As part of a series highlighting the work of young people in addressing the climate crisis, writer Patricia Lane interviews Victoria Coun. Sharmarke Dubow.
The 1990s were personally tough for me. I spent the decade immersed in action based on climate catastrophe science, trying, and by all accounts failing, to stem the tide. Hardest of all, death and dementia came to my family.
British Columbia remains the only province in Canada governed by the New Democratic Party (NDP), after the social democrats won a decisive election on Saturday, October 24. Even with several ridings too close to call, and hundreds of thousands of mail-in votes still to be counted, the NDP’s lead is insurmountable, with the party leading or elected in fifty-five ridings, nearly double the BC Liberals’ twenty-nine.
The RCMP's failure to protect Mi'kmaq fishers from intimidation, assault and destruction in Nova Scotia demonstrates how the Canadian state is all too ready to permit or perpetrate violence against Indigenous Peoples, say First Nations groups and B.C. politicians.
British Columbia is at the confluence of several crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn; the ongoing housing, homelessness, and drug overdose crises; the climate and ecological crises; and the crisis of colonialism for indigenous peoples, which has been ongoing since the beginnings of settler society.
British Columbia is also in the throes of an election campaign. The election pits the BC NDP led by Premier John Horgan, against the BC Liberals led by Andrew Wilkinson, and the BC Green Party led by Sonia Furstenau.
Harrison Johnston remembers standing in a little coffee shop last September, watching in awe as a massive crowd marched from Vancouver City Hall to the Central Library downtown.
Then a lead organizer with Sustainabiliteens, a youth-led climate movement in Metro Vancouver that coordinated the Sept. 27, 2019, climate strike, he said he had only expected up to 20,000 people. Instead, the protest became the largest in the city’s history, with over 100,000 people filling the streets.
