Yorkregion.com - Thornhill - Youth urges PM to help protect woodlands, animal habitats
Youth urges PM to help protect woodlands, animal habitats
Thornhill
May 01, 2008 10:42 PM
By: Dwayne Wynter
While others her age are out playing their favourite games in the park or riding their bikes, nine-year-old Alexandra Frankel is busy cleaning up litter and writing to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in hopes of saving the environment.
For the Thornhill girl, animal safety and the environment have always been a big concern.
Though she doesn’t remember exactly when her passion for the wellbeing of her community began, Jenny Frankel remembers the day her daughter screamed out that they needed to protest all the houses being built, as they drove through Richmond Hill.
That passion hasn’t ebbed, Alexandra said.
“I’m not sure what, but something made me change. I saw so much litter all over the place and animals that had nowhere to go,” she said.
“Animals who live above ground might have another place to go, but if we continue building houses and destroying their homes, what about all those that are underground? Soon there will be no place to go at all.”
And so, she took the initiative to do something about it. With the support of two friends, Emily Smith and Seine Pak who also signed the letter, she wrote to Mr. Harper.
It asks him to “help before it is too late” and points to the need to consider protecting smaller woodlands, to protect more animal habitats.
“You are only caring about big forests, not small ones, but that has to stop because people are turning those forests into houses,” she wrote. “Be nice to the animals and they’ll be nice to us.
“When you make a difference, everybody in Canada makes a difference,” she told Mr. Harper in the letter.
She said she used the Internet as a research tool for the information she needed to make her argument in the letter.
Now she hopes the prime minister won’t just listen, but act on what she and her friends have suggested.
“There are a lot of things that he can help make better,” she said. “Hopefully, he will read what I wrote and change them.”
Ms Frankel was amazed at what her daughter has done.
“She was there reading the bylaws and had a notepad with notes in it to make sure she was well-informed,” she said.
Hoping to one day be either a veterinarian or a lawyer or even both, Alexandra has also been a frontrunner on cleanups around her area, been responsible for starting a fundraiser for the Jewish National Fund and, this past December, won an award at school for empathy.
“She is very aware of her surroundings and connects very well with things around her,” Ms Frankel said.
With the help of her two friends, they’ve helped change the way parents are thinking, she added.
“I think 100 per cent differently than I did about the environment before,” Ms Frankel said.
“She’s made me rethink and I listen to what she has to say.
“There is truth, passion and conviction in what she’s saying and I really respect all that she has done and is doing.”
So what message does the Environment Club participant have for everyone?
“Recycle, reuse and stop using so much electricity,” Alexandra concludes.