Canada's Environmental Voice
The words on the back of the business card say so much: Belong & Thrive. For staff at House of Friendship, a social service charity based in Waterloo Region, Ont., these words are much more than an inspirational motto. They are a reminder that helping people in need by providing food, […]
What do small-scale farmers and market gardeners do in the winter? This is a perennial question for growers in temperate climates where the growing season for sustainable, local agriculture is traditionally just half of the year.
Maha Kumbh Mela The largest gathering of people on Earth happened on one day in 2013. There will not be another mass congregation on the Ganges River or anywhere else until 2157. Darrol Bryant reflects. What event could draw 30 million people? To the same place, on the same day? […]
By: Dr. Shelagh McCartney, Jeffrey Herskovits & Kathryn Trnavsky HOUSING ISSUES in Canada’s Indigenous communities have been well documented for decades without any positive changes. As populations grow rapidly, housing demand continues to increase and the existing shortfall becomes exacerbated. Housing need creates not only a lack of suitable shelter but […]
How can we make an understanding common? Passionate advocates continuously seek new answers to this question, as it is so pertinent to inciting change. Steve McDonald’s short film, The Rainmakers of Nganyi, proposes one solution to this concern. Alternatives Journal discussed these rainmakers in our spring 2010 issue, so it […]
Imagination is key to innovation. After 18 years of constructing and racing solar-powered cars the Queen’s Solar Design Team, situated at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, plunged head first into building sustainable and energy efficient homes. They ended up placing first at the US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon in […]
In the spring and summer of 2014 and late winter 2015, I lived and worked in the beautiful vibrant hamlet of Igloolik, Nunavut, a coastal Inuit community of more than 1800 people located on Igloolik Island about 300 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. I was there doing my undergraduate thesis, working on […]
Emi Do was captivated from the get go. By the beginning of the 2011 season, she had accumulated 13 plots of land scattered around Vancouver, to which she tended by way of bicycle and trailer. Her first season, at the beginning of 2010, Do stumbled on the opportunity to farm a plot on the […]
The other day I had a treacherous thought as I reviewed a report on how far away Canada is from meeting our climate targets. Where would be today if those of us who condemned the Harper governments “Turn the Corner” climate plan years ago (2007) had instead encouraged the government to implement it?
“Because it’s 2015” is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s catch phrase and answer to why ethnic and gender diversity matter. The statement made headlines across Canada and beyond. A “mic drop” by Trudeau would have been the icing on the cake for social justice advocates everywhere. After all, the moment symbolized […]
