Peace with the Earth, goodwill to all our relations

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Dr. Trevor Hancock

21 December 2025

703 words

Today is the Winter Solstice, an auspicious time for humankind for millennia, long before Christianity, ever since we first learned to keep track of the seasons and the sun. The turning of the year, when the sun in the northern hemisphere stops trending southwards, stands still, and then turns and heads back north, heralding a new year, spring, a new crop, new animals to add to the flock.

Solstice thus reminds us of our close relationship with and dependence upon nature, which my title also emphasises. It is of course a variant of the proclamation of the angels appearing to the shepherds: “on earth peace, goodwill toward men” (Luke 2:14). My version, however, speaks to a wider ecological perspective, eco-centric rather than anthropocentric.

The idea of making peace with nature has been championed in recent years by the United Nations. And the idea of ‘all our relations’ is a powerful way that Indigenous people think about our place in nature and our links to all the other species in the web of life to whom we are linked and on whom we depend.

Five years ago, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres gave an important speech on “The State of the Planet”. Mr Guterres was blunt: “To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken”, he said; “humanity is waging war on nature” – and that “is suicidal”. But, he went on to say, “Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere.”

An extraordinary and largely overlooked speech by David McGuinty, Canada’s Minister of Defence, at the 4th Montreal Climate Security Summit in early October is consistent with this idea. (If you want a clear distinction between Canada and Trump’s USA, read this speech and compare it to the brutal words that come out of the mouth of Pete Hegseth,  US Secretary of Defence.) Mr McGuinty’s speech has had me reflecting on making peace with nature, in the context of enhanced military expenditures and preparations for war.

Mr. McGuinty, an environmental lawyer and former head of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, was clear: “Our security and our prosperity are fully dependent on a healthy and functioning environment.” He went on to state “To truly safeguard Canada’s future, all our futures, it’s time to stop the fiction that our planet’s carrying capacity is unlimited . . .  that species aren’t being depleted and rendered extinct, that we’re not compromising the planet’s ability to restore itself.”

Mr. McGuinty very explicitly linked Canada’s national security to what he called our ‘natural security’: ““Investing in and restoring our ecosystems and natural capital is strategic preparedness. It is national defence. And it’s natural security.”


I found much the same sentiment at a provincial level in a commentary by Jim Pine (Times Colonist, 12 December). Mr Pine, who worked in the forest industry for 15 years “and has been advocating for systemic change in forest practices since 1988”, in essence calls for us to make peace with nature, specifically the temperate rainforest in which we live.

He points out: “These magnificent forests have evolved here for the last 10,000 years” and that “their life cycle is around 750 years.” But, he laments, “we will never, under current management, leave forests for 500 years to replace what we have clear-cut” and replaced with “monoculture fibre farms with 50 -100 year harvest targets.”

In a yet to be published article I have written with my friend and colleague Dr. Tim Takaro, a long-time environment and health activist who is committed to non-violent action, we have noted that Canada has a proud history of peace keeping and used to have a reputation as good environmental stewards.

So we propose Canada recognize that our security includes a livable planet and invest accordingly. Some of the 5 percent of GDP that is being committed to preparing for war should instead be diverted to reviving and expanding Canada’s peace-keeping role by creating a Canadian Environmental Peace Corps,

Making peace with nature would truly enhance our security. That is a thought to cherish and act upon at this time of peace, this turning of the year.

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

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

With cruelty reigning to the south, Canada needs to keep flame of kindness burning

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Who can forget Elon Musk’s disgusting celebration of the destruction of U.S. AID. How can anyone other than a psychopath celebrate the destruction of the lives and health of millions of people?

Dr. Trevor Hancock

25 March 2025

699 words

Back in the late-1980s the first President Bush expressed a wish for a kinder, gentler nation. A joke going round at the time, I recall, was that he had found it, it was called Canada, and now he was going to buy it.

Fast forward almost 40 years and we have a President whose whole approach seems based in nastiness and cruelty, the very opposite of kindness and gentleness. Indeed, I am struck by how often in the past couple of weeks I have heard the word cruel used in describing Trump, Musk and the US government as a whole.

We see that cruelty in Trump’s childish name-calling and belittling of people, his attack on the federal work force, his crushing of policies and entire agencies intended to protect and lift up the weak and disadvantaged. 

Who can forget Elon Musk’s disgusting celebration of the destruction of the US Agency for International Development, the largest single aid program in the world? We fed it into the wood-chipper, he exulted – chainsaw in hand. How can anyone other than a psychopath celebrate the destruction of the lives and health of millions of people that will result from such cruelty.

We also see it in Trump’s bullying not just of President Zelensky but of the entire nation of Ukraine, or his contempt for entire peoples and nations, be they Palestinians or Lesotho or Canada. We see it in his heartless and racist attitude towards immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. He has not yet got around to proposing a final solution, but I won’t be surprised if he does.

That cruelty extends beyond humanity to the planet as a whole. We see it in his rejection of the reality of human induced climate change and his commitment to expanding fossil fuel use, as well as in the wholesale abolition of environmental protections and the slashing of environmental science staff. Indeed George Monbiot, a renowned environmental writer, wrote in the Guardian recently that Trump, Musk and their followers are waging war against life on Earth.

As James Parker wrote recently in The Atlantic, it seems as if “kindness has become countercultural”. So perhaps Trump sees Canada as a threat because we are proof, right on his border, that it is possible to be kinder, gentler, more caring, more committed to the rule of law. 

If so, he intends to eliminate that threat by taking us over, crushing our economy, our independence, our sovereignty, our culture, our very existence.  And if that sounds like Putin’s attitude towards Ukraine – well, bingo, two peas in a pod! 

Now I am not suggesting we are a beacon of rectitude, there is plenty of cruelty and nastiness here in Canada. But the big difference is that as a nation, kindness, caring and gentleness towards others is still an underlying, if at times somewhat threatened, motivating force. 

We see it in our social programs, which are a social contract expressing solidarity and caring for each other. We see it in the mosaic of multi-culturalism that doesn’t just recognise but celebrates diversity. We see it in our proud, if now somewhat tattered but still extant commitment to peace-keeping – and the same could be said of our commitment to protecting the environment. We see it in our slow groping towards truth-telling in the history of our relationship with Indigenous people and our moves towards recognition and reconciliation.

Kindness, gentleness and consideration towards others has also been the underlying rationale for a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, which Trump and his fellow-travellers contemptuously dismiss as ‘woke’.

Now I am not going to defend every aspect of ‘wokeness’, there are times I too find it silly, irritating, performative and exasperating. But what I see at its heart is an attempt to recognise, protect and promote the inherent worth, dignity and rights of individuals, and that is a good thing.

Given we have a cruel tyrant to our south, maybe our most important job right now as Canadians  is to keep alive the flame of kindness, gentleness and caring, of compassion towards others, no matter whom or where they are, of respecting and protecting our environment. That must be Canada’s response to Trump.

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

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