Photo: Andre Mayer | CBC
April 1st was Fossils Fools Day in cities across Canada thanks to Seniors for Climate Action Now! In Toronto, they joined other protest groups outside the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada, a major financier of the Coastal GasLink project in northern British Columbia. "The level of engagement and the form of it among older people seems to be changing dramatically," says Tim Gray, executive director of the Canadian advocacy group Environmental Defence. Norman Meade, a Métis elder-in-residence at the University of Manitoba, says the ecological problem has become so acute in part because people haven't really considered the long-term consequences of our way of life -- what's known as seventh-generation thinking. A lot of seniors simply aren't aware of what the banks are doing, says Charles Bull, a retired Anglican priest in Halifax who sits on an environment committee for the Canadian Association for Retired Persons. But, he says, "we tend to have assets" and "seniors vote, and politicians know that."
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