How the Gulf War Helped Raise my Environmental Awareness

STORY BY: Kat Rother
YEAR: 1990
LOCATION: Montreal, QC

Kat shares a story about her environmental awareness being raised in the early 1990s. It started with the first Gulf War in 1990-91, when she saw images of animals coated in oil. "It was the first that I'd watched television and cried". Kat made a "peace pamphlet" in high school, and then entered CEGEP* in Montreal, where there was an environmental science class. Their teacher had them look through their kitchen cupboards and consider how much energy was used to produce and transport each item. "It made me stop and think about how the choices I was making on a day-to-day basis were impacting my environment." Kat then became a vegetarian, not necessarily because she felt that she had all the answers, but because "I had made a choice to think about what I was doing". Thanks for sharing, Kat.

*CEGEP is a publicly funded pre‑university and technical college in the province of Quebec's education system.

NOTE: On a story note, Kat met Rick Miller as fellow apprentices with Repercussion Theatre, in the Shakespeare-in-the-Park production mentioned in BOOM X.