Canada's Environmental Voice
AT THE SPIRIT TREE ESTATE CIDERY, Tom Wilson and Nicole Judge are intent on answering customers’ questions. Their infant son sits on the sales counter resting against his mother as if he’s spent his life in this pose. The young couple looks tired, but totally engaged. They are living their […]
IN 2009, the CBC ran a series called The Great Food Revolution. If you doubt that something as simple as what we choose to put in our mouths can have a revolutionary effect, listen to episode four: "Food of the Future." In it, the CBC notes, "How we cook, what […]
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, […]
AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY, cities were at a tipping point. Many people believed that broad social problems, such as poor public health, poverty, widening class divisions and social unrest, were closely linked to the design and (non-)functioning of cities. Visionary urbanists, such as Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd […]
LET’S FACE IT – the really inconvenient truth is that the age of unconstrained exuberance is over. Techno-industrial society has broken faith with Gaia and is now wrestling its twin demons of hubris and greed. It is illusory to think that anything can ever be the same. Nevertheless, not a […]
Stephen Bocking hearkens back to Aldo Leopold for a new ecological vision. How can we keep all of the parts and why should we? Bocking weaves politics and science together to reveal prospects of a resilient future with ecologically creative designs for parks and neighbourhoods.
AT OUR HOUSE, Alternatives is a keeper; as with great cookbooks, we mark up our favourite articles and save them for future reference. I also keep Orion’s gorgeous photos and impassioned essays, and together, the sumptuous American magazine and its savvy northern cousin keep my family on a balanced diet […]
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 […]
NOT LONG AFTER ARRIVING in North Carolina, I became enamored with that exotic Southern delicacy: deep-fried turkey. Each time I fried a bird, however, I was left with gallons of used cooking oil. The recycler in me found it hard to throw such waste in the woods, so in 2002 […]
“IT WAS A BAD YEAR,” David Donnelly, Earth Day Canada’s Hometown Hero for 2008, tells me. We’re sitting at a long table beside the open-concept kitchen in the common room at 215 Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto. It’s the official hangout for socially conscious non-profit groups in Canada’s largest city. […]
