Biography:

My name is Mireille Fournier. I'm a student at Collège Durocher St-Lambert, on the south shore of Montreal (Québec). I found out about PBI when I went to Churchill for the first time, in November 2008, to film a documentary movie on climate change with a few of my friends from high school. It took us nearly two years to plan our trip, get the money, learn how to film, learn how to plan an interview, and finally to cut every scene and polish our product until it was final.

Our trip to Churchill lasted a single week and we had to run everywhere to get the images, interviews, and content for our film. We wanted to get the northern youths' opinion on global warming and we found out that, after all, it wasn't very different from ours. The trip was determinant for me in many ways. It showed me how much the north was abstract to me and my people and how it was crucial to make them understand that we have to solve the climate problem before it's too late. Also, thanks to this experience, I now have the dream of becoming a journalist and working on these types of issues.

While we were in Churchill, we had the opportunity to interview Mr. Robert Buchanan [president of PBI] and he was the one who told me first about PBI. Now that you know how I ended up collaborating with PBI, here's a bit of basic information about me. First, I live in some obscure suburb of Montreal and I'm French, although I currently speak three languages: French, English, and Spanish. My greatest interest in life is politics—geopolitics as well as local activism. I'm also interested in literature and everything that's linked to communications (cinema, journalism, etc.), because they are the "peaceful" pendant of political activism.

I care about polar bears and conservation because I constantly think about the future. As a human being, I'm worried about the survival of my own species and because a lot of theories demonstrate the interdependence of all the living species of our planet, I honestly think we should all care about the thousands of species we are about to lose. OK, this may sound a bit too harsh. I guess I'll simply have to admit that I'm a harsh person and continue. When I think about my parents generation, I'm angry because they simply profited from all the earth's resources without foreshadowing the consequences of their acts. The only thing I hope is that our generation will learn from our fathers' mistakes and change the way we manage our natural resources, our energy, and our water. When I think of my children's generation, I'm not as hopeful as I'd like to be, but I'll do my best to change this perspective. This is why I care about the conservation of every species on earth: it's because I care about our conservation, the future of the human race...

Five years from now, I'll be done with my studies, my generation shall have the right to vote, we will be the new workers, investors, and young leaders of the world—and this will change a lot of things. Our generation is much more conscious about environmental issues than our fathers' generation, I notice this every day, and I try to improve it as much as I can by informing and debating all around with people of my age (even older people sometimes). I do this because debating is my favorite way to exchange ideas and because it is also useful to consider new aspects of the problem. Finally, I just hope that when we are in charge of our society, we will make different choices with our new vision of the future and our own modern values. This is called evolution.