Elders for Climate Sanity

Elders 4 Climate Sanity (E4CS) has sent the following letter to Employment and Social Development Canada in support of funding the project Bridging Generations: Climate Stories, Wisdom, and Action in Hamilton by the New Horizons for Seniors Program.

The funding decision will be made in January 2027.

New Horizons for Seniors Program
Employment and Social Development Canada

Re: Letter of Support — Bridging Generations: Climate Stories, Wisdom, and Action in Hamilton

To the New Horizons for Seniors Program Review Committee,

On behalf of Elders 4 Climate Sanity (E4CS), I am writing to express our full and enthusiastic support for the project “Bridging Generations: Climate Stories, Wisdom, and Action in Hamilton,” led by McMaster University’s Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging in partnership with E4CS, the Hamilton chapter of Seniors for Climate Action Now! (SCAN!), and Hamilton 350.

E4CS is a Hamilton-based group of older adults who have come together because we refuse to be sidelined in conversations about the future of our community and our planet. Our members range in age into their nineties and beyond, including our oldest member, Don Brown, who recently celebrated his 100th birthday and remains an active voice in our group. Several of our members, known locally as the “Dundas 4,” were arrested during a climate rally at the Dundas RBC branch in March 2024, a testament to our members’ continued willingness to act on our convictions rather than simply hold them. We are not a passive advisory body; we are organizers, advocates, and, when it comes to it, activists.

This project speaks directly to something our members have long experienced firsthand: older adults are too often treated as bystanders to climate change rather than as people with a century of adaptive knowledge, community memory, and hard-won perspective to offer. We are also, as the project rightly recognizes, among those most potentially at risk from heat waves, flooding, and power outages, even as our voices are routinely left out of the planning meant to protect us. We welcomed the opportunity to help create and shape a project that treats our lived experience as an asset rather than a liability.

E4CS members were involved from the earliest stages of designing this project and will remain central to its delivery, not as subjects of research but as co-leads. Our members are helping identify participants and interview subjects, shaping the content and direction of the documentary, recruiting our peers into the Climate Jam series, co-facilitating sessions alongside Gilbrea Centre staff, and helping guide the community discussions and knowledge-sharing that will follow. This is exactly the kind of seniors-led model we believe should be more common: one where our decades of experience adapting to environmental and social change are treated as knowledge worth preserving and sharing, not simply managed.

We are especially glad this project pairs our members with younger participants from Hamilton 350 and McMaster University in a genuinely two-way exchange. We have plenty to teach about sustained organizing, historical perspective, and civic persistence, and we are equally glad for the chance to build our own confidence and skills in digital oral history recording alongside younger participants. Too often, intergenerational programming treats seniors only as recipients of help; this project is structured so that we are mentors as much as we are mentees.

We believe the documentary and the six Climate Jam gatherings will do real good beyond our own group: reducing isolation among older adults, building lasting relationships across generations, and leaving behind an oral history archive, housed at the Gilbrea Centre, that will outlast this project and continue to push back against ageism in the climate movement and in public life more broadly.

E4CS is pleased to partner with the Gilbrea Centre, SCAN!, and Hamilton 350 on this initiative, and we offer our strongest possible support for its funding through the New Horizons for Seniors Program.

On Saturday, May 2nd, Eco-Locke and the First Unitarian Climate Action Team held a Water Is Life event, bringing together various groups from the region to talk about the importance of water.

The presentations, accompanied by informative slides, covered a variety of topics from cleaning up the harbour to the importance of native plants to preventing the taking of our water by profit-seeking companies and much more.

The event, MC’ed by Graham Cubitt, opened with a ceremony by Six Nations resident Marie Jones, with a Mohawk water song from her daughter Elaina. This was followed by presentations from:

Mike Christie of the City of Hamilton’s Watershed Management department.
Craig Cassar’s Follow the Flow of Ancaster Creek video.
Nancy Hurst of Save Our Streams with a status update on the Garner Marsh.
Dani Lindamood of Water Watchers, describing efforts to preserve our water from commercial profiteers.
Alexia da Poupada of Green Venture describing the Rai Ready program and discussing the importance of native plants.

Display tables included:

A member of Seniors for Climate Action Now (SCAN) posted this video to X, describing his attempt to first locate MP J.P. Danko’s office, and then to actually speak to someone.

As the narrator says, “It looks abandoned… There’s just a sad little sign in front with a phone number.” On calling the number, he was told that they’re in the midst of moving but “from what we understand, they’ve been moving for about a year now.”

“There’s no sign of anyone there and it’s by apointment; you can’t just walk in.”

“So, ladies and gentlemen, MP Danko’s office, nonexistent; representation, nonexistent.”

Click the image to watch the video.

On January 29, MP Aslam Rana made the following statement in the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa.

“Mr. Speaker, on December 19, we had the great joy of celebrating one of my constituents, Mr. Donald Brown, as he turned 100 years young.

“Mr. Brown is a treasure and inspiring member of our community. It was a true pleasure to welcome him to the office to talk about the environment and the clean energy topics that he remains deeply passionate about.

“I am delighted to stand here in the House of Commons to wish Mr. Brown a happy belated 100th birthday and another year filled with happiness and health. I send my congratulations to Mr. Brown.”

In it’s article “Here are some fantastically uplifting stories from 2024“, The Hamilton Spectator highlighted the activities of “the Dundas Four”, Hamilton 350’s elders who were arrested at the RBC branch in Dundas in March this year.

Here’s an extract from the article:

Aged agitators take on banks and big oil

A group of seniors, canes in hand, left court in November after pleading guilty to trespassing; each fined $250 for an act of civil disobedience. The climate activists — calling themselves the Dundas Four — were arrested protesting RBC’s investment in oil companies inside the King and Sydenham branch in March. The manager asked them to leave. They politely refused.

The Dundas Four — three of them pictured here — pleaded guilty to trespassing during a climate change protest.

The Hamilton Spectator file photo

About 45 seniors and their supporters, including one on stilts, gathered Tuesday at King Street West and Sydenham Street in Dundas, where four of Canada’s major banks each occupy a corner.

The protest, organized by Seniors for Climate (SFC), was one of dozens planned across the country on National Seniors Day. In a media release, SFC said the goal was to highlight “frustration with government inaction on the climate emergency.”

From an article by Cathie Coward in The Hamilton Spectator, 2 October 2024.

Four members of Hamilton 350’s Elders 4 Climate Sanity (E4CS) were arrested inside the RBC branch in Dundas at the Stop Destroying Earth rally on 22 March. They are due to appear in court in April.

It took six police officers in five patrol cars to accomplish the arrest.

For more details and interviews with the fab four, see the Hamilton Spectator article, No one is too young or too old to be a climate activist, by Susan Clairmont, 2 April 2024.

You can also check out more images from the rally and the arrest.

Elders 4 Climate Sanity (E4CS) was founded by six members of Hamilton 350 in the summer of 2018.

We wanted to address the climate crisis and attempt to wake more people up to the fact that the earth was burning and that the youngest and most vulnerable would suffer greatly. We felt compelled to take action.

One of our members, Tina Di Clementi, a retired science teacher, created an audio-visual presentation showing how and why the earth’s atmosphere has been warming.

Her first presentation was given to the residents of Caroline Place in March, 2019, followed by more than 30 similar presentations to various community groups, seniors’ residences and churches in Hamilton, Ancaster, Dundas, Stoney Creek and Oakville. We were pleased to learn that several of these groups started their own climate actions. In April, 2020, however, COVID put an end to these presentations.

In 2023, E4CS member Don Brown was the recipient of the Hamilton Senior of the Year Award for Financial Leadership.

Why 350?

The global 350 movement of which E4CS is a part was co-founded by Bill McKibben 15 years ago and is active in 188 countries. Why 350?

The math is terrifying- For thousands of years, the earth’s atmosphere contained less than 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO2), which scientists agreed was a safe amount. Since the Industrial Revolution, however, it has risen to the point where it is 424.55 (as of the time of writing).

This is largely due to the ever-increasing burning of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil. Abandoned oil and gas wells, as well as fracking so-called “natural” gas, add methane to the atmosphere, which is up to 80 times more potent than CO2 in trapping heat.

As a result, 350.org was founded to promote bold action against those wrecking Earth’s climate. One of its successful campaigns has been to demand significant divestment from fossil fuels.

McKibben went on to found Third Act, building a community of people over the age of 60 who are determined to change the world for the better, using their life experience, skills, and resources to build a better tomorrow.

Why support a bank that is helping to destroy the planet?

Canadian banks continue to loan billions of dollars to the fossil fuel industries for new coal, gas and oil projects. RBC is the worst offender.

E4CS is focused on stopping this financing of Earth’s destruction, targeting both bank personnel and customers. How could we tell our banks to support an economy based on Earth-friendly practices rather than on Earth-destroying ones?

Every few weeks, armed with signs, leaflets and letters, we meet at five different banking areas to talk with people on the sidewalks and to let bank officials know the reason for our mission.

We greet and engage everyone, people walking down the street or in their cars, students on their lunch break. Sometimes we use a sound system for music and singing.

We also take advantage of ArtCrawls, street closings, and summer festivals to deliver our message. E4CS members join other environmental groups such as Fridays for Future, Stop Urban Sprawl, Land Back, and Macdivest, always calling for “sanity”, and protesting the financing of Earth’s destruction.

Our leaflets present the facts and urge people to “let their money talk”. They can confront their banks, invest ethically in renewable energy, and switch to credit unions, letting their bank know why. We have handed out hundreds of letters addressed to bank officials for people to sign and mail.

We also draw attention to the misleading greenwashing in banks’ advertising, and how Indigenous water and land rights continue to be disrespected during pipeline construction.

Responses to our actions are mixed. Requests to meet with managers can often be successful. While one RBC manager was pretty stiff-necked about talking with us at all, another expressed sympathy for what we were doing. Security officers sometimes prevent our entry if we are wearing signs. On four occasions when police were called, cordial conversations happened. More and more people are telling us that they have changed how they bank.

From our sister organization, Seniors for Climate Action Now (SCAN), we acquired postcards to send to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) calling out their greenwashing and urging divestment from fossil fuels. We have also handed out No Farmland, No Food postcards that ask people to support the National Farmers Union in preserving farmland. We welcome new members, support and ideas.

If you love this planet, and your children, join us at our next public rally and learn how to slow down dangerous weather!

The Elders for Climate Sanity were at RBC at the Centre on Barton on Friday, 14 April, talking with customers and passersby outside the bank about RBC’s fossil fuel investments and encouraging people to put their money into a credit union instead.

Two members tried to meet with the manager and were angrily turned away.

Outside, a security guard told us we were on private property and to move to Barton Street. FOUR security guards watched over the SIX of us and the manager threatened to call the police, saying we were harassing customers. We refused to leave and no police arrived.

Several people took our information and were supportive.

Category: Elders for Climate Sanity

Bridging Generations: Climate Stories, Wisdom, and Action in Hamilton

Water Is Life

Does MP J.P. Danko Actually Exist?

Don Brown Recognized in the House of Commons

Protests work!

Later is Too Late!

The “Dundas Four” under arrest at RBC!

Five Years of Elders For Climate Sanity

Why 350?

Why support a bank that is helping to destroy the planet?

RBC Protest at the Centre on Barton