Remembering Friends and Environmental Heroes Lost on Flight 302

Remembering the Victims of Flight 302

by Catherine Abreu - Climate Action Network Canada

March 12, 2019

Friends; early Sunday morning, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed 6 minutes after takeoff. All 157 passengers and crew on board died. These kinds of tragedies are always heartbreaking. Yet in the past 48 hours, it has been particularly devastating to learn that many of those who perished were our colleagues and friends: courageous activists, academics, and young people dedicated to the fight for justice and environmental protection who were on their way to the United Nations Environment Assembly taking place in Nairobi this week.

My heart is heavy thinking of all the families and communities who lost people they love, people tirelessly offering their energy and passion to protect our futures.

18 of the victims were Canadian. Some of them were my friends. Some of them were allies I never had the opportunity to meet, but whose names and work were familiar to many of us in this small and mighty movement we share.

Darcy Belanger, co-founder of Parvati.org, was genuinely one of the kindest, most inspiring people I’ve had the privilege to know in this work. In just a few short years, he and his colleagues - all employed full-time in other fields and working with Parvati on a volunteer-basis - have made the campaign to establish the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary (MAPS) a global phenomenon.

This morning I am remembering the last time I got to hang out with Darcy at COP24 in Poland. I was demoralized by the negotiations but with his usual bright, relentless determination, he cheered me up by sharing stories of the amazing wins he and his colleague Vandana had made on the MAPS campaign in Katowice. Darcy was exactly the kind of compassionate leader our movement needs and cannot afford to lose.

I met Stephanie Lacroix through her work with the United Nations Association in Canada (UNAC). Stephanie worked with her UNAC colleagues to develop the resources and capacity necessary to bring delegations of young environmental leaders like herself to UN conferences.

Having spent the last few years attending such conferences myself, I know that the youth who attend are often the most fierce force demanding ambition and progress from processes that can be crushingly incremental and marginalizing.

Again, I am reflecting on my most recent memories of Stephanie at COP24, where she and all the Canadian youth on the ground offered so much of themselves in a constant, awe-inspiring call for inclusion and action.

Stephanie was on her way to Nairobi with three other young people.

It seems that there’s no social justice cause Danielle Moore did not devote her amazing spirit to. I am thankful I met her in Halifax, where she volunteered on a number of environmental campaigns while completing her degree at Dal. I’m thinking about friends on the east coast who knew her, and in Winnipeg where she worked with our colleagues at the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition (MEJC), along with so many others tackling important causes.

Indigenous youth are the heart of so many creative, challenging, uncompromising campaigns working to confront the destruction wrecked by colonist capitalism in Canada and around the world. I honour Micah Messent, a student at Vancouver Island University (VIU), for his work and his generosity.

Angela Rehhorn devoted herself to conservation, working with the Canadian Wildlife Federation (CWF). I am thinking of Angela’s friends in Halifax, Ontario, and Alberta.

The loss of these four people who were part of building the next generation of environmental justice activists in Canada stops my heart.

Our thoughts also go out to many of our colleagues who work in the fields of humanitarian justice and international development who are mourning the loss of Pius Adesanmi, literature professor and director of the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University. I wish I had gotten to know someone so clearly brilliant and committed.

I can only speak for myself, but I know that the whole CAN-Rac team is grieving this profound loss. The light that pierces through our sadness is the knowledge that, had they had the chance, every one of these beautiful humans would have told us that the best way to celebrate them is to hold their memory close as we forge ahead in our collective resolve to bring us into closer harmony with each other and with the non-human world.

Yours in love and grief,

Cat


Catherine Abreu, Executive Director
Climate Action Network Canada - Réseau action climat Canada
Twitter: @cat_abreu