Tuesday evening I heard Vaggelis Lampakis (the mayor of Alexandroupoli in the Thrace region of Greece) and Maria Kadoglou (an activist from the Halkidiki peninsula) speak at the University of Ottawa about mines being developed in their country by Vancouver-based Eldorado Gold. They were accompanied by Tolis Papageorgiou who is also from the Halkidiki peninsula.

They have travelled more than 7,500 kilometres to speak in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver to raise public awareness in Canada about the impacts the mines would have on their forests, land and water, and the harm the company has already brought to their community and democratic process.

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Another true horror story for water and the environment: open cast mineral sand mining. In very basic terms, this form of mining uses huge water cannons to send highly pressurized water to convert the soil to a slurry. This is then sent to a processing plant to separate valuable minerals, with waste going to pit refill, slimes dam sites and the recycle system at the plant. Alongside the valuable minerals, the process produces a sterilized mining area and abhorrent slimes dams.

Blue Planet Project campaigner Meera Karunananthan is currently on a fact-finding mission on mining and water in El Salvador. She is participating in an international delegation that includes people from 12 countries and 22 organizations.

On Friday, she was in the capital city of San Salvador. At the media conference that began that day, she spoke about international solidarity for the struggle to protect water in El Salvador and the leadership social movements in that country have provided to the world. That afternoon, she spoke on a panel along side Manuel Perez Rocha, who is with the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, and Vidalina Morales, a Salvadoran activist who has been leading the struggle against a Canadian-based mining company in her community.

On Monday a 'Toxic Tour' march took place to 'expose Vancouver-based mining companies.'

The Mining Justice Alliance event was endorsed by the Council of Canadians, Greenpeace, Idle No More Vancouver, Llh Lin Liyin Grassroots Wetsuwet'en, Kairos Metro Vancouver, No One Is Illegal, Occupy Vancouver, Rising Tide, Wirikuta Vancouver Alliance, the National Roundtable of El Salvador on Metallic Mining, and many other groups.