Meredith Boyd
Meredith Boyd (left) and Maggie Naphtali proudly displaying their certificates.
Meredith is a Grade 10 student at Gulf Islands Secondary School.
Congratulations Meredith!
Nurturing the Unstoppable Wave
Over the past while I fell into the trap of worrying about doomsday and that inhibited my ability to act or even share my worries and knowledge about the climate emergency. I would like to create a space where youth can connect to share their concerns about climate change and personal stories about how it has affected their lives. Together with these youth, I would like to organize community protests and events to educate people about climate change and create change within our communities. Another aspect of creating change that I am passionate about is writing letters to government officials of all different levels. Notifying provincial members of parliament and MLA's, the Minister of Environment and others with the power to make change within this country is a crucial aspect of the climate movement. I have been writing letters to government officials since I could write, and it is a very underutilized form of action. Although I have often not received a genuine response, if there are enough people sending these letters they do have an impact. I have been a part of community letter-writing campaigns, and these events have been powerful as we have been able to send hundreds of letters to the government, which does make a difference.
I have been involved with the Pender Island Conservancy through volunteer work, and that has helped me gain a lot of knowledge of the effects climate change is having and will continue to have on our Islands. This has fueled my desire to take more steps to protect these beautiful Islands. A group of my friends created a group called the Salish Sea Stars in elementary school, and we have continued to work together. Last year we released a Native Plant Brochure to try and bring awareness about alternatives to invasive species to grow in your garden or flower pot. Most recently I have been involved with Mary-Anne Pare, a member of POD, a climate activism group on Pender, to create an episode of her podcast that talks about the importance of creative expression in the climate movement. I believe that creativity should be at the forefront of the climate movement because poetry and songs and visual art can help to create the feeling of the urgency of the situation, as well as how climate change can impact our lives. This is a poem I wrote about the desire to feel the connection to the earth that I felt with nature throughout my childhood.
AMONG THE TREES
Sometimes I wonder
what it would be like to
let the child within me loose.
To skip back along the roots of pine
How I miss the sweet painless laughter
Echoing through the forest.
Love coursing through the veins
Of the trees as we folded
Their leaves and swung from
Their branches
Dappled sunlight shining on toothless smiles One by one we forgot the sun
We left behind the trees
Had cooler places to be
Lately I've been feeling out of place
The pillars of light between the
Trees seem lonely
Desperate for a child's imagination
The inspiration that comes from discovering A new species of beetle.
One day I will go back there.
Back to my moss blanketed home.