Read the Wilderness Committee article about developing more sustainable waste management systems in Vancouver: Environmentalists Urge Minister Penner to Reject Incineration Due to Toxic Ash in Burns Bog Landfill.

About a month ago I sent in a message to Metro Vancouver after reading about the garbage issue on www.wildernesscommittee.org (great group working for the environment in BC). I just got an email with an update on the situation from Councillor Andrea Reimer and am posting it here in hopes that more folks will become aware of the situation.

Anyway here is the update from Andrea Reimer:

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We never seem to have much time for entertainment these days, but since coming to Vancouver, BC we have become fans of a local troupe of radical actors. The last play we saw was Death of a Clown by Sebastien Archibald. This was actually our first time at Queen Elizabeth park which was a treat in and of itself. We climbed through the park to the top of the large hill, through lovely gardens and past a Cambodian picnic with traditional music and dancing to boot. The view over Vancouver is fantastic, what a perfect spot for this modern version of Robin Hood, also written by Sebastien Archibald.

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Facbook Page for Vancouver Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Training

In 2003, I began a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy training in New Zealand. I was a chef at the time, so this was entirely new for me. Prior to starting the training I spent about 3 years researching various healing modalities to make sure I put my hard-earned money into the right one for me. I knew I wanted to do craniosacral therapy, but at the time it was hard to find anyone to teach it. I stumbled on this course when I was studying herbs and nutrition at Wellpark College in Auckland and knew right away it was what I had been looking for.

As a chef, I worked long hours and the standing combined with chopping, whipping, stirring, grilling… was taking a toll on my body. Not only that, but I smoked more than I ate, and loved a cup of coffee more than a bowl of soup. At the time I actually thought it a waste of money to buy food! (Bear in mind that I worked in kitchens so I always had access to the best food without having to buy it for at least one meal a day.) My body was falling apart. I knew I was on the wrong path and I needed to find a way to get healthy again.

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I’ve just had the most amazing weekend, and thought it might be of interest to others living here in Vancouver.

I wasn’t even aware of this until a couple days ago, but there is a great program here called the Vancouver Tourism Challenge, which is available to everyone working or volunteering in the tourism industry in the city. How it works is each spring participants are given a tourism challenge passport, which grants free admission for themselves and a guest to a whole slew of tourist attractions in the city and surrounding areas for the next month. By collecting stamps in the passport at enough of these attractions, they earn free admissions for the entire year, as well as discounts at restaurants, hotels, and being entered to win prizes.

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As most of you know, Canada’s tar sands are creating insane environmental destruction. I just read this article about a coalition of Indigenous Nations that have come together and issued a declaration barring the proposed Enbridge Northern gateway pipeline that would transport crude oil from Alberta 1,179 km through many delicate ecosystems and across more than 1,000 rivers and streams.

Read the whole article here. Read the Coastal First Nations Declaration here. Add your voice to stop the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline here.

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This interview is from The Agora’s March 2010 issue. The interview was done by Ryan from The Agora, interviewing Randall Ross, the Vancouver Ubuntu’s ‘buzz generator’. I think it answers the sort of questions many of us have when we hear “Ubuntu, Ubuntu…” Ubuntu is an amazing, flexible tool which comes with an international community and is here to assist everyone in their quests for freedom and connection.

The full conversation can be found on the Vancouver Ubuntu Community Meetup Website here. I had been wanting to interview Randall for a while but I didn’t know where to begin. Ryan does a fantastic job of getting right to the heart of the matter, take a few minutes to read this interview–it could change your life–at the very least it can save you a lot of money!

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I have been wanting to go to Seedy Saturday for the past couple years, but somehow missed it each time. This year I was determined to get there, and so I rushed off after my last day of work. It was a sad morning as we got news of the earthquake in Chile and three of the ladies in the kitchen are from Chile. The hardest part for these ladies as they tried to take their mind off their families, was not knowing if they were alive as it was impossible to get communications through.

I got to Seedy Saturday shortly before it closed up, call me naive or just idealistic, but I had gotten the idea that Seedy Saturday was gonna be a bunch of people exchanging seeds for free, so I just assumed that the donation I was expected to give at the door would cover my costs and I gave generously. So generously I didn’t have any money left when I got in the building and realised that there really wasn’t much of an exchange going, and it was actually just a seed sale. I guess if I hadn’t come with this assumption I might have been more impressed. Fortunately I did discover a forum where seeds can be freely exchanged at the Environmental Youth Alliance booth, which also had some really cool stickers. The aforementioned forum is the Vancouver Plant and Seed Exchange Network.

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During the Winter Olympics I helped out at Lazy Gourmet which was very busy catering to French House, General Electric Hosting, Price Waterhouse Coopers, events for the Polish Government, Vanoc, Richard Branson and a bunch of other stuff. Given this line up, and knowing Lazy Gourmet’s reputation as being the best catering in Vancouver, I expected to be working in a high stress environment. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in an easy-going but highly efficient kitchen full of interesting and widely varied people. I realised in the 11 days I spent working there, how much I have missed the special sort of community you get when you cook together.

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There was so much going on for Valentines Day this year that I didn’t have time to think about chocolates and roses. Instead, I was thinking about joining in the celebrations to welcome in the Year of the Tiger and eager to get to Chinatown before the whole show was over since rumors said the festivities would be closed down early due to the Olympics. In fact, our bus couldn’t get through downtown, as soon as we realised this we headed for the nearest skytrain station and squeezed ourselves in among the throngs of people and headed for the Chinatown/Stadium stop.

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I first broke ground in Vancouver BC, on June 7th, 2009. For me this was a very symbolic act. This was the day I finally got the stamp in my passport that said I was an official resident of Canada. Living in an apartment I didn’t have a piece of ground of my own, but I had been scouting out the nearby possibilities for about a year and a half while waiting for my residency to come through.

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