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Being a nun offers me the best of both worlds: prayer and service to the poor | Letter

Thank you to Emma Beddington for her thoughtful column (Tired of being a woman in 2025? Why not become a nun?, 1 December). It is always refreshing to see nuns and religious sisters portrayed in a context other than the horror-movie stereotype we seem to have inherited. I was intrigued by her mention of Convent Wisdom: How Sixteenth-Century Nuns Could Save Your Twenty-First-Century Life by Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita. I look forward to reading it and I may well recommend it in our Franciscan newsletter. Emma is absolutely right that there has been a renewed interest among younger women in religious life. I have been a Franciscan sister for two years. While some women are called to the cloistered, contemplative life, many of us belong to active orders. Our work is practical and rooted in service to the poor. In my own ministry, I divide my time between soup kitchens, homeless shelters, emergency food and housing programmes, and – drawing on my background in healthcare – providing medical support to people living on the streets. For me, this vocation offers the best of both worlds. I live in a community of women and participate in our daily offices of prayer, yet I also live and work in central London, very much immersed in the life of the city. Not everyone called to religious life flourishes behind monastery walls. Fortunately, there are many forms of religious life – contemplative cloistered orders, mixed contemplative/active communities, apostolic and fully active orders – each offering a distinct way to live out one’s calling. It has become increasingly common for people to be unsure of what a nun actually is, and with the abundance of cinematic nuns (few of them flattering) – and the unfortunate legacy of some deeply troubled individuals in our history – it’s heartening to encounter writing that treats us with curiosity and wit. Sister Sophia Rose Community of St Francis, London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Kremlin hails Trump’s national security strategy as aligned with Russia’s vision

The Kremlin has heaped praise on Donald Trump’s latest national security strategy, calling it an encouraging change of policy that largely aligns with Russian thinking. The remarks follow the publication of a White House document on Friday that criticises the EU and says Europe is at risk of “civilisational erasure”, while making clear the US is keen to establish better relations with Russia. “The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Sunday. He welcomed signals that the Trump administration was “in favour of dialogue and building good relations”. He warned, however, that the supposed US “deep state” could try to sabotage Trump’s vision. It came as the White House’s efforts to push through a peace deal in Ukraine enter a key phase. US officials claim they are in the final stage of reaching an agreement, but there is little sign that either Ukraine or Russia is willing to sign the framework deal drawn up by Trump’s negotiating team. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will visit Downing Street on Monday for a four-way meeting with with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Zelenskyy has previously called on European allies for support at times when the White House has tried to push Ukraine towards agreeing to give up territory. A key issue for Kyiv is what security guarantees it would receive if it does agree to renounce control of some territory. Zelenskyy has said he had a “substantive phone call” with US officials on Saturday evening after they finished three days of talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Florida. Those meetings followed a visit to Moscow by Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, earlier in the week. A source told Axios the call had lasted two hours and was “difficult”. “Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. He said the two sides had discussed “key points that could ensure an end to the bloodshed and eliminate the threat of a new Russian full-scale invasion”. It is not clear that either the US or Europe are willing to offer the kind of security guarantees that would genuinely deter Russia from invading again. Nor is it likely that Vladimir Putin would agree to a deal that involved any western troops stationed in Ukraine. US officials have claimed to be close to a sustainable deal on numerous occasions since Trump began his second term in office, only for the claims to be exposed as wishful thinking. Trump’s outgoing Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, said at a defence forum on Saturday that the administration’s efforts to end the war were in “the last 10 metres”. He said there were two outstanding issues: territory and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kellogg is seen as among the US officials most sympathetic to Kyiv’s position, but is due to leave his role in January and was present at the Florida talks. Many others in Trump’s orbit, including Witkoff, have been much more open to adopting Russian positions. Trump’s son, Donald Jr, said at a forum in Doha on Sunday that Zelenskyy was deliberately continuing the conflict for fear of losing power if it ended. He said the US would not be “the idiot with the chequebook” any longer. Analysts in Kyiv say the situation is not yet so bad that Ukraine would be forced to sign any deal whatsoever simply to prevent a continuation of the war, but they say a difficult and potentially bleak winter lies ahead as Russia continues to target energy infrastructure, disrupting power and heating supplies for millions of Ukrainians. Exhaustion is setting in as Ukraine enters the fourth winter of full-scale war, and Zelenskyy has been weakened by a corruption scandal that has touched numerous associates and led to the resignation of his powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. One person was killed during a drone attack in the northern Chernihiv region late on Saturday, according to local officials, and a combined attack of drones and missiles targeted energy infrastructure in the central city of Kremenchuk. It left much of the city without power and water on Sunday. It was the second consecutive night of attacks targeting energy, after more than 600 drones and 50 missiles were used on Friday night.

Disarming Hamas should not be first task of Gaza stabilisation force, Turkey says

The international stabilisation force (ISF) in Gaza should make its priority the separation of Israeli troops and Hamas rather than the disarmament of the Palestinian group, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, has said. He also suggested that Indonesia and Azerbaijan, two countries that have offered to contribute troops, would prefer that Turkey was a member of the planned UN-backed force, something Israel is seeking to veto. The talks over the composition of the force, along with the membership of the planned board of peace and a 15-strong Palestinian technocratic committee to run services in Gaza, have stalled as detailed talks over the ISF mandate have raged behind the scenes. “Disarmament cannot be the first stage in this process,” Fidan said, speaking in Doha. “We need to proceed in the correct order and remain realistic.” He added that the ISF’s first goal “should be to separate Palestinians from the Israelis”. The Egyptian foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, seconded these proposed ISF priorities, calling for the force to be deployed along the “yellow line” running north to south in Gaza that divides the Israel Defense Forces to the east from broadly Hamas-controlled areas in the west. “We need to deploy this force as soon as possible on the ground because one side, Israel, every day is violating the ceasefire, but claims the other side is responsible so we need monitors along the yellow side in order to verify and monitor,” Abdelatty said. The ISF mandate “should be peace monitoring not peace enforcement”, he added. Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, said the plan proposed by the US president, Donald Trump, was not clear on the sequencing of the ISF tasks. As a result, he warned: “The different parties can say ‘I will do my part but only when he has done its part’, so we need to get the board of peace and the ISF in place this month because it is very urgent.” He added: “We are now in a very fragile ceasefire. We can either go forward or backward. I do not think we can stay many more weeks in this situation. The alternatives are back to war and descent into total anarchy, or we move forward.” Eide said the ISF mandate was not clear, and leaders of Muslim countries ready to provide a large number of troops were still seeking clarification about rules of engagement. “Are they actually going to try to go down into the tunnels and fight Hamas, or are they going to work with a temporary Palestinian Authority where Hamas will actually voluntarily hand in their weapons and demobilise, which they have said they are willing to do when the institutions are in place?” he asked, predicting there would not be a consensus behind an ISF mandate to disarm Hamas physically against its will. Israel has said it will not withdraw from Gaza until disarmament has taken place. Majed Mohammed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said the issue was whether disarmament had to start before the occupation ended. “You can disarm a group now and end up with 10 groups two months later if the people who took up arms are faced with the same security crisis,” he said. What was needed was political will, he added. He said Qatar was not prepared again to take sole responsibility for the reconstruction of Gaza, saying if the reconstruction was the responsibility of the entire international community Israel may feel less willing “to bomb the hell out of it”. The Saudi foreign minister, Dr Manal bint Hassan Radwan, warned against being sidetracked by detail or redefinitions of what had already been agreed. She said ultimately there would be no security for anyone without a Palestinian state. The Gulf states and Turkey had both proposed in the draft UN resolution that Hamas should be required to disarm to the Palestinian Authority and not to the ISF, since a handover of weapons to fellow Palestinians would look less like a Hamas surrender, but have the same practical impact. The amendment was not accepted by the US. The Hamas chief negotiator and its Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, has said it would hand over its weapons to “the authority of the state”, later clarifying that meant a sovereign and independent Palestinian state. “We accept the deployment of UN forces as a separation force, tasked with monitoring the borders and ensuring compliance with the ceasefire in Gaza,” Hayya said, signalling his group’s rejection of the deployment of an international force whose mission would be to disarm it. Fidan said: “First, we need to see the Palestinian committee of technical experts take over the administration of Gaza, and then we need to see a police force, composed of Palestinians, not Hamas, established to secure Gaza again.” Fidan acknowledged that the main Trump special envoy, Steve Witkoff, had been detained trying to work on the Russian-Ukraine deal, and this may be delaying the process of setting up the new bodies. He said Turkey and the Trump administration shared the same broad objectives. The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, said: “A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces – [until] there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out – which is not the case today.”

The Right Rev Thomas McMahon obituary

Catholicism does not fall quite so neatly into conservative and liberal factions as is sometimes supposed. Thomas McMahon, the former RC bishop of Brentwood, who has died aged 89, was a case in point. So traditional in his liturgical tastes that he spent millions commissioning the architect Quinlan Terry to give his undistinguished cathedral in Essex a neoclassical makeover, McMahon also led anti-nuclear prayer vigils and supported street demonstrators against American foreign policy. It was in this later role that McMahon made his most lasting mark on the usually cautious, low-profile English Catholic church. A vice-president since 1989 of the Catholic peace organisation Pax Christi, the tall bishop, with his distinctive Bobby Charlton combover and high-pitched voice, participated in full clerical garb at protests outside international arms fairs at the Docklands Arena in east London, and at the then US embassy in Mayfair. He was an unswerving opponent of nuclear weapons – in contrast to most of his fellow English and Welsh bishops, who followed the more ambiguous line of, first, Cardinal Basil Hume and then his successors Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Vincent Nichols. In 1999, McMahon was prominent in exposing the gap between the foreign secretary Robin Cook’s public commitment to an ethical foreign policy and his government’s decision to sell arms to Indonesia. And in 2006 the bishop lent his name to those opposed to Labour’s plans to replace the Trident missile system. Such an outspoken stance should, if Catholicism divided easily into left and right wings, have made him the cheerleader for many other liberal causes, but elsewhere McMahon followed to the letter traditional Catholic teaching. In 2004 he joined the US-based anti-abortion movement Helpers of God’s Precious Infants in their picket of a Marie Stopes abortion clinic in Buckhurst Hill, Essex. English and Welsh bishops, though firmly anti-abortion in their teaching, had previously been reluctant to join such protests. It was, however, McMahon’s expensive remodelling of the Cathedral Church of St Mary and St Helen in Brentwood between 1989 and 1991 that brought him the most criticism. Protesters argued that the existing Victorian gothic structure, with its bland 1960s extension, was perfectly adequate for congregations in a small Essex town and that the money being spent on the project would be better directed towards tackling poverty and injustice. McMahon, however, maintained that the funds came from an anonymous donation made specifically for the rebuilding project, but refused to give any further details. His highly individual choice of architect – the neoclassicist Terry – did not help ease tensions. Terry mixed Italian Renaissance and English baroque styles, with one portico based on Christopher Wren’s designs for St Paul’s. It was claimed that Brentwood Cathedral was the first classical cathedral erected in Britain since St Paul’s. To some it was a masterpiece, to others a white elephant. Thomas was born into a middle-class home in Dorking, Surrey. His parents had come from Ireland, and his father was chief consultant civil engineer to Harlow New Town, in Essex. He was one of twins, but his brother, John, a barrister, died in 1969. Educated as a boarder at St Bede’s Catholic grammar in Manchester (which also ran as a junior seminary), Thomas took the unusual – among English clergy – step of training for the priesthood at Saint-Sulpice in Paris. Following his ordination in 1959, he served in a number of Essex parishes before being named in 1972 chaplain to Essex University. His patron at the time was the deeply conservative Cambridge University chaplain Mgr Alfred Gilbey, who was later rumoured to have been the anonymous funder of the Brentwood Cathedral makeover (being a member of the Gilbey’s gin dynasty). McMahon’s work as Essex University chaplain caught the attention of others in the hierarchy and in 1980, at the early age of 44, he was named bishop of Brentwood. His diocesan boundaries stretched deep into east London and increasingly McMahon was involved in multifaith initiatives there with Muslim clerics and community leaders. He enjoyed a close working relationship with his Anglican counterparts as bishops of Chelmsford. The two would meet once a month for joint prayer and their commitment to ecumenism saw them set up five shared churches and two shared schools. Never lacking in the courage of his convictions, McMahon matched his candour in speaking out in public with a colourful personality in private. He chose not to live in the traditional bishop’s residence on the London side of his diocese, but remained in the picture-postcard cottage in the village of Stock, near Billericay, which he had first occupied as university chaplain. He filled it with antiques and would entertain his priests there for dinner in batches of 10. Tipped in his early days as a bishop for further promotions, he was never one for the machinations of the national bishops’ conference and left too vivid an impression to fit neatly into the Vatican’s blueprint for a loyal cardinal. He served as bishop of Brentwood until 2014, staying on for three years after he had submitted his resignation to Rome on reaching 75, as is required, before retreating to his beloved Stock where he served as its parish priest until the end of his life. • Thomas McMahon, priest, born 17 June 1936; died 24 November 2025

First phase of Gaza ceasefire plan nearly complete, says Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the first phase of the UN-endorsed Gaza ceasefire plan is close to completion, and that the second phase must involve the disarmament of Hamas. The Israeli prime minister said he would discuss the next steps later this month in Washington with Donald Trump, whose Gaza proposals were codified in a UN security council resolution on 17 November. “We’re about to finish the first stage,” Netanyahu said. “But we have to make sure that we achieve the same results in the second stage, and that’s something I look forward to discussing with President Trump.” The prime minister was speaking at a joint press conference with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who said: “Phase two must come now and then phase three must also be considered.” Merz is the first leader of a major European state to meet Netanyahu in Israel since the international criminal court issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, in November last year for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. After winning federal elections in February, Merz had said he would invite Netanyahu to Germany despite the ICC warrants, but said on Sunday a visit was not currently under consideration. Netanyahu dismisses the warrants as “trumped-up charges” from a “corrupt prosecutor”. During the first phase of the current ceasefire agreement, Hamas released the last 20 living Israeli hostages in exchange for about 2,000 Palestinian detainees held by Israel, and it has handed over all but one of 28 bodies of hostages killed during the war. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have withdrawn to a ceasefire line, leaving them in control of 58% of the Gaza Strip. Since the ceasefire was declared on 10 October, Israeli forces have killed more than 360 Palestinians, including an estimated 70 children. Three Israeli soldiers have been killed in Hamas attacks over the same period. Neither Trump’s proposals, nor UN security council resolution 2803 which largely endorsed them, set out a timetable extending the ceasefire into a lasting peace. Hamas is supposed to disarm, Israeli troops are meant to withdraw farther, and an international stabilisation force (ISF) is to be set up under the control of a “board of peace” of world leaders chaired by Trump, overseeing a technocratic Palestinian committee to run the day-to-day governance of Gaza. The sequencing of these steps is not clear in Trump’s proposals or in resolution 2803. In his remarks on Sunday, Netanyahu put his emphasis on Hamas disarmament. “I think it’s important to make sure that Hamas complies not only with the ceasefire, but also with their commitment which they undertook to disarm and have Gaza demilitarise,” he said. Netanyahu raised the prospects of “alternatives” to the ISF, without explaining what those might be. He would not rule out Israeli annexation of the West Bank, describing it as a subject of “discussion”, and stressed that Israel was adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state, the aim of the peace process desired by most European and Arab capitals as well as the overwhelming majority of UN member states. Netanyahu said the reason he would not be able make a return visit to Germany was the ICC arrest warrants, which he described as fabricated by the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, as a means of diverting attention from allegations of sexual harassment against him. Khan has denied any wrongdoing, but stepped aside from his role in May pending the conclusion of an investigation. Netanyahu said Khan was “destroying the reputation of the ICC” with “trumped-up charges of starvation and genocide” from a “corrupt prosecutor”. Another tribunal, the international court of justice, is weighing up charges that Israeli has committed genocide in Gaza. In September, a UN independent commission of inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide. Asked about the possibility of Netanyahu visiting Germany, Merz told reporters on Sunday: “There is no reason to discuss this at the moment.”

Two marathon organisers arrested in Iran over women running without hijabs

Judicial authorities in Iran have arrested two organisers of a marathon held on an island off the country’s southern coast after images emerged showing women taking part in the race without hijabs. The arrests on Saturday come as the authorities face increasing criticism from ultraconservatives who accuse them of inadequate efforts to enforce a mandatory headscarf law for women amid fears of growing western influence on the Islamic republic. Online images of the marathon on Friday, which took place on Kish Island and attracted about 5,000 participants, showed a number of women competing without headscarves. “Two of the main organisers of the competition were arrested on warrants,” the judiciary’s Mizan news website reported on Saturday. “One of those arrested is an official in the Kish free zone, and the other works for the private company that organised the race,” it added. The judiciary said a criminal case had been opened against the organisers of the race. “Despite previous warnings regarding the need to comply with the country’s current laws and regulations, as well as religious, customary and professional principles … the event was held in a way that violated public decency,” the local prosecutor was quoted as saying in Mizan. “Considering the violations that occurred and based on the laws and regulations, a criminal case has been filed against the officials and agents organising this event.” Conservative-aligned outlets, including Tasnim and Fars, had earlier condemned the marathon as indecent and disrespectful to Islamic laws enforced after the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the US-backed shah. Although women in Iran are required to cover their hair and wear modest, loose-fitting clothing in public, observance of the hijab rules has become more sporadic since the demonstrations in 2022 after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman arrested over an alleged dress code breach. Earlier this week, a majority of lawmakers accused the judiciary of failing to uphold the hijab law. The chief justice, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, later called for stricter enforcement. The government of President Masoud Pezeshkian has refused to ratify a bill passed by the parliament that would have imposed tough penalties for women who do not observe the dress code. In May 2023, the head of Iran’s athletics federation resigned after women without headscarves took part in a sporting event in the southern city of Shiraz. Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

African swine fever outbreak in Spain may have leaked from research lab, officials say

Spanish authorities investigating the African swine fever outbreak in Catalonia are looking into the possibility that the disease may have leaked from a research facility and are focusing on five nearby laboratories as potential sources. Thirteen cases of the fever have been confirmed in wild boars in the countryside outside Barcelona since 28 November, prompting Spain to scramble to contain the outbreak before it becomes a serious threat to its pork export industry, which is worth €8.8bn (£7.7bn) a year. The regional authorities initially believed the disease may have begun to circulate after a wild boar ate contaminated food that had been brought in from outside Spain, perhaps in the form of a meat sandwich discarded by a haulier. But Spain’s agriculture ministry has opened a new line of inquiry after concluding that the strain of the virus found in the dead boars in Catalonia was not the same as the one reported to be circulating in other EU member states. According to one report, the strain in question is instead similar to one detected in Georgia in 2007. “The discovery of a virus similar to the one that circulated in Georgia does not, therefore, rule out the possibility that its origin lies in a biological containment facility,” the ministry said on Friday. “The ‘Georgia 2007’ virus strain is a ‘reference’ virus frequently used in experimental infections in containment facilities to study the virus or to evaluate the efficacy of vaccines, which are currently under development. The report suggests that the virus may not have originated in animals or animal products from any of the countries where the infection is currently present.” Catalonia’s regional president, Salvador Illa, said on Saturday that he had ordered the Catalan agrifood research institute to conduct an audit of five facilities within 20km (12 miles) of the outbreak site that work with the African swine fever virus. “The regional government isn’t ruling out any possibilities when it comes to the origin of the outbreak of African swine fever, but neither is it confirming any,” he said. “All hypotheses remain open. First and foremost, we need to know what happened.” The agriculture ministry has confirmed 13 cases of the virus – all of them in dead wild boar found within 6km of the initial focus. It has said the corpses of 37 more wild animals found in the zone had been analysed, and that all had tested negative for swine fever. Experts dispatched to the 39 pig farms within a 20km radius of the affected area have found no trace of the illness in animals there. More than 100 personnel from Spain’s military emergencies unit have also been deployed to the area to work alongside police and wildlife rangers. Long endemic to Africa, African swine fever is harmless to humans but often fatal to pigs. In 2018, the virus turned up in China, which is home to about half of the world’s pigs. By 2019, there were concerns that as many as 100 million pigs had been lost. Two years later, the virus was confirmed in Germany, home to one of the EU’s largest swine herds. Spain, which is the EU’s biggest pork producer, exported pig meat products worth €5.1bn to other EU countries last year, and almost €3.7bn of pork products to markets outside the bloc. Spain slaughtered 58 million pigs in 2021, up 40% from a decade earlier.

Canada may approve a new oil pipeline. First Nations fear another ‘worst-case scenario’

The distress call went out to the Canadian coast guard station after midnight on an October night. The Nathan E Stewart, an American-flagged tugboat, sailing through the light winds and rain of the central British Columbia coast, had grounded on a reef. The captain tried to reverse, moving the rudder from hard over port to hard over starboard. The boat pivoted but did not move, and the tug repeatedly struck the sea bed. Four hours later, the ship began taking on water, and leaking diesel into the sea. That evening, a coast guard helicopter confirmed the “worst-case scenario”: a large sheen of diesel oil on the water was visible outside of a containment boom. In total, 110,000 litres spilled near the entrance to Seaforth Channel. “I remember being in my office later that day getting calls from elders in the community. Some were crying and very upset. They talked as though we had lost someone in our community. People were devastated,” said Marilynn Slett, chief councillor of the Heiltsuk Nation, whose community of Bella Bella was 10 nautical miles from the grounding. “The spill contaminated our primary harvesting sites, causing immediate economic loss that are still ongoing today.” Nearly a decade after the 2016 disaster, the nation is still fighting for compensation for the losses it bore, including the destruction of clam gardens they had cultivated for centuries. And their lengthy and tiring battle has returned to the spotlight as Mark Carney, the prime minister, supports a pipeline project that would ferry bitumen across Alberta and British Columbia. Part of that would involve lifting a tanker ban that has been in place for 53 years. Against the backdrop of a trade war and the climate crisis, Canada is in a difficult position. It is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer with the fourth-largest reserves, outproducing most members of Opec. But swathes of the country are also warming faster than the rest of the world, and communities are facing the devastating effects. Grappling with those two realities, Carney has pledged to help Alberta with a pipeline that would move “at least one million barrels a day” to Asia. With new legislative powers, Carney’s government could also slash permitting and approval delays and is weighing lifting the moratorium on tanker traffic along the BC north coast. For many, that ban, formalized into law in 2019, reflects the inherent danger of shipping oil through a region of tempestuous weather, physical hazards and deeply revered marine ecosystems. “It’s spectacularly dangerous to conceive of putting a pipeline to northern BC and hauling that oil across the Gulf of Alaska to Asian markets,” Rick Steiner, who was one of the first on the scene of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, told the Canadian Press. “It should not see the light of day.” Large oil tankers would likely have to traverse portions of the Hecate Strait, described by author John Vaillant as a “malevolent weather factory” where winter storms produce “one of the most diabolically hostile environments that wind, sea and land are capable of conjuring”. Coastal First Nations, which represent nine nations along the central coast, swiftly declared that the project “would never happen”, and said the tanker ban was non-negotiable. Chiefs representing more than 600 First Nations voted unanimously for Ottawa to uphold the oil-tanker ban and to withdraw from the deal between the federal and Alberta governments that could see a pipeline project pushed through. Green party leader Elizabeth May said in a statement there was “no chance on God’s green Earth that an oil tanker will ever move through the inner waters between Haida Gwaii and the north coast of British Columbia”. May added that “governments cannot wish away science” nor can they “pretend that an oil tanker would not break apart under those conditions”. For First Nations on the coast, the prospect of an oil spill is deeply feared. Even relatively small disasters can have years-long consequences. The ecosystem still bears the scars of the Nathan E Stewart grounding: traditional harvesting sites have been closed and the damage to the ecosystem has permitted invasive species such as the European green crab to thrive. λáλíyasila Frank Brown, a Heiltsuk hereditary chief, said his community is open to industrial development, but only projects for which the risks can be safely managed – and the community consents. BC’s premier, David Eby, alluded to this reality when he told reporters he was open to a pipeline proposal, but said any project that would require the tanker ban to be lifted was a non-starter. He pointed out that billions of dollars’ worth of projects in the region, including liquefied natural gas terminals, currently have support from First Nations, and warned that support could be rapidly withdrawn if the federal government pushes to lift the tanker ban. Scrapping the ban would be a “grave mistake”, he said, adding: “I think that the risk of an oil spill is really significant in terms of the economic harm.” For Slett and her community, the potential harms transcend economics and push into cultural losses that have proven far more damaging. Under existing maritime law, the Heiltsuk aren’t eligible for compensation for cultural losses – including the loss of access to cultural sites. A delegation traveled to London last year to meet with the UN’s international marine organization to lobby for changes. “We’ve been fighting for justice through this colonial legal system and it’s really a process of ‘show me your receipts’. But how do you show a receipt for the loss of our ability to transmit our knowledge and our cultural practices between generations?” she asked. The cleanup salvage operations for the Nathan E Stewart spill took 40 days, with harsh weather suspending work for 11 of those. It took 45 vessels and more than 200 people to help with both the initial response and the cleanup. “That was a spill of fewer than 700 barrels and yet it polluted over 1,500 acres of our territory,” said Slett, adding that large oil tankers can carry more than 2m barrels. “We just cannot accept this risk to our community after seeing what can happen. We can’t. And we won’t.”