Back in the early 1990s, my environmentalist side was just being kindled. I had just started recycling, no easy feat as it was well before blue box years. I was living in Winnipeg at the time and my garden consisted of a few pots of pansies on my balcony. I came across my “environment” file [...]
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The file sorting continues. I was astonished at the number of film projects I had undertaken, or rather film proposals I have written. During my years at City Farmer, I was hell bent on getting a TV series or documentary on urban agriculture off the ground. There were many titles and formats: City Farmers (1995, [...] I was at a meditation retreat outside of Portland on the weekend. It was held at Queen of Angels Monastery. The Benedictine Sisters who call this place home, are engaged in a number of ministries including an on-site shelter that houses and feeds homeless people. They also support their work by making their own monastery [...] In early 1991, some friends of mine from California started a campaign to conserve oil. It was a response to the Persian Gulf War. As the pledge sheet said, whether you were for or against the conflict, it was clear that the need for oil was a central cause. The premise was that by reducing [...] I’ve had some pretty funny jobs in my day. I worked at a cannery, sorting apricots on the conveyor belt and cleaning the rotten, mushy ones out of the slop tray. I was then promoted to the exciting job of pitting, where I fed one apricot at a time into a machine for eight hours. [...] My neighbour across the hall smokes like a chimney. The smoke wafts out into the hallway, stinking it up and on particularly heavy days, creating a wall of blue. It also seeps under my door and into my suite. Since the balconies have been torn off, she’s taken to smoking on the back steps, where [...] We took my nephews to the Vancouver Aquarium on Saturday. They loved it of course. The displays of brightly coloured fish and undersea life are breathtaking. The Aquarium lived up to its promise of: Engage. Amaze. Inspire. Except for the beluga whale show. We waited and waited for the show to begin, even the adults [...] In 1979, after graduating from the University of Victoria with a degree in French and linguistics, I had no idea what to do with my life. I was working at Safeway in Victoria as a cashier when I got word that I had been awarded a monitorship at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivieres. I [...] I’m addicted to Teflon. I’m trying to give up my habit, but it is a struggle. While cleaning out my cupboards to make room for a new, non-Teflon wok, I removed all my non-stick pans. For the last couple weeks, I’ve been using stainless steel or glass frying pans. I feel like I’m learning to [...] Recycling is a daily theme for me right now as I’m sifting and sorting through my life. Yesterday I came upon an old file labelled “recycling.” It contained newspaper clippings and magazine articles going back to 1991. The headlines show how far we have come and not come. “Fluorescents are made to last,” “Juice box [...] |
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