Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has a message for Enbridge Inc., of Canada, which operates the pipeline called Line 5 that crosses through Straits of Mackinac: “Times up!”

The governor gave notice six months ago that the troubled pipeline had to cease operation as of Wednesday; Enbridge refused and court fights continue.

I don’t think the Odawa Casino up in Mackinaw City has a wagering line on it, but it’s a safe bet that a shutdown won’t happen anytime soon.

As the complicated international legal battle intensifies, the opposing sides to the issue dig deeper trenches and fire more shots of litigation. The most recent salvo is an Enbridge suit filed yesterday, invoking a 1977 border treaty between the U.S. and Canada, and requesting an indefinite stay on Whitmer’s executive order that revokes the 1953 state easement allowing Enbridge to move oil under the Mackinac Bridge.

In the meantime, the Odawa Tribe, in a chorus with the other 11 federally recognized Native American tribes in the region, demands the end of the folly called Line 5.

The people who were here first have always opposed the dangerous industrial intrusion into their waters. The recent discovery of an ingenious Stone Age “caribou run” that their ancient ancestors constructed on the floor of Lake Huron near the pipeline deepens their resolve to banish Enbridge, as the sachem of the Bay Mills Tribe phrased it.

It is important to note that Enbridge failed to mention the existence of the caribou run, an astounding archaeological find, in the survey that it submitted to the state to obtain permits for a permanent Line 5 tunnel 100 feet below the bottom of the Straits.

How did their expert surveyors manage to miss an assemblage of glacial boulders in parallel lines where they were surveying? Or did they come across the caribou run and leave it out of the report, knowing that news of it would cause a delay, maybe even a change in plans? With regard to the archaeological survey, Enbridge demonstrated either incompetence or duplicity. Neither is a qualification to safely operate an oil pipeline.

Julie Riddle’s recent column on the controversy was chock-full of useful data. It is comforting to think that, in the event of a Line 5 oil spill, there is only a 5% chance that black dreck would reach the shores of Thunder Bay.

That is, if the spill were 25,000 gallons.

Further along in the informative article, the reader learns that, in 2010, an Enbridge pipeline puked 840,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River. That’s almost 34 times larger than the theoretical spill resulting in that consoling figure of 5%. Math is one of my many weaknesses, but, when I plug the number 840,000 into the equation, instead of 25,000 … I don’t like those odds!

If Enbridge was unable to fix the leak into the Kalamazoo River (which is no Mississippi) before nearly a million gallons got away, how quickly could it respond to a pipeline rupture in the Straits of Mackinac?

The Straits is not a single strait, it is a network of passages, not only the big Strait between the two lobes of the lungs-shaped lake we divide into two, lakes Michigan and Huron, but also between several islands, the most famous of which is Ferry-to-the-Fudge Island.

The water in the Straits creates complex currents, as anyone who has been at the helm of a sailboat navigating under Big Mac or trying to make port at Mackinac Island or Mackinaw City will attest. Unlike the Mississippi, which flows one way, unless the New Madrid Fault acts up and makes it go backwards for a while.

That kind of epic earthquake, last experienced in 1810, does not seem to be a scenario considered by Enbridge. On that occasion, the ground heaved all the way to New England, much farther from Tennessee than the Straits, where Enbridge wants to encase a pipeline in a tunnel.

Finally, The Straits is a body of water about five times wider than the Mississippi at its widest point, and half again as deep. Lord knows how much wider and deeper it is than the mighty Kalamazoo!

“I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo” is a witty little ditty, an ear-worm left by the 1942 movie “Orchestra Wives”, which Michiganders have been humming ever since. Here it is: youtube.com/watch?v=rDnKaHHe0Rw

The film is fun, a vehicle for the great big band leader Glenn Miller. The whole flick is on YouTube, but the excerpt everyone should watch is the seven-plus-minute rendition of “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo”.

Miller’s orchestra dazzles, and the legendary trombonist is at the height of his abilities, captured just two years before his airplane went down in the English Channel, adding him to the long list of casualties of World War II. The stars of the sequence are The Nicholas Brothers. Fayard and Harold Nicholas ignored gravity as they danced. Their bodies don’t seem solid; they move as if their forms were liquid, contained only by their tuxedoes. Do yourself a favor and google it.

Here’s my adapted version of the song’s lyrics, made germane to today’s non-event, Gov. Gretchen’s Line 5 deadline:

“They had a spill in Kalamazoo!

Thousands of gallons of oil in the river called Kalamazoo.

Years have gone by, since Two Thousand Ten.

Now Enbridge is back,

hoping we won’t remember back then.

They’re irresponsible!

K-A-L-A-M-A-Z-O-O …

When it comes to Enbridge —

Just say No!”

Eric Paul Roorda is a professor, historian, lecturer, author, and illustrator. He has called Alcona County home for 50 years.