Community Leaders & Books: December 2024

We profile local community leaders and post book reviews on a weekly basis on social media, along with excerpts from Nature Companion, our nature app/website. Once a month we repost these items on our website for those of you who may not be active on social media.

Community Leaders

British Columbia: Squamish CAN (Climate Action Network) strives to empower its community with actionable solutions to the climate crisis, from community gardens & seed saving to repair cafés and toy and clothing swaps. They will be hosting a Seedy Saturday event on March 1.

Saskatchewan: The Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan is celebrating its 30th anniversary by offering a grant to a project using native plants to create or enhance a public space. Eligible projects might include garden boxes or signage in natural areas, and may take place where native plants are already present or will be introduced as part of the project. The deadline to apply is March 1.

Alberta: The Helen Schuler Nature Centre, Lethbridge, is offering a Natural Leaders program from January to June for adults who want to learn about local ecosystems and ways to make positive change in their community (ecosystems, protected parks, water, waste). They offer a similar year-long, monthly program for grade 5-9 classes.

Books

In The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer compares the gift economy of the serviceberry that freely provides its berries to birds and animals with the human economy based on scarcity, competition, and hoarding of resources. She says, “The Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity rather than accumulation, where wealth and security come from the quality of our relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”

Sunil Amrith, author of The Burning Earth, says, “When I first started out as a historian, I saw environmental concerns as secondary to political rights, economic empowerment, and social justice. I now believe that they are inseparable, and that the pursuit of environmental justice extends and builds on those earlier and still-unfinished struggles for human freedom.” The book twins the stories of environment and Empire, exploring exploitation of resources, transportation networks, war, and migration.

Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale? by Caroline Woodward & Claire Watson is an illustrated children’s book about adventure on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. There are sun-warmed rocks and crackling campfires, leaping dolphins, and barking sea lions. It’s a journey of touch, taste, sight, and smell, encouraging children to explore their surroundings and put their imaginations to work.

In Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton raises a young hare to adulthood. It sleeps in the house by day and runs free at night. She says, “For the first time in my life, I have had cause to study animals rather than people, and to see that we are not diminished by making way for them. Coexistence gives our own existence greater poignancy, and perhaps even grandeur. My wish now is for an environment that is safer for hares and other creatures of the land, wherever they may live: not at the expense of humans, but in balance with our priorities. I wish there were more wild, undisturbed places, for both wildlife and for us as humans, and a greater understanding that restoring and appreciating nature meets needs we sometimes forget we have. Under the subtle influence of the hare, my own wants have simplified. To be dependable in love and friendship more than in work. To leave the land in a more natural state than I found it. And to take better care of what is to hand, seeing beauty and value in the ordinary.”

Nature Companion

Scientists believe that the caribou's ancestors lived in South America, migrating north across the Isthmus of Panama 5 million years ago.

Nature Companion is a free app/website introducing many of the plants and animals found in Canada’s four western provinces.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/apmckinlay/10717831625

EcoFriendly West informs and encourages initiatives that support Western Canada’s natural environment through its online publication and the Nature Companion website/app. Like us on Facebook, follow us on BlueSky, X, and Mastodon, or subscribe by email.