The Beginning of a Blog

My earliest memories are almost all spent in nature: picking blackberries in the summer heat and eating enough to make myself sick, developing my love for swimming in the freezing glacial fed Pitt Lake and searching for any and all wildlife in the forest. If these moments sound familiar to you, like me, you might have grown up and fallen in love with the magic that surrounds BC’s wild & wonderful places. 

My love for nature grew and now at twenty-one years old I am studying Resource and Environmental Management in the Faculty of Environment at SFU and spending my free time harvesting from my backyard garden, cooking anything and everything plant-based and hiking through the trails of BC. 

However, I am not one of those kids that decided at five-years-old what they wanted to do with their life and never looked back. I always loved the environment and being outdoors, but what I did not have a love for was science. I loved writing and after taking a social justice class, I decided to enter university taking International Studies courses. In the summer of 2017, this led me 14,000km across the world to Kampala, Uganda to work as a NGO intern. 

 I worked for a women’s reproductive and sexual health organization and had to opportunity to experience a different culture, the frustrations and triumphs of NGO work and endless new experiences. As much as I loved my work there, it was exhausting and disheartening to work on an issue as overwhelming as women’s rights as a foreigner in a culture and language that I didn’t fully understand. Leaving Uganda at the end of that summer, I felt unsure about the future of working internationally that I had imagined for myself. 

That fall back at SFU I took a course called Global Change, the most introductory course to the REM program, and fell in love with the way it blended environmental science, communication and resource management. While in Uganda, I also learned from some amazing students in my program about permaculture farming, climate change action in BC, and something that I really latched onto – the zero waste movement. While I’m nowhere near zero waste still, that fall I began to make DIY skincare recipes, really pay attention to my consumption of single use plastics and delve into the world of environmental blogging. 

Since then I have worked for a Canadian environmental NGO, SFU’s Sustainability Office, volunteered as an environmental blog writer and podcast host, and am currently co-leading a fight to remove plastic water bottles and single use plastics on university campuses.

All of that background brings me to where I am today – heading into my fourth year of university and simultaneously invigorated by worldwide environmental action while terrified of the climate catastrophe playing out in front of our eyes. That is why I am here beginning this blog. In the face of climate breakdown, we need a reason to continue fighting and resisting. We need hope. This blog is here to provide some of that hope in the form of sharing the stories of BC’s climate change activists and sustainability initiatives. 

I invite you to stay hopeful with me and for every scary article you read about our changing climate, come here to read one about the activists, scientists, teachers and everyday citizens working to change themselves & the world along with it. 

The mountain view from Pitt Lake, British Columbia

The view from my apartment building in Kampala, Uganda

At my first Fridays for Future climate strike outside of Buckingham Palace in London, England