As the former science outreach manager to the Dean of Science and Engineering at Laurentian University from 2004-2011, I felt honoured to do the work I did. I helped staff and students in their STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) outreach to Northern Ontario. In addition, I was to balance the unique and beautiful bilingual, tricultural mandate of Laurentian University.
Even though I can barely speak French, I learned how to project manage in both official languages. My three daughters are bilingual. They went to French-immersion school and many of their teachers were educated at Laurentian University.
My most-treasured part of the job I had at Laurentian University, that serves me to this day, is the all that I learned while bringing STEM to the Anishinaabe and Cree people here in Northeastern Ontario. The elders, the youth and my coworkers gave me an education of a lifetime.
In 2008, when 250 Canadians were selected to be trained by Vice President Al Gore and Climate Reality in Montreal, I was selected and I think my role at Laurentian played a big part in that.
At the training in 2008 with Gore, almost every time I said, I am from Sudbury, the other climate leaders from across Canada would say something along the lines, "We expect big things from you".
On April 12,my heart was broken repeatedly. Our community has been pushed back into the early 1900s. As a mother of three young women, and an auntie to a midwife, I am aghast that the Midwifery program was cut. As a great-granddaughter of a French-Canadian (Theophile Bruyere) buried at Lasalle Cemetery who helped establish the community of Falconbridge in the 1920s, the loss of the French programs is unimaginable.
Many people cruelly fired on April 12 were my former co-workers. My gut wrenched painfully, as I thought about the second oldest Indigenous studies program on Turtle Island gutted. The ramifications are unthinkable especially considering our country is supposed to be in a state of reconciliation.
The people monitoring and then thinking about environmental issues, gone. It terrifies me actually. My brain went into overdrive. We are at a time of massive change. We need scientists and thinkers guiding us.
You may know me as a climate activist, but as a trained biologist, the biodiversity collapse keeps me up at night not the climate crisis. The impacts of the COVID pandemic are nothing compared to what is coming with biodiversity collapse compounded by the climate crisis.
I am very angry. My anger comes from love. I love the North. I love the people. My great grandparents and grandparents got an economic foothold because of mining up here.
We sit on the largest known nickel deposit on the planet. What has happened makes no sense.
There is money. Here are some places to look for tens of billions of dollars annually: tax havens, inheritance taxes, wealth taxes and more royalty taxes on natural resources.
We should also all support the Robinson-Huron Annuity case. The Crown failed to live up to the terms of the 171-year-old document. It is time to give our Anishinaabe friends the money owed to them. I trust they would do a better job of sharing the wealth up here then people on Bay Street who would not exist if it were not mining in the North.
Let's show them what we are made of Greater Sudbury. Fight to save Laurentian. Fund Laurentian with tax reform.
Cathy Orlando
Director of Programs
Citizens' Climate International