A Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted on World Environment Day, June 5th, 2026
This June 5th marks World Environment Day today – the 54th day of its kind since it was first established by the United Nation General Assembly in 1972 – but not that it appears this year that many people have noticed.
Even the Office of Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, that has a habit of coming out with a canned “statement” ffrom the PM for almost every conceivable day except ones that might honour cow chips or belly button lint, has not come out with one to recognize World Environment Day – although, we will see. The day is only a little more than half through.
If this aging journalist, who spent a good deal of his years at newspapers and other media venues reporting on environment issues, sounds a little disheartened to you at this point in time, I would have to confess that you are damn right. I am.
When I look back over the decades to all of the good citizens from the late
We sure could use more people as fearless and as dedicated as the late, great environmental activist from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Margherita Howe who led a group called Operation Clean, today.,
Margherita Howe of Operation Clean in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario and former Love Canal resident Lois Gibbs and great people like the late Sister Margeen Hoffman who supported their fight against toxic waste dumps on the American side of the Niagara River, and to brave government officials who had the courage to speak out while still working with Environment Canada like Doug Hallett and Rick Findlay, and to now retired New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Erie County, N.Y area director John Spagnoli, and to the recently deceased Jim Bradley and all of the work he did to usher in tougher environmental protection measures as a St. Catharines MPP and Ontario Environment Minister in the 1980s, it is very disheartening to see how little attention the environment appears to be getting now.
The late St. Catharines MPP and Niagara Regional Chair Jim Bradley, during his years in the mid to late 1980s as Environment Minister in Ontario. Canadian scientist, environmental activist and CBC TV Nature of Things host David Suzuki often called him the best environment minister Canada ever had.
In fact, with so much attention and financial resources now going to fighting wars, to building more gas and oil pipelines, to building more housing and roads further and further out into what are left of our irreplaceable green spaces, we seem to be moving backwards.
Then we have all of the crackpots out there, including political leaders as high up as U.S. President Donald Trump out there, who still insist that climate change is a hoax.
Then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with then Canadian Environment Minster Catherine McKenna to his left, take a few moments to talk to school children gathered in a Niagara-on-the-Lake on World Environment Day, June 5th, 2017, to urge them to stay engaged in public affairs because, as Trudeau stressed at the time, “you are the future leaders.” Photo by Doug Draper
Back in 2017, when it was Canada’s turn to host a global summit on World Environment Canada, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a quick visit to Niagara—on-the-Lake after paddling a kayak down the Niagara River and said the following in front of a group of teachers and their elementary school students; “We can’t walk away from the reality of climate change and we won’t walk away from a global plan that has a realistic chance of fighting it.”
Tragically, it appears that we can walk away from that reality until consequences of climate change come right up and blow down or flood out our homes, turn our communities to ashes or make the air potentially dangerous to breath from the smoke from distant wildfires.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just throw up my hands and give up writing about all of this and spend more time learning to play a few more songs on my guitar before my journey on this planet is over, but I can’t.
I have a young daughter and her future and the future of all younger people and of other species of life on this earth are at stake.
That means that all of us have a responsibility to make the protection and preservation of our precious natural resources as much of a priority, if not more, than making money and spending countless billions of dollars building weapons of war.
That is my sermon for this World Environment Day 2026 and I hope I didn’t bore you too much.
And with that want to leave you with a wonderful video of the iconic David Attenborough, who just recently turned 100 years old, delivering some words about life on this planet a few years ago.
To watch it, and I hope you do and share it with your friends, click on the screen immediately below –
For more on on World Environment Day and related topics, click on the following links –
https://www.worldenvironmentday.global/about/his54tory
Canada’s Resolve Won’t Be Trumped in Climate Change Fight – Trudeau | Niagara At Large
P.S. – There are so many other good people from the environmental battles of the past 40 or 50 years that I could have mentioned here, including some great fellow journalists who inspired my work so much, if I had the room. I feel bad about leaving them out. Doug Draper
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