What am I doing to address the climate crisis? How far will I go to defend the earth? What price am I willing to pay for climate justice?

Since 2014, hundreds of people have been arrested while engaging in non-violent civil disobedience to protest the “TMX” Trans Mountain pipeline project. Standing on High Ground: Civil Disobedience on Burnaby Mountain includes twenty-five stories of people who put themselves on the line for climate justice. While some of those arrested were longtime activists, others felt compelled to act for the first time in their lives. Editors Rosemary Cornell, Adrienne Drobnies, and Tim Bray showcase the profiles of Indigenous leaders, academics, faith leaders, political leaders, engineers, artists and writers, scientists, physicians, and ordinary folk from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Their reflections on the protests and their arrests explore our moral duty to future generations, government’s collusion with corporate power, the violation of Indigenous Law, and unsustainable worldviews. Climate activists in protest movements such as the one against the TMX pipeline are critical in the existential fight for a sustainable future and habitable planet. They show us that we can all take a stand.

Rosemary Cornell has been an activist for nature conservation and regeneration since childhood as she watched in consternation and grief as the forest surrounding her home was converted into a housing subdivision. Speaking the uncomfortable truth is a value engrained into her by the religious community within which she was raised. She was a professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain for 33 years, and for eight years, collaborated in research with co-editor Adrienne Drobnies. She lives in a wonderful neighborhood on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, and has two inspiring adult children, whose future is her prime concern.

Rosemary Cornell's profile page

Adrienne Drobnies has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley; she has worked at Simon Fraser University and the Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver. Her origins are in Texas and California and she has spent most of her life in Toronto and Vancouver. A graduate of the Simon Fraser University Writer's Studio, her poetry has appeared in Canadian literary magazines, including The Antigonish Review, Event, Riddle Fence, The Toronto Quarterly, and The Maynard, as well as The Cider Press Review and Sow's Ear's Review in the US, and Popshot Magazine in the UK. She is an editor of a collection of poetry in French, Poèmes sur Mesure, by Alain Fournier. Her poetry has received honourable mention in the Compton Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 Vallum Award for poetry. Her long poem "Randonnées" won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Award for Best Suite of Poems by an Emerging Poet and was a finalist for the CBC literary award for poetry.

Adrienne Drobnies' profile page

Tim Bray's profile page