Oh yeah. I’m starting my own liquid hunger strike this afternoon. I was thinking of having a chocolate and a strawberry milkshake and McDonald’s, a super big gulp coke from 7-11, and then an oreo cookie Blizzard from Dairy Queen (I’ll allow it to melt first for technical compliance).

Thanks for your reply. You ask; “But let me let me ask you of the last time you heard an important environmental matter make news headlines or the ears of the Canadian public after an environmental assessment and public hearing, especially on a matter so hotly lobbied by a very invested group?”

OK. Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. Backed by Imperial Oil and a number of O&G interests. There have been a wide range of hearings on the issue – technical, environmental etc. Sierra Club, Pembina Institute etc have intervened and appeared in local info workshops and public townhalls etc. Google it if you are unfamiliar with the project. Lots of coverage.

My involvement? Actually, I corresponded with a prominent national columnist who wrote about many of the issues (subsidies, use of the gas at the oilsands etc) related to it in a number of columns.

If DD wants to undertake a hunger strike on her own, go ahead. What I object to is using her position as a council member of the GPC and the party’s active support of this type of effort. There’s no place for it within a political party.

As for my other thoughts on this, and in reply to Ant Bee, I have replied to her comments and a subsequent one at Torontoist.

Hay Dot and any one else that has no empathy, don’t be putting down my neighbor. And for your information, there are thousands of Donna Dillman behind her, ready and willing to make the sacrifice needed to end this madness. My family farm and my neighbors farm are in danger of being contaminated by radon gas, there is traces of uranium already in some of our wells, more test drilling for uranium by George White and his lawyer well end up slowly killing us all, so maybe you could gain little sympathy for your fellow Ontario, and maybe if some company down the road decide to dig up your back yard I might be there to help you. . There is thousands of people, wild life, clean water lakes in this area and only one hour to Ottawa or Kingston. We are the people that feed those cities, if some one
in power doesn’t see this, we are not doing to good as a society. So what do you call thousands of people, asking there Government to help them, and they stay silent. That’s called democracy gone. Peace, love.

I find your comments entertaining, in a purely fictional-erratic plane.

Say, didn’t you start posting your comments roughly around the time of the Governor General’s Awards? Michael Ondotje, is it you?

Your arguments are terribly unfounded and reaching.

I am proud of Canada and it’s democracy. But let me let me ask you of the last time you heard an important environmental matter make news headlines or the ears of the Canadian public after an environmental assessment and public hearing, especially on a matter so hotly lobbied by a very invested group? You say gimic, I say freedom of expression. THAT’S how democracy normally works. Did I answer your question on “why the stunt?”

The provincial election is over. And there is nothing federal happening yet. Could it be that this was not a “stunt” timed with any campaigns but perhaps rather with a Gramma’s very warranted worry about her (and your) grandchildren’s health in a world where we don’t yet know how to safely deal with the regional effects of uranium mining or the nuclear waste we are producing. Or maybe you’re right, and she just doesn’t know the election is over and the ending of this thing is simply timed horribly. Start eating Gramma! The election is over!

And please, for the sake of my valuable time, read the references you post to support your claims. The second line of the Wikipedia article speaks of “…taking liquids but not solid foods” in a hunger strike. As Gramma is.

To Chris, I say: Shame on you for having a provincial election roughly around the time when Gramma started her “hunger” strike, and for having policies that include starving Grammas, as Dot has suggested in her immaculately written passive-suggestive paragraph.

(Great blog, by the way).

But I find the press release quite interesting. You say “For the last 50 days, Donna Dillman has been on a hunger strike to protest uranium mining in eastern Ontario”, the classic NIMBY protest, but the press release posted by ex GPC leader Jim Harris goes well beyond this. According to it: “The protest will be led by Donna Dillman, a grandmother who has gone without food since Thanksgiving Day, October 8, to protest the dangers posed by uranium and its uses in nuclear power.”

Say, didn’t you just have an election in Ontario, roughly around the time when she started her diet? Wasn’t this part of the GPO’s policy in which no members were elected?

So why the stunt? And let’s be honest here. This is no “hunger strike”. It is a calorie enhanced liquid diet. If it truly was a 50 day hunger strike, she’d be bed ridden, or close to death, not leading a protest walk in downtown T.O.

According to wiki:

In the first 3 days, the body is still using energy from glucose After that, the liver starts processing body fat.After 3 weeks the body enters in “starvation mode”. At this point the body “mines” the muscles and vital organs for energy.The estimated limit of resistance is 60 days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_strike

Let’s cut with the gimics, OK? If she doesn’t like the idea of a mine, there are plenty of opportunities to have her voice heard in public hearings and environmental assessments. This is how a democracy normally works.

A faux hunger strike in a province that has embraced, and continues to embrace nuclear energy should be below the level of any self respecting political party.