Church of the Ascension looks for new ways to go green — both inside and outside

BY LEIGH ANNE WILLIAMS

Parishioners at Ottawa’s Church of the Ascension have longstanding interests in environmental stewardship and creation care. In 2012, three years before Synod called for decarbonization of all of the buildings in the diocese, Ascension did a green audit of their property through Faith and the Common Good’s Greening Sacred Spaces program. In 2022, as a part of their Shape of Parish Ministry discussions, they took stock of their progress and looked ahead.

According to a recent Vestry report, Ascension’s goals are “to be as close to ‘net zero’ carbon emissions as we can reasonably be; to be a leader in the community in the greening of buildings; and to live up to our baptismal covenant to “strive to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation, and respect, sustain and renew the life of the Earth.”

Deputy Warden Dave Longworth told Crosstalk that the audit done in 2012 “was very extensive, or at least it covered all the areas that one needs to look at,” and was still useful as they renewed their efforts. “Basically, we went through our records of what had been done and people’s recollections of what had been done.” All the windows on the lower level were replaced with energy efficient ones, as well as half of the large windows on the upper level. Much of the lighting was upgraded.

“Some of the things that have not been done are for good reasons, they’re not practical to do,” said Longworth. “But we identified a number of ones that we want to

Splendour in the grass

Early in 2023, an exhibit of work from artist Barbara Brown, who is a member of the Christ Church Cathedral parish, was featured at the Ottawa School of Art Gallery. Terroir: belonging to place included a series of photographs titled “Portrait of Rochester Field.” She has kindly given Crosstalk permission to publish this image from the portrait and excerpts from her statement about it.

Portrait of Rochester Field is a project that tracks the emergence, flourishing and final destruction of a local “empty green space” just before the arrival of heavy construction equipment to build the new light rail transit line in the west-end of Ottawa. It is a record of what is now likely lost forever. …

Early morning before the business of the day, Brown visited the field and discovered the majesty of an ordinary place. Rochester Field; a nondescript open field, a place under pressure of development, located in the city where green space is seen by some as a development opportunity. She offers this artwork as a way of saying, this is what we lose when the bulldozers arrive. … look at in the future and in particular in the short term.”

While collecting the individual plants found in the field, Brown started to notice the diversity and quiet magnificence of each plant. Broadleaf Plantain crowds the edges of the path in thick clusters, tall grasses with their pollen hang down and Curly Dock stridently pokes through the thick grasses….

The images in this series function as memories of a particular time and place and are named by the date they were collected and the image created. They are a record of the discovery of the ceaseless progress of the seasons. The vantage point of these pictures is unusually low — it does not tower above as is our habitual point of view. Rather this vantage point features weeds as if they were a forest, giving humans a better viewpoint to see the complexity and splendour of this place. This is the viewpoint of one who has bent a knee and offers an outstretched hand seeking to know this place, not one who claims dominion over it.

They applied for and just received a $500 grant through the Ottawa Faith Community Capacity Building Program (which is co-sponsored by Greening Sacred Spaces) to help replace the existing electric hot water heater with something that has a much smaller tank, and they are planning to place that tank closer to the points of use, “so we’ll be reducing both our water usage and our use of electricity in heating the water,” Longworth said. They are also planning some small projects to seal the building envelope, including insulating the front door.

“We had a meeting in the spring as we were putting together ideas for environmental stewardship and a lot of things came up that we need to look at for the longer run. Some of it is just blue-skying things we need to look at,” he said.

“Given the fact that a lot of our roof faces south, is there room for solar panels? And is that a wise thing to do? …It’s still way off before we would even start those studies, but we have kind of written down a list of all the ideas … and as time and money become available, then we’ll be looking at pursuing further studies of that.”

Greening Sacred Spaces is Faith and the Common Good’s longest running program. It now offers both walk-through green audits and virtual green audits that include a do-ityourself walkthrough audit that can be downloaded for free and the opportunity to do a video conference with a consultant.

For more information: https:// www.faithcommongood.org/audits