WCWC 20 years old & getting younger
-- by Paul George, Founding Director
Young volunteers making a stand to protect Stoltmann's thousand-year-old trees.
On August 3, 2000 Western Canada Wilderness Committee celebrates its 20th anniversary. Are we going to slow down and bask in our great successes, like South Moresby, Carmanah Valley, the lower Tsitika, Stein Valley, the Tatshenshini, Pinecone/Boise/Burke, Sooke Hills, Clayoquot Sound and many others? NO WAY!
These victories have simply whetted our appetite for even greater successes-saving enough big interconnected wilderness areas to sustain biodiversity and provide clean air, pure water, and a healthy environment for future generations!
While WCWC has grown older (and, we think, wiser) the people campaigning and volunteering for WCWC have become younger. Most of WCWC's intrepid door-to-door canvassers-who collectively take the message of wilderness preservation to nearly a thousand doors a night across the country-are in their 20s. It's their commitment that keeps them going, not the money--which on average is barely minimum wage. Their dedication to grassroots education--despite rain, snow, and cold--is indispensable to our success, as is the contribution of our volunteers, many of whom are high school students and young new immigrants learning English as they stuff our mailouts!
Several young WCWC canvassers have moved up in our organization. These include Ken Wu, (our new Victoria-based campaigner) and Chris Player (as Stoltmann campaign assistant). Other young WCWC staff, like Andrea Reimer and Selena Laundrie--both in their 20s-have also taken on new major repsonibilities: Andrea in charge of our membership programs and Selena as our Victoria office administrator and new store manager. We've also added a new Great Bear Rainforest campaign assistant, John Richardson, and a new Endangered Species campaigner, Jacqueline Pruner, both in their 20s, too!
Who isn't inspired by the recent surge of youth activism--youth rallying for local economic control against the World Trade Organization in Seattle; youth peacefully protesting logging in the Stoltmann; not to mention the youthful spirit of grandmother Betty Kracywk who blockaded logging and went to jail to protest the violence against the young Stoltmann activists. It keeps us all young at heart--and our efforts to protect Earth focused.
Long live youth! The wilderness awaits, as it has for each generation past, their gentle but determined footsteps.
