Last week I turned a corner in my quiet existence. I became a radical environmental activist. ('Radical Environmental Activist' being our Federal government's description of choice for those registering opposition to Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.)
I'm pretty excited, actually - to be honest, I've always yearned to be a radical. The genetic code of people who grew up in middle class homes in West Vancouver generally precludes any tendency to non-conformity of any sort, let alone radicalism. A woman who religiously files her income tax by April 30th, would never consider checking out of a hotel at 11:05 if check-out time is 11, and drives the man known simply as Geoff crazy with her insistence that a paper bag which has been in contact with a loaf of bread is too contaminated to be recycled with the mixed paper is not exactly activist material. Nonetheless, it would seem that this pipeline issue has pushed me right over the top - driven me to the absolute brink - incited me to a desperate civil disobedience. I wrote a letter. Well, sort of.
I have flirted with protest in the past. However, honesty requires me to disclose that my previous efforts were to 'protest' as heating a TV dinner is to 'cooking'. That is to say that they have consisted of electronically signing my name to a form letter (generally passionately penned by the David Suzuki Foundation) and clicking 'send', whereupon, depending on the issue, the letter magically makes its way to the appropriate inbox in either Ottawa or Victoria. (I am particularly fond of the feature that, upon entering your postal code, automatically cc's your MP!!). This time, however, I find that Dr. Suzuki and his team have, to my great inconvenience, yet to provide a suitable letter. What to do?
Recognizing that writing a letter from scratch, much like cooking from scratch, actually requires effort, and perhaps even some time spent researching the facts, I quickly resort to perusing the internet for something I can plagiarize (preferably from a reasonably informed source which shares my views and encourages 'plagiarism for protest'). A few key strokes later, a suitable letter on the Pacific Wild site presents itself. Fantastic! What's this, though? I actually have to research the email addresses and contacts? Merciful Heavens - who knew this would be so much work - there is a rerun of Seinfeld that I have seen only three times starting in five minutes?! (and for the record? - I suspect that governmental email addresses, which are about the least intuitive addresses I have ever encountered, are purpose-built to be undeliverable... but that's a subject for my next blog post: 'How I Became a Conspiracy Theorist').
However, protest is not without a price, and so I persevere. At long last, the email addresses located and entered into my contact list, I have the letter signed and am poised to click the 'send' button when I suddenly think I should just tweak the letter a bit. I mean, there are a couple of phrases that just don't sound like me. Perhaps move a phrase here, change a word there. That paragraph seems a teeny bit wordy, and I would never .... wait a minute.... do I actually think anyone is really going to critique this letter? Will Prime Minister Harper personally open this email and say 'If only Karen Playfair had used the active rather than passive voice and avoided all that hackneyed simile I would stop that Northern Gateway pipeline project. Immediately.'. Probably not. I probably just need to get the damn thing sent before the damn pipeline is built. And so I click. Done. I am an activist. Sure - it took a plagiarized form letter and about fourteen 'Undeliverable' messages from someone called 'System Administrator' to express my outrage, but dammit, I am an activist. A bona fide radical environmental activist.
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