The Green Gazette - September/October 2019 by TheGreenGazette

September/October 2019

World Rivers Day Good Earth Green New Deal Children's Vote? Single-Use Plastics Ban Artifishal Bear Trade Littering Ain't Cool Puddle Poetry Long Table Roots Watershed Stewards Connecting with Spirit Climate Grief Death Festival 4G / 5G Warning Forest Liquidation Big Bar Slide Plastic-free Preserving www.thegreengazette.ca

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Contents Features

24 31

Protecting Wild Salmon

September/October 2019 l Issue #53

By Melissa Chaun

Active Hope Through Climate Grief By Erin Hitchcock

Paddling for Empowerment

By Ella Parker and Riley Brennan

Hey Pal, Littering ain't Cool

By Oliver Berger

The Green New Deal By Jessica Kirby

World Rivers Day By Jessica Kirby

Unbearable: The Illegal Trade in Asian Bear Species By Chris R. Shepherd and Lalita Gomez

Publisher / Lisa Bland Editor-in-Chief Senior Editor Jessica Kirby Contributors Erin Hitchcock, LeRae Haynes, Jessica

Kirby, Terri Smith, Lisa Bland, Chris R. Shepherd, Oliver Berger, Guy Dauncey, Ryan Elizabeth Cope, Venta Rutkauskas, David Suzuki, Bill Irwin, Melissa Chaun, Ella Parker, Riley Brennan, Amy Quarry, Jim Cooperman, Nicola Finch, Jim Hilton, Amber Gregg, Lalita Gomez, Fin Donnelly Barbara Schellenberg

Advertising Lisa Bland Creative Directors Lisa Bland / Stacey Smith Ad Design Jill Schick / Stacey Smith Published by Earthwild Consulting Printing International Web exPress Inc.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: 4. Publisher's Letter: Falling for the Earth 5. Fall Book Releases 7. Towards an Unruly Imagination: Introducing Puddle Poetry in Schools 8. Mason Jars and the Art of Plastic-free Food Preservation 10. Green Business Williams Lake: Mint & Lime Catering Company 12. Green Business Williams Lake: The Heeler 16. Long Table Grocery: Exploring Our Roots 17. Turkey Pumpkin Chili From the Long Table Grocery Kitchen 18. Local Nordic Club in 100 Mile House Invests in Green Infrastructure 19. Single-use Plastics Bans to Take Time 20. Forest Tenure Changes Occurring Across the World 22. The Swan Song Festival: Breathing Life into Death 23. Guardian of the Vegetables: The Good Earth 26. Hazardous Waste: 5 Tips to Recycling the Right Way 28. Connecting with Spirit: Stacey Hanrahan 30. Fraser River Salmon in Trouble: Big Bar Landslide 32. Conservation Conversation: Going Green as a Family 34. Science Matters: Let the Children Vote? 37. Help Cariboo Communities: Become a Healthy Habitat Leader with the Invasive Species Council BC 38. The Climate Emergency: How Can We Respond? 40. Skywatch with Bill Irwin 41. Low-carbon Electrification in BC: Next Steps for BC Hydro 42. UN Urged to Protect Nature and Humankind from Electromagnetic Fields 43. The Final Liquidation: A BC Forest Emergency 44. Nourishing Our Children: Rethinking Condiments

Website Design / Rebecca Patenaude Technical Support Cover Photo Ripples in sand and sky - Chilcotin River,

Farwell Canyon. Photo: Pat Teti

Paper: Rolland Enviro Satin, 100% Post

Consumer Waste, Acid Free.

Ink: Novavit 950 Plus Bio is a vegetable

based ink made from renewable raw materials with high colour.

www.thegreengazette.ca info@thegreengazette.ca The Green Gazette is published by Earthwild Consulting. To subscribe email info@thegreengazette.ca or visit our website at www.thegreengazette.ca © 2019 all rights reserved. Opinions and perspectives expressed in the magazine are those of authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the ownership or management. Reproduction in whole or part without the publisher’s consent is strictly prohibited.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 3

—

PUBLISHER'S LETTER —

Falling for the Earth By Lisa Bland

Dear Readers,

ow that fall is here, the desire to hold onto summer has slowly transformed into an appreciation for what the season brings. The wet Cariboo summer and fleeting hot, sunny days, although unusual, brought lush growth to the Earth and were a blessing in contrast to the uncertainty and worry of living through another catastrophic fire season. At this time of year, gardens are harvested, flowers have gone to seed, and the beautiful golden aspen and cottonwoods of the countryside light our way for a little while. In fall, when the distraction and perfusion of life quiets down, everything seems to naturally downshift. The origin and etymology of the word “fall” comes from the Old English “to drop from a height; fail, decay, die,” from Proto-Germanic fallanan and the root, pol- “to fall” (also of Armenian p'ul “downfall,” Old Prussian aupallai “finds,” “falls upon”). It’s meaning “come suddenly to the ground” is from late Old English. Of darkness, night, from c. 1600; of empires, governments, etc., from c. 1200. Meaning “die in battle” is from the 1570s. In this light, not only externally, but within the self in moving with the season, fall may be a sobering time of letting go of what we reached for in summer as we transition closer

LISA BLAND Publisher/Editor-in-Chief The Green Gazette

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to the long, cold winter. Letting go of excess possibilities, understanding what yielded fruit, and taking the harvest in for safekeeping— whether ideas or tangible resources, is all part of this season. Tuning in to what the Earth naturally dictates can put things into perspective at a time when world chaos is a constant hum in the background. Externally, it feels like this is a time of battle for our living planet. Though we were mostly spared the intensity of local impacts this summer, the warming climate is here to stay. As the collective climate emergency heightens, world leaders such as Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, add fuel to the burning fires in the Amazon rainforest or are poised to rescind environmental protections for air, water, and species such as in the US by the Trump administration. Other leaders are pushing the Green New Deal along with a groundswell of activists, many of them the world’s youth, fighting for their future. There’s little doubt now the accelerated warming is human caused, and in this time of reckoning, political systems reflect the fears and hopes on both sides of the spectrum and stand to impact our collective future. In our personal, social, and political choices, hanging on to the status quo or our comfort zones prevents us from seeing what is necessary to change. Laws recognizing and protecting earth, air, water, and other species seems the

only way to de-accelerate many catastrophic changes, yet the corporate and government structures in power can easily flip the coin and at our base we’re all entwined with mass consumption and extraction of the Earth’s resources. When it all seems too much to grasp, the Earth and children’s voices lead us back to the ground and the basics. The story in our bodies has been part of the Earth’s long history before we came to dominate and advance our interests over life-forms and ecosystems. The plants that surround us offer medicine and nourishment. We share over 90 per cent of our DNA with other animal species, and they show us an uncomplicated relationship with the natural world. Children and our animal companions bring us back into moment-to-moment gratitude and joy. The youth remind us what we live and fight for—a loving world. They see truth clearly and the compromises we’ve made along the way. Maybe it’s time to dismantle what we have and come quickly to the grounded realization that past models aren’t working and it’s time for them to die. This fall, may you come back to the ground of your life’s harvest, savour the ways your life is rich without overconsumption, and stand behind the children and other species in their fight for a future when you head to the polls to cast your vote this October. -GG

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Fall Book Releases by

Harbour Publishing and Rocky Mountain Books Highballer: True Tales from a Treeplanting Life By Greg Nolan Published by Harbour Publishing

In 1983 when he was 19, Greg Nolan was hired by a tree-planting contractor in Northern British Columbia. His crewmates didn’t know what to think of the wideeyed kid whose mom drove him the 750 kilometres to hook upwith his first job. But within a week, Nolan was hitting the thousand-treesa-day mark. By the end of his first rookie season, he gained the status of top producer among a crew of extraordinary young men and women. But surviving in some of the more remote, isolated, and technically challenging regions in Western Canada proved trickier, often requiring resourcefulness and luck. Nolan all but lost his mind supervising his first project deep in the wilds of Northern Alberta. He was nearly mauled by grizzlies while tenting out in the wilds of Bute Inlet. Nolan survived hurricanes, landslides, hostile loggers, whirlwind romances, and life-threatening situations of nearly every conceivable kind. Despite many escapes, Nolan was not immune to tragedy and he grappled with guilt over his own indirect role in a multiple-fatality vehicle accident, throwing him into a deep depression. Only by returning to the challenge of planting trees in remote wilderness settings did he manage to find peace. Highballer is an exuberant record of a time in the silviculture arena when the industry was largely unregulated, and the wilderness was still wild. Nolan planted more than 2.5 million trees in some of the most challenging regions of BC and Alberta. With forests comprising 40% of Canada’s landscape, the forestry sector is a major contributor to our national economy, contributing roughly $24.6 billion. Nolan draws from his 27 years of industry experience as a tree planter, foreman, project manager, and company operator to speak to the realities and challenges of tree planting at every level. -GG Greg Nolan previously served as co-owner and operator of Rainforest Silviculture Services Ltd. He resides in Victoria, BC.

The Anthropocene Disruption

By Robert William Sandford Published by Rocky Mountain Books Rocky Mountain Books is pleased to announce the upcoming publication of The Anthropocene Disruption, by Robert William Sandford, available October 2019. This latest RMB manifesto is an important and timely book that addresses some of the most challenging questions of our time as humanity continues to march past the dawn of a new, humaninfluenced epoch. In what is now being heralded as the Second Copernican Revolution, Earth scientists have discovered that our self-regulating planetary life support system is a single, dynamic integrated system, and not a collection of ecosystems as we once thought. The view that the planet needs to be understood as a unified, complex, evolving system that is more than the sum of its parts has led to three linked breakthrough concepts in Earth system science: • The Anthropocene, which suggests we have entered a new geological epoch defined by human influence on Earth system function. • The Great Acceleration, the extraordinary increase in human impacts on Earth system function since the end of the Second World War. • Planetary Boundaries, limits within which we need to stay if we are to create a safe and viable planet for humanity to survive. -GG

Robert William Sandford is the EPCOR Chair for Water and Climate Security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health. He is the co-author of the UN Water in the World We Want report on post-2015 global sustainable development goals relating to water. He is also the author of some 30 books on the history, heritage, and landscape of the Canadian Rockies and co-author of The Columbia River Treaty: A Primer, The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity in a Changing World, and The Hard Work of Hope: Climate Change in the Age of Trump. Robert lives in Canmore, Alberta.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 5

Protecting Wild Salmon:

What If The Stories We’ve Been Telling Have Been Wrong? Article by Melissa Chaun

n the newly released Patagonia documentary Artifishal an Indigenous fisher is quoted saying, “Many of today’s problems are a result of the stories we were told or told ourselves that were wrong.” We’ve been told that hydroelectric power is clean, even ‘green,’ and that damming wild rivers – wild salmon rivers – can be compensated by fish ladders, transporting returning salmon around dams, and by hardworking fish hatcheries. Artifishal is Patagonia’s most recent eyeopening documentary. The iconic outdoor clothing and equipment manufacturer began making documentaries in 2014 with Dam Nation, a film that explores the impacts of hydroelectric dams. Artifishal looks at the other three Hs that impact wild salmon: habitat, harvest, and hatcheries. The film explores the staggering financial, cultural, and ecological cost of our blind belief that humanconstructed solutions can make up for habitat destruction. Artifishal traces the impact of our fish factories – public hatcheries and private fish farms – and their ongoing high cost to the taxpayer and the environment. For Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia founder and the film’s executive producer, Artifishal highlights a classic human folly. “Humans have always thought themselves superior to nature and it’s gotten us into a lot of trouble,” he says. In recent years, thanks to Dr. Alexandra Morton and Dr. Kristi Miller, the public has become aware of both the ecological and human health impacts caused by the predominantly foreign-owned Atlantic salmon fish-farming industry. It has been far less popular to talk about fish hatcheries because they have become the fabric of so many communities wanting to give back to the environment, and because government agencies have evolved to unquestioningly spend millions of dollars supporting these artificial breeding programs in the name of salmon conservation. There has been a growing body of literature, however, that not only indicates that rearing fish in hatcheries (high densities in flowthrough tanks) does not create the same fish as

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those bred in streams but that hatchery-born fish are interfering with the survival of wild salmon. Salmon are highly complex creatures that have evolved over thousands of years, and many river-specific runs migrate not just hundreds but as much as a thousand miles upstream. Research reveals that returning salmon record all sorts of information in their genes, reflective of their specific journeys, literally equipping them to navigate a constantly changing environment. As far back as 2001, the Norwegian Journal of Freshwater Research was already sounding the alarm. Sigurd Einum and Ian Fleming reported that hatchery rearing of salmonids resulted in increased pre-adult aggression, decreased response to predators and decreased survival. A decade later, the Skagit River System Cooperative published a 2013 study that found hatchery smolt releases had a highly significant negative effect on native Skagit steelhead returns. Researchers discovered an inverse relationship between hatchery smolt releases and wild steelhead returns over the past 30 years. They conclude this trend is potentially due to negative biological interactions between hatchery and wild steelhead including increased juvenile competition, increased susceptibility to predators such as bull trout, lost spawning effort when wild fish spawn with hatchery fish, and reduced fitness when wild fish hybridize with hatchery fish that have significantly reduced marine survival rates. By artificially breeding every fish that returns to a specific area, are we not ‘dumbing-down’ the gene pool, reversing natural selection to the point of devolving these highly complex and resilient fish? After Mount St. Helens (known as Lawetlat'la to the indigenous Cowlitz people, and Loowit or Louwala-Clough to the Klickitat) erupted in 1980, wild steelhead runs not only returned to the drastically changed Toutle River but returned in even greater numbers than previously recorded.

The film also unveils the huge financial costs that have been invested in the hatchery industry. Although Washington State spent $320 million decommissioning the Elwha River Dam, they then turned around and spent $17 million on a new hatchery, negating the whole purpose of decommissioning in the first place. Moreover, Artifishal reports that the average hatchery fish size has dwindled from 22 lb to 10-12 lb, and if that wasn’t sufficiently alarming, Oregon’s Bonneville Power Administration painstakingly calculated that it spends $68,000 per hatchery steelhead. If the stories we’ve been told or we’ve told ourselves have been wrong, what should we do? 1. Practice curiosity. Asking wise questions, combined with humility that recognizes we will only ever know and understand in part the vast, wildly unpredictable, and highly complex natural world, brings us closer to more effective responses. 2. Conserve and preserve before resorting to restoration. An ounce of preservation is worth a pound of restoration. We must prioritize preserving and conserving intact ecosystems ahead of mitigating our actions afterwards. Failing that, work with nature to increase the health and resilience of our remaining natural areas.

With storytelling comes responsibility.-GG Melissa Chaun of Port Moody is an ecologist with a passion for all things sustainable. She is events co-ordinator with the Rivershed Society of BC and volunteers on various city committees. This article was originally published in Melissa Chaun’s July 15, 2019 column in Tri City News, “Living Green: How do we protect B.C.’s wild salmon?" (www.tricitynews.com/lifestyles/ living-green-how-do-we-protect-b-c-s-wildsalmon-1.23886161).

Towards an Unruly Imagination — Introducing Puddle Poetry in Schools

Sonya Littlejohn and Dana I.D. Matthews bring persuasive talent and discerning experience to their roles as educators. Puddle Poetry in the Schools pilot project begins this fall. Photo: Venta Rutkauskas

Article by Venta Rutkauskas

n arts education pathway ready to roll out in local classrooms this fall affirms the art and craft of poetry. Puddle Poetry in the Schools was developed by poets Sonya Littlejohn, Dana I.D. Matthews, and myself, and is a Community Arts Council of Williams Lake project supported by the City of Williams Lake and the Cariboo Regional District via the Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Society. The pilot project sees the artist educators spend three or four sessions with each class, guiding participants to write and perform their own poetic works. Ahh, poetry, that shunned literary form, discarded after our early love affair with nursery rhyme, detested after the churningstomach high school module and terrifying mandatory recitation. In the wrong hands, even exquisite works of art can be distorted. Poetry lives, though, and will as long as words and humans do. It’s an ancient language of rhythm and beat; it is song and verse and bows to the heart of beauty. Beauty, underneath it all… It’s what I’m fighting for when pen hits the page, when my mind, body, and soul merge to lure out the symbol like a snake charmed from its basket. Committed to sharing their craft with students, Sonya and Dana have worked with Vancouver Poetry House’s educational branch, WordPlay, for years. When asked about her relationship to writing and teaching poetry, Sonya, herself a powerful word-smith, wrote: Poetry allows the reader and the writer in their craft to explore the depth of everyday experiences and emotions— expand upon their meaning... discover what lessons and ideas have shaped their lives.

The poetic process is filled with teachable moments that relate to every aspect of

our lives. To some, like Plato for example, the process breeds irrationality, the work untrustworthy. Poetry and poets would be expelled from a Republic of logical idealism, too fuelled by emotion and orally expressive. Poets’ imitation and reliance on metaphor eject them from the virtuous circles. In reality, shackled writers sit trapped in prisons around the globe, silenced by the powers that be. The silence is like a squall, though, rattling the cages of our existence, howling that writers are dangerous—especially poets. Plato likely missed the healing grace that radiates from the poetic process. Both the writer and the reader can discover what psychologist and philosopher Eugene Gendlin coined ‘the felt sense’, a somatic experience that aligns imagery and language with the body’s awareness. Practitioners of Gendlin’s Focusing technique explain (via the focusing. org website) that this method of tuning into and ‘naming’ the felt sense in the body offers “confirmatory knowing” and “draws preverbal knowledge into conscious awareness”. Poetry does this for me, both the reading and especially the writing. If I could show you the palpable click I sense when the chosen word emerges from the ethers of imagination, it would express a river of sunlight piercing the clouds. Resonating with another person’s metaphor is the same, breath and body quicken, a depth of knowing flies home to roost. Though some naturally favour poetry, I daresay there is value in teaching it to everyone. In recent writing classes I attended with Canadian poet George Elliott Clarke (see georgeelliottclarke.net), the importance of exposing truth, beliefs, and our understanding of the world through our writing undulated through every lecture and assigned exercise. I will leave you with his words to me, as a sparkto-light manifesto for our work as Puddle Poetry in the Schools:

Poetry matters because it's both the simplest and cheapest art: All you need is a mind that can work with language plus the "apps" of lungs, lips, tongue, teeth, guts, vocal cords, pulse/rhythm/heartbeat, breath, and then the extras of pen, paper, and/or electronic keyboard. So, poetry is the most accessible art; you can be penniless and still howl a poem or two. But poetry is also the most profound art because it's interested in the emotional side of words--not just the dictionary meaning, but the emotional resonance. In a good poem, "love" is no ordinary word, but stones bursting into flower or hair that melts into honey or molasses. And poetry is especially important for youth because youth want/need dreams to be real, to become flesh, and that's the mission of poetry: To articulate the living beauty possible in every thing, the utopia that lurks – hidden – in every nation, every culture, every household, every room, that only poets can discover and describe. Poetry makes IT beautiful – whatever IT is because Poetry is Freedom – undiluted.

-GG

Venta Rutkauskas is the co-ordinator for the Community Arts Council of Williams Lake (CACWL). She is an advocate and lover of the arts and has taught drama and written plays for young children. She is also passionate about the healing arts. Visit www.williamslakecommunityartscouncil. com to learn more about CACWL and local artists.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 7

Mason Jars and the Art of Plastic-free Food Preservation Article By Ryan Elizabeth Cope

ummer tomatoes, fresh off the vine. Green beans, purple beans, and yellow beans, dangling among their tangled vines on the stalk. Cucumbers, hidden on the ground between their fuzzy, windy stems. These are just a few of late-summer’s magical garden offerings, the abundance that is our reward for patiently waiting through summer, winter, and spring as the plants take root and develop their fruit. With all this abundance comes a certain amount of responsibility, as well. We’ve brought this produce into the world and we’d better have a way of preserving it, or else all of our efforts have gone to waste. This is sometimes our downfall: just like with anything in life, without proper preparation we’re left to make last-minute decisions that aren’t always the best for ourselves, our food, or our planet. Our food spoils without quick action and this is such a tragedy. All that work for naught! This year take a page out of John Landis Mason’s book and get yourself set up with some jars, a hot-water bath, and some empty shelves in your cupboard. Why jars? Put simply, they are safe, they are effective, they are plastic-free, and they stand the test of time. Jars are the most useful tool for storing just about everything that comes out of a garden. John Landis Mason is considered by historians to be one of the founding fathers of food preservation. It makes sense, since the “mason jar”, as we’ve come to know it, was named after him. He invented and patented a metal lid that could be used to can food in jars in 1858 but by no means was he the first to figure out that adding heat and pressure to a jar of food would render it edible for months after it was harvested. This feat can be attributed to Napoleon, of all people. In 1795, he put out a call for someone to come up with a method to preserve food and offered cash as a reward. Nicolas Appert, a French inventor at the time, answered that call and came up with what we now know as canning… in 1806! Appert’s original method involved filling glass jars with food, then sealing them with wax and boiling them in water. But thanks to Mason, we can now preserve food in glass jars with a safer, more reliable metal lid and the

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jars full of abundance gives us peace. When resulting canned foods can grace our pantry those jars are full of gathered food, we’re filled shelves for months beyond harvest. with a sense of accomplishment and we know Nowadays, jars are used for so much more that regardless of how our global economies than canning. We use jars for just about are faring, as long as there is a jar of summer everything food-related. Dehydrated treats tomatoes in our pantry, we will be fine. -GG like apricots or apple slices, or dried beans and pulses, fit nicely in jars of all sizes. Because Ryan Elizabeth Cope is a Kelowna, BC-based of Mason’s lid invention, we have a safe and advocate for plastic-less, healthful living. She effective way to pressure-cooking soups and blogs at Seven in the Ocean (sevenintheocean. sauces, keeping food fresh for longer. And becom) where she marries her love of food with cause of the durability of the jars, they can be her disdain for plastic-wrapped garbage. used for hot or cold foods, going from freezer to fridge to soup bowl with ease. They are beautiful, too, especially when filled with teas or herbal infusions or dried delights. At every step along the harvesting process, whether storing herbs, vegetables, or fruits, jars serve a purpose and stand the test of time. Jars are a safe and effective way to store food, sans-plastic. There are no chemicals leached out of glass, and What You Will Need: they hold up better when An abundance of tomatoes, olive oil, sea salt, exposed to intense cold baking sheets, tongs, jars with lids or high heat. Jars save on cash and carbon 1. Preheat your oven to 230 degrees C. emissions, too. Instead 2. Slice tomatoes in half lengthwise and place of driving to the store in a bowl. to purchase canned or frozen food from far-off 3. Drizzle the cut tomatoes with olive oil lands, we simply have to and a generous portion of sea salt. Toss until make a quick trip to our well-coated. pantries and freezers. 4. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer on a Anyone who has ever baking sheet, cut side facing up, and bake until had the pleasure of filling they begin to shrivel and caramelize, about 30 up a jar with homemade minutes. goodies, made pickles, 5. Remove from oven and let cool slightly until canned tomatoes, or the tomatoes can be handled. had a jamming party will agree that there is something endlessly satisfying and gratifying about being able to crack open that jar weeks or months later to find a delicious bite of something gathered or crafted by hand. Having our pantries full of

6. Using tongs, place tomatoes into jars until packed full, screw on lid, and place in freezer. 7. When winter hits, pop open a jar and revel in the fact that you are enjoying summer sunshine, preserved in the flesh of savory, colourful tomato as the blizzard rages on outside!

On the one hand this photo shows how people are destroying our beautiful world but on the other how nature is so resilient. Photo: Oliver Berger

Finding Active Hope Through Climate Grief

n late summer I can still smell the wildflowers from my open window, while bees franticly scoop up as much nectar and pollen as they can before the days get colder and winter sings them all to sleep. The life around me is beautiful. I feel so much love for this place. Yet the ecological threads unravel in the distance, and so I can’t help but feel so much pain and despair. We are running out of time to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees C to avert the most destructive impacts of climate change. I realize this will be the biggest fight we have ever known, and I don’t know how to win it. I step outside and let that pain flow over me. I clench my heart, and I apologize again and again for my betrayal to the oblivious creatures around me. I wish I didn’t trade pieces of the Earth for what I didn’t need. I wish I hadn’t wasted the planet and the days I could have spent protecting it. Many people don’t want to face what’s happening to our world, and I don’t blame them. I have been there, too. We talk about the weather but not about the climate. We talk about our kids and grand-kids, but not about the future we are leaving to them. It all starts to feel very, very lonely. But I am not alone, I know. I have been fortunate to share my frustrations, anger, sadness, and grief with others who feel the same. Connecting with people in the community has provided the empowerment, solidarity, and hope to keep going. On October 26 the Cariboo Community Deathcaring Network will hold its Swan Song

By Erin Hitchcock Festival that will include meditation and grief acknowledgement for our planet (See related article in this issue on page 22). Grieving can be healing. The truth is painful, but we need to face it in order to transform fear into resilience and activism. Author, scholar, and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy says to embrace the pain.“Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response,” she writes on her website. In Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy, written by Macy and Chris Johnstone, we are reminded to focus on something we do rather than what we have. “When our responses are guided by the intention to act for the healing of our world, the mess we’re in not only becomes easier to face, our lives also become more meaningful and satisfying,” the book says. To have active hope is not to be an escapist. Rather, it’s a mindful response to grief and anger, a realization we can choose to shape the future we want. Philosopher and author Charles Eisenstein explains that by being active you become in service to something greater than yourself.“No matter how complete the despair, no matter how bitter the cynicism, a possibility beckons of a world more beautiful and a life more magnificent than what we know today,” he writes in The Ascent of Humanity. Looking to history I am reminded of the battles won because people fought for a better world. For example, in 1897 Millicent Fawcett began fighting for the right for women to vote. She and many other suffragettes were successful because they didn’t give up.

In the 1950s and 60s, the civil rights movement worked to gain equal and legal rights for blacks. Due to Martin Luther King and the collective uprising of non-violent civil disobedience, slavery was abolished. Last year, a 15-year-old girl had enough of the silence and inaction from governments to fight climate change. Greta Thunberg stopped going to school and protested outside the Swedish parliament. She has been an inspiration to thousands, if not millions, of people. On Friday, September 20 please join Williams Lake activists in the Global Climate Strike. We will meet at the Red Shred’s parking lot on First Avenue before marching through the city demanding climate justice for everyone. Though there is still much gender, racial, social, and environmental injustice work to be done, it’s important to remind ourselves that change begins with each one of us. We must stand up for what’s right, with the knowledge in our hearts that most people want a world without suffering and without extinction. Don’t turn off the light. Turn on another and see clearly the world that you need and that needs your active optimism. -GG Erin Hitchcock is a stay-at-home mom with a journalism diploma and more than 15 years of related experience. She is part of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Pachamama Alliance and is passionate about creating a better future for the Earth. She can be contacted at CCPlanetEarth@gmail.com.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 9

Mindy Johnson and Jenn Brown at Mint and Lime Catering Company. Photo: Lisa Bland

A colourful brunch charcuterie filled with seasonal fruit and vegetables. Photo: Mindy Johnson

GREEN BUSINESS WILLIAMS LAKE —

—

Doors Open at

Mint and Lime Catering Company

here is more than green in the name at Mint and Lime Catering Company, owned and operated in Williams Lake by Jenn Brown and Mindy Johnson. Dedicated to providing healthy, natural, delicious, high-quality food in partnership with local producers, Mint and Lime is also committed to a high standard of environmental responsibility. They cater large and small groups, with a focus on allergies and gluten-free, nut-free, and dairy-free food as options, as well as ideal protein and keto diets. “We try to make sure our customers are accommodated the best we can,” says Brown. “My son is celiac, and so often when we eat somewhere there very few, if any, options for him. If a group comes to us and says they have a gluten-free member we’ll try to make the whole meal gluten-free, rather than just an individual portion, so that person can eat the entire meal.” There is an extensive conversation when customers book a catered event with Mint and Lime, ensuring that the meal meets the group’s vision and expectations and will delight the entire party. “We don’t roll with providing menus to choose from,” says Brown. “We cater to budgets and preferences. Sometimes a menu can pigeon-hole you, and your customer assumes those are their only options.” Brown asks how the group feels about certain cuisines like Mexican or soup and salad and is sure to find out about their vision of the event. “We might do ham and cheese croissants with homemade honey mustard sauce, or a rosemary flatbread with chicken and pesto, or maybe some sprouts and smoked gouda,”

10 | September/October 2019

Article by LeRae Haynes says Brown. “We try to be very creative and outside-the-box, while providing great quality.” Mint and Lime caters anytime of the day, any day of the week, and any event of any size at a business, organization, or private home. The business also does some retail sales from the shop including the Meal in a Jar program. This program started when one of Brown’s friends asked her to cook a dinner for her and her family because both kids are in hockey and she didn’t always have time to make dinner. Defaulting to drive-throughs was making her feel guilty, so she was hoping Brown could help by making something family-sized and healthy. “So, I thought about it and figured there were more people out there facing that same dilemma,” explained. Brown. “We wanted to use recycled packaging for the meals— something we could use in the oven, the microwave, and the fridge or freezer. After extensive searching, I finally said, ‘Can we just use glass jars?’” Brown started testing the idea with her kids’ school lunches. “My son doesn’t eat a lot of sandwiches because of the whole gluten-free thing, so I’d send things like butter chicken or lasagne in a jar,” says Brown. “All he had to do was heat it up. It was a big success.” Mint and Lime can do things like shepherd’s pie, pasta dishes, or chicken and rice. “Online we’ll advertise our weekly jars, as well as a range available here in the store that people can choose off the shelf,” she says. Brown and Johnson have young daughters who help out at the shop by making repurposed, re-useable shopping bags out of second-hand washed T-shirts. Even if you’re not shopping at the store, you are invited stop by and take a bag.

They plan to offer innovative classes at Mint and Lime. “We really found that when we’d invite our friends to come help with kitchen prep for larger functions, everyone always said, ‘This was so much fun, Jenn, call us anytime!’They loved the humour, the energy, the teasing, the camaraderie, and the fun in the kitchen,” says Brown, “and we want to create that in community workshops.” They would like to offer a canning workshop for beginners, for example, or a class on raw food dishes, and they will search for people in the community to teach the classes. When it comes to being green, people are beginning to see that there’s a new and different way to do things that is better for the environment, says Brown, and she and Johnson want to be a part of it. “City council has been approached to help reduce single-use plastics; we have the cloth bags and the jars, and when we cater, we don’t use plastic throw-away dishes and plates. We use real ones,” she says. Brown has always worked in the customer service industry and knows how important it is. “I always felt it’s important to make a connection with customers,” she says. “Whether I could actually help them or not, as long as they walked away with a smile, that was always important to me. Making people happy with what I do is what it’s all about.” Gift certificates are available at Mint and Lime Catering Company. Reach the company at (250) 267-8087, at 327 Oliver Street, or by following them on Facebook. -GG LeRae Haynes is a freelance writer, song writer and instigator of lots of music with people of all ages in the community. She fearlessly owns 10 ukuleles, clinging to the belief that you’re not a hoarder if you play them all.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 11

GREEN BUSINESS WILLIAMS LAKE —

—

The Heeler

Touching Lives from Sole to Soul

Article by LeRae Haynes

iffany Simard from The Heeler: Cobbler, Crystals, and Curiosities in Williams Lake brings skill, vision, passion, and a true love for people to work with her every day. The range of work she does is matched only by the range of the people’s lives she touches and the heart connections she makes. The cobbler aspect of her work involves repairing and refurbishing shoes and boots. The crystals and curiosities aspects are reflected in a unique little shop where she sells a wide range of thoughtfully researched products promoting healing, beauty, and happiness. Simard has been repairing and refurbishing shoes and boots on and off since 1989 when she was a waitress at the golf course and looking for a change. “I needed a job, and the owner of Bob’s Shoes and Repairs was looking for someone to cover a maternity leave,” she says. “Don Miller taught me how to fix shoes, and I loved the creative aspect of it. You need to look at something, visualize a solution, and figure how what to do.” After some years away to raise her young children she found herself back in the cobbler trade. “Just over three years ago my daughter came to me with a piece of Birkenstock material and said she needed her shoe repaired,” says Simard. “By then, Bob’s had stopped doing repairs. I looked at my husband, Ron, and said, ‘Why not?’” She made Bob’s Shoes an offer and bought out the company’s tools and equipment. Simard and her husband re-roofed, windowed, and insulated a 10 by 12 tool shed on their property and The Heeler was in business. She said the response has been fantastic. Simard repairs, cleans, and refurbishes

12 | September/October 2019

shoes, boots, and purses—doing anything but sewing. She resoles and replaces heels, has done modifications to shoes for people who have had hip replacements, and has even resoled a pair of dog shoes. “I love taking something someone could toss away and use creativity to make it new again,” she says. “It’s incredibly satisfying to take something that looks tattered or unrepairable and give it life. It feels so good.” One local physiotherapist has referred clients to Simard because of her skill in modifying a shoe or boot to support a specific need. Her husband Ron works with her. “He’s fantastic—he keeps my Heeler tools and equipment excellently maintained,” she said. She explains that nothing is wasted and very little is discarded. “Everything has purpose: every bit of leather, cut off heel bits, old pieces of insole. I use inner tube pieces for patching and sealing,” she says. “Everything is used to its core. Materials are expensive and reusing/ re-purposing things keeps them out of landfill and keeps costs down.” In her shop at 77A North 2nd Avenue there are curiosities and crystals—things to help you in a healing journey and things to surround you with happiness. She has been overwhelmed with the positive response. “In my store I sell things I love,” she says.“Things that make me happy and feed my soul. I work hard to find things that are unique and creative.” You can find meaningful home décor, jewellery, thoughtful gifts, natural health and beauty products, crystals, singing bowls, and things like beautifully made reusable food wrap. “I love authentic,” says Simard.“You can find things in my store that do more than make

Tiffany Simard welcomes customers to the new location of The Heeler: Cobbler, Crystals, and Curiosities. Photo: Lisa Bland

your home look good—they make your heart feel good, too. “I’m huge into wellness—things that make people feel happy and make them feel good. I always want to keep things as organic and as local as possible. Everything I purchase has been carefully researched and hand-picked. Fair trade is big for me.” She brings things in from places like Nepal, India, and Brazil and features local artists. Stepping into her shop is like stepping into a dimension of peace and beauty. “I want people to feel like family here,” she said. “Welcomed and nourished.” You can reach Simard by phoning (250) 3054187, by following The Heeler on Facebook, or by stopping by the store on 2nd Avenue, Williams Lake.-GG LeRae Haynes is a freelance writer, song writer and instigator of lots of music with people of all ages in the community. She fearlessly owns 10 ukuleles, clinging to the belief that you’re not a hoarder if you play them all.

Photo: Junho Bae

Paddling for Empowerment

New Program on the Nechako River Seeks to Activate Youth Watershed Stewardship

Article by Ella Parker & Riley Brennan

his past August, seven youth took part in an inaugural fiveday canoeing program on the Nechako River. The River Clinic for Empowered Youth (RCEY) program consisted of one day of canoe certification training, one day of learning about the history of the Nechako watershed, and three days of paddling and camping on the upper reaches of the Nechako River. With youth participants coming from communities across the Nechako watershed, the purpose of the program was two-fold: to build outdoor and leadership skills and to form a network of youth passionate about their watershed. The RCEY program was a collaboration between the Rivershed Society of BC (RSBC), School District 91, and the Nadleh Whut’en First Nation. The program was an overwhelming success. Participants learned how to execute canoe strokes, rescue capsized canoes, and conduct an official voyageur canoe salute. They travelled to the headwaters of the Nechako River and visited the Kenney Dam, which has been diverting the flow of the Nechako River since 1952. Along the journey they learned from multiple speakers about the

repercussions the dam has had on both local ecosystems and on First Nations and settler communities. Participants also learned how to practice Leave-No-Trace principles for travelling and camping in the outdoors. Some of the challenging portions of the trip included participants portaging canoes and gear over land and braving the rapids downstream of Cheslatta Falls. Youth also participated in several activities to give them tools for having their voices heard on the topic of their watershed and to gain the confidence to do so. The final product of the trip consisted of a ‘zine art project—a small circulation, hand-made magazine. Participants expressed their opinions around the question: If the Nechako could talk, what would it say? The ‘zine will be distributed around the four Nechako watershed communities. Seventeen-year-old RCEY participant Skyler Fitzpatrick from Vanderhoof describes the impact the trip has had on her: “This trip solidified my desire to protect and restore areas of our watershed,” she says.“I think we need to get more people out there to connect to nature and our beautiful river.”

This new regional program builds off similar programs organized by the Rivershed Society of BC, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health of the Fraser River and its tributaries. RCEY organizers Megan Rempel, Petra Markova, Riley Brennan, and Ella Parker are all alumni of the RSBC’s Sustainable Living Leadership Program, a 29-day voyageur canoe and rafting expedition on the Fraser River. After their experience on the Fraser, the organizers became inspired to offer similar experiences for more youth and hoped that programs that are shorter in length like RCEY would be accessible to a larger audience. As BC Rivers Day approaches on Sept 22, we are reminded that all rivers in BC need local stewards and advocates, and therefore we need opportunities for youth to experience them. Based on the success of this year’s RCEY program, organizers are already looking ahead to next year with ideas for how to expand the program and involve more partners in future years. If you are interested in learning more about the RCEY, please visit www.rivershed. com or contact ellabuchanparker@gmail.com. -GG

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 13

—

NO TIME LEFT TO WASTE —

Hey pal, Littering ain't Cool!

here is ample talk out there about recycling and reducing our waste as a society to curb our big garbage problem. We discuss consumerism coupled with resource consumption adding a burden to our planet. We are all bombarded with plastics in our lives poisoning the food we eat and killing our wildlife. What is the real problem here? I keep finding myself returning to one main issue that we as a society seem to look at with a faded vision. Littering. The real problem with our waste, especially plastics, is when they end up in the natural environment rather than in a controlled environment like a landfill or recycling facility. Plastic, for instance, never goes away. It continuously breaks down into smaller pieces until it is minute enough to make it into the mouths of animals or, even worse, our bloodstreams. Indigestible, animals all over the world are dying and choking on our leftovers. Plastics in the landfill contribute to methane gas emissions, yes. Most plastics can be recycled; however, few make it to the correct location and we burn a lot of fossil fuels to make it happen. Many cities are trying to adopt single-use plastic bans or fees to tackle this issue. These are hopefully all valuable steps in the right direction, but are they enough? We have to manage our waste more responsibly. We need to take better care that what we leave behind cannot hurt the fragile natural environment around us. We should be stricter with littering fines, and it should not be okay to toss your cigarette butt on the ground or out your car window! Littering has many forms. To me littering is when a non-natural substance enters our natural environment. So that could entail toxic smoke into the atmosphere, oil leaking onto our roadways, garbage flying out of the back of our pickup trucks, and even chemical fertilizers sprayed onto our precious soils. All these things are currently happening with no real personal consequences. We can seriously make a difference if all unnatural things entering our natural world did not. Now, this is a huge task; however, we do have some leverage. It is currently illegal to dump your garbage in the forest. How often does someone get fined for something like this? According to RAPP (Report All Poachers & Polluters), in 2018 they issued 18 fines province-wide. WTF? This probably has a lot to do with poaching taking priority and the under-funding of issues. As well, if you don’t have valid proof of the person actually dumping the material, no charges can be laid.

14 | September/October 2019

Article by Oliver Berger

Oliver Berger reminding us that littering is not cool. Photo: Lisa Bland

Detailed information can be found at this link:: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/ environment/research-monitoring-reporting/ reporting/env-compliance-inspection-report. So I ask you please… when you see anyone polluting our natural environment with something foreign, call them on it. We all share this beautiful planet and rely on it to survive. You have the right to say something. You might start with… “Hey pal… littering ain’t cool!” If you are interested in helping out with local litter picks stay tuned to your social media. Williams Lake organized a city-wide clean up on May 11 of this year and more are to follow. The Cariboo-Chilcotin Conservation Society is planning a litter pick day on September 21 to

pair with World Clean Up Day. Last year over 150 countries and 15 million people took part in this initiative. Now that’s what I call making a dent! Check out these hashtags as well… #makelitterpickingcool #trashtag #endalllitter #beachcleanup -GG Oliver Berger has a 37-year degree in life, starting out in the Spokin Lake area, spending adolescence in Williams Lake, and then venturing throughout the world on a quest of always learning new things. His priorities include dedication to and education about waste management.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 15

Long Table Grocery

Exploring Our Roots Article by Amy Quarry, Owner

have always been fascinated by history and stories from the past. When we started Long Table Grocery, I spent a bit of time looking into our own family history of entrepreneurship. The scale we have on the table in our shop is from our great-grandmother Anne Stella’s grocery store in Chicago, which she owned with her father Frank Stella in 1907 when she was just 17. Frank Stella was an Italian immigrant who also owned a milk delivery business. Anne managed her grocery store until the late 20s when, as the family legend goes, she refused to pay protection to the Mob after her father died, eventually standing up to Al Capone himself in her shop with my grandfather watching from the back. She left everything behind and moved to California on her own with two small children. There she opened a deli in Oakland and ran it successfully through the Depression without going bankrupt. This deli happened to be next door to our other great-grandmother’s bakery, which led to the meeting of our paternal grandparents. One set of great-grandparents went on to buy a ranch and develop one of the commercial trout farms in California, and our maternal great-grandfather also owned a famous butcher shop called Butcher Boy in Laguna Beach for many years. One of our greatgrandmothers paid her way through school by baking cupcakes and bread and taking them to a neighbouring campground to sell during the summers. As well, both my parents have been entrepreneurial throughout their lives, setting an example for us of what is possible through small business. I find this history and the many stories I have heard of Cariboo pioneers, farmers, and entrepreneurs full of inspiring examples of the grit, ingenuity, creativity, and commitment that entrepreneurship demands. Though the times were different, the belief is the same— building a business can be a path forward to prosperity for our families and for our communities, and using our gifts and talents to contribute what we can to our local economies is the right thing to do to. It is this same belief that inspires the farmers we purchase from and that inspires the entrepreneurs who produce coffee and jam and bread, and that inspires our business.

16 | September/October 2019

At Long Table our motto is “Growing Community Through Food” and we strive to do this in all of our business activities, honouring the efforts of the agricultural and business pioneers and advocates who have worked tirelessly for many years in the field of local food, while also dreaming of new paths forward into a future that fully lives out the permaculture ethics of “Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share”. We look forward to sharing a bit of the behind-the-scenes in our business with you over the coming issues of The Green Gazette, and we wish you a bountiful harvest season full of long tables laden with good food, surrounded by laughter and love. -GG Amy Quarry is an entrepreneur, communitybuilder, maker, graphic designer, and localist.

She loves her small town and strongly believes in the resilience of a community built together. Long Table Grocery is a locally owned, independent food hub that provides good food sustainably sourced and rooted in the Cariboo region of BC. As well as bi-weekly subscription Harvest Boxes, it operates a fresh food grocery and no-waste cafe and hosts cooking workshops and community-based food events throughout the year. It is our goal that shopping at Long Table Local is easy, convenient, and a meaningful way to make your purchasing dollars count towards building a more foodsecure community for all of us. We currently work with over 40 North Cariboo farmers and food producers, growing community through food. Visit us at 141 Marsh Drive, Quesnel, BC or Follow us on Facebook at Long Table Grocery.

Photo: Anne Maria Stella (left) stands in front the grocery store she co-owned with her father Frank Stella in Chicago 1907-1917. Photo submitted by Amy Quarry.

Turkey Pumpkin Chili From the Long Table Grocery Kitchen

INGREDIENTS: 1 Tbsp

coconut oil

20g

onion, chopped

20g

garlic, minced

chard stems, chopped

2 Tbsp

cumin

200g

navy beans, soaked and cooked

578g

ground turkey, cooked

15 oz. can pumpkin puree

500 ml chicken stock 2

bay leaves

1 tsp

chili powder

1 tsp

salt

½ tsp

pepper

55g

jalapeno pepper, minced

1 tsp

oregano

180g

button mushrooms

300g

zucchini, medium diced

grated parmesan, for garnish

METHOD: 1. Sautee onion, garlic, and chard stems in coconut oil until tender. 2. Add cumin and sauté another two minutes. 3. Place this mixture in a crock pot and add navy beans, ground turkey, pumpkin, chicken stock, bay leaves, chili powder, salt, pepper, jalapeno, and oregano. 4. Cook on high for two hours. 5. Add mushrooms and zucchini and cook for two more hours on high. 6. Garnish with grated parmesan and serve. Recipe by Jessica Golden, Registered Holistic Nutritionist TheGreenGazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 17

Local Nordic Club in 100 Mile House Invests in

Green Infrastructure

locations with underground wiring instead of he 100 Mile Nordic Ski Society overhead wires. Special attention has been completed a major LED lighting paid to the style and direction of the lights to upgrade last summer. Over 70 new reduce light pollution. LED lights were installed to replace The biggest change will be that the lighting 83 high pressure sodium bulbs. system focuses more on the stadium oval right The club operates at the 99 Mile ski trails outside the Nordic lodge. This means parents and has been in operation for over 35 years. will be able to view kids from the lodge while The “Nordics” have over 200 members and eating a snack by the fire. It also allows novice operate a 45-km network of track-set Nordic skiers a place to take lessons and spend time ski trails and a charming log cabin lodge. The learning on the flat, easy trails. club is one of the most active and vibrant non“Nordic skiing is as green as it gets,” Davidiuk profit sports clubs in 100 Mile House. says. “Used skis and gear can be found at our Club Media Liaison Craig Davidiuk says annual ski swap on November 3 where you the club has seen renewed interest in crosscan up-cycle and purchase used skis. The country skiing the past couple of years. He technology hasn’t changed much so most used attributes the increase to an influx of new skis you buy are literally as good as new.” people moving to the region from larger The new lighting centres. technology allowed In 2019, the club The new lighting technology the non-profit to won a province-wide membership contest allowed the non-profit to reduce reduce energy usage approximately through Cross energy usage by approximately by 75 percent. The Country BC and 75 percent. project has been in enjoyed the largest the works since 2016. In 2018, the club was gain of any club in the province. granted $388,375 through the province’s Rural “Families, singles, and seniors in the South Dividend Fund and $40,000 from the Cariboo Cariboo are trying Nordic skiing and loving Regional District’s Community Works Fund. it,” Davidiuk says. “The lighting upgrade is “We gratefully acknowledge the financial reflective of the need to keep up with other support of the Province of British Columbia,” recreation offerings in the region and appeal Davidiuk says. “There is an opening ceremony to more people who want to go skiing after for the lighting system planned for December work in the winter.” and the general public is invited to attend.” The lighting system itself is operated on a 100 Mile Nordics is located at 500 Ainsworth timer until 10 p.m. nightly. Skiers simply suit Road in 100 Mile House. For more info see: up, hit a button, and enjoy 5km of lit trails until www.100milenordics.com or Facebook at 100 10 p.m. Mile Nordics. -GG The old lighting system has been in operation for over 22 years and followed more challenging trails than this new version. The old wooden light poles were up-cycled and new metal poles were added in different

18 | September/October 2019

100 Mile Nordics Infographic by Craig Davidiuk, 108DigitalMarketing.com

Advertise with us!

www.thegreengazette.ca

Single-use Plastics Bans to Take Time Despite Multi-Government Support Article by Erin Hitchcock

t’s not clear when or by what authority, but a single-use plastics ban is on the horizon. In July, I presented a petition to Williams Lake city council with more than 1,300 signatures, asking them to ban singleuse plastics. They all agreed at the Committee of the Whole meeting with plans to begin working on a ban bylaw, as several other municipalities in BC have done. However, doing so may not be as simple as previously thought. Days after the presentation, the BC Court of Appeal overturned last year’s BC Supreme Court ruling that allowed Victoria to enact a plastic bag ban bylaw. The recent judgement is based on a clause in the Community Charter that says municipal laws that regulate in relation to the protection of the natural environment require the approval of the provincial Minister of Environment. Whether it’s just as simple as receiving provincial permission or whether there could be other ways around the issue will need to be determined. Victoria is considering taking the matter to the Supreme Court of Canada, but by then, plastic bags and other single-use plastics could be banned in BC or even Canada, while the impact these items have on the environment and communities will have continued to grow. BC Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, George Heyman, has expressed support for a single-use plastics ban, welcoming the federal government’s announcement earlier this year of a countrywide ban that is supposed to come into effect in 2021. The BC Government has also given first reading to a bill to ban plastic bags and is now seeking feedback from the public via a survey on a single-use plastic ban, as well as feedback

on reducing and recycling more plastics so they don’t end up in the landfill. “The message from British Columbians is loud and clear—we need to take action to reduce plastic waste, especially single-use items like water bottles and plastic bags that often find their way into our waters, streets, and environment,” Heyman said in a July 25 news release. “We have all seen the striking images of animals and fish being caught up in everyday plastic waste like grocery bags or beer can loops that ensnare these beautiful creatures, and it cannot continue. I look forward to hearing from people about how we can all play a part in reducing plastic pollution and plastics use overall.” To take the public survey, visit https:// cleanbc.gov.bc.ca/plastics, send a formal submission to Plastics@gov.bc.ca., or email your comments to Plastics@gov.bc.ca4. Please participate by September 18 at 4 pm. According to a study published in National Geographic magazine, more than eight million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year—that’s about a dump truck a minute. While many plastics can be recycled, globally 91 percent of plastics aren’t being recycled. Plastic pollution has become so out of control that, according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 90 percent of seabirds have plastics in their stomachs. Plastics also pollute our local environment. One only has to walk down the street to see plastic bags, bottles, straws, takeout cups, and Styrofoam bits, which can harm local wildlife, clog storm drains, and eventually reach the Fraser River and ocean. I would like to see a swift ban on plastic bags, Styrofoam, and straws, at a minimum or as a first step. Compostable/biodegradable

plastics are a terrible solution, as most can’t actually be composted in someone’s backyard and they aren’t accepted in our recycling stream. The best alternatives are reusables. A few ideas on how to reduce plastic waste: • Be mindful what you are buying—remember everything you buy has an environmental impact, from its production to its transportation and to its disposal. • Carry a travel kit of reusable bags, cups, water bottles, straws (such as glass, metal, or bamboo), containers for lunch leftovers, and cutlery. Prepare the night before by having your items by the door or have a reminder decal on your vehicle. • Ditch garbage bags all together. If you must use a garbage bag, reuse packaging currently difficult to escape from, such as bread bags, toilet paper bags, etc. or line your indoor waste bins with newspaper. • Reuse packaging, such as bread bags, or use mesh or cloth bags for your produce and bulk items. • Eat more whole foods and less processed foods that come in packaging. • Instead of wrapping food in plastic wrap, use containers or wrap them up with reusable beeswax-coated fabric. -GG

Erin Hitchcock is a stay-at-home mom with a journalism diploma and more than 15 years of related experience. She is part of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Pachamama Alliance and is passionate about creating a better future for the Earth. She can be contacted at CCPlanetEarth@gmail.com.

TheGreenGazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 19

Forest Tenure Changes Occurring Across the World Article by Jim Hilton

s promised, the BC Government has published a forestry discussion paper, which includes a number of questions for

public input. The link engage.gov.bc.ca provides access to the 19-page “Interior Forest Sector Renewal Policy and Program Engagement Discussion Paper”, which can be viewed at engage. gov.bc.ca/govtogetherbc/consultation/ interior-forest-renewal-forest-policy-initiative/ The online public engagement period runs from July 18 to October 11, 2019 at 4 p.m. The report contains the following topics along with questions in each of the seven sections: 1. Forest Tenure and Fibre Supply 2. Fibre and Sustainability of Timber and Non-Timber Values. 3. Climate Change and Forest Carbon. 4. Manufacturing Capacity and Fibre Utilization. 5. Wood Products Innovation. 6. Timber Pricing and the Softwood Lumber Dispute 7. Reconciliation with Indigenous Nations.

Sections one and seven dealing with forest tenures and reconciliation with First Nations in BC should be discussed in the context of the other provinces in Canada as well as throughout the world. Since the forest industry is global in nature it may be useful to see what is happening in other countries. The 32-page report titled, “Who Owns the World’s Forests? Forest Tenure and Public Forests in Transition” by Andy White and Alejandra Martin, published in 2002 is a good start. As the authors point out, the statistics in the report should be used with caution since they are derived from only 24 of the many dozens of countries with forests and do not reflect the amount of forest land actively claimed by Indigenous and other local communities. The percentages of forest in each tenure category are perhaps more reliable. For example, of

20 | September/October 2019

the global forest estate of 3.9 billion hectares, approximately 77 percent of the world’s forest (according to national law) is owned and administered by governments, at least 4 percent is reserved for communities, at least 7 percent is owned by local communities, and approximately12 percent is owned by individuals. The four largest players, indicated millions of hectares followed by the percentage that is government owned (in brackets), are as follows. First is the Russian Federation 886.5 (100), followed by Brazil 423.7 (77.0), Australia 410.3 (70.9), Canada 388.9 (93), and United States 110.0 (37.8).Two countries close to the US are Republic of Congo 109.2 (100) and Indonesia 104.0 (99.4). While many countries have most land in government ownership there are some important exceptions. For example, in the United States private individuals and firms own more than half of the forests, or 55 percent. The US is joined by two other commercially important northern forested countries, Sweden and Finland at 70 percent and 80 percent, respectively, and Argentina, where some 80 percent of forests are also privately owned by individuals and firms. Other important exceptions are Mexico and Papua New Guinea, where indigenous and other local communities respectively own some 80 percent and 90 percent of forests. The following is a summary by authors White and Martin. “There is a major, unprecedented transition in forest ownership underway. This transition presents both opportunities and challenges to the global forest community. The recognition of Indigenous rights and community ownership–and the broader rationalization of public forest tenure– present an historic opportunity for countries to dramatically improve the livelihoods of millions of forest inhabitants. But seizing this opportunity and preventing further forest degradation will require ambitious and concerted action by the global forest community. Some of the more important opportunities are listed below. Better

knowledge on actual forest tenure claims, disputes, and ownership is needed. As evidenced by the difficulty in collecting information for this report, it is clear that data and information regarding who owns, and who has access to, the world’s forests are incomplete. Where they exist, they are often questionable in quality and difficult to compare. New mapping technology like the Global Forest Watch project is needed so all players will be able to better conduct informed debates on reforming forest tenure. Greater awareness of transition strategies, lessons, and best practices is needed. Many governments and supporting actors are reforming tenure systems, but the knowledge generated from these experiences is often difficult for innovators in other countries to find. While the social and political context of every country is different, some lessons can be learned, and some errors can be averted by sharing information. Collecting and disseminating information on the most effective uses of these strategies would be very valuable. Major investments will be required to facilitate this transition. Assessing community claims, mapping tenure, delimiting property, reforming legal frameworks, devising regulations, and establishing new enforcement.” Since the publication of this report in 2002 there have been some additional community forest and Indigenous Nations licences in BC, but these changes would be very minor in the context of the global forest picture. It could be time for an updated report with specifics about what seems to be working on making positive tenure changes. -GG Jim Hilton is a professional agrologist and forester who has lived and worked in the Cariboo Chilcotin for the past 40 years. Since his retirement he has been spending his time with a number of volunteer organizations, including community forests.

Tel: 250-395-4545 Fax: 1-877-606-5385 spellizzari@telus.net

Stephen Pellizzari NOTARY PUBLIC

Cariboo Mall 575 Alder Avenue Box 2105, 100 Mile House, BC V0K 2E0

Stephen Pellizzari NOTARY PUBLIC

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 21

Photo: Nicola Finch

ngela Gutzer and Nicola Finch are local end-of-life guides (also known as death doulas) who connected in the fall of 2017 thanks to a Green Gazette article written by Angela that alerted Nicola to their shared passion for ‘doing death differently’. The two women soon formed the Cariboo Community Deathcaring Network (CCDC) and have been offering regular Death Cafes in Williams Lake as well as a handful of End of Life planning workshops. This fall, in partnership with Community Deathcare Canada, CCDC Network is hosting the Swan Song Festival. This inaugural annual festival is intended to mobilize communities across Canada to re-engage with dying and deathcare in more meaningful, holistic, and environmentally sustainable ways. The Swan Song Festival focuses on Death. Yours and mine. We don’t talk about it much. We rarely act like it’s right in front of us, but we all face the same inevitable end. And we all dwell in that time before. That decade, that week, that moment before death. Young or old, sick or well; we’re celebrating a birth, we’re singing off key, preparing a meal, we are counting our dimes, writing a paper, closing a door, we’re loving and grumbling, and living our lives. And then death. Our own or the death of someone we love. The End. Everything stops. Have you contemplated your own dying time? Have you thought about your death or the deaths of those you love most in the world—your mother, your dog, your best friend, your garden? And what of the bigger picture—our global grief over the plight of whales and coral reefs, the decimation of our forests, melting ice caps,

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cultural genocide? Some will say, “Let’s focus on the positive, the beautiful, the flowers as they turn their heads to the sun. Let us not contemplate the end of things.” But we know that by facing death, by talking about it and sharing our thoughts and feelings with our loved ones, we turn our own faces to the sun. We may not embrace it, but by accepting the inevitable, we tend to find more joy in our finite lives. We make better use of the time we have with the people we love and the gardens we tend.

"It is good for us to invite death into our presence when it is still at a distance and not on the move." —Martin Luther “Joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die…if you and I know we’re each in the process, there is something that will happen between us. There’s some kind of tenderness that might be possible.” —Poet Ross Gay in conversation with Krista Tippett at onbeing.org/programs/ ross-gay-tending-joy-and-practicing-delight/ Festivals where we honour our dead and face our own mortality are found throughout human history. One such festival is held annually in Tucson, Arizona. From its inception in 1990, artists, teachers, and community activists there have grown a magnificent event that culminates in the All Souls Procession, a community parade of gigantic proportions. “Festal Culture,” they explain, “is the expression and fulfillment of core human needs through public celebration, ceremony, and ritual. The All Souls Procession is an event

that was created to serve the public need to mourn, reflect, and celebrate the universal experience of death through their ancestors, loved ones, and the living.” They build a gigantic urn each year and invite anyone, anywhere (we can participate virtually) to add names of loved ones, prayers, hopes, and wishes. The finale is a ritual burning of the urn and the messages. The urn was created out of “a communal need for a focal point: a place to channel all the energy, grief, and joy of the participants.” Read more at www.allsoulsprocession.org Throughout North America, Death Festivals have been bringing people together to learn, celebrate, question, and create. On October 26, we invite you to join us as we Breathe Life into Death at the Swan Song Festival in Williams Lake. �It is good for us to invite death into our presence when it is still at a distance and not on the move.� —Martin Luther The Swan Song Festival, with the support of the Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Society, will take place at the Central Cariboo Arts Center in Williams Lake, Saturday October 26 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. This is a free event for community members of all ages and from all walks of life. Stay tuned for details on the day’s events including children’s activities, ritual, art, spoken word, an open mic, music, interactive activities, humour, mini Death Cafes, workshops, information on home funerals and building your own coffin, and an outdoor labyrinth to walk. Find out how you can be involved as a volunteer, an artist, or a presenter. Visit www. ccdcnetwork.com and look for regular updates on Facebook @ccdcnetwork. -GG

—

LOCAL FOOD QUESNEL —

Guardian of the Vegetables: The Good Earth Article by Terri Smith

“And roots, if they are to bear fruits, must be kept well in the soil of the land.” —Pearl S. Buck, “The Good Earth”

s a bio-dynamic farmer, I have always felt that plants need soil. Feeding the soil has always been my highest priority in the garden. If you feed the soil well, it will be lively and good, and it will reward you with beautiful plants that provide the tastiest and most vibrant food imaginable. Because of this I have always felt sceptical about plants grown hydroponically. In hydroponics, plants are not grown in soil. Instead, they are grown in a ‘growing medium,’ usually indoors where no real sunlight reaches them, no gentle breeze washes over them, and no birds can sing to them. Their roots are fed a solution of nutrients that are supposed to provide everything the plant needs to grow into food. This always seemed wrong to me. I don’t like food being taken away from nature. I don’t know very much about hydroponics, other than that it has always made me uncomfortable. There is more going on in the relationship between plants and soil than we can possibly understand. The idea of plants being moved indoors and out of the soil has always frightened me. It feels like a dystopian nightmare—a futuristic world that has destroyed its connection to the earth. And then I came across a podcast talking about this exact problem. The podcast is called “Green Dreamer,” and I recommend it to everyone. One of the episodes is an interview with Dave Chapman about The Real Organic Project. A few years ago, the USDA organic label changed. Once again, no one much noticed except for farmers. While prior to this change only food grown in soil could be labelled “organic” this change allowed hydroponically grown food to now be labelled as “organic” (if grown with “organic” fertilizers), and suddenly soil was no longer a part of the picture. The Real Organic Project is a grassroots, farmer-led movement created to distinguish soil-grown and pasture-raised products under USDA organic. In 1995 when the original USDA certified organic labelling began, organic meant: “an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity,

"A basket of vegetables I grew naturally in this good earth" Photo: Terri Smith

biological cycles, and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain, and enhance ecological harmony.” But with the new rules, animals who live in feed lots who never see the sun nor touch the soil, and plants grown hydroponically can all be certified as organic and when we buy that food we have no way of knowing whether soil has had any part to play in its creation. This is not okay. Let me say that again: this is not okay! So, a large group of farmers have begun a movement to create a label within the label that allows consumers to know which food is actually organic. If you want to learn more please visit the website at: www.realorganicproject.org. Another episode on the same podcast talks about soil. The relationship between the soil and the mycorrhizal fungi in the soil is amazing. The plant provides the fungi with sugars the plant has obtained through photosynthesis, and in exchange, the fungi gives the plant nutrients it has broken down out of the mineral and organic content of the soil. These nutrients and minerals from the fungi are in their most bio-available form, meaning that the plant is able to absorb and utilize them easily. When we eat the plant, the nutrients

we receive are in their most bio-available form for our bodies. Studies are now showing that plants grown without soil and without this connection with mycorrhizal fungi contain nutrients that are not very bio-available. This means that when we eat these plants, we are not able to absorb or use many of the nutrients and minerals present. Consequently, we may eat a lot of food, but because our bodies do not receive enough nutrients from the food, we do not feel full and so we keep eating. The consequence of this for our bodies is a paradoxical one: we have become a nation where obesity and malnutrition are occurring simultaneously, within the same bodies! There has never been a time in human history where this has happened. It seems the Green Dreamer website no longer exists, but the podcasts can still be found here: radiopublic.com/green-dreamersustainability-and-Ww0Pb5/ep/s1!28818, Episodes: 141 and 142. -GG An erstwhile market gardener and mother of goat, Terri lives on a small farm near Quesnel, BC. There she gardens, makes art, writes about local food, teaches workshops, and works at Long Table Grocery as Guardian of the Vegetables.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 23

The Green New Deal Voting for Hope

By Jessica Kirby, Senior Editor of TheGreenGazette

very time we see a headline about climate change, it should inspire hope. Although the situation is dire, headlines validate climate change, put it in front of the people who can create change, and inspire people who can demand action. In Canada, these headlines will be especially important over the next few months as we get closer to one of the country’s most important federal elections. With only a few years left to turn this thing around, whoever we elect to run the country for the next 4 years will change the face of the country forever. Here’s the problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we have less than 11 years to cut emissions in half while protecting the world’s remaining cultural and biological diversity. If we don’t meet that target, catastrophic impacts will follow, and the crisis will move beyond our control. That’s the bottom line. Agreements are in place in various places around the world, but they fall short.

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The IPCC’s special report on global warming, which is based on more than 6,000 scientific references and the dedicated contribution of thousands of expert and government reviewers worldwide said, “Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C will require rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” Here’s the even bigger problem: Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. It is breaking records for wildfires, flooding, and loss of sea ice, and as governments cling to the vestiges of the fossil fuel industry, thousands of families who depend on oil and gas are facing economic disaster with no backup plan. That’s where the Green New Deal (GND) comes in. Developed from grassroots with the support of non-profits, climate warriors, and industry, the GND is a way forward for Canada, a comprehensive plan for politicians, and a game-changer for communities. Its defining characteristic is its reliance on two key principles:

1. It must meet the demand of Indigenous knowledge and science and cut Canada’s emissions in half in 11 years while protecting cultural and biological diversity. 2. It must leave no one behind and build a better present and future for all of us.

This second point is especially important because it reconciles the need for urgent environmental action and acknowledgement of and protection for families who rely on natural resource extraction industries. The GND encompasses as sense of inclusion and holistic community building that does not seek to divide environmentalists and industry but bring people together with a solid plan that takes Canada beyond the end of fossil fuels to whatever comes next for all families. The final text of a GND is currently under construction, but it will ideally conform with the scientific community’s recommendations ad include the most important issues for Canadians. For instance, the United Nations

calculates a 45 percent reduction in global emissions reduction by 2030. To achieve that in Canada, governments must freeze fossil fuel expansion, make massive investment in low carbon infrastructure, guarantee well paying green jobs to anyone who wants one, and commit to genuine reconciliation with First Nations. A GND is being built from the ground up with town hall meetings held across the country to identify the issues that matter most to Canadians. As a collaborative, inclusive document, the GND stands to become an important tool in the coming election because it gives parties a solid environmental reference to which they can agree or not, so voters have a clear idea of what they are opting for when they check the box on voting day. This is extremely important because climate change policy stands to be a deciding factor in the election, and parties need to get their platforms on this issue right. As Kai Nagata, communications director for the BC-based Dogwood initiative told The Tyee, “The great fear is that two or three parties compete over the same progressive voters and a consolidated Conservative party basically just walks up the middle and grabs a majority.” Contenders for Canada’s leadership have environmental platforms, but whether they will subscribe to the GND’s development and take it on as a campaign objective remains to be seen. Jasmeet Singh, leader of the federal NDPs, says the New Democrats have long championed action on climate change, heralding Jack Layton's trailblazing Climate Change Accountability Act and NDP MP Linda Duncan's important work on her Environmental Bill of Rights. “New Democrats know it’s time to act. It’s time to fight like our future depends on it, because it does,” said Singh in an interview with The Green Gazette. “That’s why we have released a bold plan to fight climate change that will create thousands of new jobs, save families money, and take on big polluters.” Although Singh didn’t refer directly to whether the party supports a GND, he did say an NDP-led plan would revise Canada's 2030 GHG target to make emissions reductions in line with what science says is necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change and

work with Indigenous people as full and equal partners in this fight against climate change. “We would end oil and gas company subsidies and expand access to training and retraining for the new job market,” says Singh, adding the plan would create a Canadian Climate Bank to spur investment in the low carbon economy. He asks readers to check out https://www.ndp.ca/climate-and-jobs for more information. Sabrina Kim, press secretary for the Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, says the Liberal government is taking action to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change across all sectors—from industry, to buildings, transportation, and agriculture. “This means using clean electricity to power our homes, workplaces, vehicles, and industries, and using energy more efficiently,” she says. “It also means more resilient infrastructure and ecosystems that can better withstand changes to the climate, and it means expanding protected areas and parks with a whole host of important new conservation measures.” She said the notion that government can only protect the environment or grow the economy is a false choice. “We know that we can and must do both,” she says. “Canadians and businesses are already feeling the costs of climate change through extreme weather, flooding, wildfires, and more. They also want to be at the forefront of the clean economy that could be worth trillions of dollars.” Kim did not address the question of whether the federal Liberals supported a Green New Deal, but she did say the Liberal platform development process is being led by National Platform Committee Co-Chairs Mona Fortier and Ralph Goodale who are still continuing discussions with business, labour, environmental, Indigenous, and community leaders across Canada. “They continue to hear new ideas from the Liberal caucus, grassroots Liberals, and Canadians directly,” says Kim. “We will have much more to say about the platform’s ideas and commitments in the weeks ahead.” Watch for current and coming objectives at https:// www.liberal.ca/realchange/climate-change/. Steve Parkinson, director of policy and correspondence for the Green Party of

Canada says the Greens support the creation of a GND that implements its two founding principles and is committed to legislating a comprehensive, science-based, climate plan that meets the IPCC’s recommended targets, immediately. “Our mission is a climate action plan that incorporates all the requirements for economic justice, just transition, and the guarantee of meaningful work, while also respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and recognizing that we cannot achieve climate security in the absence of equity,” he says. “The Green Party’s 2019 election platform will meet and exceed the Green New Deal (US) and The Pact for a Green New Deal (Canada).” In terms of reconciling drastic environmental change with prosperous jobs, Parkinson says the writing is on the wall. “A quick transition away from fossil fuels is necessary as we face the climate emergency, and Part 4 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act empowers the Minister of Environment to bring in regulated limits of emissions of GHG from any facility in Canada,” he says. “Our possible climate action plan commits to a Just Transition, putting in place the training programs and supports required to ensure that Canadian workers and their families from across the fossil fuel industries are able to thrive during the transition to a low carbon economy. We welcome industry’s presence at the table as we work towards solutions that work for all.” Read more at https://www.greenparty.ca/ en/platform/bold-climate-action. The Conservative Party did not respond to our request for an interview, but it does list its environmental platform at https://www.conservative.ca/cpc/ andrew-scheers-climate-plan/ In August, advocacy group for global climate action 350.0rg collected close to 50,000 signatures from people across Canada demanding a leaders’ debate on the climate crisis. Such an event has not been arranged by national media at the time of writing, but 350. org and affiliated groups are calling for a day of action September 27 with a massive youth-led mobilization expected to be the largest global mobilization on climate to ever take place. Visit 350.org to learn more and to participate.-GG

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 25

Hazardous Materials: 5 Tips to Recycling the Right Way

re you tossing your cellphone and laptop batteries into your blue bin? How about lighters, propane, or butane canisters? If yes, then you are potentially causing explosions and fires at material recovery facilities and in material collection vehicles, endangering the lives of BC’s recycling collectors and processors. There is an alarming increase of hazardous waste that British Columbians are depositing in the province’s residential recycling stream—a behaviour that has caused a resurgence of concern from Recycle BC. Follow these expert tips to help you rethink what you recycle and where, and to help keep recycling workers, facilities, and the environment safe from not-accepted, hazardous materials. 1. Problem Materials When incorrectly disposed, there are numerous materials that can pose a health risk, cause personal injury, or even result in the death for collectors and processors. Incorrect disposal of hazardous materials can also lead to the destruction of BC recycling facilities. Recycle BC 2019 material audits found that two thirds container loads contained hazardous materials. From items related to camping and outdoor living, like propane tanks for home barbecues and camp stoves, to electronics including mobile devices, curbside recycling collection does not accept the following materials: lithium-ion and household batteries, single-use propane and butane canisters, needles, flammable liquids, helium tanks, knives, flares, electronics, bear spray, ammunition, lighters, paint. 2. Read Warning Labels Hazardous materials should not only be kept out of recycling bins but also out of the waste stream. For example, when household batteries end up in landfills, they can leak toxic mercury and lead, contaminating the soil and groundwater. Always read the label. Any products left in packaging that contain corrosive, toxic, flammable, or reactive components can cause major problems at the

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recycling facility and are often labelled with hazard text/symbols: CAUTION, WARNING, CORROSIVE, EXPLOSIVE, FLAMMABLE, POISONOUS or TOXIC. Keep these materials out of your residential recycling bins. 3. Be Aware of Not-accepted Materials Be mindful of what you put in your recycling bins and ensure it’s an accepted material and 100% empty—not something that is potentially explosive and deadly. The risk for fires or explosions is especially high for material collection vehicles and receiving facilities due to significant amounts of paper, as well as the opportunity for the items to be compressed, causing explosions. The combination of easily flammable material, plenty of oxygen, and large amounts of material where sparks can smolder undetected for lengthy periods, makes the presence of hazardous material especially precarious. View the materials accepted in your curbside recycling bin as part of the Recycle BC program. 4. Take Action—Change Your Behaviour Be part of the solution to help prevent potential tragedies and ensure waste workers are not exposed to the risk of explosions or fires. Do not put hazardous materials in your recycling bins, your garbage cans, or down the drain or toilet. Don’t just assume that because it’s recyclable it belongs in a particular bin or that checking for a triangle symbol before tossing whatever it is in the blue bin is due diligence: it’s not. It only takes a few minutes to plan to properly dispose of your hazardous waste. 5. Find a Location to Recycle or Dispose Safely When material is not allowed in the curbside bin, it doesn’t mean it can’t be recycled somewhere else. Find a disposal location so problem items can be processed safely. Visit RecycleBC.ca/Hazardous to learn more and access the online depot search tool. You can also download the latest version of the free BC Recyclepedia App to find your closest recycling depot or contact the Recycling Hotline at 1.800.667.4321 or 604. RECYCLE (604.732.9253). -GG

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 27

Photo : Rex Lumberjack

Connecting with Spirit — Stacey Hanrahan

Article by Terri Smith

tacey Hanrahan is a psychic medium. You don’t have to believe me. You don’t have to believe her, either. One of the biggest reasons that I do believe her is that she doesn’t care either way whether I do or not. It even took a long time for her to believe it herself. Stacey is a member of the Mikisew Cree Nation on her mother’s side, and IrishIcelandic on her father’s. Her grandmother on her mother’s side was put into residential school at the age of three and lived there until she was 18. Consequently, her grandmother’s connection to her people and her culture was all but erased. She lost her language and her cultural identity. But she also had the same gift as Stacey. It was something that was understood in their family—Grandma just knew things. Stacey describes one such instance when she was about 12, driving with her mother and grandmother. Her grandmother suddenly turned to Stacey’s mother and said, “We have to find a payphone now. Kevin’s been in an accident.” (Kevin was her son). They pulled over, and it turned out that Stacey’s uncle had indeed been in an accident and was in the hospital. Until she was in her early 30s Stacey didn’t really tell many people about the dreams and visions she had. Her family and close friends knew about it, but she kept it a secret because she was afraid of being judged. She wasn’t afraid of her connection to the other side, because, as she tells me, “Connecting to Spirit is not scary ... I connect to Spirit, to people who have crossed over, and I relay messages to loved ones. This is called, ‘remote viewing.’” She receives messages in the form of visions

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and images. She didn’t want this gift when it first began to make itself known, and it took time for her to understand it and make peace with it. When she finally began to accept that the dreams and visions were warnings of things that might happen, she called a friend she had known since fifth grade and whispered into the phone, “I speak to dead people,” and he said, “Dude, you’ve always done that.” At that time, she began to realize she just needed to accept this gift because, wanted or not, it is a part of who she is. Since accepting her gift, she has helped many people heal themselves. She is adamant that healing comes from within each individual person and not from her. She tries to make a safe, comfortable space for people to find healing after having lost loved a one, and she also does readings for people just looking for guidance.

Since accepting her gift, she has helped many people heal themselves. Now she is beginning a process of reconnection and healing within her culture. Because of her grandmother’s upbringing in the residential school system, Stacey grew up knowing very little about her Cree heritage, but she has been relearning what has been lost and she now does much of her work on First Nation reservations in Saskatchewan and BC. She tells me that when she goes to reservations, elders and most people there embrace what she does because it is more normalized within First Nations culture. She

is also learning from elders, both locally and in Alberta and Saskatchewan, about their traditions and medicines and also about her own gift. “A lot of people are fearful about Spirit, afraid their loved ones are not at rest or will cross back over if I connect with them,” Stacey says. “But I do this from a space of love, without ego, and I feel they can cross back and forward. They already come and go when they want. Sometimes I wish there was an ethical code for psychics.” She laments mediums who are not careful with their gift. “I’m reading the energy in the moment,” she says. “It can change. If you see someone who says the future is unchangeable, they are coming from a place of ego.” Stacey is not pushy about what she does. I knew her for two years before I even knew she was a medium. The stories she has told me and her own humble nature have pushed away any scepticism I may have had. She is a wonderful human, an amazing mother of four, and a gifted medium. “I am a white-looking First Nations woman rediscovering my culture, rediscovering the traditional ways,” she says. “People don’t have to believe in what I do. It’s a part of who I am.” Stacey lives in Quesnel, BC. For more info visit her webpage at www.staceyhd.net/ about.html. -GG An erstwhile market gardener and mother of goat, Terri lives on a small farm near Quesnel, BC. There she gardens, makes art, writes about local food, teaches workshops, and works at Long Table Grocery as Guardian of the Vegetables.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 29

Fraser River Salmon in Trouble

Big Bar Landslide

ith the lowest return of Fraser River Sockeye salmon expected since records began in 1893, Fraser River salmon are in peril. Not only do they face a massive rock slide, but a slew of other challenges like climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and fish farms. For months, crews have heroically captured salmon and helicopters flew them over the rock slide, which happened approximately June 21 at Big Bar, in a remote area just west of Clinton, BC.

Since June 29, federal, provincial, and First Nations government officials have been working together to transport salmon upriver of the rock slide. Photo: Fin Donnelly

However, much more is needed if these salmon are to survive. The Rivershed Society of BC (RSBC) is calling for an investment of $500 million to restore and rebuild salmon runs within the Fraser watershed. Fin Donnelly, RSBCs chair and member of parliament for Port Moody-Coquitlam, visited the Big Bar Landslide in August 2019 with his colleague Gord Johns, NDP fisheries critic and MP for Courtenay-Alberni. Here are a few photos from their trip .-GG

The view from the helicopter of French Bar canyon 2 km north of the Big Bar ferry where a massive rock slide prevented salmon from getting through. Photo: Fin Donnelly

Three beach seine crews from Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and First Nations and two fish wheels operated daily to catch fish, and three medium lift helicopters transported them above the slide. Photo: Fin Donnelly

MP Fin Donnelly meets with River Tek operators Dan Pereda and Jake Baerg. They are part of a Unified Command Incident Management Team that includes DFO, Forest Lands Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, and First Nations Emergency Services Society, with assistance from BC Wild Fire Service, Canadian Coast Guard, and the US Army Corp of Engineers. Photo: Fin Donnelly

Protect the Fraser River from headwaters to sea. Learn how with our River Clinics and Sustainable Living Leadership Program.

www.rivershed.com 30â&#x20AC;&#x192; |â&#x20AC;&#x192; September/October 2019

World Rivers Day

Helping to Protect and Increase Global Awareness About Rivers Article by Jessica Kirby

The Fraser River – BC’s longest river and Canada’s 10th longest – moves along nearly 1,400 km of territory in British Columbia. It consists of 34 interdependent watersheds, drains 21 million hectares of the province, and supports more salmon runs than any other river in the world. Yet, salmon population numbers have steadily declined over the past decade to dire levels. The recent Big Bar Landslide has blocked passage for already declining Chinook and Sockeye salmon populations—a scenario that has caused the Tsilhqot’in Nation to declare a state of Local Emergency, calling on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to stop all marine and recreational fisheries that access salmon spawning above the Big Bar slide. Mark Angelo, avid environmentalist and founder of BC Rivers Day and World Rivers Day, says natural pressures like the slide only add to the threatened health of the Fraser River. “There is a noble effort to move the fish around the slide, and to get as many fish as we can is important in terms of preserving the runs and the genetics,” he says. “My hope is that for the longer term we will be able to re-establish fish passage.” Keep an eye on local BC news for progress on this important issue.

ark Angelo has had a love of rivers and fascination with moving water since he was a boy. As a teenager, he became an avid paddler and fly fisher, and throughout the 70s he spent a lot of time exploring BC rivers in every region of the province, including a summer-long paddle trip along the length of the Fraser River in 1975. “At the end I was so impressed with this river, its beauty, power, and diversity,” says Angelo. “At that point I started thinking, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were an event to celebrate how special rivers are in BC? I’ve paddled around world and I believe we have the world’s finest river heritage here in our own province.” An academic at BCIT, and Rivers Chair with the Outdoor Recreation Council at the time, Angelo decided to act on the idea. He and colleagues spread the word and approached the provincial and local governments to endorse a day of celebration for waterways in BC. It was a hit. “We kicked it off with one event: a river clean-up on the Thompson River,” says Angelo. “We had volunteers and a flotilla of rafts, and we worked with a towing company to remove car wrecks from the banks of the river. We removed several tonnes of garbage, including the wrecks from the river and its banks. Later that night we met in the pub and planned a few events for the next year, and after that it took on a life of its own.” In 2005, Angelo approached the United Nations about creating a World Rivers Day, which has become one of the biggest environmental celebrations on the planet occurring on the last Sunday in September.

Photo: Fraser River, Esk'etemc (Alkali), Esket = white Earth, Esk'etemc = people of the white Earth. For 15 years Jeremy Williams has been working with communities, First Nations, and organizations who rely on and protect the Fraser River. His vision is rivers teeming with fish and forests full of wildlife. To achieve this dream, we must look to the wisdom of Indigenous Nations and support their governance and follow their leadership. We are all downstream. Photo: Jeremy Williams, River Voices Productions, RiverVoices.ca

“It struck a chord with people because it celebrates the natural and cultural values of waterways and tries to engage people with those waterways,” says Angelo. “World Rivers Day has also strived to create a greater awareness of the pressures rivers face, and it encourages people to be advocates, increases awareness on so many fronts, and promotes educational activities around protecting and understanding waterways.” On a global scale, rivers face an array of threats from things like pollution, including anything from industrial sewage to plastic, which travels to the ocean via flowing water. Urbanization is another major threat because it contributes to pollution and leads to the destruction of riparian habitat. More than half the world’s population lives in urban settings, and the numbers only grow. “No one can deny climate change is a huge issue, nor can anyone deny the impact of that on rivers,” says Angelo. “Rivers are long, linear, vulnerable features that travel through multiple jurisdictions and face an array of threats and pressures. Protections of waterways in general is easily one of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. He points to the Fraser River as an example of an important, diverse, and sensitive ecosystem that needs help to remain healthy and productive. “I think the Fraser River is one of the world’s great waterways, and it has a special place in my heart,” says Angelo. “The Fraser watershed is a microcosm of the issues confronting so many rivers globally, including climate change.” The Fraser and its tributaries confront habitat issues, especially along what is known

as the heart of the Fraser, which is the section between Hope and Mission. “This is one of the most productive stretches on planet, and it is under immense pressure,” says Angelo. “There is a major effort now underway to try to protect these habitats while we can, including the Fraser islands and the channels around them, which are so important to species alone.” Despite a vast web of complex, interrelated pressures on rivers and other waterways, Angelo believes there are many things the public can do to help preserve and protect these areas. “We can work to ensure the issues are on the political radar federally, provincially, and at the local levels of government,” he says. “We can make sure the issues are profiled. When he started as a streamkeeper 50 years ago it was a lonely undertaking, he says. “Now, there are stream-keeping groups and advocacy groups with eyes and ears on local waterways all around the province. That has been a huge step forward.” He encourages advocacy work, volunteerism, and mindfulness around waste disposal and water use habits at home and work. “We can all try to be and do our best to be models on that front,” he says. “For those who have young people in their lives, spend time with them along creeks and rivers so they can learn to value, protect, and properly care for these places.” “As Canada’s longest unobstructed rivers, the Fraser in particular remains one of the great rivers on the planet,” says Angelo. “It brings significant natural, cultural, and recreational value to us all. I’ve always viewed it as the heart and soul of the province.” -GG

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 31

Conservation Conversation: Going Green as a Family Article by Amber Gregg

Spending time outdoors as a family is a great way to enjoy nature and learn about the environment. Photo: Amber Gregg

s many of you may know, our previous co-ordinator Vanessa Moberg recently boarded a 34foot sail boat and set off for sea in an effort to create awareness around conservation. Vanessa’s adventurous decision meant that the Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society would need to find a replacement for her—a tall order. After a successful interview, I was offered the position and happily accepted. It is my responsibility to ensure that the team has the resources they need to deliver our amazing programs. When I am not sitting in front of a budget, spread sheet, or funding report (something I actually enjoy), I am learning about watershed health, sustainable life, and what it means to be waste wise and water wise. My husband and I have two young boys, ages three years and 18 months, and two dogs. He and I both work, and the kids are in daycare four days a week. We all love outdoor activities including biking, hiking, canoeing, and camping. We enjoy gardening, home improvements, and spending time with family and friends. We are busy, to say the least, and our routine is delicately balanced to ensure we don’t exceed the maximum amount of chaos on any given day. Since joining the team at the Conservation Society, I have been reviewing our daily life from an environmental standpoint and we

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have been trying to adopt some new, earthfriendly habits. Here are a few that were easy for us to implement: • We ride our bikes as much as possible. My partner rides to work, rain or shine, and as cold as minus 20 degrees C. We have a bike trailer for the kids, and they think it’s a really cool way to travel, especially while yelling “faster mommy” as I pedal up the hill toward home. • We participate in the compost program at the Potato House. Once or twice a week we bring our bucket of scraps from food prep and their amazing team turns it back into nutrient rich soil for gardening. • We only do laundry when we have a full load and we hang our laundry to dry as much as possible. • We swap out products that come with packaging (even if it is recyclable) for alternatives as often as possible, such as purchasing milk in glass bottles, bar shampoo, conditioner, and body soap. • We turn the tap off while brushing our teeth and washing our hands.

As it turns out, more often than not, the environmentally-friendly choice is also less expensive and healthier—win-win! My partner and I very much enjoy spending time in the kitchen preparing delicious and nutritious meals and snacks for our family.

There is no question that we would much rather make everything from scratch and with the highest quality ingredients, but the reality is that we are not always willing to sacrifice the time, and ingredients can be extremely expensive or difficult to source. One night we may have a homemade meal with ingredients grown in our own backyard, and another night its frozen fish sticks and tater tots. Going green as a family can be a daunting task. During my first month here, my very wise co-workers advised me to change one habit at a time so as not to become overwhelmed. We try to be conscious of the impact that the choices we make have on the environment and hope that our kids will, too. A couple of weeks ago, my partner was cleaning the bathroom and after wiping out the toilet bowl, he gave it a quick flush. Our son went in and told him, “That’s a waste of water, Daddy”. Sounds like we are off to a good start! -GG Amber is the Coordinator for the Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society as well as the Coordinator for WildSafe BC for the Cariboo Regional District. When she is not working on spreadsheets or sharing information about wildlife safety, she enjoys getting outdoors with her husband and two boys. Visit CCCS at https://www.ccconserv.org to learn more about our education programs or community projects.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 33

—

SCIENCE MATTERS —

Let the Children Vote? Article by David Suzuki

Students at Fridays for Future demonstration in Austria, Vienna, February 2019. Photo: www.123rf.com, rolfgwackenberg

oung people have been speaking out for their rights. Many are wise beyond their years. Without the blinkers of ideology, workaday priorities, and ingrained values, they can see clearly what’s happening. They’ve had to step up for their own futures because too few of their elders are willing to accept that rampant consumerism has been an illusory quest for happiness at the expense of the planet’s lifesupport systems. “We have learned that if we don’t start acting for our future, nobody else will make the first move,” said a Guardian article signed by 46 young people, including 16-year-old Swedish student climate activist Greta Thunberg. Kids understand that their well-being, safety, and lives depend on a healthy planet with clean air, good water, nutritious food, and a stable climate. And many are skilled at distinguishing truth from lies. But while tens of thousands are marching in streets worldwide—for the #FridaysForFuture youth climate strikes that Thunberg started and more—they don’t always see much evidence that adults with the power to make change are listening. “We’re feeling the burden of it, so it makes sense that I would care the most,” 15-year-old Lily Gardner of Lexington, Kentucky, told The Guardian. “But I think it’s really difficult to get politicians and legislators to take our voices seriously, especially because they believe that we do not have any voting power.” What if we gave them that power? A cheeky movement to lower Canada’s voting age from 18 to 8 might sound… out there. But I’m not seeing much evidence that adults are any better at making political

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decisions than young people. So many grownups are electing politicians who don’t even accept climate science, let alone the need to treat climate disruption as an emergency. Many governments and politicians around the world seem more beholden to the fading fossil fuel industry than the people they’re supposed to represent. “Politicians have known about climate change for decades,” Thunberg and her fellow youth wrote. “They have willingly handed over their responsibility for our future to profiteers whose search for quick cash threatens our very existence.” This is not hyperbole. Every reputable scientist in every climate-related discipline, from oceanography to atmospheric physics, is saying we have little time – not much more than a decade, if that – to turn things around, to keep from pumping so many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that they can’t be re-absorbed or broken down before Earth heats beyond its ability to support human life. Every legitimate scientific academy and institution in the world agrees. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has worked with scientists and researchers worldwide to regularly compile and summarize the research and evidence to share with government leaders and policymakers. There’s no shortage of solutions. Many are being deployed and new ones are being developed all the time, but not quickly enough. The only thing holding us back is lack of political will. Yet many grown-ups are willing to risk that all these scientists and their research are wrong—even though we’d still end up with cleaner air, water, and soil and healthier people

if we took their advice and it turned out they all somehow missed something. Those who are gambling away our youth’s future often support politicians who are likewise willing to bet against impossible odds. Young people may not always make the best or most informed decisions but given that their futures are at stake and they understand that change is possible and necessary, I can’t imagine they would make worse decisions than their elders. As adults, we must do all we can to support our youth. The Friday youth walkouts are expanding to a Global Climate Strike on September 20, kick-starting a week of activities that people of all ages are invited to join, and culminating in another strike on September 27. We should encourage our kids and grandkids to take part and get out there ourselves. Let the children speak, and we must listen to them. We should also make sure to take our election responsibilities seriously, asking candidates about their climate plans and voting for those who are committed to a cleaner, safer, brighter tomorrow. Should we let the kids vote? As the 18 to 8 campaign says, “Let the future decide the future.” DAVID SUZUKI is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and cofounder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation senior editor, Ian Hanington. Learn more at https://www.davidsuzuki.org

berg

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 35

Unbearable

The Illegal Trade in Asian Bear Species Article by Chris R. Shepherd and Lalita Gomez

Asiatic Black Bear rescued from a bear bile farm in Vietnam. Despite the name, bear bile farms in Vietnam do not breed bears but rely on illegal capture from the wild. Photo: Chris R. Shepherd

he illegal trade of wildlife is ravaging our planet of life and diversity. Myriad species are drawing ever closer to extinction as we exploit them for food, medicine, pets, ornaments, leather, fashion, and even good luck charms. Poaching wildlife for trade now rivals habitat destruction as a key threat to the survival of species. Bears are no exception. Our planet is home to eight species of bears that are found across Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Six of these species are found in Asia, with four species, Asiatic black bear Ursusthibetanus, Sun bear Helarctosmalayanus, Sloth bear Melursus Ursinus, and Giant panda Ailuopodamelanoleuca, endemic to the region, and two others, Brown bear Ursusarctos and Polar bear Ursusmaritimus, found in Asia’s Arctic Siberia. In Asia, bear populations are considered in decline across their ranges. This is in part due to habitat loss, but increasingly it is the illegal and unsustainable poaching and killing of bears fuelled by widespread, blatant, and thriving black-market trade in bile and derivatives that is the primary cause for declines. This illicit trade is largely driven by demand for their gall bladders and bile, which are highly valuable ingredients in traditional medicines used to treat a variety of ailments such as the flu, sores, haemorrhoids, sprains, epilepsy, and liver diseases. Bear meat is also coveted and sold in wild meat restaurants. The paws are considered

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a delicacy and health tonic when soaked in wine. They are in particularly high demand in countries such as China and Vietnam. Between 2000-2011, over 6,000 bear paws were seized on route to China, equating to at least 1,500 individual bears, the majority of which were Brown bears from Russia, destined for the luxury meat trade. Other parts, such as claws, teeth, skulls, and skins, are traded as trophies, talismans, or souvenirs. Live bears, especially cubs, are also captured to stock bear bile extracting facilities (generally referred to as bear farms) in China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam, or increasingly to be sold as exotic pets (see photo). Asian bear species are largely protected from hunting and trade throughout their ranges. They are also listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which generally prohibits commercial international trade. Regardless of the legal protections in place, bears in trade continue to be illegally sourced from the wild. In some countries, including China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam, there are so-called bear farms, where bears are kept in horrific conditions, alone in extremely small cages, and the bile is drained out of them through pipes regularly inserted into their gallbladders. This practice began in the mid-1980s in support of the commercial bear bile trade and, in the minds of some, on the premise that it would alleviate pressure on wild bear populations as captive breeding

programs would be established. However, studies have shown the opposite to be true, as most of these farms rely on wild-caught bears, with the Asiatic black bear being the most commonly used species. The demand for bear parts and derivatives is not just confined to Asia. In June 2019, Canada participated in an INTERPOL-led operation called Operation Thunderball and found 16 baculum (the penis bone of a bear), bear testicles, and a number of bear paws in three provinces, being smuggled out of the country. Currently, the consumption of bear parts in Asia is unsustainable, and if left to continue at the current rate, will very likely lead to the extinction of some bear species in the wild. One of our goals in Monitor Conservation Research Society (Monitor) is to reduce the illegal hunting and trade of bears. This includes researching and monitoring national, regional, and international trade dynamics to support law enforcement efforts to end this illicit trade. We are also working to raise levels of awareness among consumers and practitioners of traditional medicines regarding legislation, consequences, and bear conservation. With World Animal Day rapidly approaching on Oct 4, there is no better time to consider what you can do to support bear conservation in Canada or abroad and join the effort to prevent further decline of wild bear populations. Educate yourself on the threats to bears and get involved or support research and/or conservation programs. Everyone has a role to play. -GG Dr. Chris R. Shepherd and Lalita Gomez are members of the IUCN SSC Bear Specialist Group. Both work for the Monitor Conservation Research Society (Monitor) where Dr. Chris R. Shepherd is the executive director and Lalita Gomez is a program officer and lead on bearrelated work. For more info see Monitor's website: https://mcrsociety.org or Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mcrsociety/.

Help Cariboo Communities:

Become a Healthy Habitat Leader with the Invasive Species Council of BC blogging. Budding event planners can gain valuable experience by helping plan the 2020 youth summit. In one healthy habitat project in Williams Lake, volunteers are building a community composter with signs informing gardeners of the importance of not composting invasive species. In Vancouver, volunteer teams have been creating educational art murals. Kamloops projects include co-ordinating invasive weed pulls and collecting insects called weevils to help control the invasive plant knapweed—a process called biocontrol. While some community projects have started, there are plenty of opportunities to join from now until March 2020. As ISCBC continues to expand its network of volunteers in the Cariboo, Kamloops, and Vancouver areas, young adults interested in building healthy habitats are encouraged to volunteer today. Have fun experiences in an inclusive environment while building your resume and gaining professional references. Sign up today at bcinvasives.ca/volunteer. -GG

About the Invasive Species Council of British Columbia

Volunteers in Williams Lake working on the composting site. Photo credit: ISCBC

oung adults aged 15-30 are invited to volunteer with the Invasive Species Council of BC’s (ISCBC) Healthy Habitats project to help prevent the spread of invasive species in British Columbia. Volunteers will benefit from training and leadership opportunities while developing and enhancing their skills. ISCBC co-ordinates efforts to tackle invasive species across the province and is pleased to also develop BC youth through this project. Early this summer, ISCBC initiated the exciting new volunteer project for young adults in Cariboo, Kamloops, and Vancouver. The project aims to provide hands-on opportunities for young people who are passionate about enhancing their local environments. Participants will gain from training, mentoring, and being part of a growing network of like-minded individuals across BC. With notable and harmful invasive species such as giant hogweed and Japanese beetle affecting landscapes and communities, having a network

of young adults trained in the prevention and management of these species will benefit the communities in which they live and work. Working in teams guided by ISCBC facilitators, volunteers create innovative and fun projects to help protect their communities from new and spreading invasive species. Imagination is encouraged when designing the projects, which can be based locally or can even be virtual. Project ideas include producing a social media video, adopting a local park, restoring a beach, and running a community weed pull. Volunteers keen on photography and writing could contribute by

The Invasive Species Council of BC is dedicated to keeping our landscapes and communities free of invasive species. It provides a co-ordinated, province-wide approach to reducing the impact of invasive species in BC. The ISCBC unites efforts across the province and collaborates with a variety of partners to develop unique solutions for the wide variety of ecosystems across BC. For more info, contact Invasive Species Council of BC#100 - 197 North Second Avenue Williams Lake, BC V2G 1Z5, BC, invasives.ca, info@bcinvasives.ca, or 250-305-1003 / Fax: 778-412-2248.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 37

The Climate Emergency How Can We Respond? Article by Guy Dauncey

here are massive forest fires in Siberia. Greenland’s melting is accelerating. Record heat waves are roasting Europe. The world’s insects are dying off. The scary news keeps accumulating. We are living on the edge of an emergency that is just getting started, and climate is only the half of it. There’s also an ecological emergency. How are we to respond? It’s easy to slip into complacency or a sense of impotence. You know the crises are real, but the children are coming to visit, there’s a holiday to plan, and don’t get me started on the problems we’re having at work. The first step to end climate complacency is to place the crisis on your weekly to-do list: • Weed the vegetable patch • Visit Aunt Agatha in hospital • Sign the kids up for karate lessons • Tackle the climate crisis

If you have a weekly household meeting, so much the better. The possibilities fall into three simple categories: political action, household action, and neighbourhood action. All are needed. All are good. Political Action Political action is so much easier if you do it with others, by joining a local group, or if one doesn’t exist, forming one with friends. Once you are sitting around the table, the question becomes, “What shall we do?” The possibilities are vast and can easily feel overwhelming. So, here’s a list to help you find one you agree on:

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• Give yourselves a name. • Petition your council/school board/chamber of commerce/labour union/provincial government to declare a climate-ecological emergency. • Spend a month doing some serious reading to get yourselves up to speed. (see reading list in this article online) • Choose a candidate to support in Canada’s federal election and join their campaign. • Write to local organizations offering yourselves as speakers. • Choose a dimension of the crisis and find a focus within it : transportation, energy, buildings, deforestation, the ocean, wildlife, green economy, Green New Deal, a new civilizational story, climate education, opposing a fossil fuel development project, food and farming, or local neighbourhood action.

Household Action One person eating less meat and buying an electric car might not make much difference, but if everyone uses this as an excuse for not acting, we will all be personally responsible for the terrible things our children will have to suffer. To make things easier I have created a Climate Emergency Household Action List with the intention that over five years, every of us should make the transition to becoming 100% climate- and ecologically-friendly. So, when you come to ‘tackle the climate crisis’ on your weekly to-do list, you can consult the list and choose a priority for the week, knowing that you have five years to get everything done. During those five years the price of electric vehicles will fall, support for home retrofits will improve, and unless I am seriously mistaken, most of the actions will become normal. The

cost to drive 1,000 kilometres in our KIA Soul EV: $15. Annual servicing: $59.95. Neighbourhood Action To tackle the emergencies with the urgency required we are going to need massive citizen engagement, street by street, block by block. In Britain, during World War 2, victory would not have been possible without the millions of people who volunteered to join the Red Cross, the YMCA, the Women’s Voluntary Service, the St John Ambulance Brigade, Oxfam, and the Home Guard, which by June 1940 had 1.5 million volunteers. We need to imagine local climate emergency organizations whose volunteers are trained to visit every home on their block and invite people to kitchen-table meetings. The goal would be to show people the list, help them decide what to do, and call on them every so often to ask how it’s going. With a little bit of organization, every volunteer could have shared access to a thermal imaging camera that neighbours could use to give them a sense of where their homes are losing heat, and a Kill-a-Watt meter to understand how much power each appliance is using. A few of your neighbours (6% of Canadians, according to a 2018 Angus Reid poll) may think the climate crisis is a hoax, but the neat thing about this approach is that it doesn’t matter. It’s a five-year transition, and during that time a lot can happen. If we just start with the 38% of Canadians who believe that “our survival depends on addressing climate change”, we’ll be making a great start. -GG Guy Dauncey is author of The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming (2009) and Journey to the Future: A Better World is Possible (2015). www.thepracticalutopian.ca

A Climate and Ecological Emergency Household Action List Household Planning Community Talk to neighbours about helping each other with this list Talk to friends to discuss forming a local action group Transportation Shift to cycling/transit Buy an electric vehicle Flights: Don't fly/buy carbon offsets (www.less.ca) Home Switch to LED lightbulbs Upgrade to the most efficient appliances Do a home energy retrofit: insulate, reduce heat leaks, reduce cost Install a heat-pump (www.tinyurl.com/hprebates) Install solar PV. 4kw system=$8000. If you have market choice, switch to a renewable electricity provider Switch to an electric mower, weed-eater, chainsaw Assemble your household emergency preparedness kit Garden Grow food 100% organically, without pesticides Practice home composting Harvest rainwater in tanks, swales, and ponds Create habitat for birds, bats, bees, native plants, and wildlife Plant ten trees Save seeds for next year Financial Switch to a climate-friendly bank (www.tinyurl.com/Fossil-Fuel-Banks) Switch to climate-friendly investments (www.riacanada.ca) Business Become a certified green business (www.vigbc.ca Become a certified B Corporation (www.bcorporation).net) Shopping Buy organic food Switch to sustainable seafood (www.seachoice.org) Reduce red meat to once a week Eliminate non-sustainable conflict palm oil products Buy sustainable harm-free snack food (www.tinyurl.com/sustsnacks) Buy tree-free or 100% recycled paper, tissues, toilet-paper Buy safe cosmetics (www.ewg.org) Buy Fair-Trade, slave-free chocolate Buy green household cleaning products (www.seventhgeneration.com) Buy nature-friendly clothing, sustainable fashion Waste Embrace zero-waste shopping (www.tinyurl.com/sustshopping) Use re-useable water bottles, mugs, bags, take-away containers Aim at sending zero waste to the landfill The End Leave a legacy for climate and nature in your will Plan a beautiful green burial

2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 39

Skywatch with Bill Irwin

he Bells Lake Observatory is about 600 ft from our home. Behind the observatory and to the sides are forested or hay meadows. Bells Lake is 200 ft to the east. It is usually very quiet here, except for birds rustling along the shore. When you add the night sky and the vastness of space to that… well, I warned you. There are two parts to the observatory: the observing deck and the warm room. The roof over the observing deck is a light welded framework with green tinted polycarbonate panels like you find in greenhouses. It is fairly easy to lift one end and roll it back on tracks over the warm room. The walls fold down to about hip height and, voilà, inside has become outside. Two telescopes sit on piers that are isolated from the floor, so you could jump up and down and not disturb the image. An observatory has its main orientation to the south, because the stars rise in the east, culminate due south, and set in the west. You get a brief chance to see the southernmost stars in constellations such as Scorpius and Sagittarius. The tail of the Scorpion is below the horizon, but the stinger is visible from our latitude. Sagittarius actually looks like a teapot, complete with steam coming from its spout.

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The star clouds are dense in this region, looking towards the galactic centre. As the season rolls on, the warm room makes it possible to stay out longer and be comfortable. Over the course of a few hours, the stars move on and new things rise in the east. It gets even darker and cooler. Having a warm space only a few feet from the scope makes observing into the cold season possible without needing Arctic gear. The telescopes have to be at outside temp due to thermal air currents disturbing the image. Even a person walking in front of the scope will make the image go fuzzy due to body heat. When my cat climbed into the reflector tube onto my mirror, it was worse than that! As fall progresses, you will see the Pleiades rising by the end of the session—certainly the most famous of the galactic open clusters. Towards morning you will see Orion and, finally, Sirius, the brightest star, in Canis Major, the big dog. The stars move on towards the west as days pass due to Earth’s revolution around the Sun, but the time that it gets dark is also a bit earlier each night this time of year. As a result the summer stars, such as the famous summer triangle, tend to stay around until late fall. A pair of good binoculars in dark Cariboo skies can show an amazing amount of stars especially when you sweep the Milky Way. Many faint fuzzies are visible, which you can later examine with a telescope. Although it wasn’t completely dark last

night, we observed the crescent moon, Jupiter, and Saturn. Even though the objects were low in the South, the air was steady and the detail in my refractor telescope was stunning. The shadows along the lunar terminator, the dark/light boundary, are at their greatest and the craters have real depth. At full moon, it is possible to examine the maria, or lunar “seas”, and the prominent craters, but the contrast is lower. There is always something to look at. Jupiter and Saturn will continue to be highly visible in the south as fall sets in. A good spotting scope will show the moons of big Jupe and how they change positions nightly. There are few things more thrilling than seeing that Saturn actually has rings, even though you already know that and have seen it a million times in magazines and TV documentaries. Like seeing the moon for the first time in a scope with really good optics, there really is nothing quite like it. Amateur astronomy does require some dedication. Things like the brightness of the moon, crummy weather, and having to go to work discourage the forming of the habit. But when it’s good, it’s good. Your mind is lifted off the Earth and something changes. Some of the views at the star parties in those really big scopes you have to go up a fruit ladder to look in are never forgotten. For more info about the Bells Lake Observatory near Horsefly, BC, I can be reached at irwin8sound@gmail.com. -GG

Low-carbon Electrification in BC: Next Steps for BC Hydro

By Tom Hackney, Policy Advisor for the BC Sustainable Energy Association

he BC government recently began Phase 2 of its Comprehensive Review of BC Hydro. A key component is determining how BC Hydro will support the low-carbon electrification – getting off fossil fuels and onto clean, renewable electricity – that is required by the ambitious GHG reduction targets in the CleanBC plan (see BCSEA’s February 2019 analysis). The CleanBC plan says that by 2030, BC will need an additional 4,000 GWh per year of clean, renewable electricity on top of currently projected load growth to support the 2030 target of 40% GHG reductions below 2007 levels. This additional energy will be an increase of about 8% above BC Hydro’s current generation—a big challenge for a government that also wants to keep electricity rates affordable. Phase 1 of the Comprehensive Review addressed BC Hydro’s current costs and regulatory oversight. Phase 2 will give strategic direction to BC Hydro on how to: • support the CleanBC plan;

• respond to technological advances and evolving customer needs; • maximize ratepayer benefits through trading on regional markets; and • support First Nations to increase their participation in the electricity sector.

BCSEA strongly supports electrifying transportation in BC by rapidly switching from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles, including electric buses. This requires development of a province-wide network of EV charging stations, as well as EV fleet charging stations. BCSEA also supports switching from natural gas heating to electric heat pumps and electrifying the many industrial loads currently met with natural gas, oil, and diesel fuel. However, BCSEA remains concerned about the government’s proposal to electrify natural gas production and LNG liquefaction to “support lower carbon natural resources for export.” Electrifying fossil fuel production and liquefaction in BC would reduce GHG emissions within BC. However, it does not reduce the much larger volumes of GHG emissions

that occur when the fuel is burned outside of BC. BCSEA does not agree with the theory that natural gas exports from BC would necessarily displace higher-carbon fuels in other countries and thereby reduce global GHG emissions. In BCSEA’s view, the imperative is to cut global GHG emissions to a small fraction of current levels. This should be reflected in the government’s policies, including the Phase 2 review. The Phase 2 Review Committee will seek stakeholder inputs early this fall. Late in 2019, a draft report will be published for public comment. The report will be finalized early in 2020, in time to give direction to BC Hydro’s 2021 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The IRP will be submitted to the BC Utilities Commission by February 2021 for public review. BCSEA expects to be involved at all stages of this process. We encourage anyone who is concerned about climate change or interested in sustainable energy to submit their thoughts and support positive change.-GG Find out more about BC Sustainable Energy Association here: www.bcsea.org.

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UN Urged to Protect Nature and Humankind from Electromagnetic Fields 4G/5G Antenna Densification is Escalating Health Risks—A Global Crisis

Photo: www.123rf.com, Copyright: Teoh Chin Leong

he Advisors to the International EMF Scientist Appeal, representing 248 scientists from 42 nations, have resubmitted The Appeal to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director, Inger Andersen, requesting the UNEP reassess the potential biological impacts of next generation 4G and 5G telecommunication technologies on plants, animals, and humans. There is urgency, particularly at this time, as new antennas are densely located throughout residential neighbourhoods using much higher frequencies, with greater biologically disruptive pulsations, more dangerous signalling characteristics, and with transmitting equipment on and inside homes and buildings. The Advisors to The Appeal recommend UNEP weigh heavily the findings of the independent, non-industry associated EMF science. The Appeal highlights the World Health Organization’s (WHO) conflicting positions about EMF risk. The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified radio-frequency radiation as a Group 2B “Possible Carcinogen” in 2011, and extremely low frequency fields in 2001. Nonetheless, WHO continues to ignore its own agency’s recommendations and favours guidelines recommended by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation

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Protection (ICNIRP), a private German NGO with industry ties long criticized for promoting guidelines not protective of humans, and falsely assuming authority. In addition, it should be noted that no nation has established EMF exposure guidelines aiming to protect animals and plants. The Appeal calls on the United Nations to resolve the inconsistencies among its sub organizations and to seriously address the rapidly escalating health and environmental crisis caused by human-made EMF pollution. Leadership is needed now, especially in light of urgent warnings from international scientists about 4G/5G antenna densification, the Internet of Things (IoT), and plans for significant radiation from space emitted by tens of thousands of satellites. The Advisors to the International EMF Scientist Appeal – Annie Sasco, MD, Dr.PH., Henry Lai, Ph.D., Joel Moskowitz, PhD., Ronald Melnick, Ph.D., and Magda Havas, Ph.D.– call on the UNEP to be a strong voice for the total environment of the planet and an effective catalyst within the United Nations with regards to the biological and health effects of electromagnetic pollution. In a letter to UNEP, Dr. Havas, Professor Emeritus, Trent University’s School of the Environment, Canada, details serious effects on plants, insects, and wildlife from

electromagnetic fields, and these effects are well documented in the scientific literature. Ronald Melnick, Ph.D., Advisor to The Appeal and former scientist at the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), managed the design and development of the NTP’s recently published $30 million animal study showing a clear link between radio frequency radiation (RFR) and cancer. He says, “Results from the NTP study show that the previously held assumption that radio-frequency radiation cannot cause cancer or other adverse health effects is clearly wrong.” Policymakers the world over should take note. See the video (https://vimeo. com/123468632) of spokesperson for The Appeal, the late Martin Blank, Ph.D. of Columbia University, and read the recent letter to the UNEP (https://www.emfscientist. org/Letter_to_UNEP_June_25_%202019.pdf) and the Appeal (https://emfscientist.org/ images/docs/International_EMF_ScientistAppeal.pdf). For more info contact Elizabeth Kelley, M.A., director, https://emfscientist.org/, info@ EMFscientist.org or Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D., School of Public Health, UC Berkeley, jmm@ berkeley.edu. -GG

The Final Liquidation — A BC Forest Emergency

Article By Jim Cooperman

espite the election of what we thought would be a more environmentally friendly government, British Columbia’s public forests continue to disappear at an alarming rate, with inadequate protection for all values including fish and wildlife habitat, community water supply protection, and recreation. Although these forests belong to the people of BC and to future generations, they are being managed primarily to benefit a few large corporations. Urgent reforms are needed to meet the needs of present and future generations, and yet to date little has been done. The BC Liberals created the problems. The Council of Forest Industries helped them to develop the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA), which ended government oversight and allowed forest companies to operate carte blanche for 15 years, enabling liquidation forestry by downplaying or entirely disregarding “non-timber values.” Now the NDP, who were once the architects of the long defunct Forest Practices Code, who more than doubled the size of the park system and implemented land use planning, have done little to address the problems and reverse these destructive policies. As a result of the professional reliance review by Mark Haddock, an oversight body was created called the Office of the Superintendent of Professional Governance in the Ministry of Attorney General with a goal to ensure best practices are implemented. As well, Bill 21 has been introduced, and when legislated it will amend FRPA to improve public input and information sharing by requiring licenses to prepare operational mapping for review and revise the wildlife definition to better protect at-risk species. More changes are in the works, but it is unlikely that the NDP will reduce the unsustainable rate of cut, revise the forest tenure system (other than Bill 22 allowing the Minister a veto over transfers of tenures and cutting rights), or remove the caveat that protection of non-timber values must not “unduly reduce the supply of timber.” The BC forest industry has now consolidated into five large corporations that control 60 percent of the allowable annual cut. Thanks to

Photo: www.123rf.com, Copyright: Michele Cornelius

generous subsidies (including operating without oversight, causing property and ecological damage with the bills going to the public taxpayers, and long term, give-away licenses to control vast swaths of public land to log publicly owned forests) these companies are taking their profits and investing them in US and Swedish mills, which will operate long after BC’s accessible forests are cut over because these mills cut fast-growing, southern pine. So far, BC forest companies have purchased 51 mills in the US and 9 mills in Sweden, which is more than they own in this province. The forest industry has far more influence over policies and laws than it deserves, given that its contribution to the province’s GDP has been decreasing along with the number of jobs it provides. Forestry only represents 5 percent of the total BC economy (GDP) and only 3 percent of the direct jobs. So far, 33 mills have closed permanently or temporarily as wood supply runs out. Massive amounts of forest land (3 million hectares economic and over 8-million non-economic) are denuded and there is no money to replant them. The government and companies can barely keep up with the costs of planting the areas that have been logged or burned recently, annual wildfire suppression costs, and disaster relief to communities for floods and drought. BC forests stopped being a carbon sink in 2001 and now add far more carbon to the atmosphere than any other source every year. The liquidation is moving into the high elevation forests, some previously considered inoperable, which is upsetting the hydrologic balance and resulting in massive flooding that is destroying property, including the city of Grand Forks and Okanagan Lake communities. Loss of high elevation forest impacts local climates by removing the cool moist air that normally flows from damp forests down in the evening to cool off the lower hills and lakes. Loss of the evening cooling breezes further warms the valleys and increases the likelihood of wildfires. Land use planning, which produced so many benefits, was shelved by the Liberals and now is barely getting any attention by the NDP.

BC Timber Sales (BCTS) has approximately 20 percent of the cut and is irresponsibly logging in community watersheds, which damages water quality and quantity and poses erosion risks. The final forest liquidation is laying waste to essential fish and wildlife habitat, especially the endangered species like caribou, owls, and salmon, and eliminating the final remnants of coastal old growth forests on Vancouver Island. Critical habitat for the mountain caribou adjacent to Wells Gray Provincial Park has been clear-cut and more logging has been approved. The NDP promised to bring in endangered species legislation and although the bill has been drafted, it has been delayed with no implementation in sight. We are now witnessing the final liquidation of the province’s once massive tracts of forests and opposition is futile. -GG Jim Cooperman was a provincial forest activist with the BC Environmental Network during the turbulent 1990s. He now focuses on local issues in the Shuswap, where he has lived on a rural property for 50 years. His bioregional book, Everything Shuswap, is a local bestseller.

A recent cut-block high above Shuswap Lake where the company logged low value balsam and spruce and left much waste to be burned. Jim is working with the downstream community to halt plans to log the south face slope on the other side of the valley because of the risks logging poses to water quality and public safety. Photo: Jim Cooperman

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 43

Nourishing Our Children Rethinking Condiments By Barbara Schellenberg

ondiments should be used to elevate a meal and can be a great way to incorporate more nutrients into your diet, but I find they are more often served up to mask the flavour or lack of flavour in food. As with everything, it is important to have a strong foundation; start with the best available ingredients for a meal to make sure you have a nutritious and flavourful base. Then use a creative, homemade condiment to take a simple meal to the next level. Commercial condiments are full of synthetic colours, processed sugars, thickeners, flavourings, and flavour enhancers that are linked to many health and behavioural problems. These are things you really don’t want to feed to your kids. Store bought condiments like ketchup, HP sauce, and cranberry sauce

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are so easily replaced by nutritious, homemade and unique sides. Using simple ingredients, you can eliminate a swath of chemicals from your diet. Try homemade cranberry sauce, currant sauce, or even a delicious acidic spiced plum sauce. This simple and quick condiment is probably my favourite since it uses whatever fruit you have on hand. Melt a little butter in a saucepan, toss in a few handfuls of fresh or frozen ripe fruit such as wild berries, fresh figs, pears, apples (even bananas work great with pork!). Lightly sauté the fruit until it starts to look like a compote. This ‘no-sugar-added’ versatile condiment is a great addition to top any meat dish. You can play with adding herbs, vinegars, and spices, as well. I particularly like to use berry sauces with lamb and apple/pear/fig with beef and pork.

Alternatively, you can find many great replacement recipes for traditional condiments in Sally Fallons’ book, Nourishing Traditions (available at www.westonaprice.org), and other online sources. I also have a favourite ketchup recipe you can find online by Jamie Oliver. It is easy to make and is absolutely delicious. Introduce sides such as live, facto-fermented kimchi and sauerkraut. The live probiotic sides aid indigestion and metabolism of nutrients, helping your body make the most of the food you eat. They also have a cleansing effect on the palate, making your food taste ‘brighter’. -GG For more everyday ways to incorporate nutritious and healing foods into your daily diet, you can follow my food page on Facebook: @ ek.everydaysuperfoods.

The Green Gazette www.thegreengazette.ca | 45

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We invite you to shop local. The character of our region is largely shaped by the unique businesses and entrepreneurs that are at the heart of our vibrant communities. Visit our community webpages to enjoy all the Cariboo has to offer by discovering our locally owned, independent businesses.

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