General History

  1. It’s A Matter of Survival was a radio series broadcast by CBC Radio in the summer of 1989. I remember listening to the program, and it must have moved me so much that I wrote a letter to CBC asking for more information (one of “17,000 shocked listeners”). As this was before the Internet, I likely had to send them a self-addressed stamped envelope. I read the brochure they sent, punched holes in it, and put at the back of my recipe binder. I would see it from time to time, but never reread it until the spring of 2019. Reading the article by Joanne Mills from the May 14, 1989 Montreal Gazette is startling: we knew climate change was coming and we didn’t do anything about it. Or rather, I had listened to a radio series and sent in for a brochure that I kept for 30 years, and I didn’t do very much about it. A brief search of the Internet now in 2019 gives me no information on Joanne Mills or the other people featured on this brochure, other than David Suzuki and Ralph Nader.