Muriel Squires:
-I look at this bunch of stuff and I think, “what am I going to do with it? What can I make?” It really gets the creative juices going far more than if I went out and bought a pattern.
-I think back to my childhood. There were children dying from diphtheria and whooping cough and measles. I could name a dozen diseases. We don’t have to worry about that now, we just have to be concerned that the mothers get their children inoculated and Bingo! They don’t get those diseases that kill anymore. That is something that science conquered.
-Beauty makes me happy to be alive. And to create something that is useful and beautiful makes my life worthwhile.
-When I was young, people became experts at things that they’d never been trained in. It was all through doing- you do, you learn, you get better at it.
-I think we need more positive news about the good things that are being done, the worries that are being taken care of. Not to the point where we say, “oh, everything is okay, I don’t have to do anything myself.” I think we still need to be aware that we can’t waste, we need to reuse, to make do, to fix up.”
-The neighbourhood I live in, the kids have grown up and I haven’t seen them. They were inside, they weren’t outside being active in the neighbourhood. There was no running up and down the street. It wasn’t like when I was a kid or had kids: when kids all got out and played outdoors all the time.
-I like to think of a childhood to be relatively carefree. Let them be children. Leave the worries to the adults.
Heather:
-I would love for my kids to grow up with the sense that they have many layers of community around them.
-I think community and relationships and beauty that we share is pretty essential.
-I would like to see Thunder Bay creating its own renewable energy, construction happening everywhere now, and more people eating and growing more local food.
Arno:
-When I was the boys' age we were more self-sufficient. We valued what we had, be it possessions or time. We looked after things and they were repairable.
Ben:
-(Muriel's perspective) really says a lot about how we live in the world can be improved and how we effect the earth
-(when asked if he'd rather be trusted with more chores and responsibility, or lose some): trusted with more of them, absolutely. I'd be really happy because it's something that I need to be able to do.
-In our community I would like to see more involvement, like fieldtrips to go actually help in some community event.
Sam:
-If we continue what we have been doing then climate change is going to be get worse and worse and worse until it is irreversible so I feel like it's more depressing to be like: we can't stop it.
-(Muriel's experiences of shopping without disposable packaging) sounds incredible! That sounds like a really good idea that we should definitely do. I don't know why we stopped doing it.
-This discussion, especially on the medicine front, that's definitely given me more hope.
-Do not expect change when you do not help. Expect change when you help. People will look at each other to see what they are doing and no-one will be doing anything so: be the change you want to see. I want to see way more refill places. And I also would like to see an improvement in climate change and more learning by doing. And I support renewable energy, absolutely, 100%, all the way.
