Culture

Mercy by Jo-Anne McArthur.

Editorial: Lessons Earned

I won’t sugarcoat it: sharing isn’t always easy. Some of the toughest moments of my life have been failed attempts to share things. I’m not talking about books or my bike or a pot of borscht. I mean the big stuff: living spaces, investments of time and money, collective ambitions […]

Water and Agriculture in Canada book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Water and Agriculture in Canada: Towards Sustainable Management of Water Resources

Whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting, or so the old saying goes. There’s no way of conveying the importance of water to agriculture more concisely. Water management is highly divisive and fraught with winners and losers. Given the contentiousness of managing this critical resource, the Hon. Gerry Ritz, federal […]

Tulips growing in the Fraser Valley in BC, Canada.

Love Hurts: In Search of Eco-Friendly Flowers

VALENTINE’S DAY means that thousands of Canadians will be heading to the florist to purchase the classic symbol of undying love – a bouquet of roses. Flowers are also a popular gift for birthdays, Mother’s Day and get-well-soon wishes. So popular, in fact, that global cut-flower sales approached $14-billion last […]

Margaret Clegg, Toll Bar Village near Doncaster, UK  (from Drowning World series

Carbon 14: Climate is Culture

The Cape Farewell Foundation has an ambitious mission: to bring artists and scientists together to explore the impact and future of climate change. Just as ambitious is the wide-ranging exhibition curated by David Buckland and Claire L. Sykes and headquartered at the Royal Ontario Museum’s Centre for Contemporary Culture until […]

Surface Tension Exhibit review THEMUSEUM A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Surface Tension

THEMUSEUM’s feature exhibition, Surface Tension, is the Canadian premiere of a travelling international exhibition that brings together artists, engineers, designers and scientists. Running from September 20th, 2013 to January 5th, 2014, the exhibition explores the many qualities of water, challenges to this pervasive resource and potential solutions.

VincentGlowingTomato

The Buddhist and the Tomato

The glaring fluorescence of Atlantic Superstore lights must have blinded me. How could I buy a shiny, temptingly red – and cheap – Mexican tomato when I knew I could purchase local, organic ones at the Halifax Farmers’ Market? Why did I do it? What possessed me to buy outside […]

TINY small house documentary review A\J Alternativesjournal.ca

TINY

The postwar consumer boom caused a swell in both the number and size of houses, leading to mass-produced homes and the advent of suburbia. The average size of Canadian homes immediately post-war was less than 1,000 square feet; by the mid-2000s it had grown to a peak of 2,300 feet […]