Being a parent is my most important job — caring about wildfires and climate change is part of that

“Mommy, I want to go outside!” my four-year-old whined as she cannonballed into my lap. 

“Outside now!” my two-year-old echoed from his perch on my shoulders.

With two children under age five, our family wasn’t known for lounging around on a Sunday morning — let alone in the middle of summer. But the view outside our window didn’t look anything like summer. Smoke from West Kelowna’s McDougall Creek wildfire had settled over Vancouver, filling the August skies with a deep, ominous, brown haze.

After poring over updates from Canada’s worst wildfire season on record for months on end, I was already on edge. I could vividly imagine flames whipping across forested hillsides behind unsuspecting homes, families racing to escape fast-moving flame, and the level of destruction many would find upon their return. And every time I went to refresh my air quality tracking app — with its blaring red warnings — I was met with even more unsettling news.

A tropical storm had hit California, my native home, inundating iconic desert towns with unprecedented floods and mudflows. Before I could compile the mental list of friends and family to check on, a familiar chant halted my thoughts.

“Playground, now! Playground, now! Playground, now!”

I declined and sighed, to a cacophony of frustrated boos and groans.

Sitting more than 400 kilometres from the evacuation zone, double-pane windows locked shut and air purifiers whirring in each bedroom, I knew we were safe, indoors — this time. And I knew exactly what society expected of a “good mother” at a time like this: get down on the floor and play pretend, initiate a colourful craft project, find a nutritious recipe to bake together. Distract. 

But I couldn’t do it anymore.

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Instead, I begged my kids to play nicely on their own so I could bear witness. With each article I read and video I watched, I remembered.

There was the summer I led guided tours of my university, while choking on ash that rained down from an apocalyptic orange sky as a fire raged through the foothills above us. The annual drought-induced water restrictions that turned each morning shower into a literal guilt bath. The summer I rode out a heat wave while seven months pregnant in a poorly insulated, airless apartment, my entire body swelling twice its usual size until the heat finally gave way. The anxiety I now feel with every changing season, wondering where in the world disaster will strike next, which already-vulnerable communities will suffer most, and how high the death toll may rise.

Just like the scent of smoke, fatalism found its way in by the end of the day: I’m just a mom. What can I possibly do in the face of a mounting global crisis?

Like any millennial mother, I know that stereotypes about me and my fellow parents abound. We’re gentle on discipline, tough on added sugar and more concerned with our children’s emotional intelligence than unfolding world events. Even as the October provincial election approaches, the myth endures: we’re far too busy, too broke — or both — to question what our elected officials are doing.

Since arriving in B.C. in 2021, with a Canadian partner and two small children, I have been rather busy. Despite a healthy savings account, we quickly found ourselves parenting under the pressure of intersecting crises: the rapidly rising cost of living, the lack of affordable housing, the dearth of licensed child care programs, the kindergarten waitlists. Piled on top of the usual child-rearing chaos, surviving the daily grind does feel like our biggest challenge.

But keeping my children healthy and safe will always be my most important job. 

And so, it’s become impossible to ignore the increasingly dire warnings that — without decisive government action now to slow climate change — my job is going to get exponentially harder. And that solutions to the compounding challenges my family faces — including building more affordable housing and child care centres, properly funding our schools and ending our dependence on fossil fuels — sit far outside my individual control.

But that doesn’t mean a parent, no matter how busy, is helpless when it comes to keeping our government accountable for systemic solutions. When I started looking for guidance, I found that parents and caregivers across the province are already leading by example.

Take Lytton wildfire survivor and parent Meghan Fandrich, who travelled to Ottawa with Climate Action Network Canada to tackle her most important job. This past June, she stood before federal lawmakers on Parliament Hill to explain exactly what it’s like to survive multiple climate emergencies back-to-back while raising a five-year-old child. Knowing that the top executives from Canada’s five largest oil and gas companies were set to address the chamber that week, she urged our federal representatives to finally pass a cap on carbon emissions released by the fossil fuel industry.

One month earlier, a coalition of parents with For Our Kids Burnaby were busy attending to their most important job too. On the steps of their city hall — accompanied by their school-age children along with  seniors, activists and environmentalists from their community — they celebrated a major milestone. After months of campaigning, Burnaby city council agreed in May to support a class-action lawsuit against the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations for deceiving the public on climate change.

More than 400 kilometres north, in 100 Mile House, parents Amber and James Vigh had been busy as well. Less than six months after their nine-year-old son, Carter, died in July 2023 from an asthma attack exacerbated by wildfire smoke, they teamed with the B.C. Lung Foundation to educate members of their community on the hazards of wildfire smoke and distribute easy-to-use air quality monitors to those who still lack one. And in May, their family travelled to Victoria, to watch their MLA introduce a bill that aims to better weigh the needs of vulnerable residents in the province’s wildfire management practices.

“In the beginning, when Carter passed I was adamant I didn’t want this to be about climate change,” Amber Vigh told The Canadian Press in May. “In the research I’ve done (since) more and more it is about climate change. There is so much happening in our world and we can’t just turn a blind eye to it.”

I couldn’t continue turning a blind eye to it either. So I started small. I got curious. I found my allies. I marched with my four-year-old in tow.

And now, I’m preparing to help my community vote. Learning the names of each provincial party and their leaders. Comparing their climate change agendas to their economic platforms. And inviting my peers to deeply consider who will support parents in our most important job — today and in the future.

Like any family with young children, mornings at our place are chaotic. Early risings, cranky squabbles, mad dashes out the door. But one morning, just a few weeks after the Global Climate Strike, I also got proof that my efforts to figure out how to take political action against climate change haven’t been in vain.

“Hey, ho, fossil fuels have got to go,” my four-year-old whispered over her cereal bowl. 

“Right, mama?” she asked, looking up with a proud glint in her eye.

That’s right. When my children do grasp the full reality of the climate crisis, they’ll also realize that they’ve already taken action — hand-in-hand with their most trusted adults — to fight it.

Updated on August 30, 2024, 7:45 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to reflect the number of participants in the 2023 Climate Strike March. An earlier version of this story cited the turnout for the 2019 march.