Well, here goes my long over due post that I will strategically disguise as a contemplative year in review. A lot has happened in my little corner of the water world since June so I will attempt to reflect and share my thoughts on everything that has gone on. For the sake of some semblance of organization, I have opted for chronological(-ish) order here.

Shortly after my most recent post, I was fortunate enough to attend the  2015 Canadian Water Summit in Vancouver. This year’s theme explored the energy-water nexus, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all the systems on which we so closely rely and the uncertainty of those systems moving forward, with information provided on the importance and challenges of long-term planning in the face of this uncertainty. You can see more of those specific conference takeaways on the Canadian Water Summit twitter account.

While this was a great opportunity to hear from those within the water industry, it was also a wonderful opportunity to see friends, new and old, who gathered from across Canada for the event. Our water community is both strong and close-knit, even though we span such a large geographic area, and I feel fortunate to learn from, meet and work with so many within this group. I was also extremely humbled to be included among the finalists announced for Water Canada’s 2015 Water’s Next Young Professional Award. A huge congratulations to Megan Kot, recipient of the award, for her research accomplishments and enthusiastic leadership in Canadian water. You can read more about her accomplishments and research focused on drinking water safety here. And if you are not doing so already, I encourage you to follow her on Twitter for a feed full of topical water content and commentary.  I must also mention fellow finalists, Muaz Nasir and Mikhail Smilovic. Between involvements with Waterlution and CWN’s Students and Young Professionals Committee I have had the privilege to work in proximity to all three of these amazing young professionals who have inspired me with their creativity, positivity and forward-thinking natures. Although many challenges line our collective path to a sustainable and resilient future for Canadian water, the inspiring mentors and eager young professionals within this community are the foundation we need to strive for a future we dare to imagine.

https://www.instagram.com/p/4mD-gYR_65/

The last six or so months have been full and transitional. I spent any free time and extra money I had this summer on trail running and attending music festivals – an attempt to promote that whole body, mind, spirit health. And I really enjoyed taking a few photos along the way to remember the occasions. Want to see?! A lot of very awesome, Ontario-based adventure.

My summer and fall marched on with an air of finality. My formal participation in Waterlution’s Transformative Leaders of the Future program wrapped and with each month, my term of president of the CWN SYPC surely drew to a close. Working with this group of water leaders has meant so much to me. I cannot believe that the 18-month term went by so quickly. The retreats, workshops, webinars, teleconferences and Blue Drinks events held across the country have promoted skill building, networking, the sharing of research findings and ideas, as well as fostering the growth of amazing friendships spanning continents. Thank you to each and every one of you for your dedication to the committee and to CWN for creating such a unique space for such important activities to flourish. And best of luck to the next SYPC group leading the charge! I can’t wait to work with all of these amazing SYPC, past and present, in the years to come.

In a quintessentially twenty-something move, I am now living back at home. I felt this compulsion to minimize the material possessions in my life, change locations, be nearer to nature and spend less time alone . Plus, my family is pretty super cool, added bonus. In a quest for simplicity, I had also made the strategic decision to minimize my volunteer commitments in order to find more focus and balance (more on how that is going below…). However, there was one more task at hand before I could move on to that blissful serenity that was sure to follow (har har).

https://www.instagram.com/p/8wLv1yx_0W/

 In October 2015, the International Association of Hydrogeologists Canadian National Chapter held it’s annual conference in Waterloo in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the University of Waterloo Earth and Environmental Sciences Department. The simple theme of Canadian Hydrogeology allowed for a broad discussion on all topics groundwater, from groundwater surface water interaction, to resource and agricultural implications for groundwater, with the technical specificity of site characterization, field methodologies and numerical modelling, from the industry, government and academic perspective.

I was fortunate to become involved in the conference, being asked to participate on the steering committee. It was so much fun working with and getting to know the members of the committee – thank you all for including me! I learned something from each and every one of you. In my role, I was responsible for the social media, volunteer coordination and development of a students and young professional mentoring program during the conference.

I was extremely pleased with how well the conference social media caught on. This may surprise you, but the hydrogeology community is not overwhelming active on Twitter, something I tried to change over the course of the conference. I think that Twitter is such a great tool for sharing conference highlights in real-time with those unable to attend in person, as well as sharing resources and generating a record of your own and other people’s experiences at the conference. To see those preserved highlights, you can check out #iahcnc15 on Twitter.

All of the other volunteers were such a joy to work with – thank you everyone for the hours spent encouraging attendee participation, manning the speaker desk, and trouble shooting AV issues during the many speaker talks. Here is a photo of many of us at the Thursday evening social event. Many of the people in this group are planning to become involved with the IAH Early Career Hydrogeoligstis Canadian Network. If you are also interested, you can access more information here.

A highlight of the conference for me was the closing plenary in which seven of the biggest names in Canadian Hydrogeology shared their most insightful moments. Dr. Cathy Ryan explained her quest to build hydrogeological capacity through the translation and availability of necessary learning materials. Her work with Hydrogeologists Without Borders and their GW2.0 textbook initiative is striving to develop international expertise through the creation of a living groundwater text document, that will undergo crowd-sources translation and allow for continuous updates. Dr. Jim Barker went on to implore the crowd to consider the importance of training and mentoring the next generation of hydrogeologists, with emphasis on the need to be proactive and improve outward communication in order to draw talent to the field and share key findings and implications of our work. Dr.Garth van der Kamp used unstated assumptions as a metaphor to explain challenges facing the field moving forward, including how the complexity of the problems we tackle will require interdisciplinary teams in order to understand real-world systems.

I was also given the opportunity to share my thesis research during one of the groundwater surface water interaction sessions. I have included a copy of my abstract below. Since I’ve already allotted a fair amount of blog space to my research in the past, I won’t go into the specifics on content, however I would like to comment on how the presentation went. This was my first time speaking at a conference and my research, which wrapped over a year prior, was a distant memory when it came time to prepare my presentation. I attempted to stay within the 20-minute time frame provided and rather than talking a warp speed as per usual, I opted to include less content and speak more slowly, with a bigger emphasis on the implications of my work rather than the technical findings themselves. Although I had slides prepared well in advance, I didn’t practice the delivery of the presentation like I should have. On the day of the presentation, my nerves and tiredness had the better of me. Being in a room full of experts, not only on hydrogeology as a whole but experts on my site in particular, was intimidating to say the least. Over the last year, I have become much more comfortable speaking to the bigger context of challenges facing water and returning to data-level conversations was a struggle. Should there be a next time, I hope to do much better.

This past month, I marked my one year anniversary with CWN and I received a promotion within the organization. I am now the Program Coordinator for the Canadian Municipal Water Consortium – woohoo! In my new position, I will continue to support Consortium activities by coordinating expert reviews, tracking research progress, supporting partnership development, developing knowledge mobilization opportunities and more.

A project currently in development at CWN  is the Blue Cities 2016 conference , taking place in Toronto in May 2016, which will address the impacts and risks posed by the new normal, address the business of getting to sustainable systems, discuss infrastructure and planning approaches and provide commentary on the value of communication in making tough decisions. I encourage you to check out our website as the program grows. It is sure to be an exciting conference that will bring together municipal water leaders, industry partners and experts from across Canada and internationally. If you have any questions at all, please let me know!

https://www.instagram.com/p/5a0sv_x_8W/

Oh look, a trail! Let’s get metaphorical and big picture here for a second. As I mentioned above, I attempted to be strategic and calculated in making room and time for self-growth, as well as mental and physical wellness, something that was and is more overdue that I had realized.

Looking at everything that has transpired over the last few years, I feel like so much has happened, but it is all such a blur that I see now how I should have done more to live mindfully and be in the present.  Upon being reflective, I am truly grateful for all of these opportunities afforded to me but I must do more to carry that gratitude into the present. The changes I have made in my life over the last few months have been in an effort to achieve this mindfulness; a mantra I have tried to manifest in my life – don’t try so hard. I need to stop trying to bring the future into focus since that is a futile venture at best. All I can do is to focus on the task at hand to produce my best work and give the greatest effort that I am capable of in that moment, with the acknowledgement that this level of “best” will always be in flux, and that is okay too.

It is time to trust the process and trust my own capabilities, without the need to forever prove myself. For much of my life, I was chasing a prize – gold stars, A+ grades, and a desire to impress those around me with just how busy I could make myself. I have never wanted to turn down an opportunity, which has certainly lead me to where I am today, but perhaps now I can be more strategic and focus more on my own well being. I was recently asked how I got to where I am in my career. Thinking backwards, the randomness of it all is scarily hilarious. I found out about my position at CWN from my involvement with the SYPC, which I became aware of from Waterlution, whose Innovation Lab I attended based on the SWIGS mailing list, which I joined because I attended a Blue Drinks event at UW, a school I chose for the challenge it would give me, a decision I made crying while lying on the floor of the gym hall in high school. Okay, so I zoomed backward in time there a bit, but really the serendipity of it all is astonishing and the futility of trying to plan for the future has never been more apparent. It is much more comforting, however, to be affirmed of your own capacity and ability to survive and thrive when faced with challenges.

If you’re still reading this far, first – wow thank you and I’m sorry, and second, this might all sound like something a twenty-six year old should know already. However, these are subtleties that I have only recently become consciously aware of. As I now enter a stage of life where I uncomfortably welcome time for rest, spontaneity and careful thought, I am aware of just how little I have grown personally and how naive I have been and continue to be about the world. Many of the basic and obvious facts of life are beginning to resonate with me for the first time. I have gone this long without having really been aware that I won’t get to live out every different life I can imagine but will have to choose a specific path to follow; maybe all of the risk taking and putting yourself out there has been less scary than quietly committing to any one thing; you have to like yourself, even (and especially) with imperfections; that balance means more than having good time management skills; that maybe instead of all of us being special, maybe none of us are. I know I am ridiculously lucky to have been able to go through life without these realities being at the forefront of everything I do, I know that for sure. And while I continue to be so fortunate, I’m left with this profound sadness and a need to share my thoughts. So I write this in an attempt to see if there are other young people going through the same realizations as me at this stage in life. Perhaps you too have preoccupied yourself for ten years only to realize that it’s almost 2016 and you don’t know what you actually like or want in life. Or maybe I’m still just as naive as ever, over thinking things or just need to do more yoga. How are you coping? What delayed realizations have you had? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

And now, a sunset.

https://www.instagram.com/p/8Rb8_KR_3O/

I am extremely fortunate to have been part of Waterlution’s Transformative Leaders of the Future program. Between September 2014 and June 2015, I was part of the Region of Waterloo TLF team, one of ten groups across the country, including Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Durham, Toronto, Guelph, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. The TLF program focuses on developing skills and building a network of students and young professionals through the cultivation of creativity, facilitation, and leadership training with hands-on practice and self-guided learning.

This opportunity to work closely in our teams over the course of months taught me a great deal about what it means to be a leader and the importance of clear communication in addressing fears, taking risks, and trusting one another in order for a co-led team to thrive. We had monthly meetings to update one another via sharing circles, share our ongoing projects, actively discuss different facets of being a leader, and take turns running creativity exercises for the group (frequently with hilarious consequences!).

Our group also became close friends and I have been so lucky to have their support over the last year, talking through uncertainties, celebrating milestones, and sharing our ideas on anything and everything. Marie Claire, Nicole, Sylvie, Katie, Shane and Ehsan – I am so glad that we all met and I look forward to planning events and going on adventures with you in the future! What do you say – definite reunion needed in 2040?

As part of TLF, each team ran events around the theme of WaterCity 2040. WaterCity 2040 is a multi-city and multi-stakeholder scenario planning initiative that brings together community and decision makers to collaborate, envision, and design plausible scenarios 25 years into the future and identify the necessary steps to create these futures. As part of running and participating in scenario planning, I was struck by how difficult it was imagine 25 years into the future (especially considering how minute that is on a geologic timescale!).  For me, Waterlution’s Karen Kun framed this challenge best – in order to shape the future, we have to talk about the future. And to do this, we have to stretch how we think. The technological and social advancements that have happened in my lifetime are remarkable and that level of change is anticipated to accelerate. When considering life 25 years from now, something completely unimaginable will be common place – think about how much the internet has changed things! To help our ability to think about the future, examples are incredibly helpful; in the year 2040, we may be able to take a pill that will teach us a new language. Whoa, that’s crazy! Now we’re thinking. It is with this mindset, open to possibility, that scenario planning can take root.

Waterloo’s TLF team ran three events over the course of the year along the theme of WaterCity 2040 and imagining the future for our community. Our resource guests spurred on discussion as we started thinking about different possible futures, the challenges standing in the way of those realities, and the steps we need to take to realize them. Thank you to Tammy Middleton, Tony Maas, and Kevin Eby for participating as resource guests and offering your expertise and insights to our group!

WaterCity 2040 events was where our TLF team really had the opportunity to shine and put our facilitation skills to work. For one of our events, I helped to put together an icebreaker activity that I was particularly proud of. I created puzzles for each table of participants. They had to work together to build and then answer the questions on the completed puzzle. I tried to make a team-building activity that involved a physical task and conversation, while keeping things introvert friendly (which if you know me, you understand the challenge I might have with that!). I’ve included a gallery of the puzzles at the end of the post (because I think they are pretty).

Ultimately, we distilled all of the ideas that were shared into four scenarios. Waterloo Region focused on the scenarios of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,’ ‘Resource Aware Individuals,’ ‘Forest Region,’ and ‘Mini Cities” – all very optimistic scenarios, with an emphasis on people coming together to form strong, engaged communities. Having lived in Waterloo, and now Kitchener, over the last eight years, the emergence of this theme of community is unsurprising given how much people in the area work together to inspire action. You can read each TLF team’s scenario summary here.

I believe that we can use creativity and inject personality into what we do to make it come alive. For a scientist, this can be a scary premise – we’re taught that if we become too personally attached to our work, biases may form. But when it comes to discussing issues at a high level, ignoring personal views and suppressing passionate responses will limit our dialogue, thus hindering progress. Learning how to channel my energy and feel confident in my ability as a facilitator has been rewarding beyond words. I am so thankful to have had this chance to grow and learn from so many people, never ceasing to be inspired by all of the TLF teams across Canada. It has been so wonderful meeting and chatting with so many of you over the last year! I look forward to continuing self reflections and applying these transferable skills to my personal and professional life. Thank you so much to Julia and Karen, for putting so much effort into making this program a reality, keeping it going strong through groan zone times, and for appealing to all of our different learning styles. It is so exciting to think about what awesome collaborative work will result from the connections we have all made! Stay in touch and #elevate.

This post to intended to be a happy 2015 one, then a happy World Water Day / Canada Water Week post, and then an Earth Day post. But as you can see, time has gotten away from me and lots of things have happened, accumulating over time to make this a more and more daunting task. But its been a very wonderful, water-filled six months and it would be a shame not to document and share it. So here is a highlight reel!

I started working at Canadian Water Network this past November as a Project Officer for the Canadian Municipal Water Consortium. It has been an amazing role to get into, where my day-to-day is always different, I am constantly learning, and I get to apply my technical understanding as well as continually developing my communication, project management and creative skill sets. As a kickoff to my career, this has been more than I could have hoped for in terms of opportunities for intellectual growth, building connections throughout the country, and knowing that what I do is impactful. To explain in a sentence what CWN’s role is or what the Consortium is accomplishing is always a challenge; we operate in a unique way to solve problems that require collaboration and the most current understanding of science. I find that a lot of contextualizing goes into my explanations. As there are many resources about CWN and the Consortium available online,I encourage you to read about it and ask me questions anytime: http://www.cwn-rce.ca/initiatives/municipal-consortium/

At the beginning of March, 2015, CWN held its Connecting Water Resources Conference, with the theme of bringing knowledge into action.There were three conference tracks: Blue Cities, Resources and Agriculture, and Small and Aboriginal Communities. I was honoured to help organize the panelists for the Blue Cities concurrent sessions with the help of Kaitlin Gibbens, Grahame Farquhar, and Erin Mahoney. The information conveyed regarding the balance of grey and green infrastructure, emerging contaminants on the environment, and international management strategies that can be applied in a Canadian context were so insightful and informative.

https://vimeo.com/124480616.

Personally the conference held many highlights, however seeing old friends and making new ones stands out to me. Prior to the start of the conference, we held a Students and Young Professionals Committee workshop about engagement, networking and planning outside-of-the-box events. The SYP team used this opportunity to set goals for the conference and think about how to get the most out of the following three days. For any person attending a conference in the future, I encourage you to actively consider what you want to get out of your experience, whether its as specific as meeting three people working in your field or as general as finding inspiration for a new project. I believe that heading into something having considered what is possible leverages such opportunities to their fullest.

Another personal highlight of mine was to see part of my thesis work with IBM and the Southern Ontario Water Consortium showcased. Conference attendees received pamphlets about Dr.Dave Rudolph and team’s Smart Watershed work and the video I previously featured was also playing on loop. It was a pretty proud moment for me!

There are so many other things I could include here, from the messages of empowering speakers to the meaningful conversations with friends over drinks after many hours of conferencing, to the amazing little touches that make this conference so special, but I’ll just leave it here. If you want to see more about Connecting Water Resources you can read, watch and listen all about it here:

https://storify.com/CdnWaterNetwork/connecting-water-resources-2015

http://cwr2015.ca/

In the last month, I also received some exciting accolades. At the risk of sounding boastful, I’m going to share these because — well, I’m excited! And why not share this joyful news! I was named as a finalist in Water Canada’s Water’s Next Awards in the Young Professional category. I’m truly honoured to be named among my amazing peers and friends, Mikhail, Megan and Muaz, who I have had the wonderful opportunity of working with on CWN and Waterlution initiatives over the last few years. I will be attending the Canadian Water Summit and the Water’s Next Gala on June 25, 2015 in Vancouver. Thank you Water Canada for making such an effort to recognize the amazing water work across the country! Additionally, I was contacted by the Water Youth Network in April and was featured as their Water Youth Leader of the Month. If you want to read this post or learn more about the Water Youth Network, you can do so here: http://www.wateryouthnetwork.org/archives/1786

As expected, this post has gotten rather lengthy and I feel as though this is only the tip of the iceberg (#obligatorywatercliche) with respect to everything that has been going on the last six months. In my test post, I’ll share my insights from Waterlution’s Transformative Leaders of the Future Program, include images of the Oceans Bound! exhibit at the Waterloo Region Museum, elaborate more on CWN’s SYPC and much more.

But for now, I’ll stop typing and head outside. I’m participating in this month’s 30×30 Challenge organized by the David Suzuki Foundation (who incidentally liked my Instagram photo – oh yeah, I got Instagram!). If you want to learn more about this endeavour to reconnect with nature, check out their website or look for #natureiscalling.

https://instagram.com/p/2MTWgXR_7m/?taken-by=cailinhillier

Let me start by saying yes, yes I know, this is long overdue but the post you have been waiting for is finally here!

Over the last 10 months, I worked on a project that seemed kind of crazy and far fetched. The project was to collect, transport, de-label, wash, sort, count, design, attach, light, and parade-down-the-street as many plastic water bottles as we could in order to make a statement. We wanted to demonstrate what Region-wide consumption of bottled water looks like and the potential environmental harm these bottles can cause. This calls for some ‘Sculptures by Numbers’ to properly explain this process:

• 6315:  Number of bottles collected in total
• 5716:  Number of bottles used in sculptures
• 140 metric tonnes:  Weight of plastic bottles collected via residential pickup each month in Waterloo Region
• 500 000:  Number of bottles collected from residences in Waterloo Region per day
• 20 minutes:  The amount time it takes the Region to produce the number of bottles used in the exhibit

And those are just the bottles collected from people’s houses that actually end up making their way into the recycling. Consider all of those that find their way to landfills and litter our environment instead.

After several iterations of designs, our bottle sculptures took the shape of four ocean creatures: a sea turtle, a jelly fish, an octopus, and a sting ray. Every year, more and more human-made garbage makes its way to our oceans and it is estimated that plastic in the oceans contributes to the death of over 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds each year.

I implore you to make changes in your life to combat the wasteful habit of one-time use plastic and encourage those around you to do that same. There are so many different ways to make a change! Look for goods that have less packaging when deciding on purchases. Carry reusable bags with you to the store. When you see litter, pick it up! Choose tap water over bottled water. And talk to your employer about making a similar switch. Its cheaper, safer, and more convenient! And remember to BYOB – Bring Your Own Bottle. Within the Region of Waterloo, look for businesses that display the Blue W sticker in their windows and encourage community events that have a Water Wagon on site instead of bottled water.

If you missed Night\Shift but would like to see the sculptures again, you will still get the chance! The Creatures of the Gyre pieces will be on display at the Waterloo Region Museum this winter. I believe it will be as part of their Oceans Bound! exhibit, opening on January 30th. Check back here for details as they become available.

I have to mention some very important thank yous for I could not have even dreamed up this project on my own. Thank you Night\Shift for helping in the creative development and funding of this idea for the last year and to Kitchener City Hall and the Kitchener Market for providing such epic building and display spaces! To the University of Waterloo, with emphatic appreciation for the amazing Plant Operations team, Engineering Orientation Week, and the Rudolph Group lab. You made bottle collection downright fun! For their encouragement and support, I must thank the Students of the Water Institute: Graduate Section and the Region of Waterloo Water Services. Messaging and man power, you guys are amazing! To all of my friends who helped for hours on end to make this a reality and for enduring the smelly bottles and sharp chicken wire – I couldn’t do anything without your help! Sondra, Stephanie, Amy, Eric, Yarko, Emma, Dede, Mina, Liz, Adriana, Graham, Peggy, Cathy, my mom Laurie, Drew, Mads, AJ, Liana, Colin, Peter, Sylvie, Victoria, Rahul, Maricor, Nathanael, Cass, Jill, Meg, Brad, Tim, Kevin, Jacob + anyone I might have missed, I am so lucky to have the opportunity to work with each and every one of you! This was such a new, big, exciting, challenging, scary, exhausting, exhilarating process and I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to bring this work to life.

Now enough talk! I think that these photos speak for themselves. I have included scans of my initial designs, messily sketched, photos from the washing and building stages, haphazardly shot, and tributes to our hard work, proudly captured. Check them out:

The last month and a half has arguably been the most transitional time in my life — more so than leaving home for university, and certainly more so than the ultra-small lull period I had between finishing my undergrad and commencing my master’s research all under the same institutional umbrella that is UW. This has been the first time in my life that I haven’t immediately jumped to the next task, next challenge, next resume builder. I decided to leave Waterloo, having lived there for seven years, and return home to sort out my next step.

My goal right now is to get everything off my plate, clear my mind, and allow the ideas to flow in. I have been using a water analogy to describe how I have been feeling and what it is that I seek. I have felt as though my life has been very turbulent, waves crashing, white caps happening, the whole bit. I have been reacting and keeping busy without taking time to acknowledge purpose, feel grateful for what I have accomplished, or even really process what is going on. Since the completion of my master’s, the waters are calming, the pull of the tides is weakening, and I am now waiting for stillness. I don’t know what it is that I will do next, but I feel certain that with that stillness, small ripples will begin to make sense and I can start to chart a more meaningful and fulfilling course. I want to experience that sense of nothingness, find my authentic self, and start fresh. I realize this may not be a feeling that will last, or even be possible to attain, and that this weird twenty-something process is certainly not unique to me. I do, however, have a great appreciation for the fact that I can take the time to do this at all. My mom is so supportive; I feel ridiculously blessed to have her on my team so listen (and listen and listen…), encourage, and catch me should I fall. Many friends have also put up with my frequent “am I crazy?!” questioning and your affirmations have helped me to maintain conviction to this process. After having the waves to distract me all of these years, the imminent calm seems even more foreboding at times. Right now, doing nothing feels like the biggest risk of all.

I have been borrowing such descriptors as “mini-retirement” or “spiritual awakening”  for this time in my life in an effort to categorize what I am doing – so like me to try to put everything in its own box. I have been getting very existential, which is scary because those thoughts aren’t easy to pin down and identify. And I have also found that for me, I cannot really process these things without verbalizing them. So during one particularly fruitful discussion with my mom, I found myself frantically scribbling on a scrap of paper in the middle of a crowded restaurant. I didn’t care about the venue; I was starting to make sense of all of these thoughts and get to the core of my fear and that sense of something missing. This is still such a work in progress so in an effort to keep it going, I have decided to share in this medium. Here is that piece of paper:

For me, it was helpful to think about things as being part of one system, but having different tiers: at the base, the first tier where factual information lives, including scientific theory, engineering principles, or social ideas; the second tier revolves around the methods in which that information is conveyed to a given audience, by way of education, visual art, facilitation, graphic design, networking, leadership, management, events, and activism; the top tier is the purpose. Why do we do what we do? I think this has been the key piece  missing in my life, lost in the waves. I have distilled purpose into two parts: personal (or inward) and community (or outward), on a local to global scale. I think I have been undervaluing personal purpose, the part where self-fulfillment is reason enough to do something. To me, this goes hand-in-hand with spirituality, security, healthy habits, adventure, and income. Community purpose is anything that inspires others, improves someone else’s quality of life, or offers enlightenment. Having these ideals of what is important to me written in one place has helped to make things clearer, but my no means is this an exhaustive list. I have also started to internalize the sentiment that one person cannot change the world, but many people coming together sure can. If doing something for my own enjoyment can inspire a chain reaction where by other people are inspired, empowering them to find their own self-fulfillment, which goes on to inspire more people – that is enough. If I can encourage one person to be more open-minded about environmental issues and start to live more sustainably – that is enough. Taking the time to appreciate the small changes each individual has in a community – that is enough. Each little impact is progress. This shift in thinking has been so fundamental to me.

It is with this thoughtful openness and emotional sensitivity that I attended the David Suzuki Blue Dot Tour at Massey Hall in Toronto just over a week ago. Musical acts, like Danny Michel, Chantal Kreviazuk, and the Barenaked Ladies, were interspersed with moving talks and powerful visual vignettes. The messaging of the event was very clear, making the case for why Canadians need to fight for the right to a healthy environment  and how to go about it. Speeches abounded, the most moving of which were delivered by Stephen Lewis, about the United Nations efforts to rally a collective fight against climate change, and Devon Page of Ecojustice, regarding that organizations attempts to curb the federal governments practice of loosening the protective powers of environmental regulations. Scientific and economic facts were juxtaposed with personal comment and emotive pleas, in perfect balance. And while each attendee was provided with a program containing a form requesting a donation to the David Suzuki foundation, it was not pushed. The objective of the evening was clear: spark small movements by imploring your municipal government to make the environment a priority, which will lead to change at a provincial and federal level.

The evening culminated in a final talk from David Suzuki himself. It was so moving to see someone in person who has been such an inspiration to me and so many others across the country. The energy in the hall was electric and yet when he spoke, you could hear a pin drop. Suzuki’s talk centered around the idea of changing perspectives and how standing up for our environment can be equated to combating racism and fighting for gender equality and the rights of the LGBT community. It is something we need to do collectively and start immediately in order to ensure that our natural spaces are preserved, our food system is secure, our water is clean to drink, and our air is fit to breathe. You can read more about the ways in which you can take action within your community here: http://bluedot.ca/take-action/. I must include the following video of a poem written for the occasion, which was the highlight of the event for me — Shane Koyczan’s ‘Shoulders’:

I woke up yesterday morning and looked around my childhood bedroom. My phone was filled with notifications from friends sending me water-related pictures, posts, and articles. On my desk lay pamphlets for Night\Shift alongside my ticket stub from Blue Dot. High on a shelf in a place of prominence, glasses with inscriptions about the benefits of drinking tap water, a gift from another water-loving friend. In my closet, the orange safety vest and mud-caked rubber boots lie in wait. I took the time to take in my surroundings and a feeling washed over me — I am thankful, I am doing my part, what I can contribute right now is enough, and purpose, however small, is the key to it all. What is your purpose?