Atiya Jaffar Atiya Jaffar, October 21, 2015
This photograph was taken by Tyler Clarke of the Prince Albert Herald.

This photograph was taken by Tyler Clarke of the Prince Albert Herald.


This article was written by Tyler Clark and it was originally posted by the Prince Albert Herald — click here to see the original piece. 

Local environmental activists are sending a message to Justin Trudeau.

In a symbolic gesture, local environmental activists are mailing a bottle of North Saskatchewan River water to incoming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“It’s basically to get the fact across that, really, we cannot carry on business as usual,” local activist Jack Jensen explained.

“As a country we are not doing our share of reducing our fossil fuels,” he said, noting that hopefully Justin Trudeau’s Liberals will be more forward-thinking than the Conservatives have been.

“I certainly hope that there will be better response than there is now,” Jensen said.

“It seemed like the Harper Government was tied completely to the petroleum industry, so hopefully there’s more of a recognition that we do have a problem and we do have to do something about it.”

The bottle of water will represent the “risks of tar sands and pipeline expansion and basically our country’s reliance on fossil fuels,” Jensen said.

It’ll be part of a four-day effort to welcome Trudeau to office and call on him to get work on taking climate action — an effort outlined online at climateaction.ca.

The four-day effort will also include the presentation of various treaties and petitions that haven’t been given adequate attention, as well as solar panels for 24 Sussex Drive.

On Tuesday, local environmental activist Nancy Carswell gathered the river water with her grandson, Deklan Dumais, 3.

“He’s the reason I’m doing this,” she said, noting that by the time the impacts of climate change take full hold if we maintain the status quo, she’ll be gone but he’ll be left dealing with it.

@TylerClarkePA • [email protected]

This deeply moving moment event was also covered by  the Prince Albert Now — click here to read more.
It’s also been posted as a blog by the Council of Canadians who added this solidarity statement: The Council of Canadians encourages its chapter activists to send bottles of water to the new prime minister as our Prince Albert chapter is doing. Detailed instructions on how to do this (bottles should be mailed by rural chapters by October 27, urban chapters by October 30).

For more information about how to participate in this action, click here! 

This photograph was taken by Tyler Clarke of the Prince Albert Herald.

This photograph was taken by Tyler Clarke of the Prince Albert Herald.