The following individuals deserve a special place in every greenie’s heart. All are compelling figures whose work and works have the ability to delight and inspire those of us who count stewardship for the earth among our key values.

Bob Hunter (Canadian) The first President of Greenpeace, Bob was a long-time campaigner for environmental causes. He lead the first on-sea anti-whaling campaigns in the world, and campaigned against nuclear testing, the Canadian seal hunt and later, climate change.

Al Gore (American)  In 2007, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Gore also starred in the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which made climate change a household concern in the United States.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (American) An outspoken activist and mesmerizing speaker on behalf of the environment, Kennedy founded The Waterkeeper Alliance, which connects and supports local waterkeeper groups. Today there are 191 waterkeeper programs worldwide.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (American) Republican politician who signed a bill creating North America’s first cap on greenhouse gas emissions and signed a second global warming bill that prohibits large utilities and corporations in California from making long-term contracts with suppliers who do not meet the state’s greenhouse gas emission standards.

Frances Moore Lappé (American) Her book Diet for a Small Planet argued that world hunger is caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundant amount of food that exists in the world and/or food-producing resources because they are simply too poor.

Farley Mowat (Canadian) is a fabled conservationist and one of Canada’s most widely-read authors. Many of his most popular works have been memoirs of his childhood, his war service, and his work as a naturalist.

E.F. Shumacher (German) His book Small is Beautiful, a collection of essays, brought his ideas to a wider audience. One of his main arguments in Small is Beautiful is that we cannot consider the problem of technological production solved if it requires that we recklessly erode our finite natural capital and deprive future generations of its benefits. Schumacher’s work coincided with the growth of ecological concerns and  he became a hero to many in the environmental movement.

Wangari Matthai (Kenyan) in the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman, and the first environmentalist, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Petra Kelly (German)  Kelly was instrumental in founding Die Grünen, the German Green Party in 1979. Between 1983 and 1990, she was a member of the Bundestag (German Parliament). Kelly received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 1982 “…for forging and implementing a new vision uniting ecological concerns with disarmament, social justice, and human rights.”

Paul Hawken (American) author of The Ecology of Commerce, dedicated his life to changing the relationship between business and the environment, and between human and living systems in order to create a more just and sustainable world. His work includes starting and running ecological businesses, writing and teaching about the impact of commerce upon the environment.

As Canada Day approaches, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what our country has had to offer to the global environmental movement. We should be proud — because Canadians have made significant green contributions to business, academia, policy, and science.

No list of Canadian greenies would be complete without David Suzuki, of course. As a television broadcaster and writer, he raised our awareness as to The Nature of Things and the problem of climate change. He has received 22 honourary degrees and The David Suzuki Foundation has become a watchdog organization that is respected around the world. His daughter Severn Suzuki is an activist in her own right who electrified the 1992 World Summit in Rio De Janeiro at the age of eleven, by making a passionate deputation demanding that children’s voices be heard as we consider how our actions determine their future.

And of course, there is Greenpeace. This Vancouver non-profit sprang out of the consciousness-raising hippie movement of the sixties and seventies. Its founders brought a media-savvy, in-your-face kind of activism to the battles against whaling, old growth clear-cuts, nuclear power, and genetically modified foods.  And Pollution Probe in Toronto created a model for public interest environmental groups that has been copied around the world.

Canadians have also been pioneers in passing tough and effective legislation that protect both our own natural world, and the planet at large.  In the 1970s, Ontario passed two pieces of legislation, the Environmental Assessment Act and the Environmental Protection Act, that are still considered to be among the toughest worldwide. More recently Ontario passed the Endangered Species Act, created a greenbelt around Toronto, and introduced The Green Energy and Economy Act.

Ontario is not the only Canadian to pioneer progressive environmental legislation. Out west in British Columbia, the very first carbon tax in North America was introduced only a year ago. And our Atlantic provinces, along with Quebec, were the first to create a Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative with their neighboring New England states.

Our federal government has also made great strides in developing technologies for a cleaner greener world. Engineers from Natural Resources Canada developed world-class software to develop renewable energy called RETSCREEN. It’s available for free download in 35 languages and is currently used by NASA, among many others around the globe.

So this Canada Day, as you fire up your barbecue and sip on your Alexander Keiths beer or your Niagara Reisling, meditate on all these achievements and be extra proud to be Canadian.