Month: June 2024

• Published as “Physician group fighting for health and planet marks 30 years”

Those of us who founded the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment in 1994 were ‘a bunch of environmentalists who just happened to be physicians’.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment: Working to better human health by protecting the planet.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

18 June 2024

700 words

In my time I have co-founded a number of organisations, but I am particularly proud to have helped start CAPE – The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment – thirty years ago. Three of us, independently, had started to develop the idea of some sort of doctors’ organization focused on the health of the planet in the early 1990s.

Warren Bell was – and still is – a family physician in Salmon Arm B.C., while Tee Guidotti was a Professor of occupational and environmental health at the University of Alberta (although he subsequently moved to Washington DC) and I was an independent public health physician in Toronto. We were, said Warren, a bunch of environmentalists who just happened to be physicians.

I had been calling for the creation of an organization of ‘Physicians for the Environment’ in my work in the early 1990s, as had Warren, and I had served with Tee on a Task Force on Human and Ecosystem Health for the Canadian Public Health Association in 1992. So we all got together in mid-1994 and by the end of 1994 had incorporated CAPE and become the Canadian affiliate of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment.

We started small, and all our work was voluntary, but we spoke out and had an important impact. In a 1996 brief to the National Forum on Health on the importance of ecosystem health as a determinant of human health we noted: “As physicians, we are concerned both professionally and personally about how the health of our patients may be affected by environmental degradation.”

But we also spelled out the wider aims of CAPE: “Our objectives as an organization are to better understand the health implications of environmental problems and global change, to educate physicians and the public on these health implications . . . and to encourage effective change in the way Canadians deal with environmental problems and global change so as to protect the health of the population.”

Today, having become a well-established organisation with 18 staff and 10 regional committees, CAPE continues to pursue its vision that “the health of people and the planet are prioritized in society and policy in Canada.” It does so by “mobilizing the credible voice of health professionals, health science, and evidence”; over the past 30 years, CAPE has “engaged over 25,000 supporters . . . with close to 16,000 having taken action on a campaign!” 

CAPE is an effective and powerful voice on a range of environmental issues, which in its latest strategic plan includes the three elements of the UN’s ‘triple planetary crisis’ (climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution), as well as the broader policy framing of social justice and equity and the need to create a wellbeing economy and society.

Some of CAPE’s highlights in the 2020s include becoming a founding partner in PaRx, Canada’s first national nature prescription program; advocating for successful passage of federal climate accountability legislation and convincing the province of Québec to reject a new LNG project.

CAPE also advocated with others to strengthen the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The revised Act now includes the recognition, for the first time, of the right to a healthy environment. The Act also updates the framework for toxic substances, another CAPE priority campaign, requiring the federal government to consider the cumulative impacts of toxics, and their effects on vulnerable populations.

In 2022 CAPE launched a campaign to ban fossil fuel ads, a call that was joined earlier this month by UN Secretary General António Guterres, who called on countries to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies.

Additionally, CAPE filed a complaint with the Competition Bureau to investigate green-washing by the fossil fuel industry and joined a complaint to Ads Canada about misleading pro-LNG adverts. The latter led to a recent ruling that the ads “paid for by Canada Action, are inaccurate, misleading, and distort the true meaning of statements by scientists.”

Many Canadians, and others around the world, have benefited from CAPE’s work over the past 30 years to better human health by protecting the planet. It is hard to think of a more important task today, so it is vital that CAPE continue this important work in the years ahead.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

We need a reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is, at its heart, spiritual.

• Published as  ‘We are deeply connected to and kin with all of life’

Dr. Trevor Hancock

11 June 2024

702 words

Two weeks ago, I ended my column on values fit for the 21^st century by stating that we have a set of values that are not fit for purpose today. One of those unfit value sets relates to our relationship with nature, which is rooted in a sense that we are separate from and indeed superior to nature. We believe we can manipulate and manage nature for the benefit of our societies and our economies.

In a very real sense we are indeed separated from nature. In North America we are 80 percent urbanised and we spend 90 percent of our time indoors – and a further 5 percent in cars and other vehicles. So we – and especially our children – have very little contact with nature, and most of that is a constrained form of nature in an urban setting.

Moreover, in economic terms we discount nature. A forest has no economic value until it is cut down and turned into lumber or paper. The pollution of air, water and land, especially well away from us, is considered an externality, not factored into our economic models and measures, “for no better reason”, wrote the late Herman Daly, a leading proponent of an economics of wellbeing, “than because we have made no provision for them in our economic models.” 


But this set of values is incompatible with our survival. So the first of four sets of value transformations I propose is the need to (re)establish a sense of reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is both rooted in ecological reality and is, at its heart, spiritual.

Duwamish Chief Seattle reportedly said almost two centuries ago, “we are part of the great web of life, and whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves”. We need to recognize that simple fact and acknowledge that ecosystems and the species they contain have intrinsic worth, that nature has rights, that other species have rights, and we owe them justice.

All of this has enormous resonance with long-held Indigenous world views and traditional teachings. I was powerfully struck by this point from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report in 2015:

“Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to destroy the natural world, then reconciliation remains incomplete.

This is a perspective that we as Commissioners have repeatedly heard: that reconciliation will never occur unless we are also reconciled with the earth.”

I am also moved by the oft-heard concept among Indigenous people of ‘all our relations’ – that we are deeply connected to and kin with all of life – something modern DNA studies show to be true to a remarkable degree.

Now I am not Indigenous, but I am a member of a Global Working Group of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) that is Indigenous-led and focused on what Indigenous perspectives and spirituality bring to our understanding of planetary health – the health of human civilizations and the natural systems that support them.

We just authored for IUHPE a Position Statement on Planetary Health Promotion and Indigenous World Views and Knowledges. In it we stated:

“Viewing humanity as deeply connected with the environment is a central element of Indigenous knowledge systems. This interdependence is not a romanticized version of the environment, but one that is perceived through a worldview that our health is tied to the health of the planet. We cannot separate human and ecosystem wellbeing in this interconnected paradigm.”

We also explicitly connected Indigenous world views and knowledges with spiritual approaches:

“Spirituality is another facet of human life that offers pathways to re-engage with humanity’s deep connection with the natural world, and to foster environmental awareness, activism and wellbeing in ways that can enhance both health promotion and planetary health.”

Whether we approach the issue of a reverence for nature through ecological science, Indigenous values or spirituality does not matter. The point is to see ourselves in context, and with humility, as just one small part of the global ecosystem that sustains us, and all of life.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

•  Published as ‘Morris dancing is good for sinners and non-sinners alike’

Benefits include being physically active, with good balance, agility and strength, as well as the mental health benefits of having to create, learn and remember dances

Dr. Trevor Hancock

4 June 2024                                                             

701 words

I am a Morris dancer, which means – in the eyes of the 17^th century Puritan polemicist William Prynne – that I am a sinner, bound for Hell. His blast against dancing, in his 1632 book Histriomastix is so wonderful it bears repeating here.

“Dancing, is, for the most part, attended with many amorous smiles, wanton compliments, unchaste kisses, scurrilous songs and sonnets, effeminate music, lust provoking attire, ridiculous love pranks, all which savor only of sensuality, of raging fleshly lusts. Therefore, it is wholly to be abandoned of all good Christians.

Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable, or pious end at all. It is only from the inbred pravity, vanity, wantonness, incontinency, pride, profaneness, or madness of man’s depraved nature. Therefore, it must needs be unlawful unto Christians.

The way to heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout. No way is large or smooth enough for capering roisters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleasant road that leads to HELL. The gate of heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troops of dancers to march in together.”

Guilty as charged – well, except I don’t think anyone would describe me or my attire as lust-provoking! And he didn’t even mention going to the pub afterwards!

I tell you this to warn those of you of a sensitive nature to avoid the front steps of the BC Legislature on Saturday June 15^th at about 4 PM. For those who are more bold, if you show up there, you will have a chance to see Canada’s oldest Morris side celebrating its 50^th anniversary, along with the other two local Morris sides. (You have another chance, when we are joined by Sound and Fury Morris from Seattle on July 6^th at 4 PM at the Legislature.)

Morris dancing is a traditional English folk dance, and is first mentioned in 1448 in a record of payment to some Morris dancers. Today it is danced all over the world. Indeed, Morris dancers around the world get up to dance at dawn on May Day – May 1^st – because if we don’t, the sun will not rise. Yes, you can thank us when you see us!

Hollytree Morris was established by David and Christine Winn in 1974; they had already co-founded the Saanich International Folk Dancers Association a few years earlier, having arrived here in 1969. Interested in their own English cultural traditions, they were inspired to create Hollytree Morris, who first performed in Victoria (originally as the Victoria Morris Men) in 1974. Since then, Hollytree Morris has danced at countless festivals and events throughout the region, across Canada and as far afield as the USA and England.

David, sadly, died in 2014, but Christine is still dancing, and dancing well, at 83, and we have dancers and musicians – yes, we are blessed with live music too – in their 80s, while many of us – including me – are in our 70s. So when I say Hollytree is the oldest Morris side in Canada, I mean that in both ways – longest established, and probably oldest average age.

I have not been dancing quite that long, but I started Morris dancing with Green Fiddle Morris in Toronto in the late 1970s, and have enjoyed the benefits of Morris dancing ever since. Those benefits include being physically active, with good balance, agility and strength, as well as the mental health benefits of having to create, learn and remember dances. Beyond that, there are also the social benefits of being with a group of friends every week.

On top of that, as a City of Victoria Proclamation for Folktoria (held last week, June 1^st and 2^nd) and Hollytree’s Golden Jubilee notes, “an important purpose of international folk dance is to learn dances from other countries and traditions, and in doing so to learn about and celebrate them: and this celebration of many cultures is shared with the community through public performance, bringing pleasure to hundreds of dancers and thousands of audience members over the years.”

So if you don’t mind hanging out with a bunch of sinners, join us as we celebrate on June 15^th or July 6th.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies”

It’s is a simple prescription, but in practice, we try to make it work the other way around

Dr. Trevor Hancock

27 May 2024

701 words

Last week I suggested that the bad decisions that government and corporate leaders are making, in the face of growing evidence of ecological decline and potential collapse, are rooted in a set of societal values that are unfit for purpose in the 21^st century.

Back in April I was asked to be the homilist at the First Unitarian Church just before Earth Day and to talk about the values revolution that is needed. Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know there was such a a beast as a homilist, and only a vague sense of what a homily is. So I looked it up. A homily, I found, is “a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the ‘public explanation of a sacred doctrine’ or text.”

Clearly I needed a piece of scripture on which to base my homily. But not being a theist, I had no sacred text to turn to. So I looked to a piece of wisdom that might be considered scripture – a word that means “sacred writings”; it certainly is scripture for me: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

The source is the 2014 edition of the bi-annual Living Planet report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). This simple piece of scripture contains a great deal of wisdom that is relevant to our modern conundrum, and underscores the need for a values revolution.

Indeed, it is a simple but profound prescription for how we should organise our societies, communities and economies. But in practice, driven by a set of distorted values, we try to make it work the other way around. As a result we live in a world where economies shape and distort societies that then damage or destroy ecosystems – to the detriment not only of our health and wellbeing, but that of a myriad other species with whom we share this one small planet.

There are four elements in the WWF ‘scripture’ that I want to explore with respect to the values we currently exhibit and how they need to change. They are the three realms of the Earth (ecosystems), society and the economy, and how we prioritise among them.

These three realms are congruent with what the Great Transition Initiative calls “the conventional triad of individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature” that lies at the root of our current global and local crises.

The Great Transition Initiative is focused on a deep transformation of culture and society and proposes that in opposition to the conventional – and mis-aligned – triad of values noted above – individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature –  we need to develop “a constellation of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and ecological sensibility” that will get us to the future we need.

Let’s start with the realm of the Earth and its ecosystems. As the WWF makes clear, ecosystems – and more broadly, the Earth – contains everything else. Every human we know of, except for the 10 currently on the International Space Station, lives on Earth – all  8+ billion of us. Every human there has ever been, and every member of every species there is or has ever been, lives or lived on Earth.

This one tiny blue dot contains all the life of the universe, as far as we know at present, and it is the basis of our very existence.

So you would think we would treat the Earth with great reverence, respect and care. But we know we don’t. Ever seen a clearcut? A polluted river? A burned forest? A destoyed reef? A tarsands mine? A tailings pond? An oceanic plastics gyre? Cities and the lands that surround them covered in air pollution?

We are in deep, deep trouble. We have already crossed six of nine planetary boundaries and are approaching two of the remaining three. In the process we have triggered a sixth ‘Great Extinction’.

All this stems from an unfit set of values rooted in a mistaken belief that we are separate from and indeed superior to nature, and can manipulate and manage nature for the benefit of our societies and our economies. I will discuss this further over the coming weeks.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy