{"id":24464,"date":"2019-08-15T19:48:34","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T23:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24464"},"modified":"2019-08-21T18:53:05","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T22:53:05","slug":"local-dentist-focuses-new-lens-on-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/local-dentist-focuses-new-lens-on-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Local dentist focuses new lens on climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Ron Goodlin began slowing down his career in\ndentistry, his energies were redirected to another passion: photography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, with more time to be behind the camera, he\u2019s tasked\nhimself with a new mission: focusing his lens on the impacts of climate change.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the well-known Aurora dentist has previously\nexhibited his wildlife photography taken on safari in Southern Africa and other\nexotic locales around the world, his quest to shine a light on one of the\nbiggest global issues today took him surprisingly close to home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armed with his camera, sturdy boots and a friend with an\nSUV, Dr. Goodlin headed due north to Bracebridge, the Muskoka-area community\nravaged by intense flooding this past spring. Once on the scene, it wasn\u2019t hard\nfor the duo to find inspiration \u2013 albeit difficult inspiration \u2013 for their\nphotographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they followed the line of the Muskoka River, they saw\nhomes half-engulfed in the rushing water, boats floating up to the tops of\ntheir respective boathouses and being crushed against the ceiling, floating\ndebris which could only be remnants of homes that didn\u2019t fare as well, and\nbridges that were all but submerged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs we kept going down, we saw sandbags at the sides of\nthe roads, sandbags around houses to protect the homes, and their front lawns\nand back lawns were absolute lakes,\u201d he recalls. \u201cSome of them were saved, some\nhad water going in, and then we could see where some of the roads had actually\nbeen washed away and trucks were going back and forth with loads of stone and\ngravel to try and rebuild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen, as we went down the river a little bit more, there\nwas one guy we saw \u2013 and, well, just the look on his face was horrible. An\nolder gentleman, he had on waders, parked on the side of the road, and he\nlooked distraught as he got out into the water. We asked, \u2018Is that your house,\u2019\nand he just nodded and said, \u2018Insurance won\u2019t pay, I\u2019ve lost everything.\u2019 He\nhad tears in his eyes, walked over to his house, opened his garage door, a\nbunch of stuff fell out that he pushed back in, just looked at us, went inside,\nand closed the garage door. He couldn\u2019t even face us or talk to anybody, he was\nso upset.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the team persevered on their mission to capture the\ndevastation. They saw vehicles from the Canadian Armed Forces helping residents,\nhelping residents into rafts and carrying out search and rescue missions up and\ndown the river. They watched them remove trees that were in danger of being\nswept up and destroying surviving homes below, while others went door to door\nmaking sure everything was okay with the residents still inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe hear so much bad news nowadays that seemingly we\u2019re\nnot even affected by it,\u201d he says. \u201cWe hear of people getting shot, getting\ninto a car crash, losing a home to fire, and, in this case, people losing their\nhomes and everything they own in a flood, and it\u2019s so easy for us to just say,\n\u2018Yeah, that\u2019s too bad,\u2019 and then forget about it. When you actually see the\ndevastation, when you actually see the people and talk to them, it breaks your\nheart. We\u2019re so acclimatized to all this bad news that we just gloss over it\nand we\u2019re not doing anything about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClimate change is a huge deal. It is affecting us. With\nthe wildfires and the extreme weather patterns and flooding, these are all\ndirect impacts of climate change and yet none of us are really doing anything\nabout it. What are we doing about our cars? What are we doing about limiting\nour gas emissions and carbon emissions? What are we doing about reducing our\nred meat intake so there are fewer cattle producing the methane causing\ngreenhouse gases? What are we doing about riding our bicycle instead of taking\nour vehicle, or not letting your car idle when you\u2019re waiting in a parking lot\nfor your spouse? Simple things that all of us could be doing to help out this\nsituation and none of us really think of it because we see the news and we just\nthink, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s too bad,\u2019 and we go onto the next thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since slowing down his practice, Dr. Goodlin says he has\ndone many different shows featuring his photography, but he wants to ensure\neach shot is meaningful and has a purpose. In addition to the shots he took in\nBracebridge, he\u2019s been turning his camera to endangered species of wildlife\nboth local and further afield, documented the impact of habitats lost to the\noil and gas industry, and other ecological problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos have included polar bears starving in the Arctic,\npenguins struggling to build nests in the mud where all the ice has melted\naway, and grizzlies looking for some semblance of their lost home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to bring people\u2019s attention to what we\u2019re doing\nto our planet,\u201d says Dr. Goodlin on what he ultimately wants to do with these\nimages. \u201cOur world is in trouble and we need to do something fast. All the\nscientists, the UN, they are all pointing to the same thing: by 2050 it is\ngoing to be too late.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ron Goodlin takes passion for photography and uses it as a medium to spark change and highlight perils of climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/2019-08-15-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6mA","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 11:13:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}