Canada's Environmental Voice
Initiated at a two-day meeting last spring, the manifesto calls on Canada’s government to address issues facing our country today ranging from indigenous rights to increasing poverty to rampant inequality. However, the over-arching theme of the fifteen demands is of environmental stewardship as a means to combat our greatest threat, […]
The “age of ecology” dawned at the end of the 1960s. Cold-war fears of nuclear fallout, warnings of a pesticide-laden silent spring and rivers so polluted they caught fire drove new attention to the environment. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. The US created its Environmental Protection Agency […]
Naïve? Perhaps it was, but 15 years ago the public perception was that Canadians don’t die from drinking tap water. We certainly don’t die from drinking water from a municipal supply in Southwestern Ontario. So when the small town of Walkerton found its drinking water supply contaminated over the course […]
Sad and grey: this is how I remember the Poland of the late 1980s and the early 90s. As a child, I felt overwhelmed by the depressing cityscapes and monotonous, boring design shaping the reality around me. Everything looked kind of the same: no originality, no uniqueness, no style – […]
IN 1982, Joe and Stephanie Mancini settled in Kitchener, Ontario, after a volunteer stint in Tanzania. The small city was faced with crippling unemployment as plant closings across North America wiped out many of the jobs that had supported thriving local economies. The young couple responded strongly to the disrupted […]
A\J’s Fashion issue explores the social and ecological impacts of “fast fashion.” In “Picking Up the Threads,” Kelly Drennan of Fashion Takes Action explains how low prices and über-trendiness come at the expense of both people and the environment.
Our go-to style expert Isabel Slone presents a lineup of outfits and products that proves sustainability and style can go hand-in-hand. What makes these clothes sustainable? Slone prioritized natural materials, high quality, ethical labour and shopping at local businesses.
The world of eyewear is rife with mass-produced, label-driven brands, but if you search beyond the nearest chain or big-box store, you will likely find some truly remarkable glasses. As the buyer for Insight Eye Care, an independent optometry and optical boutique in Waterloo, Ontario, I have had the opportunity […]
We can’t get enough fast fashion. Globally, we consume more than 80 billion pieces of clothing each year, many of them hyper-trendy, low-cost items that move from runway to sale rack at breakneck speed. Fashion is a trillion-dollar-a-year industry that increasingly relies on rock-bottom retail prices. The amount of made-in-Canada […]
In the mid-1980s, garment production went global, clothes got cheaper and our closets got bigger. While we once chose attire to fit seasonal demands – warmer, thicker layers in winter, for example – for many the significance of garments has shifted from practical need to social and emotional want. We […]
