On Friday, millions of people around the world are once again expected to walk out of their jobs and classrooms and participate in a global climate strike.
The events seek to build on the momentum of the #FridaysForFuture movement, which has seen students walking out of their classrooms every Friday for the last year to demand drastic action from governments to address climate change.
Last Friday, Sept. 20, roughly 200 young people marched in downtown Vancouver and participated in a die-in as part of a series of global protests timed around the United Nations emergency climate summit held on Sept. 23. This Friday's strike is the culmination of that week of action.
In Metro Vancouver, no fewer than eight different climate strike events are planned.
The largest one is likely to be the one planned outside Vancouver City Hall at 1 p.m. Participants will march from 12th Avenue and Cambie Street across the Cambie Street bridge and into downtown, where the march will end at the intersection of West Georgia and Hamilton streets. As of Thursday afternoon, nearly 9,000 people had responded to a Facebook event for the Vancouver strike indicating they would be "going."
Several other events are planned for earlier in the day and encourage their participants to congregate at the Vancouver event later.
The climate strike with the earliest start time begins at 6:30 a.m. at the Pitt River Bridge between Port Coquitlam and Pitt Meadows. Organizers indicate they will be striking on both sides of the bridge, before making their way to Vancouver later in the day.
Events will also be held in the morning in New Westminster's Hyack Square at 8 a.m. and outside city hall in Maple Ridge at 8:30 a.m.
Students at the University of British Columbia will gather in front of the AMS Nest on campus at 11 a.m.
Elsewhere, students at Capilano University in North Vancouver and Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Richmond have organized events that will see participants leave campus en masse to attend the rally at Vancouver City Hall. The Capilano event begins at 10:30 a.m. on campus and at 11 a.m. at Lonsdale Quay, while the Kwantlen event begins at noon in the KPU Richmond Atrium.
Finally, a climate strike is planned for Surrey and North Delta at 2 p.m. outside the Strawberry Hill shopping centre.
While most businesses around the region will be open during the strike, two Vancouver-based companies have pledged to close their stores Canada-wide so that their employees can participate.
Mountain Equipment Co-op is shutting its doors across Canada until 5 p.m. local time, and Lush Cosmetics is closing its retail stores, head office and manufacturing facilities, along with its Canadian website.
