When Liz Straiton, a member of Redwood Park Church in Thunder Bay, Ontario, was asked to make reusable communion cups to replace the disposable plastic ones in use, she accepted the challenge. She glazed and fired over 500 dishwasher-safe cups over eight weeks. Each individual cup is small and lightweight, similar in size to the…
In 1939, Paul Müller discovered that DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was a very effective insecticide. It became widely used to kill mosquitoes and reduce the incidence of malaria and other insect-spread diseases. In 1948, Müller received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on the effects of DDT and how it aided the fight against disease….
About a mile from my childhood home flowed the Onion River, the water turgid with clay, cow manure and urine. Occasional sections were wooded but much of the wetland near to the river was used as heifer pasture. Abused would be a better word. Over the years much of the trampled riparian zone had been…
“We are all going to die by 2040,” the tour guide said flatly, “based on the cascading negative effects of climate change.” As shocking as that sentence was, I was more taken aback by the fact that it got zero reaction from his audience. This was last June: I was a chaperone with a group…
Almost 40 years ago, by accident or by the hand of God (these can look remarkably similar) we bought a decrepit old house in a very tiny rural town. We bought it only because we needed a place to live in that vicinity, it was available, and it was affordable. Oh, and there was a…
I grew up as a farm kid who helped milk cows and feed chickens before catching the bus to school. It was on the farm that I learned many of the core values that still drive my work in the city, such as no waste, work hard, care for creation. In my parenting years I…
From name to business model, New Jubilee in northeast Edmonton exists to share a uniquely situated bit of creation even beyond the 50-year timeframe for redistribution prescribed in the biblical Jubilee. People come to band birds, hold events in the on-site yurt, tour the forest and participate in two thriving U-pick operations: Lady Flower Gardens…
I asked a Christian Reformed church member about the size of his former dairy farm, what the land was like – if there was any forest on it? He said that he kept trees in a piece because, well, “we did a lot of clearing and it seemed good to leave a little in forest.”…
On one of my first days out looking for adult coho salmon on the Upper Bulkley River near Houston, B.C., I was taught how to notch a beaver dam. We carefully pulled sticks out of the dam to create a one-metre-wide opening so that salmon could migrate upstream, leaving the beaver habitat relatively unaffected. Some…
Not too far away from my home, logging companies have plans to log the headwaters and mid-reaches of several small creeks. According to laws, they must do a survey to determine if the creeks and rills are fish-bearing. If there are sections of the creeks that don’t have fish, dry up in summer or are…
Sylvia Keesmaat lives on an off-grid permaculture farm in Ontario. She’s writing a book on climate grief. It begins with a simple ask: to go outside and “learn the space where you are, even if it’s an urban environment.” Keesmat remembers canoeing the wetlands as a child, both of her parents pausing to paint and…
My week usually begins with three children being delivered to our farm for piano lessons. Each gets about a fifteen-minute lesson. The other two do outdoor chores with Betsey as the payment for their lesson. This particular week didn’t follow the pattern. Due to a prior commitment of mine with some mallard ducks, the lessons…
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