The news cycles may be perpetually full of doom and gloom, but Lorraine Green, 73, and Carole Holmes, 74, are decidedly not. The energetic Oakville grandmothers are using their retirement to save the planet, and they’re inviting other retired women and “empathetic spouses” to join them.
While they admit they might feel angry from time to time, they don’t waste energy shaking their fists at the TV or getting into heated debates on the Internet. Instead, they’re pouring their time into grassroots activism.
Over Christmas, they assembled a team of 30 members who hand wrote a thousand holiday cards from the safety of their own living rooms, and mailed them to bank executives as part of a campaign to encourage Canadian big banks to divest from fossil fuels.
Provided
A charming greeting card for bank executives
1000 festive postcards were hand addressed last holiday season by 30 members of Grandmothers Act to Save the Planet (GASP).
Their effort won them a personal audience via video chat with RBC executives in Toronto last month.
“We make an effort to retain our dignity,” Holmes explains. “While we may be angry, we try to speak as mature grandmothers would speak. We appeal in a scientific sense because we have done our homework and we appeal in the emotional sense as grandmothers.”
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Lorraine Green wants RBC to stop investing in fossil fuels
Co-chair of Grandmothers Act to Save the Planet participating in a global action Fossil Banks No Thanks.
Grandmothers Act to Save the Planet (GASP) grew from a network of some 30 women in the Halton area who in 2017 were gathering once a month to discuss systemic racism and white privilege. Some in their ranks had been around since 1982 as founding members of the Women of Halton Action Network (WHAM) that lobbied to include the gender equality clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Other members had been knitting pussy hats to attend the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC the day after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.
At one of the discussion meetings, someone mentioned that it was their demographic group -- educated white women -- who got President Trump elected. As that information sank in, they considered how to harness their privilege to drive positive change. They asked themselves, “What is the most important thing for us right now?” and Green says the group settled on the climate crisis as a focal point.
“Climate injustice hits you in the face, because these people in developing countries are the ones suffering the most from climate change, through no fault of their own, while we in the West sit at home, thinking, ‘Oh, too bad,’” Green says.
In that conversation, GASP was born and now boasts 80 paid members in Oakville, Milton, Hamilton, Mississauga and Burlington. There are another 200 supporters active on their Facebook group. Entirely self-funded through modest membership dues of $20 per year, the group organizes letter writing and social media campaigns, and continues to video-conference once a month to strategize.
As the women explain it, doing advocacy as a retired person has its benefits. For one, “we can say what we want because we’re not worried about losing our jobs,” Green says.
“It’s quite exciting,” adds Holmes. “This is a women-led movement. There’s a feminist base to everything we’re doing.”
Another Oakville member, Irene Clarke, credits her GASP activities for what she says will be one of her most cherished memories: attending a Fridays for the Future rally in May 2019 with her grandson Zander, who was nine at the time.
“When I asked him earlier in the week, he wasn’t that interested,” Clarke says. “But at 7 a.m. the morning of, his mother called and said he changed his mind. I was going by myself, but I was getting less motivated because I was going by myself. When he decided to come, I thought, ‘Oh, we have to make a sign!’”
Zander’s mom dropped him off with Clarke that morning and the pair quickly assembled two signs before boarding the GO Train for Toronto. “We walked from City Hall to Union and back and we were shouting, ‘We want climate action now!’ After a while, he was shouting with everyone. It was really my biggest surprise -- he never once asked, ‘How much longer?’ ‘Is it nearly finished?’ Or ‘When are we going to go home?’ I was so proud of him. It was such a beautiful experience.”
Clarke, 78, is a member of GASP’s political action team, watching for opportunities to influence decision-makers at the provincial or national level on matters affecting climate change and human rights. Leading up to the 2019 federal election, Clarke and members of the team met with every candidate of every political party in Burlington, Oakville, Milton, and Halton Hills, accompanied by high school students enrolled in environmental programs in Oakville. “It was a wonderful experience,” Clarke recalls. “We are working with grandchildren whether they are our own, or other people’s grandchildren, because we all need to work together.”
Clarke has been active in advocacy since she retired 12 years from a long career in nursing. When she was younger, working and raising her four children, she says she didn’t have a lot of time to get involved politically. “I say this with a bit of a smile thinking I don’t know how I found time to work because this is like a full-time job, my advocacy now,” Clarke says.
“We’re older women; we’ve lived; we’ve experienced; and we have tons of wisdom acquired from that experience,” Clarke says. “We have seen because we have been around for such a long time, where society’s past behaviour has led us, and we have seen where we can learn from our mistakes.”
To anyone who finds the bad news overwhelming, Clarke has this to say: “These are exciting times. There is so much we can be part of. I would encourage people to get informed, to find out what’s happening in our communities regarding global warming. I don’t think there’s any better opportunity to meet our need to learn and to feel useful. There are different levels of engagement and there is something for everyone to do. Anything would be helpful.”
Last year, GASP was recognized by the YMCA with the Group Peace Medal for their work to leave a green legacy for the world’s grandchildren.
