Canada's Environmental Voice
WITH AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, March of the Penguins and The Day After Tomorrow grossing well over the average for a studio feature film, it seems that Hollywood may be listening. Moviegoers, adamant in their demands to mix pleasure with purpose, seem to no longer be content with films focused on […]
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 […]
THIS YEAR’S RECIPIENT of Earth Day Canada’s Outstanding Commitment to the Environment Award, Bruce Cockburn is a singer/songwriter and activist. An Officer of the Order of Canada and the honorary chair of Friends of the Earth, Cockburn has used his music to oppose degradation of the environment – from destructive […]
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 […]
A RADICAL TRANSFORMATION of education would develop an ecologically literate society – one that understands the principles of ecological systems and uses them to design human systems.
I ATTENDED Belfountain Public School from Grade 1 to 8. With four classrooms and a gymnasium, it was a considerable step up from the one-room schoolhouses where my older siblings learned their three Rs. Nonetheless, a product of educational wisdom in 1960s Ontario, the schoolyard was devoid of vegetation and we […]
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, […]
WHEN JONATHAN GLENCROSS arrived at McGill University, he had no intention of changing the institution. Yet four years later, this is precisely what he has helped do. Enrolled in the McGill School of Environment, Glencross has become one of the driving forces behind the university’s dramatically increased commitment to sustainability.
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.
SINCE ROMAN PLEBEIANS rose up against their masters in the fifth century BCE, social movements have been the most important force for advancing progressive change. They work because ordinary people – like you and me – are the ultimate source of power in any society: People in positions of economic, […]
