The seminal "occupier" makes a well-timed visit to Toronto.

By Steve Kupferman

Julia "Butterfly" Hill. Image courtesy of her website.

As would-be occupiers camp out in Toronto’s St. James Park—part of a worldwide movement to protest, among other things, the growing income disparity between rich and poor—last night the Hart House library received a visit by someone who could be considered an innovator in the realm of protesting by staying put.

Julia “Butterfly” Hill, who between 1997 and 1999 famously spent 738 days living in the branches of a redwood tree near Stafford, California, in order to prevent it from being felled by loggers, spoke before a small assembly of mostly student-aged people.

Now 37, Hill has, since descending the tree, co-founded a non-profit, written a book, and also parlayed her experience into a motivational speaking career. (Her tagline: “What’s Your Tree?”) Her eyes aren’t quite as wide as they were in the nineties, and a grey streak runs through her hair. During a 20-minute video that recapped some of the events of her second month in the tree, she left the room.

When she returned, she told the crowd the same story she’s been telling, now, for nearly twelve years.

“There were many times when I wanted to come down and give up,” she said. “It was an absolute liquefaction of myself on several levels, that enabled me to get through it.” (Caterpillars, she explained, need to liquefy themselves in order to become butterflies.)

She stayed in the tree despite storms and fierce gales from the blades of the logging company’s helicopters. Her entire living quarters consisted of little more than a wooden platform strapped to some branches. She endured frostbite, she said, and, on one occasion, bullets from the hunting rifles of drunk loggers, who later apologized for the shooting by bringing her a gift of organic fruit.

After the talk was over, and after she had spent half an hour autographing merchandise for fans, she paused to consider Occupy Wall Street, and all its satellite protests.

“I’m excited to see that people are really bringing forth a holistic message that’s about, let’s look at the systems that oppress, and let’s support the systems that liberate,” she said.

But would her vigil have been easier, if, like today’s occupiers, she’d had hundreds of colleagues to support her?

With a laugh, she said: “That would have driven me crazy.”