VICTORIA, B.C. – Organizers are promising a peaceful but huge sit-in at the B.C. legislature, Monday, to protest the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, but many also said some participants are willing to go to jail to get their point across.

The demonstration, organized by a coalition of groups, is aimed at sending a clear message to the provincial and federal governments about the plan to pipe crude from the Alberta oil sands to a tanker port in Kitimat.

Peter McHugh, spokesman for the group, Defend Our Coast, said demonstrators do not take civil disobedience lightly, but they hope the protest is peaceful.

“We mean to deliver a message to Christy Clark and the federal government that British Columbians oppose these tar sands, tankers and pipelines,” McHugh said.

Some protesters were lining up at a Greenpeace tent to sign legal forms to participate in what Greenpeace officials were saying could become an act of civil disobedience.

Greenpeace is known for using attention-grabbing methods that include placing banners on whaling ships or business headquarters to highlight their causes.

McHugh said he hopes the protest shows that opponents of the project run the gamut from grandmothers to business owners.

Molly Vanpoelgeest, 65, said she travelled from nearby Saltspring Island to participate in the protest.

She said she wants to show the federal and provincial governments that the majority of British Columbians and Canadians are opposed to a pipeline project that threatens the West Coast environment.

“Despite the fact that (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper would give away the coastline for nothing and (Premier Christy) Clark would give it away for the right price, I’m not willing to give it away,” Vanpoelgeest said. “I’m not willing to give it away.”

Many protesters were carrying placards telling Harper and Clark the B.C. coast is not for sale.

Others carried hand-made placards, one saying, “Tanker Free B.C. For Me.”

The Northern Gateway issue is a tipping point for the public, and everyday people are mobilizing against it, said Nikki Skuce of ForestEthics.

“People have thought about the Enbridge and Kinder-Morgan pipelines as a real key issue, whether it’s to do with climate change, Harper bullying, cutting environmental legislation, First Nations rights and title, shipping raw resources and the jobs that go with it overseas,” Skuce said.

“This is the first, the culmination, of building on what people have said when they said they’ll do whatever it takes to try to stop these projects.”

The threat of protests and civil disobedience harkens back to the War in the Woods of B.C. in the 1980s, when confrontations between environmentalists and forestry workers were commonplace as the two battled over the province’s old growth forests.

The Northern Gateway protests have been endorsed by unions such as the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, the Canadian Auto Workers, the B.C. Teacher’s Federation, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union, as well as celebrities including actor Ellen Page and singer Dan Mangan and filmmaker Michael Moore.

They have the backing of Greenpeace, ForestEthics, the Council of Canadians and several First Nations, and have been endorsed by high-profile activists such as David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis.

The provincial government is not in session, but protesters say it will get the message.

About 4,500 people have signed an online pledge on the group’s website promising support for the protest in Victoria and another provincewide protest planned for Wednesday at MLA offices in 55 communities.

The pipeline would carry diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands through northern B.C. to a tanker port in Kitimat in one pipe, and condensate from Kitimat east to Alberta in another.

Enbridge has estimated that opening up Asian markets to Canadian oil would boost Canada’s GDP by $270 billion over 30 years, and would generate $81 billion in direct and indirect revenues to the federal and provincial governments. Of that, B.C. would receive about $6 billion, while Ottawa would receive about $36 billion and Alberta $32 billion.

Environmental review hearings in Prince George, B.C., have been adjourned for one week, and will resume Oct. 29.

The three-member review panel has until the end of next year to complete its report.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said he will be in Victoria on Monday.

“The Harper Government has clearly demonstrated that it is only their blatant sell-out to industry agenda that matters,” Phillip said in a statement.

He said environmental laws “are being systematically bulldozed aside in Parliament to the delight and benefit of tar sands development projects such as the Northern Gateway Enbridge project and the expansion of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline.”

Kinder Morgan has proposed its own $4.1-billion Trans Mountain project that would expand an existing pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver.