The Complacency of Blue Skies
Editorial by Kelsey Agnew, Photo by Denis Bresolin
“I can't believe we're still protesting this shit.” Have you seen this sign when you've taken to the streets?
As someone born in the late 80s, my protesting career is only about 20 years old. I guess it’s actually a long time when that's half of my life. Whether advocating for bike lanes at city council meetings, handing out fliers about fluoride at the dump during a blizzard in May, walking to and from work with an “Indigenous Lives Matter” sign for the two weeks before the Bushby trial, or co-organizing the largest environmental rally in Thunder Bay’s history, I haven't lacked opportunities in this city to express my concern about environmental and social issues.
As the skies, our lungs, and our bloodstreams filled with particulate matter, I found myself laughing cynically, thinking back to this past winter. How could I have ever thought that our epic snow coverage was in any way a match for the human-propelled, fossil-fuel-driven climate change that is setting our country ablaze? And don't feed me any rhetoric about how important fire is for the jack pines, or its cyclical nature.
As you’re reading this, the wind will have shifted, the rain will have fallen, and we'll no doubt have seen blue skies over Thunder Bay again. You'll be able to go for a run. You'll open your windows. You'll stop checking the air quality index obsessively, the way you stopped checking it last year, and the year before that. And that relief is going to feel so good that most of us will just… let it go. We'll fold the sign back up, stop doom scrolling evacuation orders and relax, because clean air makes it very easy to forget what it felt like not to have any.
Apathy doesn't usually announce itself. It just shows up disguised as being busy, as needing a break, as “someone else will do something.” Complacency is what happens between crises—in the blue sky moments, it's easiest to assume the problem solved itself. It didn't. The budget is still cut. The next fire season is still coming. And Doug Ford is still in power, doing photo ops until we’re tired enough, or comfortable enough, to stop paying attention.
So let’s collectively screw complacency. Write a letter to your MPP today (in Thunder Bay - Atikokan, Kevin Holland, and in Thunder Bay - Superior North, Lise Vaugeois), while climate refugees from evacuated communities are still housed in hotels, and their possessions are ash on the ground. Then put a reminder in your phone to send another letter on September 30 to ask your MPP how the progress of rebuilding Namaygoosisagagun First Nation is going. Ask your friends if they've written their letters. Ask your pickle ball club, your Jeep club, your sports mom group chat. Of the six to nine hours a day you spend on your phone, spend some of it fighting for a future you actually want. This isn't a big ask.
On the issue of forest fires, focus on writing to your MPP, because it’s Doug Ford's Provincial Conservative government cutting Ontario's wildland fire fighting budget, so that they do not have the resources for adequate preparedness. No matter how much emergency response money is “thrown” at this year's fires, that doesn’t influence next year’s budget.
You don't need facts and figures, perfect grammar or tone. Simply express your frustration or concerns. Can’t put your feelings into words? There are templates and links to google drive letters that people have written and shared. Make sure you include your name, full address including postal code, and send it to the elected Member of Provincial Parliament in your riding.
I'm 20 years into this. What I don't want, 20 years from now, is to be standing on some future sidewalk, in some future summer where I can only leave my house with an N95, being the one holding the sign that says "I can't believe we're still protesting this shit”—all because I got comfortable the moment the sky cleared, as did everyone around me.
Write the letter. Then write another one.