Canada's Environmental Voice
COMBING THROUGH scientific studies and correspondents’ reports in her seaside home in Maine, Rachel Carson saw nature bludgeoned by a chemical barrage. Telling stories about the northern Barren Lands, Farley Mowat expressed the spirit and meaning of wolves at home in the wilderness. Drawing on advice from every continent, Barbara […]
ANIMALS HAVE LONG ADORNED our currency. The nickel features a beaver, the quarter has a caribou and a five-dollar bill depicts a kingfisher. We continue to call our one-dollar coin a “loonie,” even though it doesn’t always show a loon. I used to be proud that nature was so central […]
THE LANGUOROUS DOG DAYS of summer are upon me as I write this editorial. Tonight, Sirius, the canine star, will light up the sky. But I can’t ignore the slightly burnt aroma of autumn that already tinges the still afternoon air.
DURING THE 2006 World Planners Congress in Vancouver, delegates raised an important question during a round-table talk on sustainable urbanization. They asked, if we have policies to recycle items as small as pop bottles and tin cans, why don’t we have strategies to reuse or recycle items as large as […]
I OFTEN SAY that my “church” is the one with the great big blue ceiling. People usually chuckle as they grasp my meaning, though I’m not certain that they take me very seriously. But the marriage of nature and spirit appears to be simmering just below the surface for many […]
I HAVE NEVER gone south in the winter. The closest I came was a three-day, mid-February family getaway in Niagara Falls at a hotel with an indoor waterslide park. The chlorine infusion did wonders for my skin! I actually prefer going to Ottawa to skate on the canal or ski […]
IN 2005, Andrea Dawber came across a project named Walk Here. She recalls thinking about Davenport, the tree-challenged Toronto community where she lives: It needs to be green here, she realized, if people are going to walk here. And so began GreenHere, the 2010 winner of Earth Day Canada’s Hometown […]
HEATHER MACFADYEN relates her horror upon returning to her weekend home in Canmore, Alberta, after a six-week hiatus. “I was driving along the road that leads to our place when I realized that something was missing. What had been a mature lodgepole pine forest a few short weeks ago was […]
This quietly jarring documentary about National Geographic photographer James Balog’s work explores the challenge of bringing climate change into focus. In search of a seductive, meaningful display of global warming’s impact, Balog realized “the story is in the ice, somehow,” and created the Extreme Ice Survey (extremeicesurvey.org) in 2005.
What sets BARC apart is the diversity of people it has engaged in reclaiming Hamilton Harbour. WHEN THE BAY Area Restoration Council (BARC) in Hamilton, Ontario, celebrated its 20th birthday in June, there was much to celebrate: The organization had just won Earth Day Canada’s 2011 Group Hometown Hero Award.
