THE SASQUATCH Chris Gilpen of the Vancouver Slam Team begs for the Sasquatch's return. If you like slam poetry and you have a soft spot for elusive furry beasts, you'll love this.]]> Chris Gilpen of the Vancouver Slam Team begs for the Sasquatch’s return. If you like slam poetry and you have a soft spot for elusive furry beasts, you’ll love this.

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by Nikko Snyder (with files from Erin Laing) THE SASQUATCH March/April 2010 (Vol II No. 2) In a deeply divided world, food brings us back together]]>

by Nikko Snyder (with files from Erin Laing)
THE SASQUATCH
March/April 2010
(Vol II No. 2)

This issue’s column was originally going to be about sprouts—how to grow tiny, nutrient-rich green things in a jar during the final weeks of the long Saskatchewan winter, before the spinach, chives, rhubarb and asparagus begin to peek their heads out of the softening soil.

But the fact that this is my last opportunity to communicate with you, dear readers, makes my job feel urgent. I have one last chance to tell you something about food that sums up how central an issue it is. So what will it be?

It won’t be instructions on growing sprouts, making yogurt, or keeping chickens. If I can suggest only one thing, it is to talk to your neighbours.

Our society encourages us to live in isolation from one another. As a culture, we drive from our houses to our places of work, then to the grocery store and back home again. We take little time to talk to each other, especially people we don’t already know.

Our isolation chips away at our capacity to live in community: to live connected to one another, to the places we live and to the land that sustains us. We share less — fewer values and fewer resources. And as our connections decrease and our divisions increase, we forget what we once knew about the benefits of being accountable to our neighbours and to the planet.

If there is a single thing I would urge you to struggle against it is this division — the separation from your neighbour, your soil, your watershed.

Food is a simple and deeply powerful way to engage in this struggle. Growing food undermines isolation. It forces us to go outside and have a relationship with the earth, while creating opportunities for learning, teaching and sharing. Cooking and eating food together connects us across differences and creates opportunities for conversation and the sharing of ideas.

Food can also be a bridge across virtually any other issue. If you work towards ending poverty or war, then equitable access to food for all is a no-brainer. If you’re an environmentalist, sustainably managing the caloric needs of ballooning numbers of humans on finite planetary resources is a must. If anti-racism or anti-imperialism turns your crank, then understanding who has (or doesn’t have) access to the world’s resources is fundamental. If you’re a feminist or health activist, the relationship of food to healthy bodies and minds is key.

If you’re grappling with one or more of these issues, food can be an empowering and tangible way to make connections both within yourself and with the people around you. I recently heard food activist Wayne Roberts speak about what he termed “the 1,000 points of food.” The food movement, he argued, needs to be one of dialogue – not either/or – because people come to food issues from so many different perspectives. At the same time, food represents a universal need we all share. It creates unlimited potential to bridge people who have been separated. All we need to do is grow, cook and eat together.

Recipe for mindful eating

This recipe is a list of suggested ingredients/actions that use food as the basis for cooking up social change. Try them on their own or in combination. Pay attention to which ones work well together and add new elements or flavours as desired. Try, observe, reflect, evaluate, reformulate and try again! And most importantly, enjoy!

• Dig into the deepest corner of your cupboard, fridge or freezer, and discover food you forgot you had. Reflect on what a luxury it is to be able to forget you have extra food! Use the most surprising ingredient as the basis for a meal.
• Season permitting, go out into your garden and find the ripest, most beautiful vegetable you can. Delight in the perfection! Then go find the most misshapen, funny looking vegetable in the garden. Marvel at the diversity of nature and the opportunity to utilize food that the industrial food system would throw away. Use both to make a meal.
• Use what you have on hand to make a meal. Make something up, or flip through a recipe book for inspiration. Try combining ingredients you’ve never used together. Generate some curiosity about the possibility of new flavours. Turn on your inner artist!
• Instead of driving to the store to pick up that missing ingredient (and whatever other dozen items you probably don’t really need), substitute it with something you have on hand. Better yet, pick up your phone and call a neighbour for that missing egg or cup of flour! You could even go so far as to invite them over to share the meal with you.
• Cooking alone? Put on the radio or a CD and have a dance party! Cooking together? Have a conversation. Either way, cooking is an opportunity for quality time with yourself or a loved one.
• Cook a little extra food. Save it for tomorrow’s lunch, or share it with a friend or neighbour. You could even find out the requirements of your local soup kitchen and take several servings to them.
• If you’re cooking with meat, trying using half of what the recipe calls for or what you usually use. Pay attention to how flavourful meat is and how far a little can go. It takes a lot of land to raise a cow, so make it last!
• When the meal is ready to eat, dish out about half the quantity you think you want. Think about how it feels to have access to more food than you need to survive and be healthy. Wait several minutes after finishing your helping before deciding if you’re still hungry. If you are, enjoy a small second helping.
• Before you start eating, spend a moment in silence. Try to imagine the collaboration that took place in order for you to eat: the sun and water and soil that worked to grow the food, the humans that worked with the land, the animals that gave their lives. Generate gratitude.
• If you’re eating alone, try not to distract yourself with other activities. Focus on the experience of being nourished — on the wonderful tastes, textures and colours of the food. It doesn’t take long to eat. Email, reading, working, etc., can wait a few minutes.
• If you’re eating with family and friends, enjoy the food and the companionship. Talk about where your food came from, how it tastes, the things that you’re learning and the things you are grateful for.

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by Brett Dolter THE SASQUATCH March/April 2010 (Vol II No. 2) Empowering low-income homeowners to escape the "fuel poverty" trap]]>

by Brett Dolter
THE SASQUATCH
March/April 2010
(Vol II No. 2)

“The main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulking gun.”

-Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy

North Central Regina has a problem. Well, make that two problems: it is home to Regina’s poorest citizens, with an average income of under $30,000 per household in 2005, as compared to the Regina average of over $55,000; and it is also home to some of Regina’s oldest, most run-down housing.

Combine these two factors and you have people trapped in sub-par housing, huddling under blankets to keep warm in winter and struggling to pay inflated heating bills.

But the inter-related problems of poverty and run-down housing create an opportunity. Communities around North America are realizing that fixing up these leaky old homes can be a great way to lift neighbourhoods out of poverty and develop the “green” economy.

I was part of a research team that went to Regina’s North Central neighbourhood to understand the state of housing there. We paid for EnerGuide audits on 44 owner-occupied homes, and the results confirmed our suspicions. The average EnerGuide rating in our sample was 52. EnerGuide ratings, created by Natural Resource Canada, operate on a scale of zero to 100, with 100 representing a “net-zero” home that produces all of the energy it consumes and zero being no better than living on the street. At an average rating of 52, these homes are far from energy-efficient.

Some homes were in worse shape than others. The lowest EnerGuide score in our sample was an incredibly low seven, which meant the home offered about as much shelter from the elements as living in a tent. Imagine how the home’s residents felt in the depths of a Saskatchewan winter.

We interviewed the occupants of the homes to understand what it was like to live in an energy inefficient old home. They told us that drafts were ever-present and many complained of feeling cold in winter. One participant even told us that in winter she would block off one of the rooms in her house because it was too cold to occupy. “I could use that room as a freezer. I could put stuff out there to freeze it in the winter,” she said.

High energy bills were also a big problem. One participant told us that his energy bills were sometimes as high as $300 per month in winter and “more than [his] mortgage sometimes.”

We knew from the EnerGuide audits that these houses could be improved with some well-placed investments in energy efficiency. Installing a new high-efficiency furnace, insulating the attic and basement walls and caulking around the windows would make dramatic improvements in energy efficiency.

Unfortunately, most of the homeowners didn’t have the savings or access to financing to invest in these retrofits. Instead they found themselves in a “fuel poverty” trap, struggling to pay their utility bills yet unable to afford the changes needed to lower their bills.

Enter Van Jones. Once a member of the Obama administration (before being forced out over a controversy related to a petition he had signed), Van Jones is a civil rights activist, author and energy efficiency crusader. With his impassioned speeches and his inspired prose, Van Jones has argued that the problems we see in communities like North Central present an opportunity for win-win policy action.

First of all, the housing needs to be fixed up, not only to improve quality of life for residents, but also to help battle climate change. As North Central homeowners try to keep themselves warm, heat leaks out from their windows and walls and they end up trying to heat the whole neighbourhood. This requires burning a lot of natural gas, which releases greenhouse gas emissions in the form of carbon dioxide up our chimneys. By fixing up the leaky homes in places like North Central we would burn less natural gas and release less of the climate-disrupting greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

But that is only one half of the policy win. Just as we found in North Central, Van Jones has recognized that run-down housing is often located in the poorest neighbourhoods. He believes that the residents of those neighbourhoods should be the ones trained to repair the housing. His project Green for All focuses on empowering low-income communities to train their residents in carpentry so they can rebuild their communities, one batt of insulation at a time.

Saskatchewan could learn from our neighbours south of the border and provide low-income communities with the funding to set up their own Green for All programs. Comfortable homes, lower utility bills, a stable climate and community revitalization, what more could you want?

Sasquatch columnist Brett Dolter is an ecological economist and musician. He teaches economics at the University of Regina and is principal consultant for BD Green Solutions.

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by Joan Soggie THE SASQUATCH March/April 2010 (Vol II No. 2) Over half of Saskatchewan's residents drink from it. How much development is too much?]]>

by Joan Soggie
THE SASQUATCH
March/April 2010
(Vol II No. 2)

“Water water everywhere,” laments the old sailor in Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

In a world beset by water shortages, that seems a strange complaint. Yet perhaps nothing is more frightening than to be surrounded by the one resource needed above all others, and to find it unusable. We Canadians are scarcely aware of that possibility. While other countries despair, we retain access to seven per cent of all the fresh water discharged by the rivers of the world.

In an attempt to get governments around the world to focus on water-related issues, the United Nations declared 2005 to 2015 the “Water for Life” decade. And not a moment too soon. According to UN statistics, at least one billion people lack access to safe drinking water; a staggering 2.5 billion have no adequate sanitation. Canada looks pretty good by comparison, with almost all urban households connected to a municipally managed water and sewer system.

But even here in this most privileged of countries, we are reluctantly learning that we cannot take water for granted. Gone are the bad old days when raw sewage or industrial waste was dumped in Mother Nature’s lap with the childish assumption that she would take care of it. From the Gulf of Mexico to the Alberta tar sands, communities have discovered how easy it is to foul up a water system – and how difficult it is to restore it.

Every living thing requires its ration of reasonably clean water in order to survive. Once pathogens or poisons enter a water supply, everything that depends on that source, from tadpoles to livestock to human children, is affected. According to Environment Canada, “health problems related to water pollution in general are estimated to cost Canadians $300 million per year.”

In Saskatchewan, most of the water we drink, bathe in and spray on our lawns comes from the South Saskatchewan River. Over 50 years ago the Canadian and Saskatchewan governments joined forces to dam the river and manage the flow, creating the 225 km long Lake Diefenbaker as a massive holding tank. The water from Lake Diefenbaker is used and re-used. Farmers irrigate their crops with it, sailors sail on it and cottagers build their cottages as close as they can to it. It turns the turbines in the power station at Gardiner Dam and washes through the holding tanks of the Wild West Steelhead factory fish farm near Birsay. And, most importantly, it provides drinking water to over half the inhabitants of Saskatchewan, including both Regina and Saskatoon. Obviously, Lake Diefenbaker matters.

One might expect that we would be very careful of everything that happens to Lake Diefenbaker. It would seem reasonable to assume that the lake, created by government agencies as a public resource, has been continuously monitored.

However, studies of the lake have been sporadic and recommendations made decades ago were never acted upon. The fact that the reservoir is losing its pristine qualities should come as a surprise to no one.

Many factors play a part in the decline of the lake water’s quality: lack of representation in government by rural constituencies during the last years of the NDP administration; fragmentation of responsibility for water between federal and provincial agencies (management of the dams on the South Saskatchewan River, for instance, passed from federal to provincial control in 1997); or maybe everyone was blind-sided by the promise of economic development like from Wild West Steelhead. The fish factory’s website does acknowledge that “Lake Diefenbaker, a large freshwater body, boasts more than 800 kilometres of shoreline and is fed by the cool, pristine waters of the Rocky Mountains.” Maybe we actually believed that it would remain cool and pristine, whatever we took out of or put into it.

In any case, a wake-up call came in 2008. A brand new Saskatchewan Party government seemed poised to follow through on a study launched under the former provincial administration and undertaken by Bruce Power, a company partly owned by uranium mining company Cameco. In its preliminary studies, Bruce Power found the perfect location for its proposed nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Diefenbaker, between the village of Elbow and the Gardiner Dam. It seems that this pristine water, fresh from the Rockies, was exactly what was needed for a nuclear cooling pond.

That plan has since been shelved. However, it was only the latest in a long line of proposals to exploit this water resource. As worrisome are the multitude of smaller schemes which have gone ahead, from factory farms like Wild West Steelhead to cottage developments to golf courses. They all make demands on the lake; but strangely, there has been no consistent long-term study of how those demands have affected it.

Although there has been no continuous monitoring, there have been occasional studies of the Saskatchewan watershed. One study that was funded jointly by Sask Water and Environment Canada was completed almost 20 years ago. The five-year, $1.6 million study recommended that Sask Water monitor the water quality and long-term changes in the ecosystem. They advised that the government introduce an informational program to help the public understand water management issues and provide a forum for people’s input.

The study concluded by stating that public involvement was crucial for the continued health of the watershed. Wayne Dybvig of Sask Water Corp told the Western Producer when the study was released that “one of the most important findings…was the need for interest on the part of the public on how water decisions are made.”

Nearly 20 years later, recommendations like increased accessibility for recreation and implementation of regional water systems have been partially implemented while others were never acted upon. Cottage developments such as Coteau Beach, Mistusinne and Prairie Lake dot the shore line. Villages like Beechy and Loreburn and farms throughout the Lake Diefenbaker region, once dependent on wells and dugouts, are served by water piped from the lake. But the program to monitor water quality and inform the public never materialized.

There has been no regular testing to determine changes in water quality or to locate sources of pollution. No consistent planning has carried on from one administration to the next. No clear line of authority for making decisions or taking responsibility. No information program. No public input.

Of course, the water is tested before you drink it, when it is pumped into municipal water systems. Health regulations ensure that what comes out of our taps is fit for human consumption. The water is filtered and treated with chemicals so that no noxious substance remains to be ingested by unsuspecting consumers in Elbow or Regina. Maybe that is enough.

But shouldn’t we first of all take care of our source water? Common sense dictates that we take a proactive approach and prevent problems from developing. Maybe we have already missed our opportunity to do that for Lake Diefenbaker. Factory farms, golf courses and cottage developments are all built near or on the lakeshore. Most of that activity is good fun, supposedly good for the economy, purported to be good for us. But without diligent protections and stringent regulation, there is no guarantee that dangerous toxins won’t leak into and affect the lake.

The village of Elbow on Lake Diefenbaker demonstrates the conundrum that we face. The village of 300 people is a popular destination for golfers, boaters and cottagers in the summer. Several years ago, the village built a new sewage lagoon to replace the old one which was too close to the lake. But every summer the combined output of the village and its summer encampment threatens to exceed the capacity of that lagoon. Plus the Elbow Village Council approved four new developments between January 2009 and January 2010, all of which are near the lake. The lagoon has become obsolete before it is paid for.

Examples like this have heightened municipal and village councils’ concern about the fate of the watershed. In 2007, several municipalities, First Nations and special interest groups formed the South Saskatchewan River Watershed Stewards with the aim of protecting that water resource. This grassroots initiative may be key in focusing attention on water quality in the river and Lake Diefenbaker. But, lacking extensive financial and technical resources, this organization has done little more than ascertain common goals and provide a forum for discussion.

Just last fall, in response to a growing awareness of water-related issues, Nancy Heppner, Sask Party environment minister, initiated a monitoring program for Lake Diefenbaker. Beginning in November 2009, the water at various points in the lake will be regularly tested by technicians from the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority. The plan states that “the overall goal of this monitoring plan is to develop and undertake a water quality monitoring program to effectively assess long-term changes in water quality for the lake as a whole and for specific near-shore regions of the lake as issues are identified.”

Promises are many: that fluctuations or deterioration in water quality will be monitored; that problem areas located and sources of pollution will be identified; and that the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority will watch over the water, making the Department of the Environment the stewards of the lake.

But remember those 20-year-old recommendations gathering bureaucratic dust? And have you heard anything at all about that decade the United Nations named “Water for Life” (2010 is its mid-point)? It’s clear that there is no substitute for an involved citizenry. It takes raging grannies and community organizations and constant vigilance to keep our representatives accountable. As Dybvig of Sask Water said back in 1991, of greatest importance is “the need for interest on the part of the public on how water decisions are made.”

One drop of oil can render up to 25 litres of water unfit for drinking.

You can survive about a month without food, but only five to seven days without water.

“Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.”

For information on the source material, contact H2O@ec.gc.ca.

Check the Saskatchwan Water Authority website. Lake Diefenbaker water monitoring data is due to be posted there as it becomes available.

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by Jenn Hardy THE SASQUATCH March/April 2010 (Vol II No. 2) Saskatoon gets a visit from seasoned environmental educator ]]>

by Jenn Hardy
THE SASQUATCH
March/April 2010
(Vol II No. 2)

For over a decade, Ken MacLeod spent his life in St. Catharines, Ontario, learning the ins and outs of a design system called permaculture. The system provides a framework for sustainable living — everything from how we eat and shop to how we educate our children and where we invest our hard-earned money.

The word permaculture, coined by two Australian academics in the 1970s, combines permanent and culture or agriculture. The point is to create complementary non-wasting, self-sustaining systems, usually by mimicking the balanced systems that already exist in nature.

MacLeod, who works as a counsellor at the University of Saskatchewan, had been living a very sustainable, small-carbon-footprint life for years. Upon arriving in Saskatoon, he and his partner Karen Krug even built a solar home in Varsity View (from where he could walk to work). The couple also employed other permaculture techniques in their yard, like planting lots of fruit trees and digging swales that hold rainwater that is later used to nourish the trees.

It wasn’t until this past summer, however, that everything really came together for MacLeod. He took a two-week intensive permaculture design course with Jesse Lemieux of Pacific Permaculture, based on Denman Island, B.C., and it all started to gel.

“It solidified my own commitment,” says MacLeod. “It came together tremendously for me, and I began to feel more urgency to act toward making positive changes. With the collision of peak oil and climate change, [Karen and I] wanted to expand on our permaculture interest further than just our backyard.”

MacLeod started on a mission to get Lemieux to come teach in the prairies. After firing off a couple of e-mails, he quickly realized he was not alone in the wish to bring permaculture to the area.

Jessie Best, president of Rooted, an environmental student group at the University of Saskatchewan, was also eager to get the ball rolling. “We had been hoping to run a permaculture course for ages, and then heard through a listserv that Ken was bringing in a trainer from British Columbia,” she says. “He didn’t even know about Rooted’s existence, so it’s pretty cool how it’s all worked out.”

Also joining the team were Heather Trueman, Gord Androsoff and Peter Garden from Turning the Tide bookstore in Saskatoon. The course took place on Jan. 23 and 24 and filled up in a matter of days. They expanded the class to include 10 more people.

Jesse Lemieux, who started Pacific Permaculture with his wife Tanya in 2008, taught the two-day introductory class at the University of Saskatchewan. As part of a prairie workshop series, he also taught two-day courses in Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer throughout January. The course was a warm-up to a 72-hour intensive course that will run over a two-week period in August in Saskatoon.

Lemieux explains that the two-day course gives a basic understanding of the subject and helps people decide if taking the 72-hour permaculture design course is for them. “Most of the time it gives people enough understanding so that they make decisions about positive change,” he says.

He says participants come from all walks of life — stay-at-home moms, city planners, roofers and students. Not many of the people he teaches are farmers or work in agriculture, which speaks to the system’s range and appeal.

“Taking the design course opened a whole world for me,” says Lemieux. “Previous to taking the course, I was considering going back to school for engineering. When I think about how I came across permaculture, I want to get it in front of people who don’t know it’s what they are looking for.”

Jessie Best is especially excited about the permaculture buzz in Saskatoon and how it applies to her group’s Transition Town initiative, a movement that focuses on change in food, water and waste disposal. They are working on a plan much like one that is underway in Peterborough, Ontario, where towns, cities or small communities come together with a focus on local and sustainable living. The participants unite to reduce energy consumption and participate in business waste exchanges and community gardens. “A lot of different environmental or social groups are starting to realize the other ones exist,” says Best. “And we are starting to work together.”

Lemieux agrees about the importance of co-operation. “At the end of the day we can change things,” he says. “What remains is how many of us actually want to take action. We have a lot of work to do, but it’s not hopeless, and the answers are there.”

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