Zahava Hanan - Heading for Home

Zahava Hanans struggle to save her ranch in Alberta from the threat of industrial pollution makes Heading for Home a modern tale on an epic scale. For twenty years she fought for her rights in Western Canada. Heading for Home gives a very warm account of her companions throughout those years from cowhands to lovable animals; from concerned neighbours to the formality of the company man, some of whom too, eventually became firm friends. Aided at times in her struggle by her friend the author and tracker Andy Russell, Heading for Home tells the tale of how one womans strength and willpower contributed to our heightened sense of mutual awareness.

In the course of her long struggle to save everything she held most dear, Zahava Hanan stood squarely up to a David and Goliath confrontation with the corporations. During that time however, she came to understand that by daring to care for our environment we inherit a common ground, goal and home. This book is also the story of that spiritual quest and challenge. And it is in this sense that Zahava Hanan has been Heading for Home, and helping others get there, ever since.

This is a masterpiece of its kind, and truly original, since nobody of her sensibility has written on the subject at all. There are countless travel books about wild places and countless cosy books about life in the town. This happens to be unique both in the handling of her environment and in her ability to feel and write about it.

Cover: Cattle Drive Photograph by Richard Harrington

heading for HOME

Copyright 2001 by Zahava Hanan

The poem on page 9 is reproduced by kind permission of Elizabeth Bishop
and the poem on page 179 is reproduced by kind permission of Kathleen Raine

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book, with the exception of brief
extracts for the purpose of literary or scholarly review, may be
reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher.

Published by Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc.

P.O. Box 95, Station O, Toronto, Ontario M4A 2M8

Distributed in the U.K. by Green Books

Photographs by Zahava Hanan

Edited by Sheila Bush and Katherine Fox

Design and typesetting by
Orna Frommer-Dawson, John and Orna Designs, London

Printed by BAS Printers, England

Hanan, Zahava

Heading for home

ISBN 1-896219-74-8

1. Hanan, Zahava. 2. Ranch lifeAlberta. 3. Women ranchersAlbertaBiography. I. Title.

FC3670.R3H35 2001 971.234 C2001-900938-0

F1078.25.H35A3 2001

ZAHAVA HANAN

In the initial publication of the book I chose to refer to the oil company as big oil. The following words by Digby McLaren will clarify the story:

Petroleum exploration and production have been active in Alberta for some 70 years, and very active for 45. As a result of this long history there is an unknown number of environmental problems, large and small, some already known, others waiting to be found... Rumsey Ranch... is situated immediately to the South and downwind of the Quirk Creek Gas Plant. When Zahava Hanan, the owner of the ranch, became aware in the 70s that the plant was responsible for perceived pollution on her land, she asked them to stop, and thus began a long drawn out confrontation with industry that continues to this day. The nature of the pollution, originating in the Gas Plant, that has plagued the ranch from the beginning, included complex movements of a variety of pollutants generated in the plant area, evidently in part fed by seepage from an evaporation pond, moving down a dip in groundwater towards the ranch. Further events arising from the plant were periodic emissions of gas with an accompanying odour...

Zahava Hanan single-handedly took on Esso, the owners of the plant, together with some 90 associated Companies... For over 20 years she refused to surrender what she considered to be her right to enjoy the land, waters and air of her ranch free from the foul waters and air emanating from the gas plant. She was ignored, put down, harassed and subjected to legal questioning, but finally won the lawsuit that established her case and held Esso responsible for clean-up. But matters did not end there... Zahava Hanan describes how she finally found that the Chief Executive of Esso and the Chairman of the Energy Conservation Board were both sympathetic to her problems, and, in her words, had kept their humanity, and this led to a dialogue that continues today... A dialogue... which led to the creation of the Restoration Action Committee (RAC).

Thus the Rumsey Ranch case represents in microcosm the threeway stand-off that still exists globally between the citizen who worries about his or her environment, the Petroleum Industry which is concerned with its legitimate profits and the regulatory agency that must attempt to carry out government policy and yet strike a balance between the conflicting interests of the other two. The Rumsey Ranch happening led to the establishment, at a personal level, of open communication between the three entities. Problems still exist ground and air pollution still affect the ranch, remediation is going to be difficult and restoration probably impossible. But they are talking, understand one another, and plainly accept the need to avoid further confrontation.

Digby Mclaren What happened at Rumsey Ranch?

PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA (198790)

My experience gave me a sensitivity to everyone and their connecting sense of place, be it a club, a landscape or a filling station:

ELIZABETH BISHOP