Residents from the Tri-Cities joined over 100,000 protestors Friday, Sept. 27, who skipped school and work to descend on Vancouver City Hall and demand action on climate change.
The protest, the largest of its kind in Metro Vancouver history, capped off a week of similar demonstrations in cities and towns around the world, including in Montreal, where Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who sparked the student protest movement, called on Canadian politicians to do more.
The Metro Vancouver group Sustainabiliteens organized the event, drawing together Indigenous leaders, environmental activists, as well as thousands of young people not old enough to vote in the upcoming elections. But where the group was expecting 10,000 to show, crowds swelled to over 10-times that number, according to a Tweet by Vancouver police chief Adam Palmer.
Coquitlam’s Rhema Plunkett was one of many who made the trip out from the Tri-Cities. As a student from Dr. Charles Best secondary school, she took part in a small, impromptu climate strike outside her school last spring, and joined a recent “die in” earlier this week on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery. This time around, she and her friends took advantage of SD 43’s Wednesday decision to excuse students from school with parent’s permission.
“I wanted to be a part of the bigger movement with all of the people that were trying to put out the same message,” she said.
The students from Charles Best started the day with their own mini demonstration outside their school. Ciara Albrecht, 16, had joined Plunkett on three other climate change demonstrations this year, but this was the first time people pushed back.
“It was the first time somebody yelled at me — mainly older men yelling out their [car] windows,” said Albrecht. “The look on their face said it all, that we shouldn’t have been out there at all.”
“It just makes me want me to do it even more,” she added.
When the girls showed up at the school’s office to sign out, they found a lineup curling out the door. The crowd got even worse on the packed SkyTrain.
Day-to-day, engaging with the idea that the world’s climate system is on a crash course is daunting. But on days like these, Albrecht says she realizes she is part of something bigger and dealing with it becomes just one more thing on the to-do list.
“I’ve never really had a connection to anything this worldwide. It’s always been, you have to choose if you’re Canadian or from some place else,” said Albrecht.
“When you see that there are kids protesting on every side of the world, you realize you don’t have to choose a side. Someone’s always got your back.”
