Canada's Environmental Voice
“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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
On June 18, Pope Francis released a 180-page encyclical letter on the environment, addressed to every person on the planet. He covers a lot of ground: pollution, our throwaway culture, the breakdown of society. Here are the passages that particularly resonate with A\J.
Andrew Welch has a thing about numbers. He loves them. But as he gradually began to see the connection between growing, multiple global crises and the lack of awareness surrounding the day-to-day human behaviour that produces them, he began to wonder if humanity’s over-reliance on numbers was responsible. “We use […]
EACH WEEK, A\J staffers share our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week!
California once possessed one of the most precious and critical natural resources of the North American continent. The Redwoods, also known as Sequoioideae, are the majestic, mystical trees that line the Oregon and California coast by the thousands. They are a keystone species, the pillars of an entire ecosystem that […]
Free the river and the salmon come back. It seems so improbable – impossible! – and yet. DamNation captures the relentless beating pulse of thousands of salmon returning against all odds to Washington State’s Elwha River after nearly a century, the year after the removal of the Elwha Dam. It […]
