My back aches and I am tired. I just finished planting a pollinator garden in my front yard. Far more exhausting than the physical labour was the year-long struggle to get permission to do a good thing. This experience showed me how complicated it can become when we try to improve how we care for…
“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:23) A recent study by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) found that Canadians had the highest individual debt load of all people living in the G7 (the seven richest countries in the world). Obviously, this is…
A network of Canadian churches and Christian organizations, including Tearfund Canada and A Rocha, have joined together in a group called the Creation Collective. From April 17-19, 220 people attended Creation Collective’s launch events in Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg, either online or in person. Among the attendees were pastors and church leaders. CC interviewed one…
A familiar sound assailed my ears as I walked to the mailbox several weeks ago. The shrill twitter was accompanied by a frenzy of splayed feathers and an exaggerated limp. The message seemed clear enough – “Catch me if you can! You probably can. Look – I’m over here, totally vulnerable.” Pretty sure that’s what…
As I discussed in June, things do change. Changes in wildlife habits have two main causes – human activities and wildlife adaptation. These changes explain, for example, why coyotes now live in most major southern Canadian cities. Let’s look at changes to human activity first. In agriculture, hand-picking corn cobs did not leave much waste….
I remember once walking as a boy with my father in some fields around our house. I was probably about nine years old. As we made our way, we came across a bird that fluttered and hopped on the ground. Its wing was bent and looked broken, and the bird appeared to be in distress….
My grandfather told me about shooting prairie chickens off the tops of oat shocks when he was a boy. By 2021, the prairie chicken count had fallen to 251 males. In the 1950s our family would drive two hours on a Sunday afternoon just to see Canadian geese. Today I need only arrive at a…
As humans continue to use fossil fuels, carbon dioxide will continue to accumulate in the earth’s atmosphere, intensifying the impacts of climate change. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution atmospheric CO2 levels have increased by 50 percent (from 280 ppm to 420 ppm today). For the sake of a livable future world, we must…
Albert and Marjorie bought a house in a subdivision and perhaps didn’t read the fine print. Their small back yard was shaded, so they made very neat gardening beds in the front yard to grow their organic vegetables. Neighbours complained, citing a subdivision ordinance that front yards must have x-amount of lawn and the rest…
“Explore” comes from Latin, “to cry out.” It is the surprise and joy of discovery, the cry of Eureka! Being an explorer ties into my life metaphor of pilgrimage. Lately, I have been exploring Venice, Florida as I begin retirement. I’ve walked, biked and done a little boating. In Punta Gorda I discovered a statue…
There are three small trees in my garden and none of them is large enough for a bird’s nest, but whenever there is a flutter, I find I freeze and hope because February brings blackbird weather and blackbird song. Growing up in Ontario, the first redwing blackbirds were an early sign of spring. I remember…
Larry was the last holdout. Years ago, the local coal company had purchased mineral rights from the inhabitants of Kayford mountain to blow it apart – to tap the coal seams and bleed the mountain of its precious payload. One by one, Larry’s neighbours had sold their rights and moved – driven away in some…
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