Marina Blazevic

Canada Strong

The beginnings of this project started two years ago, in the ecologically catastrophic summer of 2023. That was the summer full of inescapable smoke and smog that blocked out the sun and clouded our minds. There was one day in particular that stuck with me; a health advisory was in effect throughout Southern Ontario warning people to not go outside, especially the children, the elderly, and otherwise vulnerable. Thinking myself young and invincible, I decided to completely ignore the alarmist propaganda and go on a jaunt outside with my sketchbook. After the better part of two hours I realized, first with surprise and then with growing concern, that it was getting hard to breathe. Shortly thereafter, I was feeling nauseous and lightheaded and had to call a friend to pick me up with her car from the park, as I wasn’t sure I would make the walk home without incident. This was the first time that I was aware that I was personally being affected by that abstract concept labeled climate change. Before that moment, climate change was something that, if it happened at all, happened to other people. People in far away, backward, coal-burning kinds of places that were suffering the consequences of their ignorance. It couldn’t, wouldn’t dare happen in a country as developed as Canada. Canadians understand the importance and beauty of nature, we are so clean and green! How could we not be, with all this untouched land? As it turns out, we are not as clean or as green as we'd like to believe. We all know that a significant portion of our National GDP comes from resource extraction. There is a certain patriotic pride in working on the oil fields, or in the forestry sector. This is especially true in our rapidly changing world order. A perfect example of this is the implementation of tariffs, only one of the many ways our political climate is shifting from the world order established post World War II. Despite being in the midst of a project that had climate change constantly at the forefront of my mind, when the tariff crisis began, I found myself supporting the construction of pipelines and refineries for the love of my country. The fight against climate change has been put on the back burner during this tariff war, but that burden of guilt should not be falling upon the average Canadian’s shoulders. Several of our pipelines run crude oil directly into the USA, where it is refined and then resold in American markets. Similarly, the Canadian trees harvested through needlessly damaging clear-cutting practices create ideal conditions for forest fires and are often transported directly to the US with minimal, if any, processing done beforehand. This sort of economy that relies heavily on the export of raw material is generally referred to as a mercantile economy. This is the type of economic relationship Canada possessed with Britain when it was still formally a British colony. The volatility of the burgeoning trade war with the US has enlightened many Canadians to the fact that little has changed since the 1800s. Is it possible that we have gone from relying on one economic power to another? Traded one master for another? It does not have to be this way though. Our children need not walk the pipeline into the abyss. This unfortunate trade war has presented us with an unprecedented opportunity for positive change. Rather than building yet more fossil fuel infrastructure with the intention of accessing non-American foreign markets, our government could instead break from colonial practices to do what is best for its citizenry; tax the wealthy accordingly in order to invest in renewable energy that will bring more people back from the financial brink, and work to close the portal to hell that opens in our forests every summer and chokes our skies. It currently appears as though we are looking over the edge of oblivion, but it is certainly not too late to turn around. In fact, it will never be too late to turn around and walk back from the edge. Even when Canada looks more like a desert than the resource-rich land it is today, the children that walk that land will not think it too late.