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.”
I believe that peak oil is accurate and that we are now past the point of peak oil. I think many of the current events have to do with this downturn and it won’t be long before the main stream media and population wake up and understand what is going on. For me and my family, we are preparing for the next era.