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Canadian Environment Awards
The Community Awards 2008
Sustainable Living
• Local Food Plus
• The Otesha Project
• The Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul
LOCAL FOOD PLUS
Network for the certification and promotion of locally produced food
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| PHOTO: LOCAL FOOD PLUS/FIESTA FARMS |
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Food. It’s essential to our survival, but in an age of agribusiness,
its provenance has become a source of concern for consumers. As
urban sprawl and shrinking markets displace the family farm, our
food is increasingly being shipped thousands of kilometres to reach
our tables. But Lori Stahlbrand and Local Food Plus (LFP) are going
the distance so that our food doesn’t have to. “Our
goal is to change the market by making as much locally grown sustainable
food available as possible,” says Stahlbrand, LFP’s
founder and president. “We’ve got to find a way
to link people to their local food.”
A former CBC Radio broadcaster,
Stahlbrand is passionate about the politics of food. After co-authoring Real
Food for a Change and researching a variety of food-sustainability
models, she decided, however, that it was time to move to the front
lines in the fight for healthy food. “I realized the
idea of organic alone was not enough,” she says. “The
environmental downside of shipping organic from across the globe
is too enormous. But local food grown conventionally isn’t
enough either.”
Stahlbrand and fellow food activist Mike Schreiner
launched the not-for-profit LFP in 2005. First, they developed
a comprehensive independent certification system that promotes
sustainable farming, biodiversity and habitat preservation, energy
conservation, workers’ rights and humane care for livestock.
LFP then nurtured a network of regional farmers committed to sustainable-farming
principles and standards. At the same time, LFP started to develop
new markets that would guarantee farmers an outlet for the food
they produce. Today, these include the University of Toronto, Il
Fornello Restaurants and Fiesta Farms Inc. “We helped create
new supply-chain links so that we could give food-service companies
a perpetually updated list of sustainable-food suppliers, products
and distributors,” says Stahlbrand.
The result is a market-driven
model with unlimited potential to connect healthy-food producers
and consumers and to rejuvenate local economies. “We believe
people are taking this seriously,” says Stahlbrand. “It’s
not just a fad. It puts healthier food on the table, and people
can see that it’s a sustainable form of community economic
development that can happen anywhere.”
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THE OTESHA PROJECT
National youth-driven sustainability campaign
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| PHOTO: THE OTESHA PROJECT |
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One part theatre, one part education and one part cycling tour,
The Otesha Project is a high-energy, youth-driven environmental
initiative that has taken its freewheeling sustainability message
on the road. And all across the country, young Canadians are heeding
the call.
The not-for-profit Ottawa-based group was founded
in 2002 by Jocelyn Land-Murphy and Jessica Lax, two sustainable-development
students who met that year in Kenya. Overwhelmed by the inequality
of life in developing countries compared with life at home, Land-Murphy
and Lax returned to Canada determined to “inspire a revolution” about
the power individuals have to protect the world’s resources.
In honour of a Kiswahili word that means “reason to dream,” they
called their project “Otesha.”
Short on funds but long
on enthusiasm, they assembled a core group of volunteers and created
the “Morning Choices Play,” a 30-minute skit that hilariously
dissects the impact that a teenager’s daily actions can have
on the planet — from showering and flushing the toilet
to making a bag lunch and choosing what clothes to wear.
In the
summer of 2003, 33 cyclists, the Otesha founders among them, headed
out on a 164-day cycling tour from Vancouver, B.C., to Corner Brook,
N.L., staging the highly animated show to enthusiastic audiences
in hundreds of schools, community centres, summer camps and living
rooms along the way. “The beauty of the play is that the performance
illustrates the hundreds of little things each of us can do every
day to make a difference,” says Jennifer Valberg, Otesha’s
outreach and development director. “Everyone has the power
to contribute. Our goal is to inspire and motivate young people,
not make them feel bad about the state of the environment. Most
of us really don’t know how easy it is to take positive action.”
Ten
cycling tours later, Otesha teams have visited nearly 400 Canadian
communities, logging some 30,000 kilometres and delivering more
than 2,000 performances and workshops to over 72,000 people. It’s
a high-octane package, and the group has reinforced its message
in an original book called The Otesha Book: From Junk to Funk,
a graphic exposé of our too often thoughtless use of water,
clothing, food and transit.
“We’re not just talking
about lighting the spark of a revolution here,” the introduction
reads. “We’re talking about one all-out, full-fledged,
love-filled, sustainability-driven, party-happenin’,
lifelong bonfire of a revolution!”
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THE SISTERS OF PROVIDENCE OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL
Heirloom Seed Sanctuary
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| PHOTO: HEIRLOOM SEED SANCTUARY
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Down the road from a big-box shopping centre in Kingston, Ont.,
the sacred gardens of Heathfield, home of the Sisters of Providence
of St. Vincent de Paul, are providing safe haven for the renewal
of a forgotten agricultural tradition.
A decade ago, this community
of religious women joined forces with long-time organic farmers
Carol and Robert Mouck to found the Heirloom Seed Sanctuary. The
seed sanctuary was an opportunity for the Sisters of Providence
to invigorate their goal of living with ecological integrity. For
the Moucks, it was a chance to invest a lifetime’s experience
in safeguarding a sustainable food source.
In the face of climate
change and with hybrid and genetically engineered seeds dominating
the marketplace, the shared strategy to preserve and disseminate
rare but hardy heritage seed varieties makes elegant sense. “The
art of handling and cultivating seeds has fallen out of favour because
of pressure to increase production,” says Carol. “We
try to hook people on the mystery of seeds, reconnecting them with
feelings they have for gardening.”
The Heirloom Seed Sanctuary
garden, now almost a hectare in size, is the proving ground for
the more than 400 varieties of vegetables, tomatoes, herbs and flower
seeds that the Moucks have gathered and raised with “tough
love,” restricting both water and compost. “Many of
these seeds were grown for years by backyard gardeners and farmers,” says
Robert. Others were first grown in the area centuries ago,
and the Moucks have tracked them down through old seed catalogues
and obscure gardening books. Still others arrived serendipitously
from enthusiastic supporters. “These open-pollinated seeds
are sustainability itself,” says Robert, noting that hybrids
or genetically engineered seeds, by contrast, can be sterile or
fail to breed true.
“Heirloom seeds have a memory to survive,” adds
Carol.
Inside Heathfield’s restored 19th-century barn,
the Moucks hand-sort each seed after the growing season, painstakingly
checking for disease or insect damage. They store — and give
away or sell — only the best specimens. Monthly meetings of
the Heirloom Seed Savers and an annual “Tomato Tasting Day” help
spread the seed sanctuary’s message through the community.
The initiative has become a cherished model for supporting biodiversity
and food sustainability. “The food movement is so popular
now,” concludes Carol, “but most people never stop to
think that the source for all food is seeds.”
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