Alumni for the Environment: It’s Substance That Matters (David Miller ’77, P’15)

David Miller ’77 places a high value on personal toughness, both in building character and in building a career to advocate for the environment. One would need to be tough to accomplish what David has done. He built a nine-year practice as an employment, immigration and shareholder rights lawyer in Toronto, then walked away from it to run in the high-profile, no-holds-barred world of Toronto municipal politics, winning three elections as a city councillor and another two as mayor of Canada’s largest city for seven years. He has since continued legal work around investment in wind and solar energy, headed WWF-Canada, the Canadian arm of the World Wildlife Fund, and since 2017 has served as the managing director of international diplomacy for C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, an organization of the mayors of the world’s largest cities dedicated to avoiding climate change by making use of the legislative and spending…

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Alumni for the Environment: Healing Living Systems (Dawn Danby ’96)

In a presentation to the American Society of Engineering Education a few years ago, Dawn Danby brought out her bristol board presentation from Gerry Bird’s 1993 Grade 10 environmental science class at Lakefield College School to make her point. “My point was that his class at LCS was more sophisticated than most of the sustainability education required or available to young engineers at the university level,” she says. "This course was not just about ecology but about the politics of extraction. We looked at the political structure of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), how nuclear reactors are built, and we did field trips to Pickering, a coal power plant and the GM plant in Oshawa. The takeaway was that the solutions to complex problems, like climate change, are also complex.” Dawn is a design strategist with a strong focus on ecology and co-founder of Spherical, a research and…

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The LCS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Club Explains Performative Activism

Lakefield College School’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) club is a student-led program that was launched in 2020. This club gathers on a weekly basis to discuss current issues pertaining to race, sex, gender identity, culture, and ability. Led by this year's Seniors-in-Charge Sarah ’22, Clea ’22, and Rori ’22, during their meetings, students explore resources, engage in important conversations, and identify new ways to share information with the broader school community. We had the opportunity to sit down with Sarah ’22, Clea ’22, Rori ’22, and Grade 10 member, Maureen ’24 to learn more about performative activism and how it impacts the progress of important social movements.  What is performative activism and why is it harmful? https://youtu.be/2fbcyLcanwg "Performative activism comes in many different forms. It usually entails actions that are done for an individual to boost their own social capital, rather than actually supporting a cause. Especially with our increasing…

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