My One Voice Matters for Mother Earth

I grew up along the pristine shorelines of Vancouver Island. My parents had built our home in the late 70s and we had spectacular views of the ocean. I fell in love as orcas or blue whales would swim in the waters off our coast, and we would sit there watching either with just our eyes or through binoculars. As I watched them from a young age, I had a love for the ocean and developed a deep-rooted respect for it that prevails to this day. We were also surrounded by some amazing lakes, and our summer day trips to the lake would see me swimming the entire time (except for the mandatory lunch and snack breaks). I loved to swim and the feeling of propelling myself through the water imagining I was an orca.

My parents also had a boat, and we spent many hours salmon and cod fishing, or creating family memories on weekend excursions. During these times, I loved the freedom of swimming in the ocean with my brother. My dad would join in from time to time, but my mother always stayed on the boat or on land. On one return from a weekend moored near Cortes Island, we were speeding fast along the surface, with the near-setting sun illuminating the ocean surrounding us, I was facing the direction of where we had been. I watched our wake emerge and leave our footprint of white water. And then something jumped, and off to the side I saw a fin appear.

Fear – I was perhaps six or seven years old and seeing fins in the water following our boat had me scared of what was chasing us. I went straight to my dad and when he turned around to see, a smile broke on his face. What was scaring my was actually dolphins. I sat, watching them play in our wake, swimming along with our boat, frolicking in the ocean – this was my first encounter with dolphins.

As a child, I was not aware of the damage we were causing to our oceans. I was in awe of them and their inhabitants and wanted to become a marine biologist. My parents took me to the Vancouver Aquarium toward the mid-80s, and it was the first time I saw an orca close and their beauty. The contrast of their white and black colourations, their personality, and their existence left me in utter awe of them. I was also fortunate to see a beluga whale for the first time and was mesmorised by them. Their white reminded me of innocence and purity,

My education and career path would not take me down these young lost dreams of working with the mammals of our oceans, but my passion for them has never dwindled.

We all know the three Rs, which is now the six Rs, and we know that we as humans are causing irreparable damage to Mother Earth, but we as a collective are broken and hindered in protecting and saving. I recognise I am one person, with one voice, and I am unsure how to use my voice. So I break it down into starting with me. I create the example that I want to set for how we love, honour, and respect Mother Earth.

We’ve all heard of “Hallmark holidays” and how our society propels us down the dark path of “we must buy” or “our gift has t be bigger, better” or worse the value of the gift is a display of affection for the receiver. Blah-blah-blah. Guess what…the most endearing gift can be as simple as a young child’s hands pressing flowers and creating beautiful hairclips, or a handmade card with a poem: “I love you more than bubble gum…Oh, I love green and I love books but I love you the MOST!”, or even the small fragment of nature, be it a rock, driftwood, shell or sea glass, can become someone’s absolute favourite gift.

Perspective shift. That is what I needed. I was caught up in the whirlwind and then stress of what to buy for Christmas presents or other holidays, and the meaning of coming together as a family for holidays felt less present. It was in my late teens that I preferred to either handmake or create a personal gift for those I wished to give gifts. In that switch of my mindset, I was ready to really create a life that goes against the grain of what society and its members have come to expect…I was not a consumer, I was not one to go into debt to buy what I could not afford, and I was not a victim of a mindset that takes me farther away from the core of our existence – Mother Earth.

But the sheer act of not buying into consumerism was not enough, and I needed to make changes in my day-to-day life. I researched and explored various methods to help save our environment, and apart from reducing my consumer-imprint, I found connecting with like-minded individuals to be my next big step. I joined an ocean clean-up group, and we would meet for a couple hours at a different local beach and spend time cleaning it up from human waste and disregard for their behaviour and how it impacts our land and water.

For me, this small dedication of time on a Sunday mid-day was the least I could do to help protect our oceans from more plastic and garbage. To help prevent our wildlife from suffering and dying from our discarded waste. Our negligence only harms a whole life and way of life we are unable to see under the surface of the water. I have not participated in an organised beach clean-up with a group for a number of years, but there are still times when I go out on my own and spend time picking up garbage and making our coastline pure again.

I am relieved as I see more people participating in the practice. Chances are, some of us are daily walkers at a favourite beach and have the same desire to keep our coastline litter free. And then there are others, like me, who pick a random location and remove a small portion of debris from shoreline. Thank goodness I am not alone in such an important mission. There is the sad realisation that as I walk away with a bucket full of random discarded waste, my effort is miniscule compared to the amount of garbage in our oceans.

At present day, I have two amazing daughter’s and we are starting a beach clean-up tradition of our own, once a month. We are frequent visitors to the beach; my girls have a love for the ocean that reminds me of my own many moons ago. When we notice litter there is always the comment of, “Who would do such a thing!?” It is time for me to show my daughter’s how we take action into our own hands to make matters right, as that itself is a life lesson that can be applied on many different levels. Even from us deciding to start this, my daughter’s have invited and included friends – and so creates awareness accompanied alongside action.

Going back about fifteen years is when I started composting – all food scraps and waste were placed in my black composting bin, which I would disgustingly maintain and turn here or twist there as I was meant to. This was to be my fertiliser for the upcoming planting season, and it played a vital role in being able to grow our own vegetables or fruit. I admit, those first few weeks once separating compostable material from our garbage, I was astonished at how much our waste had been reduced.

My biggest shift occurred in my 30s as I entered motherhood. Before my baby was born, I was dreading the use of disposable diapers. I had decided to cloth diaper, and every two days, my laundry routine would start with soaking, washing, rinsing, and hanging to dry. There was a point when, with time on my hands, I took the next step and went diaper free with my first when she was five months old. Yup, she was able to use the potty and I was able to reduce my amount of laundry. The determination and communication between my baby and I allowed us to reduce the amount of waste we produced just from our day-to-day life.

Before she turned one, I was pregnant with her sister and once she was born, it was as if some old-traditional way of me emerged and I taught myself how to sew. My first item was making our own cloth diapers, and while they were a difficult first project, I was successful and she had some “around the house” diapers. I then examined all the wipes I had used and opted to make my own wipes. After this, and seeing how easy it was to switch, my girls and I set out to make items for our home to help reduce our need to buy.

I made un-paper towel for us to use in our kitchen, and as I would share this information with people, they were curious. I would provide them with a set to sample and before I knew it, I had a little sewing business (I named myself Purple Patch Designs) and was selling our homemade re-useable products online. While this was never my intent, it was nice to help spread some awareness on the benefits and ease of use with re-useable products.

My daughter’s have grown and are no longer in diapers, and when I think back and calculate how many disposable diapers just my family would have used with two children – for my first, as she potty trained at 2.5 years would be over 9,000 disposable diapers and for my second, who potty trained by 4 years, would be over 14,500 disposable diapers. I take great pride in thinking that by cloth diapering and creating eco-friendly washing systems, my daughter’s and I prevented about 24,000 diapers entering the landfill. It is a victory for sure, but on a grand scale, it still scares me to think of how many diapers enter our landfill and their impact on our environment.

These were some of the bigger changes we made as a collective family, but there were also changes I still made in my daily living – I would make our own house cleaners, mouthwash, or other personal products, as well as food and treats for our dogs, and we would do this to reduce our need to purchase items in plastic bottles or with excessive and unnecessary amounts of packaging that would simple be removed and placed in the recycle. I was also a baker, and not a bad one if I may say so myself, and all of our food was made by me – again reducing our use of plastic and paper products.

My love for the mammals of the ocean is present in my daughter’s, and we often spend time at the beach hoping to see a whale swimming nearby. When Blackfish was released, it was an eye opener to just how sad of a state human had taken our ocean mammals to. Anger, tears, disgust – but what to do. How could I help? How could I make a difference? I felt really, really small in this world with our environment in the state it was in. Helpless, confused and worried.

While each of these steps I have introduced into my life has been gradual and at a pace that works for either myself when single, or my daughter’s and I as a family, I am highly cognizant that we are just one family, and our actions will make a difference. Now that my girls are older, and they are aware of the state of our oceans and our earth, they are becoming the voice of the generation that is here to tell us we fucked up. For hundreds of years, we have been taking from Earth and not taking care of her in return. It has taken us hundreds of years to enter into this dire state, and I look to our youth to be the generation that will have more awareness and ability to reduce their footprint while here.

Our youth have Greta Thunberg as their role model to highlight that just one voice can be heard and can make a difference. I have two young ambassadors who are ready to face the world – they listen to Greta, they are passionate alongside what she stands for, speaks up for, and calls-out all us adults who have presented Mother Earth as she is to our children.

I never dreamed in the 80s as a young child that our planet would be facing such harsh realities – my idyllic view is not shared by the generation of today. While we sat back and took nature for granted, thinking it would always be there, our oceans would always be there, we are now in a state where we do not know what will happen over the next 50 years…or even the next 20 years.

I feel that the biggest impact we as individuals can have to help save Mother Earth, is to be aware that as one person, we can make a difference. We can take small steps that will eventually lead to bigger results that we can take pride in. We cannot continue as a society that does not care for our biggest resource – Mother Earth. I turn to our youth to propel us forward into a path of new ways and new methods. I feel I have set a stage of example for my daughter’s that highlights resourcefulness, craftiness, and creativity in working in our own small way to help our environment. And that matters.