With the emerald-tipped towers of the Centre Block beading down from across the street, Ann Cognito fumbled through her bag.
“I don’t actually really smoke very much,” she said in a light, wispy voice that barely carries over the car-honking traffic and construction of downtown Ottawa.
“It started again in Winnipeg.”
She walked away from the Parliament visitor’s centre and down the street to her camp, a collection of tents and banners strung up in trees on a wedge of land next to the National War Memorial. A sign leaned against her tent reads, The Expedition: Walk to Waken the Nation.
Another, bright yellow and extended between stakes near the road, said, “Climate Emergency Camp.”
Cognito hiked from Calgary to Ottawa through the spring and summer with her dog Mr. Myrtle, and is now camping to advocate for climate action and to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
She wears a simple dark blue dress and a similarly coloured coat. Her hands are covered by dirt-red fingerless gloves, and her head by a hat, then hood. Her cheeks are red, with individual veins visible. Her nose is sharp and she smiles often. She is in her 50s but walks with the bounce of a teenager and speaks with the aura of a grandmother.
With the support of local climate group Extinction Rebellion, Cognito set up camp on Dec. 5, the first day of the new Parliament. If her tent wasn’t covered by a camouflage tarp, she’d be able to stare into the second-floor windows of the Office of the Prime Minister at 80 Wellington Street.
The encampment grows by the day. Volunteers, often associated with Extinction Rebellion, bring in tarps, bungee cords or bedding, and it all is put to good use. There’s a camouflage tarp tied to trees on one end and staked into the ground on the other, creating a front porch and roof above Cognito’s tent.
Inside her tent, sleeping bags and blankets are piled and intertwined in a way that resembles uncooked ground beef. A collapsable blue water bowl for Mr. Myrtle sits near the door of the tent, and bags of Cognito’s belongings lie nearby.
“They’re not listening, so I will come sit right here in their faces,” said Cognito.
“[They’re] still treating us like we’re absolute idiots.”
Cognito said she hopes to get a meeting with the prime minister, concrete steps towards net-zero emissions by 2025, and transparency in government on global warming.
“We don’t have time for farting around, talking about things anymore,” said Cognito. “The only thing we have time for now is change.”
“I don’t drive, and I’m never getting on an airplane again,” said Cognito.
“So I walked.”
She said this with a kind of simplification that made it seem easy for her, and her eyes light up when exploring her past. Growing up camping, Cognito learned to walk by following trails of M&Ms on hiking paths.
“My family was a little unusual,” she says with a smile. “Which is really cool, until you think about what else might be interested in those M&Ms.”
In some ways, it seems like what Cognito is doing—hiking from Calgary and camping to change the status quo—is intrinsic to who she is, and she is at ease on the road. When she first arrived in Ottawa, Cognito wasn’t ready to camp and spent more than a month “couch surfing.”
By the time Dec. 5 rolled around and Cognito pitched her tent, she was exhausted—not by working towards her goal, but by the lack of it.
“I’ve been feeling like I’m on hold, in between, you know?” said Cognito as we walked. She derives meaning from her movement.
“It’s been a long time, but it’s something that I can do,” said Cognito.
Cognito is originally from Edmonton, but lived in Calgary before her hike. She said conversations about climate change aren’t as commonplace where she’s from. In a way, along her 3,300 kilometre trek, Cognito planted the seeds of communities.
“If that can happen in Alberta, it can happen anywhere.”
Just as she did on the road, Cognito has brought together a growing community of people. On Dec. 5, about 25 Extinction Rebellion volunteers, students and seniors and everyone in between, helped Cognito settle in.
A week later, the area was bustling. There was a bigger tent being set up for community meetings, and new faces scattered between the trees and banners. Someone would pop in every few minutes, offering supplies and food. Sometimes, just a hug or ear scratch for Mr. Myrtle.
Camping in Ottawan weather had taken its toll on Cognito and she was sick at a friend’s place. Xenia Vakova, who hiked from Toronto to Ottawa in the fall and returned to camp alongside Cognito, was also sick.
“We don’t have any plans to go home . . . getting sick is just part of life,” said Vakova.
“We don’t know how to rebel here,” said Cognito. “We’re known all over the world for being polite and nice. We’re nice-ing ourselves to death.”
“We need to believe in something,” she said, leaning back and staring down at the line where the tarp meets the snow-covered grass. “We’re changing this. I absolutely believe that.”
Featured image by Mark Colley.
