Patricia Lane

Columnist Victoria

About Patricia Lane

Patricia Lane's column profiles young climate leaders working across Canada.

Patricia has been a lawyer for 35 years specializing in collaborative decision-making and public policy creation. She has worked in every region of Canada and federally. Patricia has worked in areas as diverse as tax policy, human rights, economic and small business development, restructuring health care, labour law, human rights, securities law, climate change, real estate and land development, wilderness protection, renewable energy, housing, and Aboriginal rights and title. She has been a climate change campaigner for 15 years and an environmentalist all her life. She was the longest serving Director on the Sierra Club Board until 2019 and continues to actively support the organization in a variety of ways.

68 Articles

From poison in cigarette butts to fair futures

Meet Lisa Chen, who wanted to use her biology degree to fight climate change but had trouble finding a relevant job.

Youth Climate Action

Sam Levac-Levey’s game plan to save the world

This 29-year-old Montrealer has invented a board game called Solutions so adults and kids can have fun while they use science to learn how to do their part to save the planet.

Youth Climate Action

Alison Gu gets political with her climate fight

Alison Gu knows politicians must make decisions now to save humanity. So at 24 years old, she became one.

Youth Climate Action

Izzy Clarke measuring in a dune system to determine the width of the vegetated buffer to assess the system’s ability to mitigate flooding and slow erosion. Photo by David Welsford, 2021

Izzy Clarke is protecting Nova Scotians from ocean rise

As a senior field technician at Coastal Action, the 29-year-old sees coastal conservation as important climate mitigation and adaptation.

Sabrina Guzman Skotnitsky paints the way out of climate grief

As part of a series highlighting the work of young people in addressing the climate crisis, writer Patricia Lane interviews Sabrina Guzman Skotnitsky, who has realized the power of art and stories in easing climate angst.

Youth Climate Action

Shay Lynn Sampson, the life force, and the ‘pipe filled with poison’

Patricia Lane interviews Gitxsan youth Shay Lynn Sampson who is doing her part to ensure the Coastal GasLink pipeline never gets built.

Dani Miller dreams of a healthy future for Maritime forests

As the co-ordinator of the Common Ground project for Community Forests International, Dani Miller uses knowledge-sharing and storytelling to support the 80,000 family landowners in the Wabanaki forest in climate-smart forest management to protect their land for generations.

Youth Climate Action

One of the few times during the height of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions that Junaid Shahzad Khan went for a double-masked nature walk with a friend and teacher, Lorraine Johnson, and the birds were happy to see them. Photo by Lorraine Johnson

Let Junaid Shahzad Khan help you work on your relationship with the land

Patricia Lane interviews Junaid Shahzad Khan, who uses his training in ecology to empower communities to weave their own ancient stories with western science to build a better future.

Youth Climate Action

Laska Paré finds a greener flipside to plastic coffee cup lids

Laska Paré turns coffee cup lids into soap dishes. No, she’s not a magician. This 33-year-old started Flipside Plastics as a circular economic enterprise, recycling plastics on Vancouver Island.

Youth Climate Action

Rachael Cadman looks to the future for Nunatsiavut fisheries

Rachael Cadman’s PhD studies involve supporting the Torngat Wildlife, Plants, & Fisheries Secretariat and other partners to map out and help implement an Inuit community vision of the future of fisheries in Nunatsiavut, a self-governing Inuit region in northern Labrador.

Youth Climate Action