The case for climate optimism (January 25 Newsletter)
The Peterborough Currents email newsletter for January 25, 2024
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Good morning, and welcome to the Peterborough Currents newsletter.
The 2024 Reframe Film Festival opens tonight, and Peterborough Currents is happy to be sponsoring this year’s festival. (That means we’re providing coverage of the festival in return for being listed as a sponsor. But, as always, we maintain editorial independence over our work.)
In this week’s newsletter, I’m sharing two Reframe film reviews, as well as some encouraging words from a local 16-year-old who wants you to stay optimistic in the face of the climate crisis.
Plus: Peterborough’s postsecondary institutions react to the federal government’s new cap on international student visas.
But before we get to all that, I also wanted to share a Reframe tip with you. While a full festival pass costs $125, each individual screening is pay-what-you-can, so keep that option in mind if you can’t afford the full pass.
High school student to discuss importance of climate optimism
Tanner Harris-Barton wants you to stay positive when you think about the climate crisis.
The 16-year-old knows it isn’t easy. “There are often times when I’m kind of disheartened about what the future is looking like,” he acknowledges. “But I think we have to be optimistic.”
Highschool students in Peterborough are wrapping up their first semesters right now, and for Harris-Barton that means the end of the Youth Leadership in Sustainability (YLS) program.
YLS is an intensive one-semester program for Grade 11 and 12 students who want to learn about the natural world and become climate leaders.
Participating students take all their courses together, with a curriculum focusing on English, world issues, environmental science, and leadership. Classes are held at Trent University and at PACE in the former PCVS building.
Harris-Barton is one of 19 students who took the program this year. He said he signed up because he wanted to learn how to tackle some of the crises he was reading about in the news.
He credits his own optimism to one of the course’s assigned readings. Early in the semester, his YLS cohort read The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis. The book helped Harris-Barton feel more confident in his generation’s ability to effect positive change, he said.
“I don’t have a choice whether I want to be optimistic or not,” Harris-Barton said. “Because if I’m not it just means giving up and I’m not ready to do that.”
For his culminating task in the YLS program, Harris-Barton made a short video exploring the potential to “rewild” urban environments. He and his partner examined the efforts of cities like Singapore and Dublin, which he says have succeeded in incorporating greenspace into urban centres.
“I think there’s a lot of promising things happening,” he said. “I think more people are aware of the crisis now than ever. I think youth are really standing up and advocating. And I think people are listening.”
Tonight (Jan. 25) at 7 p.m., Harris-Barton will speak at Emmanuel United Church as part of a series of talks put on by the local provincial Green Party riding association. Inspired by The Future We Choose, he said he’ll discuss “how shifting your mindset to one of stubborn optimism can save your health, and that of the planet.”
Stories of family, culture and community from Curve Lake First Nation
Six short films made by citizens of Curve Lake will screen at the Market Hall on Saturday afternoon. Read our review here.
Documentary investigates lack of clean drinking water in Indigenous communities
Reframe opens tonight (Jan. 25) with a screening of Boil Alert, which is about one activist’s fight for equitable access to clean drinking water. Read our review here.
Other stories to watch
International students
The federal government announced on Monday that it would put a cap on the number of new international students permitted to study at the undergraduate level in Canada. As a result, Ontario will have to cut the number of international students it admits by as much as 50 percent in 2024, immigration minister Marc Miller said. Miller framed the cap as an effort to protect the integrity of postsecondary education in Canada, but it is also widely seen as an effort to lessen the impact that international students are having on Canada’s housing market.
Fleming College president Maureen Adamson called the announcement “rash” and said it would have “an immense adverse human and economic impact for our region.” Trent University also expressed disappointment in the announcement. International students bring “highly-skilled, worldly talent” to the region and bridge “cultures in ways that benefit our local economies and our communities as a whole,” a statement from Trent read.
International enrolment has been increasing faster than domestic enrolment at Fleming and Trent in recent years. Both institutions charge international students significantly more in tuition than domestic students, a practice which is buoying the institutions’ budgets during a time of decreased provincial funding and mandated tuition freezes for domestic students. At Fleming, 29 percent of students come from outside of Canada. At Trent University, the number is 20 percent.
Last year, Trent’s student union called for a freeze on enrolment growth because of the local housing crisis.
Mayor Jeff Leal told the Examiner this week that he expects the two-year cap will give Peterborough’s housing market some “breathing space” to catch up to demand.
Affordable housing
Ashburnham Realty’s Sawmill development at 191 Rink Street will include 10 units of supportive housing. These units will “provide 10 new opportunities for people with physical disabilities, high risk seniors and people with acquired brain injuries to live independently,” stated a press release from Thrive Housing and Support, an agency that will provide supports to the tenants. The City of Peterborough will allocate rent supplements to the tenants, the press release stated. The Sawmill development has 64-units of housing and was partially funded with a low-cost loan from the federal government.
Hate crime
The person alleged to have distributed antisemitic flyers to Peterborough homes last year has been charged with the willful promotion of hatred, Peterborough Police announced on Tuesday.
Homelessness
The shelter at the Trinity Community Centre was at capacity last week as overnight temperatures plummeted to as low as -18° C. The shelter has been turning away anywhere from 5 to 17 people each night, executive director Christian Harvey told the Examiner.
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