Mother Earth

It was my last year of university, and I'd made friends with a great bunch of people who unfortunately are no longer in my life. My friend Matthew, his girlfriend of the time whose name I do not even recall, and her sister Anne who was a friend and classmate of mine who shared some Philosophy classes with me. There was some kind of "environment club" at the university, and we were all members. There was a lot of talk around the world of reviving Earth Day, which was something that had taken place 20 years prior to then, back in 1970, but somehow did not become an annual event. The planet was in trouble and needed our help - and we rose to the call. The four of us spearheaded the efforts in the local community, and after weeks of planning we proudly pulled off a pretty spectacular day to celebrate the Planet we call home - Mother Earth.

We started the day with a sunrise ceremony at the lookoff (pictured). Incidentially, the house that my wife-to-be grew up in is in that picture - though it would be a number of years yet before I would meet her. The little church we got married in is hidden amongst some trees in the foreground. Unfortunately I don't recall exactly what was involved in our sunrise ceremony - I've got a pretty terrible memory like that. I do recall that afterwards we all went back to my place for a pancake breakfast. And after this we had a full day ahead of us in the Student Union Building at the University - we'd booked the main level and had tables and booths set up over the whole area, for people and organisations to put on displays and talk about the environment, and concrete ways we could do something positive to help. My terrible memory fails me again as to just what this all entailed - I do recall that we had a dozen or more people set up in booths and tables, I just do not recall what they all were. I do recall there was one lady with a cloth diapering business who was giving out information on how much better cloth diapering was for the environment, than disposables. Incidentally, that link is to the blog of the woman who owns the store where my wife works - a cloth diapering store here in Ottawa. When our fist child was born 8 years ago now, my wife was dead-set against my idea of using cloth diapers. But I managed to convert her, and now she calls herself a cloth-diapering evangelist :-)