The technology for this was pioneered in the North Sea, enough said.

Pumped storage requires a lot of land to hold the water. With people freaking out over the small footprint of the windmills I can only imagine the resistance to such a large scale project would be even greater.

This only works if the Canadians are onboard.  Ontario and Quebec have huge hydro power capacity.  As for the NIMBY types who worry about whether this will make their beach house go down in value, when the planet is unihabitable because of climate change I hope they're happy.

Are there any windmills in development where the axis of rotation is perpendicular to the ground instead of parallel as current designs use? This would seem to lower the visual impact as well as the amount of land area needed and might even reduce the bird problem.

Bigger is better in this case. The bigger the diameter of the blade, the slower it's rotation.  Wind shear at lower elevations lowers the wind speed.  

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg