Reflections on Leading For Their Future Yukon

How being affiliated with For Their Future Yukon and with For Our Kids has provided me with a needed platform for climate action in Whitehorse.

Peggy Land is a grandmother and former team leader of For Their Future Yukon, an affiliate group within the For Our Kids network. In 2026, on the cusp of entering her eighties, Peggy decided to step back from a leadership role with the group. What follows is her reflection on being part of For Our Kids, including her concern for her grandchildren, hosting climate cafes, and helping to form a broader climate action network in the Yukon. For Our Kids is deeply grateful to Peggy for all her work and wisdom.

A New Beginning in the Yukon

When we moved from Perth Ontario to Whitehorse in 2019 to be closer to family, I already knew that rapidly accelerating climate change in the North would challenge me to continue my climate activism for the sake of our four grandkids here and their parents.  Within a week of arriving I found myself addressing City Council along with others, urging Council to declare a climate emergency, which happened.  Aware but too busy and overwhelmed to take leadership like many parents, my daughters were reluctant to even talk about it.  Why ruin a perfectly fine family dinner?

Finding a Platform Through For Their Future Yukon

Soon though, I agreed to take on leading the fledgling For Their Future Yukon as an affiliate of For Our Kids at the request of its local founder.  There already were lots of followers but no leaders to share that work.  So as much for my own information as for others, I put together and posted a chart showing the climate platforms of the various parties running in the upcoming Territorial election and later I started a climate action petition to the Yukon government, allying with a local opposition MLA.    It was and still is very helpful to have a ready-made web page, to be able to say that “For Their Future Yukon is an affiliate of the national group For Our Kids” and the online support from For Our Kids staff was very welcome indeed.  

For my Grandchildren

I felt emboldened that even as a “team” of one, I had some credibility and a platform.  But so sad too when my ten year old grandson told me “Gramma, I just want to live” on asking to sign my petition.  Then after I urged the parents of his eight year old cousin to get her to talk about her feelings about climate change, she said “ I just wish I’d been born into a different time.”  These Yukon kids have been well educated about climate change at school but sadly, not how to cope with it emotionally and there are still no climate-aware professionals here to help them or their parents or their teachers.  GHG emissions just kept rising in large part due to mining which has always been out of control.  I felt overwhelmed by the whole challenge and was also coping with illness and injuries so I asked a friend to take over For Their Future Yukon.  My friend wasn’t able to do much at For Their Future Yukon so eventually, when I felt stronger, I resumed my role as “team leader” and she retired.  

Creating Space for Climate Emotions

I asked around and finally found Lea Bayliss, a child protection worker, who would be interested in putting on climate cafes with me.  We agreed that such cafes were needed to help people cope by naming and sharing their reactions to the climate crisis in a supportive setting.  I attended an online climate café put on by the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America.  Even online the experience was powerfully supportive, just to be able to share my feelings and more importantly to know that I’d been heard.  The psychologists were very good at this.  The next day I felt energized so I emailed our MP, who was then the co-chair of Health Canada’s Committee on Mental Health and Addictions asking for a meeting about the mental health impacts of climate change.  He seemed to get it when we met.

Running Climate Cafes

From then on climate cafes have been my main focus.  Lea and I have offered five cafes over the past few years.  I couldn’t have done it without her or without being part of For Our Kids.  We wanted to support each other so she agreed to be a co-lead at For Their Future Yukon and I agreed to be on the Board of her favorite NGO, Grizzly Bear Protection Yukon.  We partnered with the Canadian Mental Health Association, Yukon and felt buoyed by their support and funding.  But advertising that we were partnering with the CMHA Yukon may not have been the best way to go.  Attendance was never good unless specific friends were invited to attend and also, people may have been scared off wondering if this partnership was really geared to those already struggling mentally and in need of professional help.  

During the time we’ve offered five climate cafes, we’ve incorporated all of the feedback we received and so the format has kept evolving.  Originally, we followed the format used by the Climate Psychology Alliance which is basically about encouraging people to name their feelings in a supportive setting.  “Name it to tame it, or Feel to heal” both work well for climate concerns.  But then what?  Most climate cafes don’t explore what to do now that feelings have been expressed.  And the CPA’s climate emotions chart may illustrate accurately that most of us are feeling disturbed about climate change most of the time but in my opinion this is not sustainable.  One cafe participant insisted that she felt depressed and that there was no way out of it, another said that if she let herself cry about it she might never stop.  So eventually our climate emotions chart evolved into showing that our negative climate emotions are all appropriate aspects of grief.  At this rate, our grief isn’t going to soften with time though, but if we acknowledge it, we can then carry it with us into gratitude for being alive.  We can balance out each grief reaction with its opposite, and learn how to cultivate these opposite attitudes and reactions if we only try.  Then we have a better chance to be effective and happy too.  This approach has been very healing for me and others. 

Building the Yukon Climate Action Network

There are no other NGOs in the Yukon that address just climate change.  When it became clear that the few NGOs in town concerned about climate change would be more effective if we worked together, I reached out to as many groups as I could find to see if they’d be interested in forming a coalition.  Five interested groups, we named ourselves YCAN, for Yukon Climate Action Network.  We polled all of the City of Whitehorse election candidates on their views about the need for climate action and publicized the results in time for the election.  Five of the strongest respondents were elected.  As a group we were also invited to consult with the City’s sustainability manager about the Climate Action Plan being developed and managed to influence some of the final text.  As For Their Future’s team co-leader and representing YCAN, I also made presentations to Council about the need to pass the Plan and then to approve funding for it and then to get on with implementation.  I know that none of these actions would have been nearly as impactful if I had been acting alone, as an unaffiliated individual .  

Passing the Torch

YCAN has seven member groups now so we are a presence.  It’s impossible to know how much impact we’ve actually had but as all climate activists know, we do this simply because it needs to be done.  We know that sadly climate change is out of control now and can’t be stopped but there is still an important role to play for us, encouraging reductions of GHG emissions to help slow it all down while we scramble to adapt.  It’s very hard work alright, I’m pushing eighty, have been a climate activist for twenty years and my need at this point is to step back and trust that  others will step up.  It’s time, and I’m very grateful to For Our Kids for all of the support and for giving me a voice.  And we’re all talking about it more.