Canada's Environmental Voice
"TRUST ME, I’m the Doctor.” And when it comes to saving the Earth, no one else compares. That’s Doctor Who of course, the eponymous protagonist of the longest running science-fiction show on television. Doctor Who is a pop-culture phenomenon in the UK, and since the show’s reboot in 2005, its […]
IN CORPORATE BOARDROOMS across Canada, businesses are debating the hot topic of how to rebuild consumer trust when it comes to the environment. Dishonest and irresponsible corporate public relations (PR) campaigns have duped citizens so many times that they are increasingly skeptical of the business community’s sincerity when it comes […]
Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oilsands, Ezra Levant, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2010, 272 pages. EVERY DAY, bitumen plugs up the economic and political works of Canada with another heavy headline. Thanks to the rapid development of the tar sands, Canadians can now read about dead birds, deformed fish, […]
DAVID SUZUKI is an inveterate storyteller who first cast his spell on me in Toronto’s St. Paul Cathedral in 1989. He, Margaret Atwood, Gordon Lightfoot and others were raising money for the Amazon’s Kaiapo people. Twenty-two years later, I’m still enchanted. In our latest conversation, “The Doc” – as friends […]
OTOMES OF IMPENDING DISASTER, thy time has passed. Canadians are heeding your message and snapping up titles that are more “do” than “doom.” For ecobook sales in 2010, it was the year of home-grown changes. Book buyers- from St. John’s to Victoria reached for handbooks on sustainable eating, guides to […]
AS I PREPARED to leave for Argentina, a friend offered to lend me her Kindle. It seemed the perfect thing to take to a place where English-language books are in short supply. I graciously – enthusiastically, in fact – accepted her offer and soon powered up the slim little beast. […]
A FEW YEARS AGO, a teenaged local led me through a stretch of the Sierra Norte mountains in southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state. My Spanish es malísimo, so I walked quietly beside or behind him, starting from a humble hilltop village, down a narrow dirt road, into the brush and up […]
Alternatives got interested in ecotourism because it raises questions about greenwashing, the parameters of sustainable development and comparisons to other forms of travel. Joe Pavelka profiles a pair of Peruvian families who demonstrate ecotourism’s most holistic qualities. Rachel DeMotts and Larry Swatuk look at the complexities of promoting tourism through conservation […]
AS THE STORY GOES, the duo behind the Chicken Soup for the Soul empire couldn’t find a publisher when they assembled their first book. But despite Chicken Soup’s winning formula – 112 million books sold in 15 years – the world of book publishing continues to be an enigma.
IN JUNE 2009, Thomas Berry, the historian, priest, author and self-described “geologian,” passed away at his home in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was 94. Uniting recent scientific discoveries concerning the provenance and progression of the universe with religious insights into the nature of creation, Berry’s writing blended empirical and spiritual […]
