In grade 1, Zoë Caron told her teacher at Redfish school that she thought they should recycle their cardboard lunch plates.
“The teacher made up an excuse, she told me no one would want to wash them all,” says Caron. “And I was like, ‘Oh if that is the only barrier, I’ll do it,’ and I washed them all and put them on her desk.”
This year, Caron was hired as an environmental advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At age 30, she’s one of the youngest members of his staff, and certainly the only graduate of LV Rogers Secondary in Nelson.
Advising the PM
As a member of Trudeau’s policy advisory team, Caron briefs him on climate change, ocean science, energy, forestry, mining, and agriculture — on the subjects themselves and on political issues surrounding them.
“For example, two weeks ago at the first ministers’ meeting in Vancouver when he met with all the premiers, I would brief him on a daily basis before those meetings, to go over the political context and answer any questions that he has. He is a strong leader in the sense that he really understands issues before he goes into a meeting, which is wonderful.
“It was my job to brief him on where the premiers were at in their own minds, on climate change leadership, bringing him up to the minute, in terms of what has been happening in various provinces and territories, or how the indigenous leaders are relating to the discussion. So it is bringing him up to date so that he has not missed a single minute of things that have happened while he has been doing something else.
“My role is to ensure that the Prime Minister is being the best he can be (on any files I am working on).”
Caron helped develop a joint statement between Trudeau and President Obama, and briefed Trudeau for his tribute to the businessman, diplomat and environmental pioneer Maurice Strong.
A social activist at LVR
“In high school I was more of a social activist. I campaigned for the voting age to be lowered to age 16. I was head of the student council and we hosted a student election in the municipal election that year and we released the results one day before the council election. Our point was, ‘This is how we would vote, please take our view into consideration.’ The results were about the same. Teenagers are much more aware than their elders on some issues.
“I was involved in an anti-harassment initiative where six of us travelled through elementary and high schools throughout the region and we did plays and workshops on how to stand up to bullying. ‘Saying nothing is like saying it is OK.’ A lot of these things for me were just about standing up where there is injustice, seeing where something is unfair, and working to do it right.
“I was a frustrated child and I always felt it strongly when there was an injustice even it if was very small. If there was an age limit to voting I felt like that was incredibly unfair. I would fight tooth and nail for things like that.”
Studying climate change
At Dalhousie University, Caron studied environmental science with a double major in international development, and tailored it to work on climate change.
“For example, I had classes that were about how do you communicate science to people, or how do you ensure that developing countries don’t suffer more damage from climate change impacts, or how do you ensure that developing countries can make a transition to lower carbon energy. I was able to work on some real world pragmatic questions, as well as the hard sciences.”
Then she worked for the next decade for the Sierra Club Youth Coalition, the World Wildlife Fund Canada and then for WWF International, and Clean Energy Canada. With Elizabeth May she co-authored a book, Global Warming for Dummies. And she worked as a consultant to the Nova Scotia government.
“These are all about sustainability and renewable energy, all in some way connected to climate change. The WWF International job was to get global investors, like the World Bank and Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, to increase investments in renewable energy and reduce those in coal. For Clean Energy Canada I worked on contributing to Alberta’s climate change plan.
‘Here you go, here is your world’
Caron says she clued into climate change when she was 19 at a youth climate change conference that she went to just because some of her friends were going.
“There was a presentation that was very emotional for me. It was a very macro level presentation on the impacts of climate change and where we already were. It seemed so unfair to me, that all of this was being handed to us on an platter, at age 19: ‘Here you go, here is the world you are now in, welcome.’
“In that moment I knew I needed to work on climate change. Elizabeth May as head of Sierra Club Canada was also at the conference and she said, ‘All of you need to go to the UN climate change conference in November. Youth are incredibly important there.’
“So I fund raised and went to the UN conference as a volunteer. We did peaceful demonstrations every day, we did interviews in the New York Times and Al Jazeera, we worked to get youth as a officially recognized group at the UN, meeting youth from around the world, understanding how to talk about climate change in a way that was not just about western issues, how to talk in a way that was fair and just for all countries and all people, indigenous people, workers, really understanding the big picture.”
Advice to LVR students
In February, Caron had a phone conversation with several LVR students who organized a 24-hour sit-in to bring attention to climate change issues.
“I encouraged them to work with pragmatic organizations that are really leading the charge in solutions, because that is the other big piece: we need more people working on the solutions. We are embarking on something that has never been done before in the history of the world and we need all hands on deck and young leaders are a big part of that.
“I think what I realized at that age was that I could not wait for someone else to change something. It is a wrong assumption to say, well, I will wait until I am the head of a company or something. That is a backward way to think about things. If you are a student you have an important role to play as a community member, as a citizen.
“The Prime Minister is putting place a new youth advisory council, so he will have a team of youth advisers so he will have a team of non-partisan youth advisers. He is the Minister of Youth and takes youth leadership seriously. “
‘You can drink the lake water you are swimming in’
Caron grew up in Procter and she says that immersion in nature forged her identity.
“You can drink the lake water you are swimming in. That is unheard of. So I have an appreciation of how much we are supported by the land around us.
“Nelson is the most wonderful place in the world. It is a very open minded and welcoming community with a big heart, and anything goes, there is no pressure to conform to be in a certain way.
“I would encourage Nelson to continue creating space for people and cities to be leaders. I see a lot of leadership there and it is important to remember that even small communities can create big change.”
‘Anyone can make a difference, my dear’
Asked about her environmental heroes, Caron takes us back to the year she washed the paper plates in her classroom.
“I read books about Jane Goodall when I was six years old and I wanted to be her. I met her recently, and when I touched her hand to shake it I burst into tears and could not speak. I was full-out sobbing. She looked up at me — she is at least a foot shorter than me — and she patted my shoulder and said, ‘Anyone can make a difference, my dear.’ And she walked off.”
