Water for Life -- my story

Reading on the dock

Acrylic on canvas

24 x 24 inches

Barbara Muir © 2013

(I have one large painting in

the Water for Life exhibition,

in the Niagara Falls History Museum, 

Niagara Falls, Opening Saturday May 12,

so I have decided to write about 

water in my posts until just before the 

show, (then reveal the work), 

and meanwhile feature some of my

other paintings on the subject.

This painting seemed right for 

today's post.)

When I was pregnant with my son Sam, who is in his 20s
now, I was at a summer cottage listening to David Suzuki
on the radio.  He was warning us that we had 10 years to
save the planet. We are more than 10 years past that deadline,
and the planet is in trouble -- so are our oceans, lakes and
rivers.  The Water for Life exhibition in Niagara Falls, in
the Niagara Falls History Museum, is about this crisis.

Oddly enough government and businesses -- which should
be working full time trying to reverse the damage our insistence
on oil, on plastic products, on rampant consumerism has cost, are
campaigning against the University of Alberta for awarding
David Suzuki with an honorary degree.  This is madness.  Bottom
line, we need clean water, we are water.  This frightening
dissociation between the factual reality, and the financial push for
continued investment in dated and dangerous technology is
beyond short sighted.

Why aren't we thinking about our children, and their children,
about all the people in the world without clean water to drink,
including in our own country?  And the answer is jobs?  Pipeline
jobs are summer work.  They are not long lasting.  Water
damage is, and as the title of the exhibition suggests -- fatal
to the environment, to wildlife, and to us.

Have a writing your politician day.