As a member of climate justice group Last Generation Canada, Concordia University student Étienne Eason went to jail in 2024 after vandalizing an Ottawa museum dinosaur replica to protest climate change.ROGER LEMOYNE/The Globe and Mail
On the morning of February 8, 2024, Étienne Eason bought a ticket to Ottawa’s Museum of Nature, chatted amiably with the staffer at the kiosk, and made his way to the dinosaur exhibit.
He pretended to read the labels under the display cases, waiting for the security guard to be distracted. Then he pulled a fire extinguisher filled with pink paint out of his knapsack, and while trying to avoid any genuine fossils, began spraying the museum’s 12-foot replica Carnosaur skeleton.
Mr. Eason is slender as a sapling, with oversized glasses that add a wide-eyed nerdiness. Even later, in his mug shot, he looked like a 19-year-old who might spend an afternoon admiring T-Rex bones in the museum.
Until that day, he was, by his own account, a “goody-two-shoes.” He made the honour roll at his Ottawa high school and played the flute in band. At home, he’d never even been grounded. Entering his second year of the creative writing program at Concordia University, he was well aware of his privilege.
But he couldn’t shake the sense that none of it mattered. The forests were burning, the oceans were rising, and yet people carried on, as if no danger existed.
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After sending in his university application, he’d collapsed into tears. What was the point of a degree, he asked his mom, if the world as everyone knew it won’t exist in 50 years? Was this how things ended, with a shrug of resignation?
By the winter of 2024, seeing little progress, he was ready to do something radical.
As he explained in a speech to a handful of museum visitors and staff, after draining the extinguisher and before the police led him away in handcuffs: “The dinosaurs famously went extinct, and the way things are going right now, we are barrelling towards another mass extinction event.”
Like so many of his peers, facing a future of climate threats and challenges, he was searching for a way to make his choices matter, to find meaning and lessen his despair. He didn’t know he was about to find hope in the most unexpected of places.
Mr. Eason’s vandalism made news, but I met him several years earlier at the church where my husband serves as the minister, and where he’d started attending the meetings of an activist climate justice group called Last Generation Canada.
The grassroots organization, whose members ranged from their 20s to their 80s, sought change – particularly the creation of a national firefighting agency – through non-violent civil disobedience. The same week as Mr. Eason’s museum protest, members blocked downtown Ottawa traffic by sitting in the street, and sprayed the wall outside the Prime Minister’s Office. A young woman glued herself to the stone walkway on Parliament Hill, and set fire to an empty baby carriage.
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The leaders of Last Generation led sessions on the history and tactics of passive resistance and protest. They taught members how to stay calm when confronted by hostile drivers, how to be respectful of the police and how to prepare to be taken into custody. Mr. Eason paid attention: Holding cells are cold, so wear a lot of layers, and hope the police don’t take them all. Use the toilet paper roll for a pillow to sleep. Write your lawyer’s name on your arm.
The museum protest was his idea. If he was going to get arrested, he wanted to make it count.
At the police station, he was stripped of the warm hoodie he prepped as his last layer, and ordered into a thin papery jumpsuit. Shivering in the cell, he sang Taylor Swift songs for comfort and waited to be released to his parents.
But by the time he appeared before a judge, the courthouse was closed. He was sent overnight to the Ottawa Correction Centre. He’d been strong until then – now he panicked.
At the jail, he was led into a common room, where about 20 men milled about. He tried not to draw attention. But eventually, someone asked why he’d been arrested, chuckling at his explanation. Others shared their food and showed him how to make his bunk. A middle-aged inmate with piercing but hardened blue eyes invited him to play Scrabble, and they discussed climate change while searching for words among their game tiles as if they were sitting at a kitchen table.
Mr. Eason pled guilty to mischief over $5,000, and was ordered to complete 150 hours of community service and pay a $11,000 fine.Last Generation Canada
Nobody said much about why they were there. But he gathered enough to know their lives had not been anything like his. He was advised, repeatedly, not to do something so foolish again.
“They showed me incredible kindness,” he says. “Jail is a pretty dark experience. But for me, it reinforced my faith in humanity.”
He was released the next day, pending his next court appearance, with a fresh appreciation for his loving home and freedom, and newly optimistic that however far the world breaks down, people will still be kind and decent.
Earlier this year, after pleading guilty to mischief over $5,000, he received a conditional discharge. He was ordered to complete 150 hours of community service, which he finished in August by volunteering for a social justice organization. He is still saving to pay off the $11,000 fine for damages.
He came away disheartened by a system that never gave him a chance to explain his motives. Social media posts about his protest prompted mostly negative comments. They felt like confirmation that people cared more about a fake dinosaur splattered in washable paint than the end of the world.
But he hasn’t given up. Today he is still trying to raise awareness, albeit within the bounds of the law, by organizing protests and attending conferences on climate justice. In October, he’s helping organize a bike ride to raise awareness about the rights of migrants and refugees.
Looking back, he feels badly about causing more damage than he intended. But he doesn’t regret taking a stand. At least for a moment, people paused to pay attention.
