A Call to Climate Action

By Dan Laxer
The Suburban

Last Friday morning Montrealers thought they might see some high school students protesting the Quebec government’s cellphone ban. There were none. But there were students out marching for the environment.

Traffic on The Boulevard and on Belmont Avenue in Westmount was delayed for about a half an hour to give students from several schools in the area time to walk from their schools to Murray Hill Park.

The event was called Rising Voices: A Call to Climate Action.

Students from Roslyn Elementary School met up with students from St. George’s at the corner of The Boulevard and Belmont. They walked to the park from there, meeting up with students from several other Westmount schools – St. Leon de Westmount, St. George’s Elementary and High School, The Priory, Miss Edgar’s and Miss Cramp’s, The Study, Roslyn, Villa Maria, and Trafalgar School for Girls.

The students from St. Georges carried a mascot that they created. They worked with artist Bronwen Moen from the One Drop Artefact for Change Foundation to create the mascot based on their conception of what a Water Protector would look like.

Laura Officer, a Grade 3 French teacher at St. George’s, started the march two years ago as a different way to get students involved with environmental issues.

Sustainability, she tells The Suburban, could be “a difficult subject to talk about with children.” Depending on how the subject is broached, it could cause some anxiety. “So if you’re going to be talking about it then you should also be talking about different solutions that are available to all of us.” Kids need to learn to work collaboratively, she says, “to create change by working with other people.”

Students are taught that some of the ways you can create change is by talking to about the issues, starting a petition, creating art, or by organizing a walk.

The first march was in 2023 with just one school, St. George’s Elementary. At the time students marched was just a short way to the high school and back. A teacher from The Study happened to see them walking by and asked if her school could join the following year. So the next one, in 2024, involved all of the schools along The Boulevard.

They had also invited MNA Jennifer Maccarone, MP Anna Gainey, and Westmount Mayor Christina Smith, who all attended. In fact, Mayor Smith invited students to a council meeting to plead their case for environmental solutions in the community, including a bicycle path along The Boulevard (there isn’t one on The Boulevard. But there are three in Westmount – on De Maisonneuve, on Cote Saint Antoine, and on Westmount Avenue. The path on De Maisonneuve takes cyclists through Westmount Park.).

This year’s participants had to contend with a cold, rainy day. But the 2,000 students who gathered at Murray Hill Park didn’t seem to mind. They all stuck it out through student speeches about water, single-use plastic, and other environmental issues.

The same elected officials who were there last year had been invited to attend again this year, but unfortunately none of them were available.

“The biggest success,” Officer says, “was how many students really felt like they had been heard and that they have this sense of agency and importance. And that goes beyond climate issues. It goes for everything in life. If you feel like you have a voice and you’re able to work with others to bring about change, that has positive repercussions in many different sides of life.” n