Hope you all have a wunderbar evening :)
I ended up missing my daily meditation last night - I wasn't able to squeeze it in since I went to work early, had dinner at my parents and then got home pretty late and hung out with the roomies instead - but I did make up for it this morning. The centering thought was 'your heart knows the truth'. Made me smile.
Precautionary Principle: The Nicole Bruinsma Story
As I mentioned last night, I made the trek on the dreaded Chelsea city bus - it only comes a few times a day, twice in the morning from Chelsea, and twice at night returning from Ottawa - in order to attend the premier showing of the documentary "Precautionary Principle: The Nicole Bruinsma Story".
Nicole Bruinsma was a family physician in Wakefield, QC and led the fight to ban the use of cosmetic pesticides in Chelsea - which she succeeded in doing - at the same time that she was waging her own personal war with breast cancer.
Personally, I know her as the mother of one of my best childhood friends. She was a loving and inspirational lady, who was always full of energy, and would still let me come for sleepovers even though I had a pretty bad track record of showing up at her bedside in the middle of the night with an upset stomach and pleading to call my parentals and go home. She would always tell me to calm down (at about 3am, I might add) and go back to sleep, and that everything would be better in the morning.
She was truly amazing.
Her husband, Scott Findlay, gave a short speech before the viewing of the documentary that was very touching. He is very well-spoken and an incredibly brilliant scientist and one of my personal gurus - I seriously never make a big life decision without consulting him first...for serious.
I thought that the documentary was very well done, although the creators, Brenda and Robert Rooney, mentioned that they still have to fix the sound a bit. It depicts Nicole's ability to gather community support for her fight to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides (aka - the use pesticides on lawns and in personal gardens) as well as her own personal story of her fight with cancer.
The documentary ended with a wonderful quote by Scott: there's no excuse for complacency, anyone can make a change in the world.
It really resonated with me, and it is something that I continually aspire to work towards in my own life.
It was a bit of an emotional evening, but I was so glad that I was able to be there to support my friend and catch-up with some other members of the community. It made me remember a lot of amazing childhood memories of the group of families that would go for crazy canoe camping excursions, cross-country ski expeditions, and our annual camping at Brown's Lake. Gotta love my extended Chelsea family and their crazy outdoor antics ;)
Sending my love to all of my family and friends who had the honour of knowing Nicole, and I am so happy that her memory continues to inspire environmental change in the Chelsea community. I think that this documentary was able to show how she was able to fight for what she believed to be the right thing to do and was able to energize those around her to join her cause and ultimately make a change in the world for the better.
Hope you all have a great day
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