Deborah Ostrovsky

Each time I visit BCAM’s diminutive Monkland headquarters, my eyes are drawn to an oil painting hanging on the office wall. This painting, by Deena Dlusy-Apel, consists of a series of small portraits of BCAM activists – co-founders, board members, volunteers – who have shown tireless dedication in the fight against the breast cancer epidemic.

Sadly, some of these women are no longer here to celebrate BCAM’s 20th anniversary. Sadder still is the fact that, for each woman’s portrait, there are many other BCAM members who are no longer with us, either. Indeed, some have succumbed to the very disease that brought them to BCAM in the first place.

Deborah Ostrovsky

We would need a very large painting – and a very large wall – to display all their pictures and honour their individual stories.

BCAM’s past heroines (and heroes) have come in many stripes. Some were never active volunteers. But they had been sensitized to the devastating effects of breast cancer and faithfully mailed in their membership dues, year after year. Others sent anonymous donations, making it possible for younger members like me to attend public lectures given by experts whose inspiring research became the lynchpin in my own commitment to activism.

Then there were women whose greatest contribution was their dogged refusal to be invisible. They fought on the frontlines to change perceptions of breast cancer and its causes at a time when questioning medical orthodoxy was still taboo. Others wrote copious letters and signed petitions directed at policy makers. They marched with placards on bustling Sainte-Catherine Street, urging strangers to beware of the potential dangers lurking in products that we have been told are safe to consume.

This small army of women (and men) spent their careers, their hard-earned dollars, or their retirement years trying to protect younger women like me from a disease and environmental dangers from which they themselves were not adequately protected. And in this new era full of contradictions – when environmental activism is flourishing, while the hidden dangers in our air, food, and water are arguably more insidious – I am in sheer awe of their collective determination. Imagine what the gift of their exemplary courage means to someone of my generation, as we look forward into an uncertain future.

These BCAM members set the bar high. But there’s no time to waste: there’s still work to be done. And so, our 20th birthday should be a celebration, and a moment to remember those who are no longer here with us. Yet it is also a clarion call to move ahead and ensure that our work is so effective that we won’t need to celebrate our 30th, 40th, or 50th  anniversary.

Their legacy gives me the audacity to believe that sometime in the future, environmental regulation and consumer protection from potential carcinogens will be one of our nation’s greatest strengths. Perhaps my future grandchildren will think of the breast cancer epidemic as something as ancient and as far removed from their reality as the plague. Maybe there will be such a radical change in attitudes, especially the ethical standards of industry, that their grandchildren will never know what it means to use unsafe cosmetics, or what pesticide abuse is. They will most certainly look back at this epoch and conclude that our refusal to heed the precautionary principle was a symptom of lunacy.

I live in hope that this day will come. When it does, BCAM can finally disconnect the phone line and pack up the office. We’ll post a sign out front: Closed forever. Mission accomplished. With relief and satisfaction, we’ll take the painting off the wall and lock the office door for good.

Deborah Ostrovsky is a freelance writer and editor. She is the latest addition to the Board of Directors.