Canada's Environmental Voice
"TRUST ME, I’m the Doctor.” And when it comes to saving the Earth, no one else compares. That’s Doctor Who of course, the eponymous protagonist of the longest running science-fiction show on television. Doctor Who is a pop-culture phenomenon in the UK, and since the show’s reboot in 2005, its […]
IN 2009, the CBC ran a series called The Great Food Revolution. If you doubt that something as simple as what we choose to put in our mouths can have a revolutionary effect, listen to episode four: "Food of the Future." In it, the CBC notes, "How we cook, what […]
TOM RAND is a cycling venture capitalist and philosophizing engineer. When not hunting clean-tech investments for his VCi Green Funds, Rand advises the public-private MaRS innovation centre in Toronto. He is also a novice hotelier. I met the first-time author on an icy December morning at his new über-green Toronto […]
View In the Shadow of Machu Picchu and Manu Park and Bonanza Tours of Peru from joe pavelka on Vimeo.
A FEW YEARS AGO, a teenaged local led me through a stretch of the Sierra Norte mountains in southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state. My Spanish es malísimo, so I walked quietly beside or behind him, starting from a humble hilltop village, down a narrow dirt road, into the brush and up […]
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 […]
Alternatives got interested in ecotourism because it raises questions about greenwashing, the parameters of sustainable development and comparisons to other forms of travel. Joe Pavelka profiles a pair of Peruvian families who demonstrate ecotourism’s most holistic qualities. Rachel DeMotts and Larry Swatuk look at the complexities of promoting tourism through conservation […]
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 […]
IN APRIL 2007, Yann Martel vowed to send PM Stephen Harper a book every two weeks – to “expand stillness”. In a similar spirit, Alternatives turned to four of the leading voices advocating for Canada’s transition to a green economy. We asked them which books they’d place at the top […]
SUPPOSE THEY HAD a depression and nobody came? Instead of accepting today’s economic downturn as a pink slip that can’t be refused, what if our governments reacted as if they had received a Facebook invitation: by selecting “join cause,” “learn more” or “ignore”?
