40th Anniversary of Earth Day

Earth Days

Watch video from 28:30 to 43:28 (end)

Anna Maria Tremonti interviews Bill McKibben

author of "The End of Nature", "Deep Economy" and "Eaarth"

Congratulations!

JL Grightmire Market Street Arena

Dundas, Ontario

Kraft Hockeyville 2010

Hamilton's 3rd Annual

ECO Film & Arts Festival

2010 April 7 to 24

Avatar
Waterlife
Tapped!
Food Fight
Crude
Sharkwater
Horse Boy
The Cove
End of the Line

The Rocky Road to a Real Transition

Paul Chatterton & Alice Cutler

Trapese Collection

2.4MB pdf, 42 pages

2008 April

Press Release

What is missing in Community is Solidarity.

Read this article at Transition Culture.

Solidarity

Detroit

Video: 3min 20sec

2010 Feb 22

Seattle, WA

BBC World Service

2010 February 18

Audio - 28 minutes

Trinity Institute, 2010 Jan 28-29

Welcome Aboard!

Cowichan, BC

Salt Spring Island, BC

Barrie, ON

We are up to 14 Transition Towns and growing.

The newest additions are

Cowichan, BC

Salt Spring Island, BC

Barrie, ON

Poplar Hill/Coldstream, ON (near London)

Vancouver, BC

with many more to come.

Here is an example of another coming:

Transition arrives in Sooke, BC (near Victoria)

Small farmers and consumers of food
share a common pursuit.

It starts with flavor.

author of "Agenda for a New Economy"

Watch all videos from the conference

Download transcripts of the four keynote speakers

How to avoid and/or reduce eating "Factory Farm" foods

See this blog,

www.righteousporkchop.com/righteousblog

if you want more, read the book: Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms, by Nicolette Hahn Niman, 2009, order from Bryan Prince Bookseller in Westdale.

Avoiding Factory Farm Foods

In the months since Nicolette Niman's book was released, she's done a lot of speaking and dozens of media interviews about factory farming.

This is what she says:

"Without a doubt, the question I've been asked most frequently is this: How can a person avoid eating foods from factory farms? It's everywhere and so cheap. Well, the reality is you'll probably never totally stop because it is, indeed, everywhere. I mean if you're invited to your aunt's house and she makes a pork roast especially for you, what are you going to do? But there's a lot you can do.

Probably the single most important piece of advice I have for people is to stop being a supermarket zombie. As I describe in Righteous Porkchop, when I started looking, really looking for foods that were not from nameless, faceless commodity markets of industrially produced food, I had to get out of the supermarket. Supermarkets buy in huge quantities and are generally unable and unwilling to buy from independent, traditional farmers.

A second important piece of advice is to try to change what you're eating one step at a time. Start, for example with eggs. (I describe my own egg hunt in Righteous Porkchop). Try to find a local farmer or even a backyard hobby farmer who is raising their hens outdoors. You will pay more for these eggs but they will be well worth it."

See Avoiding Factory Farm Foods: An Eater's Guide

The Guide doesn't give you all the answers but it provides a lot of helpful information to get you well on your way in the journey to living well, within the Earth's means.

Thought for today

by Margaret Atwood

This speech was given by Canadian author Margaret Atwood at a benefit concert produced by St Lawrence Works for the Toronto Dollar in 1999.

I am honoured to have been invited to share this occasion with you. I'm here because of Joy Kogawa, who along with many others has done so much selfless work on this project.

Now, Joy Kogawa is an artist, and those performing here tonight are artists, and you may wonder what an artist is doing getting involved in a project that has to do with the structure of money. Weren't we all taught that Art and Commerce were polar opposites? But art has to do with symbolism -- the human tendency to make one thing stand for another -- and money is the most deeply symbolic thing there is. Money as such is, as Oscar Wilde said, perfectly useless. You can't eat it, drink it, shelter yourself from the cold with it, wear it, or make love with it unless deeply disturbed. In and of itself, it has no emotions, no mind, and no conscience. It doesn't put out flowers or have children, and it makes a lousy pet. It has meaning only when it circulates, and is exchanged for other things; and money doesn't do that for itself. People do that, using money as a symbolic token.

We have all been brainwashed into believing that there is only one kind of money -- one kind of wealth -- and only one measure of human worth -- how much money you have -- and one kind of exchange -- traditional buying and selling. And only one motive to do so -- the Siamese twins of consumer greed and the profit motive. We've also been told all of this is controlled by a mysterious god called Global Market Forces, who is now beyond our control, but to whom we are forced to sacrifice our children. Thus if international commercial interests suck up our wealth, stomp out our magazines, trash our culture, and dictate what toxic chemicals we must eat and drink and breathe, it is the will of Global Market Forces, whose ways are dark, but who is thought to have our best interests at heart in the end.

Now, the Toronto Dollar Project is an exercise in changing the symbolic structure of money. This project believes that there can be a different kind of money, and that its circulation can directly enhance the community through which it circulates.

"Don't touch that money, you don't know where it's been," we used to be told as children. But with the Toronto Dollar, you do know where it's been. It's been right here, and it's staying here, and 10% of it is going directly to those in the community who need it the most.

There is more than one kind of wealth. A country, province or city that has embraced the principles of selfishness, hatred, envy, greed and spite, is poor, no matter how rich its individual citizens may be. One that incorporates concern for the well-being of a society as a whole will, on the contrary, be rich, even though its citizens don't all have 5-car garages.

Thank you again to Joy Kogawa and to our performers this evening, Catherine Robbin and William Aide, and to all the others involved in the Toronto Dollar. They are making Toronto a richer place, through this initially small but very meaningful step towards the formation of a more human -- and also a more humane -- symbolism for money.

June 4, 1999, Toronto.