Elmira activist still had a long to-do list before losing battle with cancer

THERE’S A PROVERB IN a variety of forms that goes something along the lines of, “A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.”

Michael Purves-Smith, who died last week at the age of 72, knew that much of the environmental work he’d focused on in recent years would require ages to pan out, but he expected to be around to see some of it unfold, if not bear fruit.

But a cancer diagnosis just a couple of months ago put an end to that, as it has to far too many lives in progress.

Even as he was caught up in the cancer battle, he would have been disappointed by the prospect of not being here to continue the much larger fight for a better environment, the one that involves all of us. Unlike most of us, however, Michael was very much aware of our connection with nature, a link we’ve lost to our own peril.

Instead, the more techsavvy our society becomes, the more we delude ourselves into believing that humans are immune to the laws of nature and can magically replenish our planet’s finite resources. We’re unwilling to take even relatively simple, easy steps that would reduce demand for water, electricity and fuel unless a smart marketing campaign convinces us that we’ll save big bucks. Modern conveniences have not only made us lazy, but have led us to assume that the arc of human betterment is inevitable, and that we are just passive observers of man’s triumphant mastery over nature.

It’s more than a little ironic that the incidence of cancer has increased even as we’ve “mastered” nature. Why that’s the case is open to great speculation. Rampant pollution of our air, water and soil? Toxins in the food we eat, the buildings where we live and work? Poor diet and exercise? Stress from our 24/7 lifestyles? Damage from the ubiquitous electromagnetic waves in our lives?

Whatever the reason, the disease is growing more prevalent. A 2014 study by the U.S. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) found there were 14.9 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million cancer deaths worldwide the previous year. The leading cause of cancer incidence for men was prostate cancer, which caused 1.4 million new cases and 293,000 deaths. In 2013 there were 1.8 million new cases of breast cancer and 464,000 deaths. Breast cancer has remained the leading cause of incident cancer cases for women between 1990 and 2013, but the number of new cases doubled during this period, the study found.

Overall, cancer was the second-leading cause of death globally after cardiovascular disease, and the proportion of deaths around the world due to cancer increased to 15 per cent in 2013 from 12 per cent in 1990.

Add in the rise of other risks related to our species mucking about with things – from mutating viruses to climate change – and you’ve got the recipe for a less-than-stellar future for homo sapiens.

On the issue of how our future might play out, Michael and I certainly differed.

Where I see a dystopic future – an advancing police state, filled with surveillance, loss of democracy and environmental collapse – he remained optimistic that the better angels of our nature would emerge.

“I’m an optimist because it doesn’t make sense to not be one,” he told me in discussing Rocky Mountain Locust, his two-volume environmental novel.

His take on post-apocalyptic society is decidedly upbeat, painting a romantic picture of humanity relearning to become part of nature. That may seem odd given that the story begins with a virus – one of those likely large-scale threats to the species – killing off almost every human. The few survivors, having lost the bulk of all the modern conveniences we currently take for granted, learn to cooperate with nature and each other. He essentially imagines life if we had a doover, a chance to avoid the many mistakes we made on the road to “progress.”

The optimism of the novel was reflected in Michael’s own take on efforts to at least begin undoing some of the environmental harms we’ve done to the planet and ourselves, as we remain a part of nature despite our assertions to the contrary.

Keenly interested in environmental matters such as climate change for much of his life, Michael was equally keen to share his passion with others, to work with them to find solutions – a passion he kept to the end.

It was the same philosophy with which he approached music, his chosen profession. A retired professor of music, having taught at Brock and Wilfrid Laurier universities, he played the keyboard, oboe and other wind instruments. He composed and orchestrated music, serving as the director of ensembles such as the WLU Baroque and Early Music program and as artistic director of the Wellington Winds for three decades until his retirement.

Music was his companion through the last couple of months, even when hospital-bound.

It was his environmental and political activism, however, that fuelled most of our discussions.

In retirement, he had more time for such issues – writing a pair of books, for instance. While optimistic, he certainly wasn’t under the impression that solutions to climate change would be either quick or easy. Growing public awareness was helpful, but concrete steps, however small, needed to be encouraged, he argued. Perhaps in time, the ship could be set on a new course.

He never expected to reach the final destination, if there is in fact one to reach, but saw himself doing more to help in the meantime, says his wife of 50 years, Shannon. That’s the story that cancer cut short.

For those of us still here, and the others who will inevitably come until such time as that’s no longer the case – collapse inevitable in my pessimistic view, avoidable in his optimistic one – the future is unwritten.