Canada's Environmental Voice
Honeybees have been part of both our agriculture and our mythology for millennia. From Mesopotamia to Maya bees have been depicted as symbols of eloquence and prophecy. The Delphic oracle was often called the Bee, and the eloquent Plato, Pindar and Saint Ambrose were all said to have had their […]
When travelling throughout Southern Ontario this summer one can’t help but notice the proliferation of wind turbines. After the Green Energy Act and the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program were enacted in 2009, large scale wind farms sprang up across the province driven by a desire to increase clean, renewable energy […]
The list of things that expectant mothers should avoid is notoriously long: hair dye, unpasteurized cheese and even some herbal teas, to name a few. But according to Pre-Polluted, a new report on the toxic loads of Canadian newborns, our everyday lives are packed with toxins that are difficult for […]
THE FIRST MOTION PICTURES were simple observations. About 125 years ago, when the medium of film was hatching, it captured snippets of basic human and animal behaviour. It allowed us to witness things we hadn’t.
Chocolate is one of life’s great pleasures. The perfect food, chocolate is fuel for flagging spirits, an inspiration, a temptation and, for some, a sacrament. Yet most consumers of mass-produced chocolate may be unaware of their beloved confection’s dark side. Child slave labour in West African cocoa plantations haunts the […]
How can we create a society that provides for all while respecting nature’s limits?
At 16, Mérida Anderson became a vegan and cooked her first meal. She opened a can of mini corn (which she loved) and cooked cauliflower (the only other vegetable in the refrigerator). She remembers that it was “truly awful.”
FOR MOST OF US, our primary connection to our food system is what we had for dinner last night. It’s what we get at the grocery store, our local farmers markets or in our CSA baskets. It’s what we stock in our kitchen cupboards and put on our plates and […]
LOCAL FOOD HAS TAKEN OFF. From coast to coast to coast, the Canadian food landscape is changing. Within local communities, alternatives to entrenched supply-chain strategies are thriving, such as farmers’ markets, restaurants that focus on regional food sources, community supported agriculture (CSA), farm-gate sales and certified organic food production. Increasingly, Canadians […]
On Sunday, I flew back to Kitchener, Ontario, after spending a little more than a week in Calgary. I’m not yet sure of the words I want to use to describe the Great Flood of 2013. I wish I could have stayed longer to assemble a bigger pile, to gather […]
