It was 9:30 pm on New Year's Eve 2021 when the #FireworksHurt movement was born.
I was standing in our horses' paddock doing my best to keep them calm as fireworks went off in three separate places within sight and earshot of our barn. At a time when others were preparing to ring in the new year, I was outside in the cold praying that the fireworks would end before something horrible happened.
The next morning I woke up to the news that a horse a couple hours away from me had been euthanized. Terrified by fireworks, he had suffered a life-ending injury. Why? Because neighbours had decided to start setting off fireworks unannounced, long before midnight. In exchange for their fifteen minutes of fun, a horse lost its life. I was just about as angry as I had ever been.
Out of that came the Ban Private Fireworks in Nova Scotia Facebook group, shortly followed by an online petition. At the time, I thought I'd put the idea out there and see if I could get ten or fifteen people to stand with me. In under three weeks the petition had thousands of signatures, and the group had grown to over 3,600 members, all with their own stories about how fireworks have negatively impacted their lives.
All of a sudden, the movement became about more than horses. We were learning the long-lasting negative consequences of fireworks on veterans and victims of gun violence, people with PTSD, autism and even Alzheimer's and dementia. We saw story after story about the vast number of dogs who run away, get lost, and sometimes never return because of fireworks. We discovered the horrible effects that fireworks can have on wildlife and the environment. The more people shared, the more we all learned. And the more we realized that this was a fight from which we could not back down.
We are applying relentless, steady pressure on our MLAs, through a coordinated letter-writing campaign, while continuing to share the petition and invite like-minded members to our Facebook group. We are collecting statements of support from organizations whose membership is negatively affected by fireworks. And we have a small committee of extremely dedicated people planning next steps and implementing best practices for lobbying our government.
More importantly, we have over 15,000 concerned citizens who are prepared to stand up and fight for what they believe in.
Are you in?
I was standing in our horses' paddock doing my best to keep them calm as fireworks went off in three separate places within sight and earshot of our barn. At a time when others were preparing to ring in the new year, I was outside in the cold praying that the fireworks would end before something horrible happened.
The next morning I woke up to the news that a horse a couple hours away from me had been euthanized. Terrified by fireworks, he had suffered a life-ending injury. Why? Because neighbours had decided to start setting off fireworks unannounced, long before midnight. In exchange for their fifteen minutes of fun, a horse lost its life. I was just about as angry as I had ever been.
Out of that came the Ban Private Fireworks in Nova Scotia Facebook group, shortly followed by an online petition. At the time, I thought I'd put the idea out there and see if I could get ten or fifteen people to stand with me. In under three weeks the petition had thousands of signatures, and the group had grown to over 3,600 members, all with their own stories about how fireworks have negatively impacted their lives.
All of a sudden, the movement became about more than horses. We were learning the long-lasting negative consequences of fireworks on veterans and victims of gun violence, people with PTSD, autism and even Alzheimer's and dementia. We saw story after story about the vast number of dogs who run away, get lost, and sometimes never return because of fireworks. We discovered the horrible effects that fireworks can have on wildlife and the environment. The more people shared, the more we all learned. And the more we realized that this was a fight from which we could not back down.
We are applying relentless, steady pressure on our MLAs, through a coordinated letter-writing campaign, while continuing to share the petition and invite like-minded members to our Facebook group. We are collecting statements of support from organizations whose membership is negatively affected by fireworks. And we have a small committee of extremely dedicated people planning next steps and implementing best practices for lobbying our government.
More importantly, we have over 15,000 concerned citizens who are prepared to stand up and fight for what they believe in.
Are you in?