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WHAT'S NEW
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Every day is Earth Day
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Discover how Canadians are rising to the environmental challenge, and be inspired to make more of a difference yourself.
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By Alanna Mitchell
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Have your say: Do you or your community have a great idea for environmental cleanup or development? Tell us about it by clicking the microphone icon.
Increasingly, Canadians are taking the environment into our own hands rather than waiting for the government to take the lead. We know that the main issue is global climate change and all the uncertainty it's bringing to our communities. Slowing the pace of climate change means focusing on how we use energy in our homes, how we get around this big country of ours and even how we cart away our garbage and get our food from where it's grown to our local grocery store.
Read on to discover how Canadians are rising to the environmental challenge, and be inspired to make more of a difference yourself.
Grassroots groundswell: How a whole town made a difference
When the people of Colonsay, Sask., needed to replace the ice-making equipment at their local curling and skating rink in 2000, they chose innovation. Instead of using the traditional energy source, natural gas, they installed a geothermal system, which pumps the heat of the deep earth up to the rink and converts it to electricity. It involved raising more than half a million dollars through grants, donations, loans and local fund-raisers in a community-wide effort dubbed Operation Fast Freeze, says Darlene Baczuk, one of the team of eight who jump-started the project. That's quite a feat when you consider that Colonsay, 60 kilometres east of Saskatoon, is a town of just 500 people. "That first year, every time there was a supper in town, Fast Freeze catered it," says Baczuk. "It really was an all-out effort."
The new equipment is in place but the project is ongoing. The town still has money left to raise to pay off the original price tag. Plus, new plans are afoot to install a heat-exchanger so the rink can use even less natural gas. As it is, though, the rink's gas bill has dropped by two-thirds, saving the town a bundle, says Baczuk.
From local to global
Take five intermingled forest regions, with rocky shoals, submerged cliffs, shallow wetlands, fens, rich woodlands and unique geology, add the most animal and plant species found in any part of Canada, toss in about 50,000 people covered by nine municipal jurisdictions in premier resort country, and you have one of Canada's most ecologically rich but vulnerable landscapes. Here, in a unique 150,000-hectare landscape crossing the Thousand Islands, bridging the Canadian shield to the Adirondacks, the Canadian Thousand Islands Heritage Conservancy (CTIHC) land trust sought to balance development against ecological treasure.
Don Ross of the CTIHC along with some others came up with the idea of nominating the region for the international UNESCO designation of Biosphere Reserve. A year and a half and about 700 application pages later, with the help of dozens of organizations straddling the Canada-U.S. border, the nomination was in. Within months, it had succeeded, making the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve only the 36th such Biosphere Reserve in North America. It was the fastest application ever approved.
"It was because of the community support," says Ross, now the executive director of the Biosphere Reserve, calling the designation "an excuse to collaborate." It makes a difference. The designation helps local and international groups celebrate the global significance of the region. More than 45 groups now get together to share ideas about how to help the area environmentally, culturally and economically.
Biosphere programs encourage sustainable development and tourism, buying local farm produce and products, conserving vital ecological lands, building and sharing in programs for culture and history, helping in municipal and park planning and more. But while 102 countries have Biosphere Reserves, Canada is the only one that does not financially support such programs.
Being the bog lady
Two decades ago, critics dismissed Eliza Olson of Delta, B.C., as a "sensationalist" and a "chicken little" when she tried to tell people about the importance of saving the 5,000-year-old Burns Bog from development. Things have changed. In 2006 Delta named her its citizen of the year, and Earth Day Canada honoured her as the year's hometown hero for helping preserve "the largest undeveloped urban land mass on the west coast of the Americas."
She did it by ceaselessly advocating for the bog with four levels of government to buy the majority of the bog, which sits at the mouth of the mighty Fraser River. It cost them $73 million, but in 2004, they did it, prompted by Olson's pressure and that of the thousands of citizens she has educated through the Burns Bog Conservation Society, which she founded in 1980.
What's the good of a bog? Its peat is an excellent bulwark against floods and an unparalleled water filter that keeps toxins out of connecting bodies of water. Not only that, but it also adds iron to rivers and lakes, which in turn fosters the growth of plankton to feed wild fish.
Bogs also store carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere, where it would add to climate instability. If all 10,000 acres of the Burns Bog were to be destroyed, says Olson, it would have the same effect as adding another 5.4 million cars to Canada's roads each year.
Saving a river
He has overseen the planting of 10,000 dogwood, high-bush cranberry, white cedar, silver maple and other trees along the banks of the Don River, but the big thrill for Phil Goodwin, chairman of the East Don Parkland Partners and member of the Don Watershed Regeneration Council, came last October, when he saw a Chinook salmon where the river reaches Highway 7. As the crow flies, that's about 20 kilometres from the mouth of the Don at Lake Ontario. No salmon had been that far north in generations. "It's remarkable how far we've come," says Goodwin.
Back in 1969, environmental groups in Ontario held a funeral for the Don, declaring it beyond redemption. It was one of the most polluted rivers in North America, afflicted with raw sewage, routine chemical spills and floating pig carcasses. It even smelled bad.
Today the banks are alive with shrubs and trees and the industrial pollution has abated thanks to the work of volunteers. Atlantic salmon have been reintroduced thanks to Banrock Station, an Australian winemaker that is investing in the
world's wetlands.
Goodwin says people need to decide whether they are custodians of the earth or just users. "The biggest issue is for people to know they can make a difference in their homes and in their communities," he says.
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