A Memorial To Earth Day – Circa 1970 to 2015

By Doug Draper

This April 22^nd, 2015 marks the 45^th anniversary of Earth Day which, if nothing else, ages the hell out of me as a participant in the first one.

There we were on the first Earth Day, we poor dumb schmucks. Where did it get us 45 years later?

I was just some young, full-of-himself kid at Centennial Secondary School in Welland, Ontario – playing out what was left of the 1960s bullshit dream that our generation would change the world for the better – when, on that very first Earth Day, our school’s principal – a person I would say was one of the more progressive education administrators of the day named Joe Krar – was good enough to say; ‘Okay, I will let five or six of you go there. Don’t worry about missing classes.’

It was a courageous move on Principal Krar’s part since public schools, then and now, have had to show real caution in doing anything that might be perceived as political, and since the place we were going to was a now-gone Union Carbide plant in Welland’s south end that was a major employer at the time, but also belched mega tonnes of black and brown pollutants into the atmosphere.

On a warm summer’s evening, when the wind was blowing from the southeast, you could sit on the roof of your house and see a snake’s tail of this billowing crap drifting toward Lake Erie, over Port Dover and beyond.

So there we were, the small group of us was, picketing in front of that plant with me wearing a gas mask and raising a sign reading; ‘If you aren’t part of solution, you’re park of the pollution,’ thinking that this was somehow going to help change the world for the better.

What we got instead was te workers in the plant throwing their empty pop containers at us and using language I would rather not repeat here to say that what we were really doing was demonstrating against their jobs and tat we ought to go back to school

Little did we or those workers possibly know at the time, but they taught us a lesson that was far more important and far-reaching than we would ever learn in school. They taught us that when it comes to what is still perversely considered a choice between jobs and the economy and protecting our environment, jobs and the economy will trump environmental protection almost every time.

Indeed, it is still very much true in Canada today where a Harper government in Ottawa has aggressively and openly gutted environmental funding and regulatons for the sake of tar sands and other dirty projects. The XL pipeline from Alberta’s tar pits to Gulf refineries in the southern United States is a “no-brainer” Harperland insists.

Through it all, once world-respected agencies like Environment Canada have been reduced to ashes and any federal government scientist who believes that human activities around the burning of oil, coal and other products is contributing to severe weather events costing all of us billions of dollars in damaged property, soaring insurance premiums, food costs, etc. has been muzzled. Environmental groups and aboriginal communities that speak out are under danger of being categorized as terrorists and enemies of the state.

So there we are as Earth Day 2015 is upon us.

Over the years, I have had a number of requests across the continent, mostly from university profs, to use a copy of that image of our 45-year-old rally in front of that old Union Carbide plant that they had found in other online venues where it had be featured before. A year or so ago, a Washington, D.C. environmental group asked if they could use. They generally say they think the image may provoke some interesting discussion or thought.

When I look at that image today I think; ‘Look at these well-meaning, naïve young people – so full of energy and an idealism that going out and doing demos like this is going to change the world for the better. If it were only that simple.’

I look at that image now and the last verse of the old Bob Dylan song ‘My Back Pages’ also comes to mind. It goes like this;

 “My guard stood hard when abstract threats

Too noble to neglect,

Deceived me into thinking

I had something to protect.

Good and bad, I defined these words,

Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I’m younger than that now.”

 Maybe quoting those lyrics in the context of what has or hasn’t become of Earth Day doesn’t make all that much sense to you.

 But what makes even less sense is the vandalism we humans are continuing to do to our lands, waters, air and so many other diverse, life-sustaining resources on this – the only planet in this universe we know we have an opportunity to live a healthy life on.

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