Critic of oilsands wins business book award

Montreal journalist and filmmaker William Marsden was named the winner of the $20,000 National Business Book Award for his book about the environmental degradation of Alberta.

Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care), published by Knopf Canada, was named winner of the award Tuesday in Toronto.

Marsden, a senior investigative reporter for the Montreal Gazette, takes Alberta to task in the book for squandering its future in return for short-term profits from the oilpatch.

Marsden says the book, which has outraged some Albertans, was meant to be provocative.

He argues development of the oilsands is out of control and Alberta is levelling its northern boreal forest, destroying people's health and the agricultural sector with gas wells and depleting and destroying its waterways.

Marsden is also co-author of the international bestsellers Angels of Death and The Road to Hell.

A jury chaired by former Ontario premier Bill Davis with members Jane Cooney, Anne Kingston and Peter Mansbridge chose the book from a short list of five books.

Other contenders were:

• Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent.
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
• Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy.
• The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need.