The climate activist, a member of the groups Extinction Rebellion and Save Old Growth, stopped drinking at midnight on Thursday and has not eaten since April 1.
More than three weeks after a hunger strike and days of fluid refusal in hopes of a public meeting with the province’s forestry minister, climate activist Howard Breen has been taken to hospital.
Breen, 68, a member of Extinction Rebellion and Save Old Growth, said Saturday that he was dehydrated and experiencing brain fog and weakness after he stopped drinking at midnight on Thursday. He hadn’t eaten since April 1.
On Sunday, his Death Watch team, which included his daughter, a nurse, said he was experiencing “blurred vision, loss of balance, back pain around the kidneys and arrhythmia.” His daughter called an ambulance to take her father to an emergency room.
Save Old Growth said Brain was probably given an intravenous drop to deliver fluid back to his system.
“I feel sad that I have to bring this to an end,” Breen said on Saturday from his home in Nanaimo, where he was under strict bail conditions in protest this month.
“I do not know how this will end or what will happen, but many people have already expressed their deep sorrow if something happened to me, including my children.
Breen is considering if he is taken to hospital (not out of my hands; they will give me an intravenous dose and I will recover, but I will not allow tube feeding and I will continue to eat quickly from now on. ”
“I will regain enough strength to determine when the next liquid starvation will happen,” he said.
Other hunger strikers, including 57-year-old Brent Eichler in Vancouver, who was without food for 31 days, continue to starve, Save Old Growth said.
Breen is trying to put pressure on the provincial government to stop old logging and the export of unprocessed logs. To end the post, he said he wanted an online “equal broadcast” of views between the forest minister and her advisers and independent experts.
Forest Minister Catherine Conroy called Breen on Friday and the two talked about postponing the government’s 1.7 million hectares of old forests and creating new parks – after which Breen closed.
Conroy said she had “meaningful conversations” with Breen and his starving colleague Brent Eichler.
“I expressed my suffering for their well-being while listening directly to their concerns. I called on them to take care of their health while we continue the important work for the protection of old forests, “she said in an e-mail statement from the Ministry of Forestry.
The province appointed an independent two-member commission in 2019 to review old growth policies and also consult with the public.
Conroy announced earlier this month that BC is working with First Nations to postpone logging in more than a million hectares of old forest at risk of permanent loss, an area larger than 4,100 Stanley Parks.
Conroy told Breen that he would not hold the meeting he had insisted on, and advised him to end the strike.
Instead, he said, the hunger strike – which began as a 25-day protest – is now “indefinite”.
Breen quoted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as saying that those who would expand fossil fuel production and logging, not environmental activists, were radical extremists.
“I am not a radical extremist, [Premier] John Horgan is and [Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau, “said Breen. “We have not yet achieved the climate goal … We are no longer looking at 50 years from now, we are on the verge of collapse right now.”
Breen said the actions taken by Save Old Growth, including recent blockades of bridges and major roads, point to the severity of the “climate emergency” related to logging. They want to stop all ancient logging in the countryside.
He denied that some commuters were angry about the group’s tactics, saying there was widespread support. Two people were detained on Wednesday after allegedly strapped to a 227-pound barrel in the middle of the Trans-Canadian Highway near Langford during an afternoon trip.
Members of Save Old Growth are among more than 1,000 people who have been arrested at the Fairy Creek watershed near Port Renfrew for allegedly violating a blockade ban.
The BC Supreme Court has heard about 400 of them are accused of criminal contempt.
Breen said the RCMP had arrested him elsewhere for other protests and that he was currently facing 12 charges.
He was arrested on April 7 after sticking to the doors of the Royal Bank of Canada in Nanaimo, an action related to the Coastal GasLink pipeline project in northern British Columbia. He spent about a week in jail and is now under house arrest and on $ 30,000 bail.
He was also one of three people standing at the end of the alley of the prime minister’s home in 2020, intending to make a civil arrest to prevent Horgan from the budget announcement. Horgan was not at home at the time, and his wife was reportedly horrified. Over the next few weeks, the prime minister denounced protesters for crossing the border.
Breen’s three older children asked their father not to risk his life and made sure he was watched day and night by “death watchers.” His two daughters are nurses.
“They had a lot of challenges with my civil disobedience,” he said.
Breen said he is doing what he is doing for his children and for all the children in the world they represent, children who at the moment can only be called “victims of the climate,” he said.
Some supporters in a conversation with Breen on Thursday night asked him to resign.
“It was probably the hardest moment of the last few weeks for people to express their love for what Brent and I were doing,” he said. “It was very heartbreaking to hear that.
“Honestly, politicians will not save us and that is why we are on the street and why we are doing things to wake up the society in the most direct way, which stops them on the highways.
ceharnett@timescolonist.com
– With a file from The Canadian Press
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