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By David Parkinson

A labyrinth in the intertidal zone; a zone of instability between sea and sand

Last week I wrote about brainstorming gone wrong. I was trying to understand why it is that people often react fearfully and negatively when a space opens up for a discussion of possibilities and ways forward. I have noticed a similar reaction in other contexts, so it is not unique to the two specific meetings I talked about. My reason for bringing it out into the open was to think my way around it, because it is very worrying to me.

Activists work to change the world. More than just that, they are usually trying to change the world — or some little corner of it — in a direction other than its present trajectory. They work against the grain of prevailing political, economic, and social trends. (If they work with these trends, we call them something else, like ‘politician’ or ‘businessperson’ or ‘marketing guru’.)

Activists usually acknowledge that a mass movement will be more effective than a one-person crusade. So they put lots of effort into enlisting public support and finding like-minded people willing to apply their time and skills to achieving some vision of a better world (or a piece of a better world). I spend much of my time thinking about public outreach for various projects I’m part of, and sometimes I question the value of it, especially when — as it inevitably does — it takes time away from the work itself.

Let me be clear: when I say “I question the value of it,” this is not code for “I think it has no value.” I’m saying that we need to take a good hard look at where we are spending our time and energy and make some tough choices. We should do this as individuals and also on behalf of the organizations we belong to and work for. It might be that outreach is the most effective use of our time; it might not. This probably varies from time to time and from project to project.

I’m also saying that this is not an empirical science. There are no right or wrong answers and people should feel free to differ amicably. One person’s feelings on this question might shift around over time. The only wrong answer is: “I haven’t thought this through carefully.” If one person wants to spend all of her time getting people on board, and another person wants to spend all of his time working quietly on tangible projects, what matters most is that they’re both happy with the choice they’ve made and feeling effective and satisfied doing what they’ve chosen to do. I think we focus too much on building consensus of technique and not enough on consensus of vision. Which means: rather than have everyone doing their own thing in the interests of a larger set of goals, we often try to bring people together around the same actions and fail to talk about the bigger questions. Sometimes I’d rather see us agreeing more on the problems we’re trying to solve, and agreeing less on the solutions — so long as we’re moving in the same direction roughly.

Here’s how this shaggy preamble relates to the subject at hand: at a rough guess, I would say that about 25% of the local population is aware of the growing challenges of resource depletion and climate chaos and has some inkling what to do about it. I would say that about 1-3% of the local population is aware and is taking serious steps to prepare for the real possibility of shortages, disruptions, and social or economic upheaval. (Growing food, going off-grid, learning to live without a car, building a strong social network, and so on.) Roughly, these latter are the people who consistently show up at events concerned with sustainability, Transition, and protecting the environment. (These numbers are the result of what we call a Scientific Wild-Ass Guess, or ’swag’ for short. Feel free to quibble.)

The activist’s task is to move the 75% portion of unaware or unready folks into the smaller group which has the facts and has some serious solutions in mind. And then to move all of those folks into the pretty tiny group of people actively creating solutions and leading the rest of the population into awareness and action.

It’s overwhelming when you consider it in its entirety. A huge hurdle — and this is what I was writing about in last week’s post — is that people are naturally resistant to new information, especially information which threatens their worldview and compels them to change their thinking or their behaviour. That’s why getting people to become more aware and take action is so difficult: even when people consciously know something to be true, and acknowledge that it is important to change their behaviour, we’re creatures of habit and prefer to amble along until a crisis forces us to change.

The negative reaction to brainstorming that I have witnessed  is, more generally, a reaction against conversations that threaten people’s worldview and make them question their habitual behaviour. It’s always easy to make the things we do and the way we do them seem like the only things worth doing and the only sensible way to do them; after all, otherwise why would be doing the things we do and doing them the way we do them? Social inertia means that the burden of proving a new idea falls squarely on the dissenter. It means that the untried but promising ideas get squeezed out of the conversation. The conventional prevails unless we fight hard. The people who champion unconventional ideas feel marginalized and may lose interest in the conversation. We lose some of the most promising sources of creative thinking if we’re not careful.

Given that our time is finite and precious, the real questions we need to be asking ourselves and each other are: how much time should we spend creating tangible solutions for ourselves and others? how much time should we spend trying to get the message out and bringing people in? how do we know whether time spent acting is more fruitful than time spent recruiting? can we measure this? can we talk about it? If so, where, when, and how?

Some of us will believe that the single most important action is to connect with people, to spread information, to let people know what they need to know in order to be better prepared and to work to bring them in on the action. (We might be assuming that no action is meaningful if it does not have broad-based support and involvement, or that the situation is not urgent.)

Some of us will want to create tangible solutions and build infrastructure that they believe we will need, whether or not the mass of the population understands or is ready to adopt these solutions yet. (We might be assuming that most people will not take action until ready solutions are in place, or that we must act quickly before the situation becomes drastically worse.)

Probably most people who think about these things fall somewhere in the middle and believe that some proportion of our time is best spent doing outreach and recruiting and the rest spent taking direct action. I’ve always felt pretty close to the middle, but lately I feel that I’m drifting gradually towards the action end of the scale. I see the value of continually working to find the people who are ready to hear the message I’m sending, but I worry about losing time which might be better spent doing the things we already know need doing. It’s gratifying to see the solutions getting up and running, but I’m worried that we’re only getting started and we have a long way to go before we are close to ready for regional resilience or self-reliance.

I do not disparage the work of recruiting and educating and drawing people into the network of activism and action. I do wonder, though, about untapped resources in the form of people who have little interest in talking and planning and prioritizing but simply want to get on with it. I’m not sure that their interests are fully represented, since they have a way of fading into the background. They may not show up for meetings (they’re not really ‘meeting people’) and they have no patience for listening to reasons why some new idea won’t work — they want to brainstorm creatively, with an open mind, welcoming challenges rather than admitting defeat before even beginning. They are the makers, artists, hammerers, tinkerers, builders, planters, and growers. People who bend problems to fit the materials at hand. Lateral thinkers.

How can we engage the creativity of these folks? Do we have the right tools for finding them and supporting them to do what they’re best at? I don’t think we do, yet.

As we move towards a future whose outlines are unknown until we map them, we need to attend carefully to the whole community. We need to try to create a language of engagement and passion and we need to understand that there is no one way to do things. We need to launch a diversity of solutions in keeping with the diversity of challenges and the diversity of people we want to have alongside us as we face these challenges. We need to ask ourselves how effective our techniques are, who we draw in and who we leave out, what we ignore, and who might best be able to take charge of the projects which are not in our area of expertise or passion.

More than anything, we need to brainstorm in the real sense: where there are no bad ideas, only possibilities opening up to the right set of people willing to take them on.

By Tom Read

About one hundred years ago a large hotel stood on this bluff overlooking Texada's harbour at Marble Bay. Some of the ruins are still visible among the trees and along the shoreline at low tide. Today this spot is a local park administered by the Powell River Regional District.

To the Directors

of the Powell River Regional District:

I am a full-time Texada Island resident and business owner who has lived on the island for the last 10 years. My comments relate to the proposed Regional District Parks and Greenspace Plan in relation to Texada.

Texada has ample existing parks and publicly accessible recreation areas, along with relatively low development pressure. Even a cursory reading of Texada’s Official Community Plan (OCP) confirms that approximately 75% of Texada’s 100,000+ acres are Crown land, and many lakes and trails contained therein are freely available for public recreational use. In addition, Texada already has a host of designated parks and recreation areas, including Shelter Point Park with its two campgrounds and nature trail, Van Anda Cove, Erikson’s Beach, Marble Bay Bluffs, two large provincial parks totaling hundreds of acres at the south end of Texada, Shingle Beach and Bob’s Lake forestry campgrounds, the Emily Lake trail, and the walking trail and access points all around Gillies Bay. We have oodles of acres of designated parks and recreation areas already, considering our small population of 1,100 residents.

So I was surprised that our electoral area director would include Texada in the proposed Parks and Greenspace Plan (PGP). Also, as a practicing licensed realtor serving Texada Island, I can confirm that there isn’t much happening in private land development here. So why is the Powell River Regional District (PRRD) pushing a PGP on our island?

Could it be that the mainland electoral areas and PPRD administrative staff feel they need a PGP, and they want Texadans to help pay for the consultants? If so, then I feel this is a misuse of Texadans’ tax dollars, because our island clearly doesn’t need more parks or “greenspace.”

I put that word “greenspace” in quotes because it is an urban planning term that’s inappropriate for rural Texada Island. Cities need “greenspace” among their large swaths of concrete and blacktop; we don’t. Unlike a crowded urban area that has destroyed almost all of the natural flora and fauna in its vicinity, Texada retains much of its natural inheritance.

Texada’s OCP already contains several potential park and recreation sites should our community someday need them. These areas were carefully selected by Texadans only five years ago both for their natural beauty and to avoid conflict with potential resource development. Our OCP also designates certain lands for “Resource” and “Rural Low Density” uses, which explicitly support environmentally and socially responsible mining, forestry and other industrial activities. It appears to me that the PGP, a mainland- and consultant-driven process, is both duplicating and undermining our OCP by trying to add more parks and “greenspace” on Texada at the likely expense of our Resource and Rural Low Density lands. This could ultimately discourage local industrial investment, endanger local businesses and choke off the well-paid industrial jobs that support Texada’s generous community and public services.

Finally, parks cost money. Given current economic conditions it should be obvious that many of us would prefer not to have our taxes increased just now to buy and operate yet more Texada Island parks.

For the above reasons, I object to including Texada in the PGP process in the first place. But since that ship has sailed, I strongly oppose any PGP recommendations for further parks or “greenspace” on Texada Island.

Sincerely,

Tom Read

The Vancouver 2010 winter Olympic Games formally ended last Sunday, but their legacy will last for a very long time.  After 17 days of intense competition both Canada and the US came out winners.  The Americans earned 37 medals at the games, which is more than they had ever earned before and more than any [...]

By David Parkinson

Apricot blossoms against the blue sky of an unseasonably warm winter's day

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man’s power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second.
(Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book X, Chapter XVII, emphasis mine)

In the last month or so I’ve attended two events whose purpose was to get a group of people to think creatively and do some collective problem-solving, and I want to write about a sense of frustration that I felt at both of these meetings. I hope I end up with something to say about how we ought to approach community conversations about big changes and challenges.

The first of these events was a meeting organized by the City of Powell River and facilitated by Emma Levez and CaroleAnn Leishman of GreenStep Solutions. The second was last week’s roundtable titled “Rebuilding Regional Resilience”, which was hosted by Transition Town Powell River. At both meetings we were given the opportunity of brainstorming to come up with possible next steps, and at both meetings I ended up feeling that something had gone wrong. I’m sure that brainstorming has its place in group work, but it’s a tool with a specific use and I think it’s being misapplied.

It’s clear to many people that we’re up against some very serious challenges: social, economic, and environmental ones, to name three dimensions along which we can can expect disruption as a result of  short-sightedness, cussed human nature, or because we have a long history of letting the wrong people make the big decisions. Many talented people of good faith are working hard to deal with the challenges we face; many of those people are the ones who showed up at either or both of the two meetings in question. They are all working on various aspects of the predicaments that we find ourselves in. I keep seeing the same faces at all these events, so it’s not a huge subculture in the regional community. (Admittedly it’s hard to know how much serious work goes on out there without being represented at meetings like these.)

But many of us are working in isolation from one another and have little shared culture or experience. I see the recent Chamber of Commoners evening as a way to start developing a common culture among the many disparate pieces of the counterculture in the region. It was a great start, but we need many more such events, formal and informal, in order to nourish a clearer set of shared missions and visions, not to mention a sense that we can trust one another. For now, we are to a great extent brought together by a very broad vision of a different world and a future radically unlike the one that most people take for granted — a future of declining resources, endangered ecosystems, and economic degrowth. But that is more of a worldview than a movement; and we have many overlapping worldviews, and a larger number of less overlapping movements.

Most of us are probably baffled by how best to proceed in face of these enormous challenges. I know I am. We’re all casting about for ideas and possible solutions, not to mention trying to stay sane and cheerful. Our time is limited, so we want to be as effective as we can; but where to focus our energies: buy a farm? develop micro-hydro? run workshops? go off-grid? build bike trails? It’s overwhelming. There are no obvious right answers.

Another source of cognitive dissonance comes from the apathy of the general population: in both of these meetings the question came up of how we can communicate more effectively with the people who don’t show up and don’t seem to have any consciousness of the tremendous changes ahead. And at both meetings, that questioned hung in the air — unanswered — unanswerable.

And so we brainstorm. And, for me, here’s where things go off the rails. Now, I’m no trained facilitator, but I think of brainstorming as a technique for coming up with a broad range of possible solutions to a pretty well-defined problem. The essence of the technique is that everyone in the room should feel free to throw out any idea or half-baked thought, no matter how impractical or bizarre — the aim, as the name suggests, is to create a wild storm of lateral thinking, to crack apart the well-worn tracks of linear thought, to build a safe space for the unpredictable and the weird. In order for this to happen, the problem to be solved or the question to be answered ought to be something narrower than, “Given that the future is wide-open and waiting to be created, what might we do?” And the people in the room, I believe, need to be united by a pretty clear shared vision and sense of purpose.

I don’t believe that you can bring a group of people into a room, throw around some fairly vague and broad possibilities, and then expect them to converge quickly enough to produce anything other than a gigantic and disconnected shopping list of possible actions. And that’s more or less what happened in both meetings. I can’t deny that it’s a pleasant activity, but it starts to feel a little desperate after a few minutes, especially when the ideas being shot out are all over the map and don’t easily fit together.

Faced with a dizzying range of possible actions — to be done when? by whom? how? with what money? — some participants, not surprisingly, felt obliged to retreat from the freedom of the brainstorm to the safety of the known and the tested. And the failed. In both meetings, this took the form of offering reasons why such-and-such an idea would not work (this happened during the brainstorming session in the City’s meeting, and in the discussion after the session in the Transition meeting). In both cases I found this to be utterly dispiriting.

At the Transition meeting, we broke out to talk about some of the ideas raised during the brainstorming session.

We talked about the idea of creating neighbourhood-based workshops of shared tools and equipment and got to hear all about how impractical that idea was, how the tools would be lost and broken, how it would hurt existing businesses, and so on.

We talked about shared or free bicycles and got to hear how City staff would be forever pulling abandoned bikes out of ditches.

We talked about the waste of plastic in school lunches and got to hear why health concerns mean that we can’t do much about that problem.

In other words, the group’s reaction to a brainstorming session was to put the genii back in the bottle, to clamp down on the possibilities opened up, to return all tray tables and seat backs to their upright position, and to prepare for re-entry to Planet Normal.

I want to be very clear that this reaction of paralysis is not (wholly) the fault of the organizers of these events. Nor is it (wholly) the fault of the attendees. Where does it come from? I’ll take that question as a jumping-off point for next week’s post.

By Tom Read

A lot of Texada-grown vegetables and even some local chicken went into the lunch served at our recent Micro-Farm Workshop, thanks to a dedicated group of Texada Garden Club volunteers.

Farmer, author and teacher Robin Wheeler came to Texada Island last Saturday to lead us in a six-hour “Micro-Farm Workshop,” sponsored by the Texada Garden Club.  Linda and I found the experience quite rewarding, and so did many others from what I observed. Here are a few highlights of the workshop, from big picture stuff to fascinating (to me) details.

By my count, 47 people came to the workshop on a mild, sunny morning, with 31 from Texada and 16 from Powell River (who arrived 30 minutes late due to an ambulance run that delayed the ferry). The Garden Club, of which I’m a member, had estimated a maximum of 50 participants would attend. So we were a little tense as people kept streaming into the Community Hall — would we run out of food at lunchtime? As it happened, there was more than enough food for everyone, and many of us felt pleased to see such a strong turnout.

Why so much interest in learning about growing food year-round, and building more capacity in our community to provide for a reliable local food supply? The term “food security” is not exactly a media buzz-word these days, but I think the concept is on folks’ minds in this community even if not in those exact words. In conversations I’ve had with fellow islanders over the last few months, many seem to sense that there’s a certain economic, environmental and energy-related volatility afoot in the world, where food prices and even availability might become a concern quite suddenly.

Robin briefly mentioned better food security as a key reason for the workshop, then she moved into specific ways we can do more to create a local food supply for our individual households and as a community. Here are some samples:

We learned how to understand our land better, including mapping of wind and water flows, soil types and most important, sun exposure.

We learned that seaweed is great for soil conditioning, but that we should collect it only in the fall, not in spring. That’s because spring seaweed contains fish eggs and provides both shelter and food to young marine organisms. If we take seaweed at that time of year, we could disrupt marine life-cycles. Besides, there’s lots more seaweed on local beaches in the fall, and it contains less woody debris, too.

We learned how to start a garden on heavy clay soil: use “sacrificial” deep-rooted plants first for a few years to break up the clay chunks, plus add more organic matter to the soil. Then plant vegetables.

We learned about the “spiral cut” on trees adjacent to a garden. This technique lets in some sun without killing the trees, as occurs with cutting off tree tops. The spiral cut removes selected branches in an upward spiral all around the tree, leaving the tree in balance and growing normally. This preserves the trees while letting in filtered sun, changing a fully shaded area where nothing will grow into a partially shaded garden that can grow some types of food plants.

We learned the critical necessity of planning at planting time how to preserve and store a crop so that you’re ready with adequate space and tools when the moment arrives for harvest.

We learned about the simple, affordable deer-fence building technique of using scrap wood, such as fence posts made from cedar tree tops left over after logging, and slabs from a local sawmill to fill the space between posts. Yes, this requires some annual maintenance, but it’s a really quick and cheap way to build a fence that otherwise might cost thousands of dollars.

There was so much more to this workshop — these few samples simply don’t do it justice. As I review my notes from that day I can see many more ideas and suggestions that I’d like to put into practice here at Slow Farm. Seems like there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

As you can imagine, Vancouver has completely caught the Olympic fever as host of the Vancouver 2010 games.  At spud! we have caught the Olympic spirit as well but instead of going for gold, silver or bronze, we are going for Green.  We want to show the world that there is no greener way to [...]

By David Parkinson

Cold front meets moist air

There is no escape except to go forward.
(Peter Hammill, “Lemmings”, 1971)

A year ago today, I wrote the first post on this blog, “Welcome to the Slow Coast!” A week and a day later, Tom Read contributed his first post, “On becoming a localist”.

Back then I had no idea where this experiment would lead. I didn’t expect that Slow Coast would still be chugging along one year — and 110 posts — later. I didn’t know if I would have the discipline to write one post each week, although that was my original goal.

It was really just that: an experiment. Cheap and simple, might well have failed. Hasn’t — so far. All I was hoping for was a place to write about the things going on around me and the questions and occurrences seizing my attention from one week to the next. And my initial fears about not having enough to write about have proven to be unfounded. Increasingly I find myself wishing I had more time to follow up on all the interesting groups and activities popping up and doing amazing things; but life is short and I’m too busy to become a full-time community biographer.

I should add, too, that this experiment might well have faltered if not for the encouragement and regular contributions of my co-editor Tom Read. When you’re wandering off into uncharted territory it helps to have a companion to keep your spirits up when the wolves start howling. And it makes it easier to keep plugging away at something, no matter how quixotic it may seem, if someone else is right there with you. So thank you, Tom.

If I had to draw a moral to this, it might be: leap before you look. Sometimes what seems like a good idea gets too bogged down in second-guessing and we end up depriving ourselves of opportunities to try something new. Right now I’m in the middle of another full-on experiment, this time with a group of collaborators: the formation of a not-for-profit cooperative for the purposes of helping regular folks do better at producing, processing, and preserving local food so we can become more self-reliant as a region. We’re learning as we go, pushing the envelope on the legislation that regulates cooperatives, creating a local network of potential members and a wider network of friends and allies around the province.

As with the blog, it’s not easy to know where we’re headed. But as Lao Tzu said,  “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” But sometimes that single step looks like it’s about a thousand miles away. We all need to practice the fine art of starting the projects we dream about, even — especially — if we don’t think we know what we’re doing. If our idea is a good one, it will find a way to survive despite us. And the process of nurturing an idea into reality is always an adventure, an opportunity to learn and teach, and a good way to connect with other experimenters and pioneers.

Happy birthday, Slow Coast!

By Tom Read

Here comes the new stinging nettle! In addition to eating the steamed leaves and stems of young nettle plants, this year I'll use nettle roots and leaves to make a vinegar-based tonic and a fertilizer "tea." The pen in the lower right is for scale; it's about 5" long. Photo taken this morning.

Today I visited Dr. Kevin Black at the Texada Health Centre in Gillies Bay for my annual physical check-up. In the course of our routine review of my cholesterol levels (normal) and blood-pressure (acceptable), we talked about the prescription drugs I use to keep my moderate hypertension “under control,” including how expensive they’re becoming. Nothing new there, but it occurred to me as I drove home that maybe I can eventually reduce my pharmaceutical intake if I start using more of the wild food and medicinal plants that grow in abundance here on Texada Island. This wasn’t a random thought, as I’ll explain in a moment.

For years now I’ve resented my dependency on a daily dose of industrially produced drugs to moderate my blood pressure. When I started using these drugs I lived in the sedentary-yet-fast-paced urban rat race, and since moving to Texada 10 years ago I had hoped that my pharma-dependency could eventually end by adopting a healthier lifestyle. Indeed, my blood pressure has decreased somewhat during my years on the island, possibly attributable to such factors as less job stress, choosing a better diet and the necessity of a more physical way of life here at Slow Farm.

Earlier this week I attended a Texada Garden Club presentation by local herbalist and healer Doreen Bonin on how to benefit one’s health using wild food and medicinal plants that grow right here on our island. Doreen’s talk gave me hope that I might gradually wean myself off the pharma-habit, but I must acknowledge that this is something I approach cautiously. Uninformed self-medication can be dangerous to one’s health, so I will seek my doctor’s advice before making any substantive changes. That said, I was fascinated by her detailed descriptions of how to find, prepare and use the likes of nettle, dock and dandelion, along with many other locally common wild and easily-cultivated plants.  I am looking forward to joining a like-minded group on Doreen’s next “nettle walk” sometime in the near future, to get hands-on plant identification practice in the field.

The place to start looking for these plants is in your own garden, according to Doreen. “I teach people to pay attention, to be like children in adopting a beginner’s mind, and to walk slowly and quietly as you look for these plants.” One example I’m already familiar with is stinging nettle, which in years past we have harvested and eaten as a vegetable in various recipes. But there’s much more to nettle. Along with dock and dandelion, it’s what Doreen calls a “broad-spectrum plant,” because its leaves and roots can create a multi-faceted tonic for people and a powerful fertilizer for plants. As of this week, the nettle on our property is about four to six inches high, and growing fast. The dandelions are also coming on strong. I am walking slowly and attentively, digging tools in hand.

By David Parkinson

Volunteers survey the results of the Good Food Box run (L to R: Claire Chase, Jaden Crooks, Lee Lorenzen, Jeremy Blanchette, M. Lee Lorenzen, elbow belonging to Robert Holmgren)

On the second Wednesday of every month (except July and August) a small miracle takes place in Powell River. This miracle is like many others that happen all around us all the time; we may be entirely unaware of them, but no matter — if we took the time to write the untold history of the communities we live in, we’d be endlessly finding unsuspected hives of activity; new groups, gangs, tribes, and teams coming together for special purposes; a whole buried secret world of affiliations and affinities. And small miracles that we take for granted at our peril.

Last week’s Chamber of Commoners get-together was intended to bring together some of the many organizations in the region whose activities are less well-known than they should be. In this age of information overload, it’s hard to stay on top of everything going on even in a relatively small region like ours. We have resources like the Powell River Peak, Powell River Living, Immanence Magazine, and the community calendar; but it’s not possible for every group to get its message out. I try to keep my ear to the ground, but of course I keep finding out about groups I’d never heard of (the latest is the Sunshine Gogos, which apparently has 56 members and is quite a going concern).

Imagine a diagram of all the people in the region, with lines connecting us together through our various groups and affiliations, with colour-coding to indicate all the different categories of activity. It would be mind-boggling — and, even then, it would only convey the most superficial picture of the complexity of the connectedness among folks in the region.

One of the little nodes of connectedness happens on the morning of the second Wednesday of the month in the Trinity Hall at the United Church in Powell River: the Good Food Box packing day. And I call it a minor miracle, because it produces so much positive action and energy with so little overhead.

The Good Food Box is a project that got started just over five years ago out of the PREP Society’s BOND project, which supports pre- and peri-natal moms and newborns. The group of young moms was looking for a project that would help them provide for their own food needs, and they found the idea of a monthly box of produce, prepaid and reasonably priced. It’s been running since then with only minor changes. Here’s how it works: participants prepay their $12.00 produce box by the third day of the month; payment can be arranged through the Family Place in the Town Centre Mall, Centsibles thrift store on Marine Ave., at the PREP Society office on Marine Ave., or by calling the coordinator Annabelle Tully-Barr at (604) 485-8213.

Annabelle collates the orders and works with the produce department at Save-On Foods, who support the program by offering a hefty discount on the bulk order of produce. Then, on the second Wednesday, the team of volunteers gathers at the United Church to sort, weigh, and pack the produce into boxes and bags. This month, a participant’s $12.00 bought:

• Five pounds of potatoes;
• One or two onions, depending on the size;
• Two pounds of carrots;
• Four heads of garlic;
• One head of romaine lettuce;
• One bunch of green onions;
• One bunch of radishes;
• Four “Granny Smith” apples;
• Three large oranges;
• One lime;
• One mango;
• One bunch of four bananas.

Some families buy more than one Good Food Box, since it is such a good deal. And we know that there is a network of people buying boxes to help family, friends, an neighbours who are needy. So the produce is getting out there and promoting healthy eating and creating social solidarity.

And the activity of packing up the boxes and bags creates another whole network, one that I have been participating in for about three years now. For over a year, we are lucky to have a class from the Powell River Christian School come over and help. It’s always a bit of a madhouse making sure that everything weighs the right amount and is ready at the same time. And meanwhile, there is always a crew of volunteers in the kitchen cooking up some amazing food for lunch.

By about 11:00 we’re ready to start The Run: this is where some volunteers race around the tables set out in a U shape, with other volunteers filling the boxes/bags with the various items of produce. For a few minutes all is chaos, but eventually we’re finished and the floor is lined with neat rows of boxes and bags of produce ready to be picked up and delivered.

By this time, everyone is ready for lunch, so we all sit down together and enjoy a fabulous home-cooked meal. Last week, we had hand-made tortillas with rice, beans, fresh salsa, cheese, and sour cream; cold Asian noodle salad with satay sauce; chicken noodle soup made with local chicken and hand-rolled fresh fettucine noodles; and because it was almost Valentine’s Day, rice krispie squares with candy hearts. Our kitchen crew deserves kudos for stretching a small food budget into delicious and healthy meals (rice krispie squares notwithstanding).

We may only come together for a few hours each month, but we’re a gang of people who enjoy working together. We laugh and share jokes and stories, we share a meaningful task that makes a difference in the community, and best of all we share food. The crew of regular volunteers, led by the tireless Annabelle Tully-Barr, manage to make this initiative hang together from one month to the next, despite chronic lack of funding. Somehow the boxes from one month manage to pay for the little expenses, and we have support from the United Church, the Ministry of Housing and Social Development, and River City Movers. The Good Food Box is a clear example of the many small shoestring operations out there in the region which bring good things into people’s lives with very little fuss and fanfare, and whose disappearance would leave an empty space in these lives. We should do everything we can to help fan these sparks into flame — or at least to keep them glowing until some real kindling comes along.

Did you know that doing your grocery shopping with spud! saves you an average of 81 minutes per week? The average family spends 90 minutes a week grocery shopping whereas the average spud! customer spends less than 9 minutes a week ordering their groceries through spud!. Shopping with spud! means no driving or transit time, no parking, no checkout [...]

In recognition of  Valentine’s Day, I thought I would pass along some advice about love that I found on the internet from a group of kids aged 4 to 8.   I think you’ll agree that they are wise beyond their years. “When my grandma got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toe nails anymore. [...]

By Tom Read

Two adjacent signs warn the public to stay off the wharf during repairs. Why two signs? Maybe this has something to do with lawyers and consultants. At least we're finally seeing our only public wharf get some well-deserved repairs.

A few days ago, men with hardhats and heavy construction equipment began repairing Texada’s only public wharf, located at Van Anda Cove. It has taken several years to reach this moment, so I’m glad that it’s finally happening. The cost of labour and materials kept going up year after year while commencement of work was delayed and the wharf continued to deteriorate, so some of us wondered if it would ever be saved.

In fact, we’re losing vehicle access out to the end of the wharf; henceforth, it will only accommodate foot traffic. But that’s all we can afford today, if wharf repairs are to meet the liability-proof standard set forth by an engineering consultant hired by the Powell River Regional District. Consulting invoices, over the years, ate up a mid-five-figures chunk of the “marine services” budget, an unfortunate fact of life. At least we still have a public space where Texadans and visitors can get out on the water, as people of all ages have done for more than a century at Van Anda Cove.

Yes, an island community just ought to have a structurally sound public wharf, and that’s exactly what I expect we’ll get when the current work is done. Then all we’ll have to do is maintain it, which should be easy by comparison to this painful, multi-year wharf rescue project.

  Last Saturday, spud! proudly sponsored a food event in support of a 79 year old farmer named Percy Schmeiser who has spent more than a decade fighting to protect his rights and the rights of all farmers to own their own seed.     Over 120 people attended the event and we were all eager to hear how one [...]

By David Parkinson

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free. (Photograph by Giovanni Spezzacatena.)

The best place to store your extra food is in your neighbor’s belly.
(African proverb)

Last week I talked about blending entrepreneurial and not-for-profit approaches to filling some of the real gaps in the regional economy, particularly the food economy. The entrepreneurial — or for-profit — approach is a good one when there is a real gap to be filled, where there are needed goods or services not being supplied by existing businesses; and the not-for-profit — or community service — approach excels where there is a gap which might not necessarily be filled by a market-driven approach, either because it is not profitable enough to attract investors or because it is a public good best provided by an association of individuals willing to sacrifice profit to the benefit of the wider community.

Powell River has many not-for-profit corporations serving the community in a variety of ways: The Powell River Association for Community Living (PRACL), Powell River Therapeutic Riding Association, Pebble in the Pond Environmental Society, The Source Club Society, and on and on… what these corporations have in common is that they have chosen to incorporate as not-for-profit societies. There is a common misconception about what it means to be a not-for-profit: it does not mean that “there is no money in it”, or that it is the sort of thing that can only work on the basis of government funding or charitable donations.

The essence of being a not-for-profit corporation is that whatever profits are generated through the activities of the corporation cannot be distributed to the members. In other words, no one can invest money in a not-for-profit with the hope of seeing a profitable return on that money. Instead, a not-for-profit corporation is a legal device for allowing a number of people to come together to achieve goals or transact business that would be difficult for any of them to do on their own, and to do that without the profit motive getting mixed up in what is usually a service to the community.

A not-for-profit corporation can indeed produce a surplus through its operations, in which case it can reinvest that surplus in those operations by purchasing equipment, starting new projects, training its staff, or in any number of other ways that will allow the organization to thrive. And those operations may produce direct economic benefit to the community by paying wages and salaries and by purchasing goods and services from other businesses. What the not-for-profit cannot do is offer dividends or other financial bonuses to its members. The membership of a not-for-profit and all other individuals or corporate partners who contribute money to it recognize that achieving the purposes of the corporation is more important than making a profit on the money they contribute.

They recognize that its status as a provider of a public good is higher than its status as a tool for increasing capital. In other words, they see it as a part of the commons.

A cooperative is a particular kind of association with its own set of provincial laws and regulations, and which operates according to principles which have been evolving since the origins of the cooperative back in the middle of the 19th Century. You may be familiar with a cooperative through membership in the Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), through belonging to our local credit union (the first one in BC), or through belonging to a food cooperative.

Most cooperatives (e.g., MEC, First Credit Union) are for-profit, which means that any surplus they generate through their activities can be returned to members in the form of dividends or patronage returns. Dividends are determined on the basis of the number of shares owned; patronage returns on the basis of the amount of business transacted with the cooperative. (The credit union pays dividends; MEC pays patronage returns.) A for-profit cooperative may also issue investment shares, which allow investors (who are not necessarily members) to put their money into the cooperative in hopes of a return on that capital.

There is also a class of not-for-profit cooperatives, known in BC as ‘community service cooperatives‘. As the for-profit cooperative is to the for-profit corporation, the community service cooperative is to the not-for-profit corporation (society or association). As the name ‘community service cooperative’ suggests, these are often used as a way of providing a service to the community in general, as opposed to cooperatives like MEC and the First Credit Union, which primarily serve the interests of their members. (Although cooperatives, even for-profit ones, often have a very high degree of commitment to community service.)

The legislation defining the community service cooperative came into effect as recently as 2007, and so this model remains to be developed and tested in a variety of different areas and for different purposes. But it offers an appealing combination of the power of cooperative association combined with the ability to provide valuable services to the community as a whole.

Since late November 2009 I have been part of a small team of people learning how cooperatives work and how to get one started. This work picks up on the sorts of thinking that I set out in a couple of posts from back in October 2009: “Why we need a food-security cooperative” and “What can a local food-security cooperative do?“. What we’re looking at are ways to organize people to work together on projects that they might find hard to accomplish on their own — and on projects where there are real economies of scale to be had by pooling labour, time, or money. Examples of this sort of thing can be found in the two posts linked to just above; but a good example would be a commonly-owned fruit crusher and cider press which could be used by members and the general public to convert fruit to cider or wine for the few weeks of the year when the fruit is most abundant. Why should everyone need to own expensive equipment like this? Why not belong to a group which serves common needs without introducing the profit motive?

There is a great deal more to say about the structure and the motivation of a cooperative (coming up in future columns). But for our little initiating group, it is clear that food — of all things — is so fundamental to the life of the individual and of the community that we need to empower people to work for themselves and with one another in order to make more food available locally year-round, as equitably and affordably as possible, and with the least negaitve impacts on the environment. It will help to have an active and activist regional organization which is open to all, dedicated to the creation of a stronger local food economy, driven by the interests and needs of its members, fully accountable to the membership and to the wider community, and obliged by its very nature to place community service above individual profit-making. That’s where we’re heading — and very soon we’ll be asking you to come along with us.

If you want to know more, please feel free to email me. Or you can come out to the upcoming Chamber of Commoners event on Wednesday February 10 and to the fifth annual Seedy Saturday in Powell River on March 13, 2010 at the Powell River Recreation Complex. We’ll be at both of these events to answer questions and hear your wonderful ideas.

Why we need a food-security cooperative

By Tom Read

Our latest Internet access technology sits on a table in the livingroom, with a 9" antenna (not shown) in the window nearby. It's smaller, uses less power and is less expensive than our previous set-up.

One of the most frequent questions we hear from prospective Texada Island residents is “do you have high-speed internet access?” The answer is “yes,” and we’re fortunate that our island now enjoys a range of internet access technologies and service options. But this wasn’t true when we first moved here in 2000.

Ten years ago, only one choice existed on Texada for internet access: dial-up, at 56kps. By mid-2001, however, a new satellite-based system became available and our household was among its first customers in western Canada. Connection speed jumped to 400kps for downloads and 125kps for uploads. We stayed on that system through various technology improvements and confusing changes in company ownership — until last week.

That’s when we migrated to internet-over-cell-phone technology, popularly known as an internet stick or modem. Our island has solid cell service in most places and after some tricky technical work, so do we. Physically, for most people this technology is just a 3”-long “stick” that plugs into a USB port on the side of one’s computer. That approach works fine in most places on Texada. Frustratingly, it does NOT work at our house, because we live behind a rocky hill down in a small creek valley. We’re in a cell phone dead spot.

The answer, for us and anyone else living under similar low-signal-strength conditions, is a booster antenna. Our service provider sells such an antenna, designed for use with motor vehicles, but it can be adapted quite easily to a house, too. With the further addition of a  wireless router both Linda and I can share one internet connection, just as we did using the satellite system. There are two main differences, however: 1) our internet stick service is in some ways faster than satellite because it’s earth-based, not space-based, and 2) it costs about a third less.

Now I have an unobtrusive little wireless internet icon occupying the bottom right side of my computer screen. It tells me that my status is “connected” and my signal strength is “very good.” And that’s good enough for me.

By Tony Colton

Consider yourself invited!

For a while Meghan and I have been convening with friends over appies and sometimes wine, perhaps once a month. A loose group having in common our love of where we live we shared highlights of our activities. Just getting together to have a good time and share some food with other active people in the community. We met nice people.

It wasn’t long before we imagined what a larger group might look like. People and groups getting together celebrating successes, rallying each other over challenges.

David Parkinson had been keeping tabs on our yapp-appy group and suggested that this kind of gathering might be called a Chamber of Commoners. From then on it was as if the Chamber of Commoners had always existed.

The Commons refers to resources that are collectively owned. Traditionally defined as trees, air, or grazing land. That no one owns but everybody enjoys.

Today, the commons can be understood within the cultural sphere as well. The commons within this sphere include literature, music, performing arts, visual arts, design, film, video, television, radio, community arts and sites of heritage. All of this paragraph is considered commons. It’s from Wikipedia.

Here’s the part I like and why I think the Chamber of Commoners is a great fit. The commons can also include the areas of human relationships. We all have a need for safety, trust, cooperation, expression and so on. An important aspect of human relationships is the sharing of information. Getting together. Strengthening our community. And I like it cause its just a party. No committees, agendas or debates. No charge!

The inaugural Chamber of Commoners get-together will be held from 7:00 to 10:00 PM on Wednesday, February 10, in the Rainbow Room of the Rodmay Hotel in Townsite.

See you there!

A few weeks ago, Caitlin Flanagan published an article in The Atlantic about how programs like Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard are damaging the most vulnerable students in the US school systems. I’m not going to write my own rebuttal of the piece here, but I do like a lot of what was written at the [...]

By David Parkinson

Sand, wood, and stone.

No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
(Alan Watts, 1966, The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, p. 112)

Last week, in “Getting there from here“, I talked about a common problem we can see whenever the talk turns to creating solutions for the challenges of peak oil, climate mayhem, and an economy in turmoil. This conversation is going on all over the place, and when the conversation comes to a halt there are many people thinking about all of this. How are we going to provide more food as transportation becomes more costly? How will we cope with the rising cost of gasoline when we depend so much on it to keep our cars running? How will we heat our homes more efficiently? How will we continue to have a prosperous economy, especially when we are isolated and our primary industry seems to be in terminal decline?

There are some good solutions to some of these challenges, and more coming every day. Some come from the public sector (the government), some from the private sector (the corporations), and some from the grassroots (the people).

Increasingly, it becomes hard to imagine that meaningful solutions to any of the problems we face are going to come from either of the first two places: the public sector, when it is has funds available, cannot always direct those funds towards their best uses at the local scale. This is not to say that government programs are of no value; but the higher the level of government the less it can respond to local needs — and the better it can respond to the needs of the large corporate interests which can afford to pay lobbyists and fund think tanks to drive policy. Also, the longer this depressed economy continues, the less money our various levels of government are going to have at their disposal; funding will likely contract in all areas except essential services, and even there we may feel a pinch.

Last week the City of Powell River hosted a brainstorming session to come up with ideas for how the City and its residents could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many of the ideas suggested were along the lines of offering incentives in the form of cash rebates or tax reductions for anyone taking steps to reduce emissions. Representatives of the City felt compelled to point out that it is unlikely that the City will be able to offer any kind of incentives, given the shakiness of the municipal tax base. Similar incentives at the provincial and federal levels are threatened by the downturn in the economy.

As for the private sector… it’s good at coming up with solutions to all kinds of problems. And entrepreneurial approaches to local concerns very often produce the best possible results. In the area of food security, all of our local farms and the people who sell goods through the various little markets are all entrepreneurs. If you want to fill a niche in the local economy, nothing beats a privately-owned and -controlled company: no shareholders telling you what to do, no strings on your investment, no reporting to the government, no answering to voters.

Some of the drawbacks of the entrepreneurial approach are:

• not everyone wants to assume the risk of ownership and management;
• it isn’t necessarily answerable to the interests of the community;
• it can tend to place profit above all other considerations.

If we could overcome these and some other shortcomings, some offshoot of the entrepreneurial approach might be the best way to tackle some of the projects we need to get started in the region: the backyard gardening, car-sharing and ride-sharing, home retrofitting, swap and barter networks, home-based businesses of all types, and all the other pieces of the Transition puzzle.

What we need to develop is a spirit of entrepreneurialism in the region which does not depend on individuals having to do everything themselves, from creating a business plan to raising startup money; which spreads the risks and advantages of ownership more widely among the members of the community; which brings people together in order to addresses their common concerns; which does not need to pursue profit at all costs; and which is democratic and accountable to the community in which it operates.

Like other communities, we’re struggling here. Good things are happening, but we need more of everything. Many of us can see a number of challenges we need to start addressing, and quickly. But we’re blocked: do we form a new not-for-profit to get that work done? That’s a lot of work and takes a lot of time. Do we try to start businesses? That also is a lot of work, and personal risk — and anyway, most people are already busy working at something and don’t have the time to start a new business, especially one which might struggle until reality catches up with vision. We need more projects that are a hybrid between not-for-profit and entrepreneurial, and share the best qualities of both. And we need to get more people excited to start working together; this is the real tough one.

I’m excited to have found one approach which I think fits the bill: the community service cooperative. Next time: what the heck is a community service cooperative?

By Tom Read

"Growing season" has already begun for our garlic. Planted last November with cloves harvested in August, it's already about 3" above ground as of late January.

It’s another typical coastal winter day on Texada Island, overcast, 5 degrees Centigrade — but my thoughts are about the coming spring, summer and fall. Specifically, today we’re finally getting in our last seed orders for the coming growing season.

Of course, we are learning to grow open-pollinated food plants and save our own seed. For example, beets, arugula, coriander and kale are all on track for seed harvesting in our garden later this year, and naturally we save potato and garlic “seed” every year. One of our plans for 2010, however, is to start growing a lot more bee forage, so there’s a bevy of nectar-laden flowers joining our order list. We already purchase dwarf white clover seed by the pound for cover crop (and to feed bees); this year we’ll increase our plantings of borage while introducing phacelia, echium, lavender, thyme (creeping groundcover), sweet clover and anise hyssop.

The above list is a result of our reading beekeeping literature, both in print and online, while seeking a balance between different blooming times and the particular growing conditions on our land. With any luck, we’ll offer the bees a constant source of nectar from spring through fall. Our goal is to strengthen our surviving bee colony, perhaps leading to one or two more colonies this summer.

Turning from bees to humans, lately we’ve discovered the pleasures of eating quinoa (pronounced “keen-wa”). It can be cooked like rice or ground into flour, and has both great taste and lots of vitamins and protein. To quote the West Coast Seeds catalogue:

“These plants look terrific in the garden and produce edible, nutritious grains that have been grown in the Americas for over 6,000 years. A distant relative of beets and spinach, the leaves of young quinoa plants are also edible.”

A friend here on Texada grew it successfully last year, so we’ll give it a try this year! Somehow, today doesn’t seem quite as gray when contemplating seeds and the sunny days to come.

As someone who believes passionately in buying locally from small, independent farms and producers, my interest was peaked when I first heard about a new book titled, “Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller.” I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the book would be about and expected that it [...]