Canada's Environmental Voice
IS IT JUST ME or has energy replaced child pop star Justin Bieber as this year’s hot topic? There are advertisements for clean energy on television, signs on the side of the road about wind farms, newspaper headlines describing yet another catastrophic oil spill, and Oprah is asking me to […]
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), […]
WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER, I subscribed to Car and Driver magazine for several years. I still have my collection in a box in the attic. Back then it was European and Japanese sports cars (and a disdain for muscle cars) that fueled my dreams. In reality, I learned to […]
AT THE SPIRIT TREE ESTATE CIDERY, Tom Wilson and Nicole Judge are intent on answering customers’ questions. Their infant son sits on the sales counter resting against his mother as if he’s spent his life in this pose. The young couple looks tired, but totally engaged. They are living their […]
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 […]
THE MELTDOWN that swept through the world’s financial markets in late 2008 was simply the latest setback to hit the beleaguered Canadian forestry industry.
KIDS ARE SMART. They get it. Over the past year, I have spoken to hundreds of university students in Eastern Canada. First, I present scientific evidence that demands we put a price on carbon and move to a low-carbon economy. Next, I pose the question: Which sectors will be the […]
LIZ BENNEIAN can’t remember a time when she wasn’t interested in nature and the environment. I’ve asked her to think back because I’m curious to know how this dynamic conservationist, with over 20 years of experience in journalism, came to be the environmental conscience of Oakville, a community situated on […]
LET’S FACE IT – the really inconvenient truth is that the age of unconstrained exuberance is over. Techno-industrial society has broken faith with Gaia and is now wrestling its twin demons of hubris and greed. It is illusory to think that anything can ever be the same. Nevertheless, not a […]
