This past F1 weekend apart of the F1 event itself Montrealers got exposed to a daring environmental protest orchestrated by members of Last Generation Canada, a nonviolent civil environmental resistance group from Ottawa.
The protest, aimed at drawing attention to climate issues, caused significant traffic delays on the Concorde Bridge leading to Île Notre-Dame, as the protesters blocked several lanes on the bridge, one of the main access points to the Grand Prix venue, for approximately 30 minutes starting around 11 a.m.
EpicNews.ca reached out for comment to Last Generation Canada to explain their latest protest action, better understand the goal of their organization as well as find out as what to expect next. We are happy to bring you this interview with their spokesperson, Gillian Graham.
[EpicNews.ca]:
Could you please introduce yourself as a spokesperson for Last Generation?
[Gillian Graham]:
Yeah, of course. So my name is Gillian Graham. I’m 24 years old. I’m a supporter of Last Generation, and I myself have been arrested on February 6th for burning a stroller in front of parliament in Ottawa to show the government the future and the children that they’re going to be burning to the ground with the government’s inaction. I have been evacuated from wildfires many a time. I choked on the smoke, and I realized how dire the situation is, so I had no other option other than to take action. I’ve been a supporter of Last Generation for the past seven months.
[EpicNews.ca]:
So where are you from? Because you’re talking about wildfires and stuff.
[Gillian Graham]:
I’m originally from near Oshawa, but I tree plant in Northern Alberta and Northern BC.
[EpicNews.ca]:
Could you tell me more about Last Generation, like some of the notable actions that Last Generation was involved in in the last couple of months? What are the goals of your organization?
[Gillian Graham]:
So Last Generation was formerly known as On2Ottawa last year. We changed the name last November. And last August, we had a three-week action period with 23 arrests. Most notably, there was a man, Caleb, who threw pink washable paint on a Tom Thomson painting. As well as many supporters walking prominent roads, such as the road outside of the Ottawa Courthouse on Laurier, walking the Wellington Bridge, and walking the Highway 417, Exit 118. And then in February, I burnt a stroller in front of Parliament Hill. There was someone that sprayed pink paint outside of the PMO’s office, and four people blocked the Wellington streets outside of Parliament. And Etienne Eason, a 19-year-old from Montreal, sprayed washable pink paint on dinosaur bones at the History of Nature Museum in Ottawa. And just last week on May 28th, three supporters of the Last Generation climbed up on gantries on the Trans Canada Highway.
[EpicNews.ca]:
Okay, a side question. So it appears that you have supporters all over the place? I mean, you have Montreal, you have Ottawa and I am guessing in other cities as well?
[Gillian Graham]:
Yeah, of course. We have currently two chapters, one in Ottawa, one in Montreal, and we are both working together to fight this climate ecological crisis.
To go back to your question before, sorry, I forgot, but Last Generation Canada is currently demanding a national firefighting agency that trains and employ 50,000 firefighters, and we are doing this through disruptive action and disrupting business as usual. We need to have our demand heard and met as soon as possible, because last summer, our whole country was on fire and we lost 5% of our boreal forest. This year, science and experts say that it could be twice as bad, which means we could lose up to 10% of our boreal forest. And we don’t have time to wait. We’ve written letters to politicians. We’ve been on marches in Parliament Hill, and nothing has worked. So we’re taking to doing highly disruptive actions this summer, and we’re not going to stop until we get our demand done.
[EpicNews.ca]:
So why exactly the F1 as the venue for your most recent protest?
[Gillian Graham]:
Yeah, for sure. We don’t take disruption lightly, and disrupting regular people just going to work is extremely difficult, and we need to be doing these disruptions to get our demand heard and met and the media attention that we need. We chose the F1 because it is a huge weekend in Montreal, and so many people are going to this, so we knew that it was going to get a lot of media attention, as well as the people that are going to the F1 are basically supporting an event that is dripping in oil and watching people drive their gas cars around and around in a circle, further contributing to carbon emissions and further worsening the climate crisis. So when we’re choosing disruptions, we don’t choose them lightly. And this is just a good event. Although we’re not protesting against the F1, we just thought it would be a great way to get our demands heard.
[EpicNews.ca]:
So how did the confrontation go with the SPVM? Basically, I know that five people were arrested. And were there any charges laid?
[Gillian Graham]:
Yeah. So it was really interesting. The protesters were on the street for about 25 minutes before the police came, which they said there was lots of discrimination, shaming, yelling from pedestrians and bystanders. And the police came, got four of the people on the road out of their Sleeping Dragon because they chained themselves together. And they’re all facing three charges. It was just a catch and release situation. They didn’t go to the court. But we know the consequences when we’re doing these kinds of actions.
[EpicNews.ca]:
What kinds of charges were your members charged with?
[Gillian Graham]:
They’ve been charged with mischief, obstruction, and unlawful assembly.
[EpicNews.ca]:
So what’s your overall view on Canadian government’s stance on environmental issues?
[Gillian Graham]:
It is a really difficult question, but the UN Secretary General said that we have one to two years left to turn this thing around and save humanity. Our government is doing absolutely nothing with this news. They have signed the Paris Agreement eight years ago and have blown past every single climate target that we have ever tried to hit. Canada is one of the only G7 countries that’s actually freezing emissions instead of lowering emissions. Our Canadian government is watching our homes burn down, our boreal forest burn, and firefighters, and children dying because of the smoke. So no, our government is doing absolutely nothing to tackle the climate ecological crisis. Absolutely nothing.
Over 70 % of our wildland firefighters are volunteers, and the Canadian government has absolutely no plans to implement a national firefighting agency. So if we cannot handle fires right now, in five years, when we do reach two degrees of warming, we are going to go into societal collapse. We need to do something now before it’s too late.
[EpicNews.ca]:
What could we expect next from Last Generation?
[Gillian Graham]:
So the name of the game for Last Generation is highly disruptive actions. This is what is going to get us to win. And we are not going to be stopping anytime soon in summer. We’re going to be ramping things up because as the smoke gets closer and closer to Montreal and Ottawa, we have less and less time to do something. So we’re going to continue doing these highly disruptive actions, targeting the government to actually do something. And we are going to keep doing this iteratively. People are going to keep getting arrested and putting their bodies and their futures on the line because we can’t take this summer off. We have to go as hard as we can because we just do not have time to waste. So you can just see a lot more of these kinds of actions starting this summer.
[EpicNews.ca]:
Any last words for our readers?
[Gillian Graham]:
It’s just really nice to talk to someone that understands we’re just ordinary people trying to target the climate ecological crisis that is burning our homes and our futures down. And we’re not rocket scientists. We’re just mothers, parents, grandparents, teachers, lawyers that are trying to do something to stop this genocidal government and this extraction-based regime from killing us. And we just want everyone to know that we’re ordinary people, and the ordinary people that are going to be reading this article can get out too. It has to be all of us to participate in these highly disruptive actions to actually achieve what we need, which is a National Firefighting Agency, to actually get something done.