Canada's Environmental Voice
The rapidly melting Arctic should not be seen as an invitation to drill for oil, says Greenpeace, the protagonist of this gripping and timely book. Between extreme conditions and low safety standards, an Arctic oil spill is an epic ecological disaster just waiting to happen. A paucity of roads, ports […]
“Science insists that we can’t express particulars. But we love things in particular, not in general … and when you love something in particular, you’re not inclined to see that it could be replaced by anything else.” – Karen Houle, writer-in-residence, rare Charitable Research Reserve.
The “age of ecology” dawned at the end of the 1960s. Cold-war fears of nuclear fallout, warnings of a pesticide-laden silent spring and rivers so polluted they caught fire drove new attention to the environment. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. The US created its Environmental Protection Agency […]
Most environmentalists are familiar with the so-called “tragedy of the commons.” In 1968, Garrett Hardin popularized the idea in Science as a way to understand environmental deterioration of common-pool resources.
Naïve? Perhaps it was, but 15 years ago the public perception was that Canadians don’t die from drinking tap water. We certainly don’t die from drinking water from a municipal supply in Southwestern Ontario. So when the small town of Walkerton found its drinking water supply contaminated over the course […]
AIRPORTS EVOKE MIXED FEELINGS. Few of us enjoy serpentine lineups, running along moving sidewalks checking our watches, or unpacking our belongings for security personnel. Yet some of the most interesting spaces we’ll meet on our journeys are the airports we rush through.
Vortex Bladeless calls itself “the new paradigm of wind power.” The Spanish startup is developing wind turbines that generate power through vibration, without the need for the distinctive spinning blades of conventional wind power. So confident are they that this will be a popular idea, they began crowdfunding their work […]
Living in Kitchener in 1989-92, I was introduced to Danny’s music by some friends who said I had to come and hear this “kid” play at a local club. From the first time I saw him on stage he was full of energy, incredibly creative, and seemed to pour all […]
In his brief career, Phil Ochs wrote over 100 songs – many of them about civil rights and other caring social/environmental observations. “When I’m Gone” was just one of his many anthems pointing toward a better world. From a songwriting standpoint, Elephant Revival does not appear to be influenced by Ochs’ music, […]
The Watershed is a documentary verbatim play, created through a research and community building process. The play focuses on writer Annabel Soutar’s research into the federal government’s 2012–2014 closing of the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA). The ELA is a scientific ecosystem research facility in Ontario that was transferred to a […]
