“A Chemical Reaction” documentary presentation by University of Ottawa Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic and Faculty of Law

“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.” – this is the beginning of “A Fable for Tomorrow”, opening Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”. We all know what happened to this town, which, as Rachel Carson says, “does not actually exist, but … might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world.” Over the years we witnessed numerous cases when towns in America and all over the world were affected by pesticides.

Here is again a pesticide story in a little town, in Quebec this time, and one more time a woman is at the heart of it, called, just like Rachel Carson, “fanatic” and “crazy” – Dr. June Irwin, a dermatologist, who noticed a correlation between spring pesticide sprays and skin reactions in her patients. She got ball rolling one of the most powerful community initiatives in North America. For 17 years, residents and the municipal government of Hudson in Quebec raised the alarm over the dangerous health impacts of chemical pesticides. Their fight culminated in a 2001 Supreme Court win banning the cosmetic use of pesticides based on precautionary principle: without waiting until “someone dies”, as says the retired by now Supreme Court of Canada Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dube.

To me this was a story about success-centered values our societies built over centuries, and signs it developed to externalize them: big house, big car, immaculate green lawn… To the extent where we are ready to poison ourselves, our children and pets in order to convey to the world the message about our success and the care we take about our households. Maybe it is time to revisit these values, and those couple of dandelions on our non-sprayed lawn will be the sign that we actually care about our dearest.

It was also a story of a person who has the nerve to be different. At the end of the film Dr. Irwin says: “It’s not about me. It’s about us. It is about community.” Every article about this movie I found quoted this phrase, which certainly tells a whole lot about the morality and sanity of this eccentric-looking person, called “crazy” by many. There is another phrase she says, which explains to me her courage to be, to look, and to act the way she considers her own, no matter what the others think or say: “I know very well where I’m going, and no one could offside me.”

Personally, I found that the case itself, and people who participated in it, are way more interesting than the movie about them. On that night, interesting people were not only on the screen, but also in the audience: Mme L’Heureux-Dube, Ecojustice founder Stewart Elgie, Stephane Dion, numerous Law Faculty professors and students, and Paul Tukey, the producer of the movie.

It was an ordinary Thursday night, as Chelsea said, one of these gloomy nights, when you would rather sit at home having for the whole world your laptop, and the maximum of what you would want as friendly gathering would be replying to e-mails in your inbox. The program gets closer to its end, and midterms are flowing into finals with no interval, leaving us little free time. All these thoughts: “What’s next?” are there. There is a bit of a saturation, too: one more “green” documentary – oh, maybe just bookmark it for the future reference. And yet, an inexplicable force, probably called love for what you are doing, pulled us out of our cocoons to get together for the umpteenth environmental documentary, and we had a great time watching it, being among like-minded people, and having this moment of a real, non-virtual discussion afterwards. Thanks, Chelsea, Jan and Jen for your company!