By Julie Afelskie
If Maude Barlow passed you on the street riding her bike to the arboretum, as she often does, you might never suspect this 55 year old is a David who regularly takes on Goliath.
Barlow has achieved iconic status for her roles as outspoken policy critic, author of 14 books, and chair of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy group.
Barlow’s lives by the motto, “Another world is possible.” When she sees a problem, she does something about it.
Her current fight to protect public ownership of the world’s water supply from corporate giants proves no battle is too big for Barlow. Her latest book, Blue Gold, which is rocking the corporate world’s clinch on water, is now being translated into several languages.
Barlow can add this to her list of successes including the recent defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, a controversial trade pact proposed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. She says the agreement would have severely limited government control over foreign investment, crippling state sovereignty.
Barlow sits in her stylish, yet simple, pinky-beige living room sharing tea and stories. Decorating the room are what she calls “little people,” miniatures she has collected from her trips around the world.
Many people have asked Barlow how she became such an influential person.
“There’s power and there’s influence — I chose influence,” she says.
“I’ve seen power up close and I didn’t like what I saw,” adds Barlow, who was
Pierre Trudeau’s adviser on women’s issues in 1983-84. She was the first, and last, to have the job.
“I look back on my life and almost every single thing I’ve done has been a first, some sort of niche that never existed before,” says Barlow.
Being the first to do things runs in the family. Barlow’s father, William McGrath, worked on the National Welfare Council and was one of the key players in the fight to get rid of capital and corporal punishment.
“He was my hero and role model,” she says.
Although she didn’t have much growing up, Barlow says she had loving parents who gave her stability and intellectual stimulation.
“But most of all, I got the sense that I had to be about something in the world — you couldn’t just be in the world,” she says. “This message of making a difference I got with my morning oatmeal.”
Barlow’s mother, Flora McGrath, says as a child who was born on Victoria Day, “Maudie used to think the fireworks were for her. And I guess in some way they were.”
When she was young, Barlow became very sick after having her tonsils removed. Her mother said it was something like Rheumatic fever.
“Maudie was forced to stay in bed for a year,” says McGrath. “I think that changed her perspective on life. It seems ever since she has had a great deal of zest to do everything.”
Both mother and daughter can recall Barlow’s first political act in high school.
Barlow was supposed to go on a school trip with her choir. “But a couple of the girls said they were restricted from going because they were Jewish,” McGrath says. “So Maudie stood up and said if they couldn’t go, none of them should go. And they didn’t.”
“My father fought in the war, and I read about the holocaust,” Barlow says. “And so I knew all about the horrific effects that kind of racism could have.”
Barlow wasn’t afraid to stand up for human rights as a teenager and she isn’t afraid now.
“I get so angry over injustice that I can’t be intimidated. When you’re that mad, you get over your nervousness quickly,” she says, recalling her trip to Paris to protest the Multilateral Agreement on Investment.
Barlow’s work fighting corporate giants and criticizing government policy has brought her many enemies.
“My mother always told me serious people have serious enemies,” she says. “You just have to learn to separate real criticism from criticism that is politically motivated. The politically motivated stuff I just let wash off like water on a duck’s back.”
Being thought of as “nasty” is something Barlow’s friend Elizabeth May knows all about.
“I think Maude and I go through some of the same things since we are both strong activists and people expect us to be hard-hitting and nasty,” says May, executive director of the Sierra Club, an environmental activist group. “But, Maude and I are both really nice people.”
May and Barlow co-wrote Frederick Street: Life and Death on Canada’s Love Canal.
“It’s the very moving story of the Sydney tar ponds in Cape Breton. It’s the most terrible environmental disaster in North America, 55 times worse than the Love Canal. Everybody has cancer. You can’t go by a house where someone hasn’t died of it. And the government hasn’t done a thing about it. This is Erin Brockovich’s worst nightmare.”
May says she is “overwhelmed” by Barlow’s compassion. “She’s a role model for people around the world. She inspires. She proves you can be effective, and not lose femininity. You can be outspoken and intelligent, while being kind and gentle. You can be strong, and still be a loving mother.”
Barlow is especially proud of her “boys.”
“While I’ve accomplished so much in my work life, nothing compares to the joy I got raising those boys.” She says they have been a strong force to “make a difference in the world.”
“It must be my overwhelming sense of social justice. I walk around and if something bothers me, I try and see what can be done about it. If there’s nothing in place to fix it, I set it up. I’m not going to wait for someone else to do it because that may never happen,” Barlow says.
“I know we will have won when we consider other species as important as our own. I will never give up on this fight, though I may die trying.”