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 […]
Online retailers devalue printed books with aggressive pricing. Text piracy threatens publisher profits.Publishing is dying.
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 […]
IN APRIL 2007, Yann Martel vowed to send PM Stephen Harper a book every two weeks – to “expand stillness”. In a similar spirit, Alternatives turned to four of the leading voices advocating for Canada’s transition to a green economy. We asked them which books they’d place at the top […]
OUR COLLECTIVE IDENTITY as Canadians and our conception of the environment is largely one of endless forests, untamed rivers and free-ranging wildlife. This vision, however, no longer reflects the reality of most of our lives. Four out of five Canadians live in major cities or their suburbs, far from the […]
ECO-RENOVATING YOUR HOUSE on a budget is like one of those kids’ Choose Your Own Adventure books: Each decision delivers a unique set of challenges and consequences. Since most of us have limited funds, building an environmentally sound dream home means every choice must be weighed carefully for its expense […]
WHAT THE WARMING WORLD needs now,” writes author Bill McKibben in Grist magazine, “is art, sweet art.” Precisely because environmental problems are rooted in cultural practices and ideologies, it is artists, immersed in world and cultural practices, who are ideally situated to locate and develop effective- responses. In fact, we’ve […]
GREG HERRIOTT judges how far industrial hemp has come by how few people joke about it. “At our first trade show in 1996, nine of 10 people who visited our booth began with a joke. Now, it’s only two of 10,” says Hempola’s founder. It’s a cool, sunny, spring day, […]
VOWS OF MARRIAGE. Oaths of citizenship. A jury’s verdict. Words with the power to change our identities are usually spoken in public places. But a cancer diagnosis is almost always delivered within a private conversation that takes place, unwitnessed, behind the closed door of a doctor’s office, on the phone, […]
