New Community Mural on Fifth Street
Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition is proud to unveil a brand new community mural at their new office on Hillside Avenue and Fifth Street! Painting the mural was a community collaboration, with mural artist Kay Gallivan timing the painting of the mural to coincide... Read more
Stop Using Taxpayers’ Money to Fund Pollution
In May, The World Health Organization released its “Manifesto for a healthy and green COVID-19 recovery.” It is in many ways an astonishing document, because it speaks briefly and plainly to the many global problems we face and how we need to respond.
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World Premiere of Awaken
Although we took a hiatus from our webinar series this summer, we didn’t take a break from standing up for our precious trees and forests. In addition to calling on our government for a New Forest Framework and reminding local governments of the importance of... Read more
Humans Are Deeply Connected With Each Other, and Other Life Forms
Following my reflections last week on Jeremy Lent’s ideas about connections, I found myself musing about beginnings and endings – my own, life on Earth and the universe – and the connections they imply. I thought about and partly wrote this column while sitting under the great trees in Heritage Grove in Francis-King Park, feeling both connected to and in awe of nature.
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Parking in Your Town: On Street Management
Learn about how your place works to keep taxes high and takes opportunities away from property owners across the Greater Victoria area. This is the first of four articles on the seemingly bland subject of parking. And yet, parking policy matters to preventing urban sprawl, and making driving not the convention.
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Making Connections, Finding Balance
In his 2017 book The Patterning Instinct, Jeremy Lent suggests there are three forms of disconnection that lie at the heart of the global challenges we are creating and that are “inexorably leading human civilization to potential disaster.”
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Grassroots Action to Save BC Forests From Extinction
Join communities across BC as we march for the forests on Friday, September 18, 2020. Its time to build a new forest framework that respects nature and gives power back to communities. There is no time to waste and the BC government must be pressed into taking... Read more
Road Crews on Edinburgh Mountain Snarled in Old-Growth Forest Pop-up Blockade
With two camp strongholds maintained into the third week of direct action blockades preventing road incursions into the headwaters of the the unlogged Fairy Creek, the frontline battle to protect what remains of the internationally-significant old-growth temperate... Read more
Bike to Work Week is now Go By Bike Week!
Greater Victoria’s Bike to Work Week is returning September 28th-October 4th, 2020 with a new name “Go By Bike Week” and a brand new website! The new name, Go By Bike Week, is intended to add a new level of inclusivity to Greater Victoria’s largest, free,... Read more
Solutions Guide
For every problem there is a solution. That is why, instead of focusing on the bad news that seems to be everywhere, we have taken a positive approach to showcase what is possible. Welcome to the premiere edition of Solutions where you can quickly and easily find ... Read more
Conversations about values for a One Planet Region
Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in the 1980s, famously remarked “all politics is local.” Significant change rarely starts at the top and moves down, mainly because the powerful do very well out of the current situation and seldom have any incentive to change it.
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30+ ways you can stand up for old-growth forests today!
There are so many unique and nourishing ways you can use your personal gifts to stand up for forests. Over the next few crucial weeks, it’s going to take as many of us as possible to shine a light on the danger these ancient trees are in.
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Wildflowers of Yellow Point
A wildflower may be defined as a flower that grows in the wild, not intentionally planted by humans. Included on this page are native, introduced and invasive species of wildflowers that are found throughout the Yellow Point area. Please note that this is an ongoing... Read more
Governments ignore urgent issues – Shouldn’t we be talking about this?
hile there is some evidence that we are slowly coming to grips with the reality of climate change, there are large and powerful pockets of resistance everywhere. Largely that resistance is rooted in and propagated by the fossil fuel industry and its ancillary industries, such as the automobile industry.
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A New Ecological Civilization: How Do We Get There?
Some of the key proposals are focused on significant reforms to the present financial system. B.C. should establish a Green Investment Bank of B.C. that would “be used to finance recovery investments that support B.C.’s climate action targets and other goals”.
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The Trees of Yellow Point
Yellow Point/Cedar area on Vancouver Island is a beautiful and diverse area within the Coastal Douglas‐Fir (CDF) ecosystem. It lies between Nanaimo and Ladysmith, with Highway 1 forming a logical boundary to the west and the coast to the east.. Click here to visit... Read more
A Call for Streamkeeper Volunteers Bringing Salmon Back to Bowker Creek
Bowker Creek Chum Salmon Recovery begins our Streamkeepers survey of habitat and water quality in August. Please come out and join us. We are forming as a new streamkeeper group with one clear focus – restore a population of salmon in Bowker Creek. Bowker Creek... Read more
Stories and Music Combine to Bring Climate Solutions to Forefront
Gail O’Riordan, Jon’s long-time wife and life partner, passed away in 2018, and the Climate and the Arts Legacy Series was established to honour her memory. “Gail was passionate about the arts and felt that combining climate stories about how humanity can change course with music and the performing arts would enrich the discussion and motivate people to act differently,”
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Guy Dauncey and the Economics of Kindness
et me turn to Guy Dauncey for an alternative that is neither communism nor medieval. Dauncey has been an interesting, thoughtful and — in the best sense — provocative thinker, writer and activist on ecological and social issues in this region for years.
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Building a Stronger, One Planet Regional Economy
Last week, I stressed the importance of a stronger regional economy as a means of increasing local self-reliance, given that we live on an Island and that the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the vulnerability that comes from being very reliant on others — be they food or energy producers or tourists.
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Esquimalt’s Climate Emergency Response Plan Survey
The world’s scientists confirmed in the 2018 IPCC report that at the current rate, the world could become 1.5˚C hotter as soon as 2030. That’s less than a decade from now and well within the lifespan of most people alive today. 1.5˚C might not sound like a big... Read more
We Need to Build Our Island Self-Reliance
Last week I discussed Prof. Rick Kool’s point that we live on an island — but we don’t act as if we do. Almost all our food, all of our fossil fuels, much of our electricity and much else is imported. The implication is that we should think about how to be more self-reliant.
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Let’s Govern as if We Live On an Island
One of the many things the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed is the extent to which we have become dependent on all sorts of products — from face masks to food — that come from away, as Newfoundlanders would put it.
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The World in 2040 – A Film
The 2040 documentary film was produced by Australian Damon Gameau as a letter to his 4-year-old daughter in 2019 to imagine what the world could look like in 2040 if current innovative technologies in energy, agriculture, transportation and urban planning were fully... Read more
Neoliberalism is a Major Threat to Well-Being
One of the beneficial side-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it might spur us to rethink the fundamental systems that constitute our society, and the deep values that underpin them. One of those systems is neoliberal economics, which has become the predominant,... Read moreThe Doughnut and the New Forest Framework: The Wildwood Model
Wildwood is a 77-acre forest nestled on the shores of Quennell Lake in the Ladysmith area of Vancouver Island. The Ecoforestry Institute Society (EIS) is a registered charitable society and the owners and trustees of…
Read moreClimate Change & Canada’s Water Future – Part 2
Find out why science is more important now than ever and water is the nexus of climate with two of the world’s leading scientists, Dr. John Pomeroy and Dr. Trevor Davies. Joining them is award-winning author, Bob Sandford…
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Who Are We? Where are we Going? Some Reflections in this COVID-19 Time
Who are we? And where are we going on this tiny planet of ours, this bright sparkle of life in a Universe so ridiculously vast? It’s a question worth exploring, if you have five minutes in your busy COVID day. Almost all scientists assume that the Universe is a... Read more
Highlands community association seeks to quash Province’s decision to approve strip mine
The Highlands District Community Association (HDCA) has filed an application to the BC Supreme Court for a judicial review of the Province’s recent approval of a new rock quarry near the southern Millstream Road entrance to the Highlands municipality. The court... Read more
Just Which Predator Needs to be Controlled?
An opinion piece in this newspaper on June 4 from the B.C. Chamber of Commerce and the Thriving Orcas, Thriving Communities Coalition (composed of a number of coastal communities’ chambers of commerce) warned that coastal communities are on the brink of extinction because they rely on recreational fishing, which is in jeopardy.
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Rebuilding BC: A Portfolio of Possibilities
In early May I was approached by the Green Technology Education Centre, based in Vancouver, and invited to join its Council for the New Green Economy, to help design a positive green recovery for BC. This we have done. The result was published last week as Rebuilding... Read more
If not for Life, what for?
More than ever, vision is needed if we want to change the course of things. We need vision, but also dedication. We need to be whole-hearted visionaries with warriors’ dedication. We need each other to stay on path, to bring into fruition our bold visions.
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Join us in our Facebook Group: KickAss Gardeners & Their Gardens
Do you LOVE gardening? Are you interested in food security, permaculture or just want to grow the best veggies you can? One way to do that is to join us in our Facebook group and add your voice to the conversations and discussions.
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A Cell Tower Removed in Victoria
1) A cell tower has been removed in Victoria. It was located on Jehovah’s Witness property (2506 Selwyn Rd) , close to Hwy 1 at exit 14. In the early 2000s when the contract was signed the congregation was not aware of the potential for it to cause harm, but... Read more
Eradicating Racism
Greetings to all in these sobering times of conflict and chaos. Decades ago in my youth group days, I was in a group that met with a First Nations Chief to talk about racism. He asked each of us to tell him if we were racist and we all answered with a phrase like “I’m... Read more
Grants Could Woo an Outdoor Audience
During COVID, when gatherings must include fewer than 50 people, government-funding for theatre groups that cater to small audiences in outdoor venues would be a job-creator. Comic play “The Fridge Festival” (see photo) was done outdoors in Fairfield.
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Help Populate the Food Atlas
The Food Atlas is a community-driven tool for empowering communities to develop and plan around food security resources. The Community Food Atlas is designed to be a self-sustaining tool and is managed by the Island Food Security Hubs in partnership with Vancouver... Read more
How to Flatten the Other Curves
As with COVID-19, this demand far exceeds the system’s capacity — only this time, we are talking about the Earth’s biocapacity. So far, we have only seen the ascending part of this chart. But as with any species that exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological niche, at some point the curve reaches a peak and starts to decline; we might call it “The Great Deccelaration.”
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Growing in the City Program
If you are looking for local resources to start growing your own food, then this City-led program may be for you!! This free food seedlings distribution program created by the City of Victoria in partnership with community and non-profit organizations supports... Read more
Making a Just Transition to ‘One Planet’
Hourly paid workers — who generally have low pay, few benefits and not much job security — are now almost two-thirds of the workforce. But while low-wage employment is down 30 per cent compared to a year ago, she adds, it is only down 1.3 per cent among high wage earners.
Read moreGreat Bear Rainforest – A Case for Managing Ecosystem Values in British Columbia
Ian McAllister is the author of a multitude of books, has been honored by the Globe and Mail as one of 133 highly accomplished Canadians, He and his wife, Karen McAllister, were named by TIME as “Leaders of the 21st Century” for their efforts to protect…
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The Ethics of Listening to Music–Especially Vinyl–In the Age of COVID-19
As much as we all have an obligation (I believe) to be responsible environmentally, there is no need to make music the whipping boy for environmental degradation and economic exploitation.
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Telus’s “Pure Fiber” vs. a True Fiber Optic Network
Over 4000 people have signed the Appeal. In case you haven’t or haven’t shared, please do: https://www.appel5gappeal.ca/ 1) As we know, Telus has been pushing its “fiber optic cable” very aggressively, even threatening people with loss of... Read more
A Regional Agenda for Social and Ecological Justice
Congratulations to the City of Victoria for endorsing the May 2020 Common Vision, Common Action Regional Policy Statement for implementing a regional agenda for social and ecological justice. (see: http://commonaction.mystrikingly.com/ ) The Creatively United for the... Read more
Ecoforestry: Nurturing Nature’s Ecosystems – A Call For a New Forest Framework in British Columbia
Learn from two of Vancouver Island’s leading foresters about the fascinating history of eco-forestry, its role in nurturing nature’s ecosystems and how we can protect and restore our forests as part of the climate change solution.
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Central Saanich Community Gardens
Are you living in Central Saanich? Check out the brand new Central Saanich Community Gardens Society. They are look forward to cultivating delightful yet purposeful community garden(s) in Central Saanich. They are currently looking for board members and land! Click... Read more
Get Growing, Victoria!
Get, growing Victoria! – This new initiative is operated by the City of Victoria’s Growing in the City program and aims to grow and distribute vegetable and herb seedlings via non-profit organizations to home gardeners, with a focus on supporting communities... Read more
The Greatest Health Scandal of Our Time!
Parents for Safe Schools is an organization of parents, teachers and students that would like to support your decision to bring this extremely important issue to the attention of Parliament, again. Our elected Government Officials and Provincial Health Officer have... Read more