Canada's Environmental Voice
IN ITS QUEST to dominate the planet’s agricultural biotechnology sector, Monsanto’s business model has produced significant collateral damage. Generations of farming families in South America, India and other robustly developing regions have been devastated by the US-based multinational’s product line, namely its flagship herbicide Roundup and the patented seeds that […]
DESPITE THE DIAGNOSES of spin doctors, an activist is not anti-government, anti-corporate, anti-Canadian or the antichrist. In fact, any citizen who tries to address important social and political issues is pro-democratic, patriotic and downright responsible. Get started with these tips:
BACK IN 2005, Princeton University Press published an engaging essay by Harry G. Frankfurt, an emeritus professor of moral philosophy. The title of the little book, which spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was On Bullshit. Frankfurt began his essay by observing that although bullshit is […]
IN A RUGGED KNOT of mountains in the remote reaches of Northern British Columbia lies a stunningly beautiful valley known to the First Nations as the Sacred Headwaters. There, on the southern edge of the Spatsizi Wilderness, the Serengeti of Canada, are born in remarkably close proximity three of Canada’s […]
WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER, I subscribed to Car and Driver magazine for several years. I still have my collection in a box in the attic. Back then it was European and Japanese sports cars (and a disdain for muscle cars) that fueled my dreams. In reality, I learned to […]
“My grandfather rode a camel. My father rode in a car. I fly in a jet airplane. My grandson will ride a camel.” (alleged Saudi saying) THE CONCEPT of non-renewable resources is not difficult. The litres of gasoline we burned yesterday are gone. They are not resting and recuperating. They […]
IT’S A FACE that I will remember for a long time. The farmer, utterly frustrated by Canada’s food system, could no longer muster the will to tell his story. He and his wife were taking part in a community “kitchen-table talk,” co-ordinated by the People’s Food Policy Project (PFPP). He […]
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 […]
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 […]
