Search Results for "summer"

ELA boat on lake, foggy A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Schindler’s Pissed

DAVID SCHINDLER is one of Canada’s most influential environmental scientists, both at home and abroad. Between 1968 and 1989, he directed the Experimental Lakes Area research facility in Ontario, leading experiments on freshwater ecosystems that advanced our understanding of the effects of nutrient enrichment, acid rain and climate change. An […]

Violating the Sacred

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 […]

Water House Rules

FROM VANCOUVER ISLAND’S southern Seymour mountain range to its dry eastern coast, the Cowichan River drains a 930-square-kilometre landscape – an area a little smaller than Ontario’s Prince Edward County. With its rural charm and boast as Canada’s warmest locale (its name means “warm land” in the local Hul’qumi’num language), […]

Black bear cub peaks out from behind some mossy rocks A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Northern Getaway

A WHITE SPIRIT BEAR cub tentatively crosses a mossy log, followed closely by his black sibling. Majestic grey wolves search for salmon from a rocky, seaweed-enveloped shore at low tide. Two orca whales ply the waters at sunset. “They call this the Great Bear Rainforest,” explains Gitga’at first nation member Helen […]

The Geologian’s Gift

IN JUNE 2009, Thomas Berry, the historian, priest, author and self-described “geologian,” passed away at his home in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was 94.  Uniting recent scientific discoveries concerning the provenance and progression­ of the universe with religious insights into the nature of creation, Berry’s writing blended empirical and spiritual […]

Editorial: A Wicked Relief

“SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES” is one of those terms that stumps an editor. As I waded through the rich collection of articles that make up the theme section for this issue of Alternatives, I was forever struggling with it. Authors would write that communities wanted to “become sustainable,” as though sustainability was […]