Red Cedar

Not too little. Not too late.

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Megan

Confrontation and conflict in the last forty years of Canadian environmentalism.
(Published in the Earth Day issue of Resistance Magazine, 2010)

“It is to this new-found resolution to reassert our indivisibility with life, to recognize the obligations incumbent upon us as the most powerful and deadly species ever to exist, and to begin making amends for the havoc we have wrought, that my own hopes for a revival and continuance of life on earth now turn. If we persevere in this new way we may succeed in making man humane … at last.” Farley Mowat, from Sea of Slaughter (1984)

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In 1988 I traveled into the eye of a massive clearcut for the first time in my life, beyond the beauty strip and up a rough logging road an hour from the highway. The destination was the Carmanah Valley and I was bounced along in the back of my friend John’s Land Rover with a group of high school friends determined to participate in the movement to save the valley from the logging industry destroying Vancouver Island’s old growth. Even though I grew up on a loggers’ island in a province dominated by the forestry economy, I had never seen anything so devastating before: the slash burns right up to the edge of the road, the choking dust filling the creeks with silt and turning them thick brown, the tallest trees I could imagine jumbled together as “waste” wood because they weren’t straight enough to bother hauling out of the forest once they were felled. Here and there, chewed up greenery poked through, fireweed had begun its long process of repairing the soil, but I remember distinctly the fear that pricked along my skin as I took in that scene: it already seemed too late to change anything so what were we doing there?

Fortunately we were doing there what thousands of people would over the next handful of years, spending time in the luscious uncut parts of the valley in order to take back that experience to the front lines of protest with the vigor we would need. Fortunately I came to this at a time when the environmental movement was in tremendous upswing in Canada and it *mattered* what high school kids thought about the devastation as we joined the demonstrations and blockades to save forests, rivers, and wildlife in BC and the rest of Canada in the decade following.

*

In British Columbia, it’s customary to believe that modern environmental activism begins and ends with Greenpeace. Whether talking Canada or the rest of the world, GP and its offshoots are still carrying out highly visible actions and fundraising millions of dollars per year from supporters, and they’ve been kicking around for a very long time. But with that success Greenpeace and its supporters have had a tendency to write their story to the exclusion of organizations that came before and afterwards. Before Greenpeace, the stage was being set for them by other Canadian individuals and groups who realized by the late 1960s that the Canadian economic reliance on resource extraction wasn’t sustainable and that the environment mattered as much as stopping the bomb or securing womens’ liberation. Whatever sparked it? Toronto historian Ryan O’Connor traces this growing awareness back to a 2-part CBC documentary that aired in 1968 titled The Air of Death. This exposé took issue with the deadly impacts of air pollution in industrial Ontario. Highly controversial, The Air of Death alarmed Canadians with graphic accounts of animal birth defects, evidence of poisoned food supply and human health problems which could be traced back to the phosphate industry.

Boulevard brainstorming.

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Megan

2 Comments

The bicycle garden at Lakewood and Charles.

For the last two months, B. and I have been attending a local community gathering at a neighbour’s house. Every few weeks we get together to discuss potential community projects, ideas we have for making more connections with other people in the hood, and positive environmental actions we can take to encourage more sustainable practices on our blocks. We haven’t done much more than get to know each other yet, but in the brainstorming process we applied for two neighbourhood grants – one for a block party, and one for a boulevard gardening project. I am pleased to say that on both counts we’ve been successful and thus have $400 towards an end-of-summer gathering plus $1300 for the boulevard idea.

If nothing else, our group has proven itself successful at raising money.

The boulevard project is aimed at encouraging people to tear up the lawn in the boulevard in front of their houses and replace it with more sustainable, drought-tolerant, climate-cooling plants instead. Additionally, we would like to see more benches and other type of seating for people to visit around, not to mention the introduction of more food plants in the neighbourhood overall. I would really like to see us experiment with a mix of native and food plants (not to mention native food plants) which are particularly adapted to the former forest Hastings-Sunrise was.

On Wednesday night, instead of our regular meeting, the group took a neighbourhood walk about to look at what’s out there in the way of boulevard gardening already. Being in Vancouver (and in particular East Vancouver) we’re in a really garden-centric place, not to mention a somewhat artistic community, so there are tons of examples within three square blocks of our house to draw ideas from. The walk gave us a chance to walk, chat with each other, and bounce ideas around all at once which opened up a whole new meeting space for the group – plus we were joined by four or five new people who had been meaning to come out previously (I think the walk appealed more than a meeting might have).

P1017510 — This was probably our favourite overall - lots of little features, lush, with a bench.

I won’t do a detailed summary of each boulevard garden we looked at (about ten in all), but I did take over 100 photos so I could keep in mind what we discussed at each plot. Overall though, I think the gardens that impressed the group most were those which:

were lush and a little wild – as opposed to overly manicured with isolated perennials
had features like the bicycle garden above, or a bench, or a little sculpture made of golf clubs – though too many “knick knacks” were a turn off for some people
were mainly native plants
had good access to the street in the form of paths through the garden
didn’t crowd out the roadside or the sidewalk
had food plantings mixed in (there was only one of these – with some bright chard alongside the flowers)
used recycled materials for planters such as concrete rip-rap or driftwood.

With $1300 we think we can do quite a few boulevards in our hood, particularly if we go after local businesses for donations of plants and other materials and scout Craiglist for cast off paving brick and other recycled goodies. I’m also thinking I should get ahold of the landscapers who did some of our backyard patio because they seem to have stuff they pull out of people’s yards in the course of their work.

After the walk, we met in our backyard for cookies and wine and tea where I got to show off my garden and the new studio and we did a little more brainstorming around how to move ahead on the boulevard project as well as the block party. I’ll be excited to write here as we develop the boulevard gardens around the hood, and hope by mid-fall we have a few decent projects to show for our work. Next is organizing a sub-committee to actually develop an approach and a rough plan which I’ve agreed to do, and then we’ll see about getting our work gloves on!