Throughout my reading of Changing Tides: An Ecologist’s Journey to Make Peace with the Anthropocene, I found myself distracted by updates and conversations on social media about blockades, arrests, and ceremonial fires in northern British Columbia, then in Vancouver and across the country. A group of hereditary chiefs from the Wet’suwet’en Nation had been in court…
If she were home right now, Mwai Mphande, would be locked-in with her family, homeschooling her sister’s two kids, dancing and playing board games at night. Instead, she’s a world away, on Bowen Island, doing everything she can to not let a global pandemic take away the opportunity of a lifetime. “When you come from…
…whatever you were doing or planning back in January is probably irrelevant by now. For me, this year started out so well, so ambitious and on-track, despite all obstacles. For a short time, I reveled in life without a car: all the money I was saving, all the exercise I was getting walking up and…
Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car. –EB White Back when I was dipping my toes into the waters of adulthood, I went to a job interview and by the end found myself in an intractable argument. Interviewer: Do you have a car? Me: No. Interviewer: Do you plan…
Metamorphosis is not a term typically associated with human animals. As dramatic as such transformations are, the idea that one of us might undergo the process of becoming, say, a tree, stretches the boundaries of the word. Our differences go beyond mere appearances and nutritional preferences, after all. This does not stop ecologist Gary Paul…
I’m not for a second complaining, but the truth is, we’re facing a bit of an emergency here: the woodshed, which we re-stocked just a few months ago, is almost bare. Sure we have space heaters and even a few baseboards but, when the thermometer dips below zero and the Arctic Outflow is pulling trees…
“Henry Rackmeyer, you tell us what is important.” “A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon, a note of music, and the way the back of a baby’s neck smells if its mother keeps it tidy,” answered Henry. “Correct,” said Stuart. -Stuart Little, by E.B. White In the off chance you have…
“Come on, get your rain pants on, we’re going to go see the Prime Minister!” It was a rainy Thursday and the kids had barely had a moment to wind down after school and daycare, but we had a ferry to catch and a protest to attend. “I hate rain pants!” Declared my six-year old.…
If there was any excitement at the birth of a new calf to the dwindling population of Southern Resident Orcas on July 24th, it was short-lived. The baby died just half an hour after birth, and its mother, known as Tahlequah, made sure the world knew it.If somehow you missed it, Tahlequah carried that baby…
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada wants Canadians to educate themselves on “residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada.” My friend Pauline Le Bel has started the Knowing Our Place Book Club to that end. She explained her choice of name to the group who met at our local…
