"There is an opportunity to tell the personal story about how people along the line feel," van Waarden says about his motivation to capture stories from a cross section of Canadians stretching from "the fisherman on Grand Manan Island to the farmer in Saskatchewan."

Energy East is a massive project proposed by TransCanada Corp. to bring 1.1 million barrels a day of western oil to eastern markets along a 4,600-kilometre pipeline. It involves converting a 40 year old existing gas pipeline, the development of 72 new pumping stations along the route and new pipelines to connect oil sands in Alberta to Quebec City and then on to St. John, N.B.

"The oil sands are already Canada's fastest-growing source of carbon pollution and the Energy East pipeline would help to accelerate production. Any regulatory review should include not only the impact of the pipeline itself, but also the impact of producing the crude that would flow through it." (Clare Demerse, Federal Policy Director, Pembina Institute)