Susan Howatt never quite knows what to say when she gets the inevitable questions about activism. As the national water campaigner for the Council of Canadians, she’s often called on to speak to crowds. “About half of the questions I get are about water. The other half are about how I got my start as an activist.”

That reaction from a crowd isn’t surprising: Susan’s energy and passion are palpable. She’s talking about the corporate take-over of our water, and instead of ranting and gritting her teeth, she’s smiling her huge, trademark smile.

“It’s not like I woke up one day and decided, ‘I’m going to be an activist!’” Instead, this PEI-native joined a peace group in high school, studied international relations and political science at Acadia University, and when she was 20 years old and her friends were going backpacking in Europe, she traveled to South America. The experience gave her the sense of commitment that doesn’t go away. It was that commitment that brought her back to South America, and eventually, to the Council of Canadians. Still, she insists, “the activist title feels like a barrier. Really it’s just concerned citizens.”

After returning from South America, Susan moved to Vancouver and got a job teaching English as a second language. Her activist work was done in all the hours between sleeping and earning a living. She worked on fair trade issues, urban poverty issues, and even went to Mexico to teach English.

Returning to Vancouver, she couldn’t forget the Mexican government’s ongoing repression of the Zapatista uprising. She began working with human rights accompaniment groups in Vancouver who shared her concerned about the military build-up in Mexico. Eventually, her work with these groups took her back to Mexico to accompany human rights protectors in Chiapas.

“I wasn’t at Quebec City,” she confesses, referring to the legendary Canadian protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) held in Quebec City in 2001. “I was doing human rights accompaniment work in Southern Mexico when it all happened. Maude [Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians] says that’s no excuse,” she jokes.

Luckily, Susan didn’t need the Quebec City protests to convince her that global trade and investment rules had to be taken on. After her time in Mexico—where the link between NAFTA and the Zapatista uprising was clear—her next stop was Indonesia, where she was sent as a CUSO co-operant to work with an organization concerned about foreign investment in mining. The organization, JATAM—an ally and partner of MiningWatch Canada—is a coalition of Indonesian community groups working to ensure high social and environmental standards for the numerous mining companies operating in Indonesia.

The group took a courageous stand while Susan was working with them, calling for a moratorium on mining until appropriate environmental and social regulations could be enforced. As the lone Canadian in their shop—and with Canadian mining giant INCO as one of the key targets—Susan came under fire from the Canadian embassy in Indonesia. “It was such a demoralizing lesson to learn about Canada,” she says. “Our country can do so much great stuff in the world—from democracy promotion, to development, to human rights—but trade will always trump.”

She relied on her colleagues at MiningWatch Canada and JATAM to keep her morale up. “These are the real heroes,” she says. “Joan Kuyek and Catherine Coumans [of MiningWatch Canada] are incredible activists.” While the Canadian embassy was rapping Susan’s knuckles for threatening mining company interests, her MiningWatch colleagues were working late, supporting their Indonesian colleagues and standing up for human rights and the environment. They knew that some Canadian companies were (and still are) taking advantage of lax environmental regulation and poor human rights records in Indonesia to grow their profit margins. “Joan and Catherine really inspired me. They aren’t looking for the spotlight. They are really excellent partners.”

When it was time to return to Canada, Susan jumped at the chance to campaign on water issues for the Council of Canadians—Canada’s largest citizen advocacy organization. For her, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to continue her human rights work, back on Canadian soil.

She spends her time working with the Council’s chapters to mobilize the public around a range of water issues. The issue of the day in her office? The secretive Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) between the US, Canada and Mexico. “The deal,” she says, “threatens to sell off our water resources and weaken Canadian regulations. To top it off, the deal is being negotiated in secret. The guys are negotiating our futures in secret backrooms. It’s an insult to democracy,” she says. This conviction drove Susan and other activists to take to the streets in Montebello in August, to protest meetings between Presidents Bush, Calderón and Prime Minister Harper.

Back in Ottawa after a busy summer—including a trip to Yellowknife for a human rights conference, and helping organize a major demonstration against the SPP—Susan is happy just to be able go home at the end of her long days. Having burned the candle at both ends to do her activist work in the evenings, Susan knows what a privilege it is to work full-time as a campaigner. “I love being able to go home, guilt-free, and watch a terrible movie. Last week, I read a whole Entertainment Weekly magazine cover-to-cover,” she laughs.

I welcome the confession. If Entertainment Weekly is all it takes to keep this activist going, I’ll buy her a subscription.