I was walking down Spring Garden Road to the library in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where we set our meeting place before our little action at the Queen Street Sobeys. I had no idea who was going to be there or what to expect, I was going to my first Kleercut action. Even though I have done a lot of activism in the past few years it really felt different, this is a Greenpeace campaign.
Two weeks ago, the whole harbourfront was buzzing about the arrival of a ship. The beautiful
MV Esperanza came to Halifax. I got the chance to work as a volunteer doing tours on in the engine control room.
The Espy’s visit gave Greenpeace a chance to start a campaign in Halifax. We had a wonderful meeting where we started to lay down the foundations of what we call Kleercut Atlantic!
Anyway, the night before our action, I went to meet the manager of the Sobeys in question. He was actually really supportive and understanding of the issues. He told us about his two-year-old daughter and what kind of world he wants her to grown up in. He was worried about what will be or not be there when she’ll embark on her journey, her own life. That one example is the whole issue; it justifies and explains the whole idea of sustainability and why we feel the need to do what it is we do. Basically I loved his story!
So when I got the library, I saw two people wearing those awesome Kleercut shirts. They introduced themselves as a Vicky and Adrian Buckley, a mom and son duo from Lunenburg NS (a little less then 100 km from Halifax which they drove especially for the action). Vicky owns a pharmacy where she recently got rid of the Kimberly-Clark products. Adrian is a very interesting Planning student at DAL. We marched on to the Sobeys where we split up after talking to the manager. Vicky and Adrian spent most of their time inside in the Kleenex aisle talking to very responsive people about the surrounding issues of the Kleercut campaign while handing out flyers. I was doing the same at the entrance of the store.
Although we found out that Sobeys doesn’t get a lot of traffic on a very sunny Saturday (got to love the beach), we did get positives dialogues going with a bunch of shoppers. The highlight was a visit by a reporter and a photograph from the Halifax Daily News, we got an awesome article on page ten of the August 28th issue.
Well that’s it for me today, I’m glad we had a great start to Kleercut Atlantic!
Expect to hear more from us!
Bruno Perron
Comments and articles posted as blogs on the Kleercut.net website represent the views of the blogger, and do not necessarily represent the views of Greenpeace.
