Heather Conn Blogs

The following is my final post in a three-part series addressing the sexual assault of Alice Munro’s daughter by her stepfather.

Alice Munro’s daughter Andrea Robin Skinner has said that she does not want her public revelations regarding sexual abuse by her stepfather Gerald Fremlin to destroy her mother’s legacy. Instead, she would like her story to be recognized as part of that legacy, acknowledging both the darkness and light of her literary parent.

I understand this perspective. In today’s cancel culture, it’s far easier to dismiss and demonize anyone or anything perceived as abhorrent. A literary panel on Alice Munro gets cancelled. Previous fans throw away her books. Devoted readers refuse to read another word of hers again. Western University pauses its Alice Munro Chair in Creativity appointment to consider how it will proceed in its relationship to the Nobel laureate.

How we respond to horrific behaviour is a personal and institutional choice. I think it’s essential to condemn publicly Munro’s behaviour and support Andrea as a survivor who suffered needlessly for far too long. Yet, as a passionate Jungian, I take the stance that banishing someone or their creative output and wholly defining them by that is the flip side of ignoring or repressing your own shadow self. In a Jungian sense, healthy individual wholeness requires integration of the good and the bad – acceptance of it all.

Perhaps survivors of sexual abuse, addictions, and other issues, like Andrea, understand this because they’ve faced the worst within themselves and others and have chosen to heal from it. As I stated in part two of this series, it’s a choice of viewing ourselves and others with a “both-and” outlook rather than “either-or.”

Munro monument and statue wars

I’m curious to see what will happen to the monument in Clinton, Ont., where Munro and Fremlin lived until his death, that honours her 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. It stands in front of the town library. Will it be defaced or removed? My stand on monument removal will likely sound contradictory to what I say here earlier, but hey, I’m human.

From a raw, emotional standpoint, I wholly understand the response of First Nations peoples choosing to take down and destroy statues of white, male Canadian leaders such as Sir John A. MacDonald, who symbolize deadly and repressive colonialist views and genocide. I support the removal of these monuments because historically, they negate the presence in our nation of anyone who does not fit the image of a white, male, success story in our dominant culture. Similarly, I applaud the removal of statues of slave-trade leaders and prominent slave owners in the U.S. (For more on this, watch Inside the Statue Wars on CBC Gem.)

Ideally, once such statues are gone, I would like to see a plaque added in the original spot that explains the cultural context for their removal. That way, we know and understand the full historical picture of this “significant” person and why people today view their role as repugnant. Otherwise, they are obliterated without public education.

Also ideally, it would be great if such removals could be done as a thought-out, ceremonial act within a Truth and Reconciliation context rather than as a sudden decision by a rage-filled mob. For example, angry protesters toppled the statue of “Gassy Jack” Deighton in February 2022, during the 31^st annual Women’s Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (Deighton was a bar owner and river boat captain whom some consider a founding father of Vancouver. At age 40, he married a 12-year-old Indigenous girl who ran away after giving birth to a son at age 15.)

Again, I understand the sentiment, but at the time, negotiations were underway between the Squamish Nation and the City of Vancouver to remove the statue in a “culturally safe and respectful way.” This rash act of removal prevented the Squamish Nation from choosing how it wanted to address Deighton’s harmful legacy and it set back important steps towards reconciliation.

If we chose to remove the name and presence of every unsavoury person in history, our textbooks would be empty. It’s up to each individual and organization to choose how they want to address a person’s historic role or creative achievement. Although I recognize his genius, I won’t go and see another Woody Allen movie. Picasso was known as verbally and physically abusive to women in his life. Does that mean I can’t appreciate his great art work Guernica, which was the inspiration for the name of my own publisher, Guernica Editions in Toronto? I look at such issues on a case-by-case basis.

As the world still reels over the horrifying news that the late Nobel-prize-winning author Alice Munro supported, and remained with, her second husband who sexually abused her daughter, I have decided to weigh in. This is part one of a three-part response.

Munro’s behaviour didn’t surprise me. Like my mother, she grew up in the insular world of a rural small town in southwestern Ontario. (In my memoir No Letter in Your Pocket (Guernica Editions 2023), I describe my mom’s refusal to acknowledge my father’s sexual abuse of me.) In such communities, especially in the 1950s, the priority was to maintain appearances at all costs. (After I mentioned my dad’s alcoholism in a letter, my mom once wrote back: “You won’t endear yourself to people by pointing out their shortcomings.”) You never aired your family’s dirty laundry because you lived as if none existed. In fact, my mom gave me one of Munro’s books decades ago to try and convey the kind of repressive and morally scathing atmosphere that she herself grew up in.

As the research in my memoir reveals, it’s sadly all too common for parents of sexually abused kids to ignore or minimize the predatory behaviour of a spouse, for the sake of “keeping the family together” or just maintaining some sense of internal stasis or security. Munro’s stance is hardly new or unique.

By no means do I excuse Munro’s actions. Her lack of parental support for, and betrayal of, her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner are unconscionable. (I use Andrea’s first name here to humanize her more.) It’s truly tragic that this acclaimed writer didn’t have the emotional fortitude to nurture and side with her abused daughter. The resulting harm caused by Munro’s actions will never be erased.

Yet, as a survivor who was steeped in denial for years about my own abuse and knows what it’s like to live with dissociation, I would like to offer a perspective not shared in the media.

Someone I know, who I just learned yesterday is Andrea’s cousin, has said that her abusive stepfather Gerald Fremlin, Munro’s husband, was a “true asshole” overall. Therefore, I’m guessing that just to live with Fremlin, who undoubtedly was sexist and objectifying in general, Munro probably dissociated without even realizing it. For her to open up to the grotesque truth of what Fremlin did to her daughter would have meant letting in debilitating pain that she obviously was unwilling to face. It would have meant accepting that she made a bottomless error in character judgment, was a bad mother, and would have to shake up her own life irreparably. How could someone who has repressed her own shadow self reconcile this ugliness with an ego immersed in global accolades and literary accomplishments?  

Hence, Munro did what countless politicians and other public figures have done for centuries with any scandalous family matter: They double down. Don’t accept accountability. Protect yourself and your own status at all costs. Blame the victim. Separate yourself from the source of the embarrassing moral blemish. It’s an all-too-familiar response. That’s always been our predominant social survival stance, so it’s no surprise to me that someone from Munro’s generation, invested in maintaining her own admired image, reflects this. 

Cognitive dissonance and deference to fame

Humans seem to find cognitive dissonance a challenge, not accepting that someone can be respected world-wide and a “monster” in their personal life. It’s part of the either-or mentality we’re all raised with: someone can’t be both things. You have to choose which one you’ll define them by. Instead, I prefer the “both/and” perspective, which recognizes and tries to integrate all aspects of someone. That is the stance I strived to take towards my abusive father in No Letter in Your Pocket. This view doesn’t mean that you accept or condone someone’s atrocious behaviour. It simply means that you try to understand it.

All of the media pieces I’ve read about Andrea’s sexual abuse have focused on Munro’s response, rather than the inaction of Munro’s first husband, Jim Munro, Andrea’s birth father. In learning the news of her abuse, he did not stand up for his daughter at all. He wilfully chose not to even tell Munro about the abuse. His behaviour was abominable. Why isn’t he being excoriated? Do we hold higher moral expectations for women than men?

Andrea revealed the truth of her abuse many years ago. People such as Robert Thacker, Munro’s biographer, knew about it. However, it wasn’t until after Munro’s death that this news has come out. Is this due to the media showing deference to Munro’s prestige, wanting to extol rather than tarnish her exterior image?

I feel tremendous empathy for Andrea, who was abandoned emotionally by both parents and left to wallow, alone, in unspoken shame and taboo-tainted silence for far too many years. Huge kudos to her for finding the courage and strength to seek healing and share her story, emerging as an empowered woman. And many thanks to Munro’s Books in Victoria, BC for publicly voicing support for Andrea.

(Read here Andrea’s article “To heal is truth and peace,” published by The Gatehouse, a Toronto-based centre that provides support and resources for people impacted by childhood sexual abuse.)

Part two of this post will appear within the next few days.

I am truly pleased that 130-plus feminist groups and individuals, including Gloria Steinem, expressed public support in an open letter last week for actor Amber Heard, who lost a defamation suit last June against her former husband Johnny Depp.

While the seven-week trial was underway, I was appalled at the hateful vitriol that Internet trolls were spewing at Heard, calling her a liar, gold-digger, and much worse. Social media sites and postings mocked her tears, facial bruising, and testimony. She received death threats and ongoing harassment intimidation. A petition was circulated to try and prevent her from appearing in an Aquaman sequel. Such responses came from both men and women.

The open letter condemned these tactics as “victim-blaming tropes” and stated: “Much of this harassment was fueled by disinformation, misogyny, biphobia and a monetized social media environment where a woman’s allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault were mocked for entertainment.”

I wholly agree. For me, this trial epitomized how far we still need to go to educate the public about domestic violence and the impact of trauma. As I discovered while writing my memoir, a blame-the-victim stance is far more embedded in cultural attitudes than I previously thought.

In contrast to Heard’s vile treatment by online commentators, it appeared that tarnished Hollywood star Depp could do no wrong. Crowds cheered him daily as he left the courthouse, female fans travelled long distances to attend the trial or even just to wait outside for hours or days for the chance of a quick glimpse of him. A female survivor of intimate partner violence vs. the cult of celebrity.

This past summer, a jury awarded Depp $15 million in damages, which was later reduced to $10.35 million. His defamation suit was filed in response to a Washington Post column in which Heard did not refer to Depp by name, but wrote that she was a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

The feminists’ open letter published last week says the verdict and the online response to Heard “indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of intimate partner and sexual violence and how survivors respond to it.” I agree. We do not live in a trauma-informed society and many people do not understand how anyone can remain in relationship with, or continue to communicate with, someone who has physically and/or sexually abused them.

Kudos to Steinem and others for condemning Heard’s “public shaming” and supporting “the ability of all [my emphasis] to report intimate partner violence and sexual violence free of harassment and intimidation.”

In the wake of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s alleged rapes and decades of sexual harassment, I appreciate that one victim is condemning her industry’s culture of silence and revealing a lack of support from her unions.

Canadian actor Mia Kirshner revealed in an Oct. 14 opinion piece in The Globe and Mail that after Weinstein promised her work “in exchange for being his disposable orifice,” managers and agents told her to forget about the incident. Her own reps did nothing. She writes, “Their silence spoke volumes about power and fear within the film industry.”

She acknowledges that she was “far too quiet.” She warned her peers about Weinstein and that’s it. She declares that both her unions, the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) and Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) offered inadequate policies and procedures even if she had launched a complaint. She states, “It is still not safe to speak against sexual harassment and abuse in the film industry.”

Weinstein is only one very public face of a problem that continues across the movie/TV industry. Until we openly challenge sexual harassment and abuse and deal with it seriously and legally, things won’t change. Kirshner says actors have little recourse if they experience sexual harassment or abuse. She suggests that to protect their members, unions need to offer tangible forms of support:

• Enforce a rule of “No work-related meetings held in hotel rooms”
• Investigate allegations of wrongdoing using an independent third-party. Currently, following a complaint of alleged abuse, SAG will write a letter and ask a studio or production house to do its own investigation. The fox manages the hen house, so to speak.
• Maintain a data base that monitors blacklisting activities. If an alleged perpetrator stops hiring an actor after s/he speaks out, the union should impose penalties.

Kirshner says, “Any effort to blacklist an actor who refuses sexual advances . . . should trigger real consequences against the offender. But again, how can the unions produce evidence of blacklisting if no monitoring is in place?”

I am glad that police in New York City and London are investigating the charges of some of Weinstein’s victims. But we all know that the rate of conviction in such cases is tiny. Even if Weinstein ends up in prison, how will that change long-embedded attitudes within the industry?

In the case of Jian Ghomeshi, it was clear that his employer, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, tolerated and maintained the atmosphere of sexual harassment that Ghomeshi created, despite complaints to the union of employees.

We need to get beyond the headlines and do-gooder talk of anti-harassment policies, and implement new rules and laws with teeth. Perpetrators need to see that their actions will have tough consequences. Victims need to feel supported. We need to educate judges, lawmakers, the public, and employers, to recognize and condemn when sexual harassment and abuse occur — and take action against it.

Last year, I worked part-time in the Mentors in Violence Prevention program run by the Sunshine Coast Community Services Society. This program, started in Boston decades ago, uses exercises to teach high school students what is inappropriate behaviour, sexual harassment etc. The overriding message is that silence is not an option. The program advocates: Be more than a bystander. Each one of us must speak out in some form and tell others. We must demand that regulations and laws change. No more silence.

As I wrote in a letter to the editor years ago to The Vancouver Sun: “Our society shows more official outrage and legal condemnation over the maltreatment of pets at home than the sexual abuse of women on the job.”

For International Women’s Day, it would appear to make more sense to see a documentary that celebrates women’s empowerment, rather than one about a death resulting from a high-profile gang rape. Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old medical student, died in 2012 as a result of serious internal injuries suffered after she was repeatedly raped on a night bus in New Delhi.

Yet, I am grateful to have watched India’s Daughter last night for many reasons: it took the story out of the headlines and into humanity, onto the victim’s parents and their dignified anguish and the achievements of their daughter; it put faces on both the perpetrators and the thousands who protested, in outrage, against this horrific crime; and it laid bare the raw misogyny not only of a rapist and his defence lawyers, but of cultural attitudes in India that have viewed women as worthless for centuries.

From his Delhi prison where he awaits death by hanging, convicted rapist Mukesh Singh condemned the impact of the documentary itself: he said that it will now encourage rapists to kill their victims, rather than “just” dump them at the side of the road, as he did with his victim and her male companion. He thought the victim deserved what she got, especially since she was out “late” (past 9 p.m.) accompanied by a male who was not a family member or relative. In his view, she should have remained silent while being raped; then things would have been easier for her.

It’s a challenge for any gender to hear such hateful opinions, yet they need to be heard. We, as women, need to know and see who holds such views and to learn how widespread they are. Two of the rapists’ defence lawyers (males, of course) shared their own astounding prejudices. One likened a woman to a flower, saying it was a man’s job to protect her, and if she became damaged or soiled in any way, she no longer had value. The other vowed that he would pour acid on his own daughter if she defied or dishonoured him.

Within India’s caste system, these lawyers are among the so-called educated class; most of the rapists were raised in poverty in one of Delhi’s slums. Women’s devalued role spans all castes in India, where female infanticide is common practice. Girl babies are often aborted, undernourished or murdered.

Even the victim’s own brothers questioned their parents’ decision to take money from land reserves, essentially their own inheritance, and apply it to their sister’s education. She was only a girl, after all. And the young wife of one of the convicted rapists, who denied his guilt, said that if her husband was hanged, she’d have to kill herself and her toddler son because she’d have no one to protect and there’d be no reason left for her to live.

Censorship-prone India has banned screenings of this film, which is a gross disservice to all of its citizens, particularly women. I applaud the decision of both the BBC and CBC to screen on International Women’s Day this searing indictment of both a culture and crime that has hatred of women (not just one) at its core. Even while creating this post, I kept writing “India’s Children” instead of “India’s Daughter”; I felt like my subconscious was trying to remind me that this is an archetypal story that affects us all. Its ramifications live far beyond this one rape and murder.

While travelling solo in India for seven months in 1990/91 in my early thirties, I was sexually assaulted numerous times by Indian men. The prevailing attitude was that any western woman travelling alone was a prostitute. This view was heightened when my male Indian companion accompanied me; men from taxi drivers to waiters assumed that I was his hooker and some even denied us a ride for fear of backlash. (I write about some of these encounters in my yet-to-be-published memoir No Letter in Your Pocket.)

Thankfully, laws in India have since changed to help female victims of rape, incest, and similar crimes fight back and win in the courts. Sally Armstrong outlines these successes in her book Ascent of Women (Random House, 2013). At least the rapists in Singh’s gang rape, including a 17-year-old tried as a juvenile, were all arrested and convicted. One of them had reportedly committed hundreds of prior rapes.

For more info on India’s Daughter, see  Arti Patel’s feature “Watch ‘India’s Daughter’ No Matter How Much Pride You Have” on HuffPost Living Canada.

     — Heather Conn photo

Theresa Jeffries with Sunshine Coast NDP MLA Nicholas Simons at last year’s Defend Our Coast rally in Davis Bay, BC.

 

I was deeply saddened by the recent death of sishalh elder Theresa Jeffries (sxixaxy) at age 81.  I had met her at events such as Defend Our Coast in Davis Bay and interviewed her for a documentary that I’ve written, produced, and directed called A New Way: An Organic Garden Changes Lives.

 

Theresa was indeed a special woman, full of grace and humour—her native name translates to “Laughing Princess.” Through public appearances and educational work, she shared her desire to ensure that as many people as possible, both First Nations and non-native, knew the destructive impact of residential schools and how much value one’s heritage holds. (The first sishalh to graduate from grade 12, Theresa entered residential school at age seven, remaining until grade seven.) She received the Queens Diamond Jubilee for her advocacy work and revitalized the sishalh language by helping to create a dictionary and curriculum development.

 

Sechelt chief Garry Feschuk reminded us at Theresa’s Celebration of Life ceremony on March 25: “Theresa lives in all of us. True love lasts forever.” He gestured to the crowd in the Sechelt band hall, filled to capacity with about three hundred of Theresa’s relatives and friends, plus elders, and people in two overflow tents outside, and said: “She was a very, very rich woman. These are her treasures.”

 

Garry told us that three days before she died, Theresa had appeared to him in a dream, surrounded by a herd of bighorn sheep. In honour of the memory of “our auntie,” as many referred to her during the ceremony, a procession of First Nations drummers carried a bentwood box to the front of the hall. It was made from a 750-year-old cedar from her home community.

 

I hope to receive Garry’s permission to dedicate the documentary A New Way to the memory of Theresa. She appears in the video, wearing her button blanket and ceremonial headdress, with Aaron Joe, CEO of Salish Soils. She expresses her pride and satisfaction in seeing the success of Aaron’s composting company and his long-term vision for the demonstration garden on Sechelt band land. She describes the negative impact of residential schools and how her people used to grow their own food and fruit.

 

Both Ivy Miller, who shot and edited the footage for A New Way, and I felt honoured to have met Theresa and experience her influence in the community and beyond. She was a treasure, indeed, and we will carry her in our hearts.

Read “A remarkable woman,” a tribute to Theresa Jeffries in The Coast Reporter.

Watch for upcoming information regarding the public release and screening of A New Day.

 

 

Prime minister Stephen Harper’s recent decision to muzzle public statements and activities of federal librarians and archivists is indeed a chilling echo of Orwell’s 1984. Controlling freedom of expression is one of the first dictates of a totalitarian regime. For Canada, this is the latest of Harper’s attempts to quash anyone or anything that challenges the actions of his government, whether it’s environmentalists slamming the tar sands or scientists reinforcing the truth of climate change.

 

 

I was appalled to read about the new “code of conduct” for Canada’s federal librarians, which lists “teaching, speaking at conferences, and other personal engagements,” as high-risk behaviours that might conflict with an employee’s “duty of loyalty” to the government. Heaven forbid that a well-educated, informed citizen might exercise his or her fundamental right and speak out against the prime minister and/or his policies!

 

Stay back in your dark stacks, you pesky librarians and archivists. How dare you exercise free speech and provide information that makes people think—and question authority.

 

Within Canada’s democratic process and heritage, Harper’s latest rule is a cringing, cowardly act. Can he control the creative spirit of those who choose to think and act as free individuals? No. Will he continue to try? Yes. Any politician, secure in his or her sense of self and position, invites public discourse as an open avenue of shared ideas, new discoveries, and rich platform for changing or expanding viewpoints. As they say, this is what democracy looks like.

 

This latest mandate continues Harper’s similar trajectory of trying to silence federally paid scientists who haven spoken out against climate change and verified its existence with research data. They, too, cannot speak to reporters or make announcements on their own volition.

 

Not surprisingly, the Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC), to which I belong, and other organizations, such as the Canadian Association of University Teachers and the Canadian Library Association, have denounced the recent changes to the role of employees at Library and Archives Canada.

 

“We strongly urge Library and Archives Canada to reconsider and rewrite their code,” TWUC chair Merilyn Simonds said in the organization’s March 20 press release. “This kind of chill on free expression reflects very poorly on Canada, and is surely outside the mainstream of Canadian opinion. Canada has a proud history of vigorous public debate. Our national archives should celebrate that tradition, not repress it.”

 

Librarians and archivists are the lifeblood of writers and a free nation. They protect and make available the gamut of knowledge to those people, like me, who seek to learn, grow, teach, and share information with others. Totalitarian governments are the ones that try to make history disappear, rewriting it in ways that extol their ideology. What’s next for Canada —federally sanctioned book-burning parties in front of the Parliament buildings?

 

— Heather Conn photos

As dozens and dozens of aboriginal drums reverberated in unison outside the Sechelt band office, people thrust “Idle No More” signs upwards. A few woven cedar hats bobbed. About 20 male shishalh band members drummed in a circle, some young, some old. They sang, joined by shishalh women who stood in a smaller circle beside them. In traditional-style dress—button blankets, cedar leggings and headbands, fringed shoulder covers—they all drummed and sang, as supportive local non-aboriginals drummed around them.

More than 500 residents on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, led by shishalh members, marched Jan. 4 across Highway 101 as part of a nation-wide Idle No More initiative. They gathered by a ceremonial fire across from Sechelt’s Raven’s Cry Theatre to show support for Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence of northern Ontario and to condemn prime minister Stephen Harper’s omnibus bill C-45. (Spence has been on a hunger strike for 29 days, demanding a meeting with Harper to discuss treaty issues and conditions on her reserve. The prime minister has since agreed to meet with the Assembly of First Nations and chiefs on Jan. 11.)

Bill C-45 reduces the number of waterways protected by the Navigable Waters Protection Act from three million to 96. It also weakens or removes industry requirements to protect fish habitat or compensate for its loss or damage. Besides directly attacking the heritage and livelihood of Canada’s First Nations communities, the bill ignores treaties signed by our European and Aboriginal ancestors. It will also serve to destroy land, water, soil, and ecosystems. It eliminates legislation that would have otherwise slowed down or prevented the building of pipelines such as Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project.

“Bill C-45 is going to affect everybody,” shishalh member Robert Joe told the group through a megaphone. “It gives free rein to come into our territories and take our resources. We need to protect our fresh water.”

Donna Shugar, Sunshine Coast Regional District director

Throughout last Friday’s event, shishalh nation members reinforced that their vision of Canada’s Idle No More movement was inclusive, equally welcoming non-natives, environmentalists, First Nations, and anyone opposed to Harper’s dismantling of Canada’s democratic process and structures.

shishalh elder Barb Higgins (Xwu’p’a’lich)

“Let’s all join together and show Canada that we are one,” said shishalh elder Barb Higgins (Xwu’p’a’lich), to cheering and drumming. Locally, Higgins has condemned destruction of forests on the Sunshine Coast and was recently arrested for trying to save 27 hectares of trees and habitat in Wilson Creek.

“We have got to stand up for our rights,” said shishalh chief Garry Feschuk. “This omnibus bill is destructive of our issues in every community across Canada. There has been no consultation. It’s the law to consult with First Nations.”

This last comment brought applause and supportive drumming. Feschuk said that Canada’s current Idle No More rallies, part of a grassroots movement, are only a beginning. Although Harper has agreed to meet with chiefs, Feschuk said: “It’s got to be more than words. Things will escalate if there’s no action behind those words.”

shishalh ancestral chief Calvin Craigan said that the First Nations struggle to achieve rights and recognition in Canada has continued for 200 years. “Finally, nations are going to stand together,” he told the group around the fire. “We’re going to continue until the suppression is no longer.”

After the event, sishalh band council member Ashley Joe wrote: “My heart is so happy to see our people unite for such an important cause. . . Let’s pray that Harper listens to our voices and meets with our leaders in good faith, [in a] Nation-to-Nation manner to address our concerns. We are a powerful people and must be reckoned with.”

The Idle No More movement began when four women in Saskatchewan, indigenous and non-indigenous, organized teach-ins to educate people about the impact of Bill C-45. Since then, indigenous communities across Canada have embraced it as a grassroots initiative and held related roadblocks, protests, flash mobs, and more.

How can you help?

• Stay informed by reading grassroots websites such as idlenomore1.blogspot.ca/
• Join Idle No More rallies and demonstrations
• Write to your local MP
• Contact Stephen Harper at pm@pm.gc.ca or 613-992-4211
• Write to the Governor-General of Canada, Rideau Hall, 1 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A1
• Join your local Idle No More Facebook page
• Join Twitter @IdleNoMore4 or Idle No More

Think of new, engaging ways to bring these issues to a broader audience in a respectful, peaceful way.

 

In all of the 2012 Olympics media coverage so far, I have heard nothing on TV or in print about the environmental impact of the Games. The construction and operations of the London Games, combined with the associated travel of athletes from 200+ countries, are expected to generate more than two million tons of carbon dioxide, according to University of B.C. associate professor James Tansey.

He’s executive director of the ISIS Research Centre at the university’s Sauder School of Business. The centre focuses on using business tools to create a low-carbon economy. Tansey was involved with the organizing committee of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, which were the first Games to be carbon neutral.

 

Tansey’s company Offsetters partnered with the 2012 Canadian Olympic team to offset its travel to London. The team is offsetting around 1,500 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which is roughly the same volume as 300 Olympic-size swimming pools. The team’s related carbon credits are invested in four organizations: two landfill gas ventures in Canada, a bio-gas project in Thailand, and a wind farm in Turkey.

 

Some people think that carbon offsets are little more than scams, allowing people to continue to pollute, then appease their guilt by investing in dubious projects branded “green.” Like any businesses, the standards and ethics of carbon-offset companies vary dramatically.

 

You can find out more about carbon offsets from the downloadable guide Purchasing Carbon Offsets, prepared by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute. A few questions to consider regarding carbon offsets include:

•  Have your carbon offsets been certified to a recognized standard?

• How do you ensure that the greenhouse gas reductions that your carbon offsets represent are quantified accurately?

• Are 100 per cent of your offsets validated and verified by accredited third parties?

 

As the David Suzuki Foundation points out on its website: “[V]oluntary offset programs should not be seen as a substitute for comprehensive government regulations to reduce greenhouse gases.” The Foundation calls them a step in the right direction, and an opportunity to demonstrate leadership on climate change.

 

Find out more at Go Carbon Neutral on the David Suzuki Foundation website.

 

 

Awareness. Commitment. Action. One person alone can’t alter an entire economic system, but working with others who are committed to take action to change it can make a difference. That’s one of the messages of The Story of Change, the latest in environmental activist Annie Leonard’s animated video series The Story of Stuff.

 

In this six-minute short, Leonard blames bad policies and business practices for our current western economy, which values profits over people and the planet, and creates enormous inequities in taxation and income. It’s not enough, she says, to be a smart shopper and stop buying stuff that you don’t need that will end up in a landfill. We need to demand changes from politicians, regulators, and manufacturers.

 

The movie explores what effective change-making has looked like over time, presenting two world examples of successful mass change: the U.S. civil rights movement under Martin Luther King Jr., and India’s shift to independence, spurred by Mahatma Gandhi. Neither of these pivotal events of social transformation would have happened, Leonard says, if the respective leaders, King and Gandhi, had pursued their quest as loners.

Annie Leonard

She emphasizes that any significant effort to build a better future shares three key factors: a big idea, a commitment to work together, and the ability to turn the big idea and commitment into action.

 

I wholly agree, and yet the movie fails to acknowledge the value and power of inner growth and change, which often creates the launching pad for external action. The spiritual beliefs of both King and Gandhi were major influences behind their desire for change and their commitment to peaceful resistance. If King and Gandhi were themselves violent people, they could not have inspired and led others towards peace and dramatic social change. Their inner change had to come first.

 

That’s one reason, in my view, why many collective attempts at change fail. The so-called leaders haven’t done enough inner growth work (whether it’s in aid of maturity, anger management, compassion, forgiveness, love etc) to walk the talk and inspire others without creating emotional meltdowns, hatred, resentments, and disillusionment. The resulting hypocrisy and contradictions between their espoused views and goals and their daily behavior become too discordant for many followers, who often quit in disgust.

 

 

As they say: Never underestimate the power of one human being to make a difference. As Gandhi said: “We must be the change we want to see in the world.” Someone’s presence, demeanour, and attitude, even with no words spoken, can alter any atmosphere or group.

 

I believe in the approach Heal Yourself, Heal the World. Yet, as Leonard points out, it’s not enough to remain isolated after changing yourself for the good. Only when you join with like-minded others for a larger cause can widespread change take place.

 

What kind of change agent are you — networker or nurturer, builder or resister? Discover your “changemaker personality type” (communicator, builder, networker, nurturer, investigator or resister) in the short quiz following the video.