Upbeat Ecology with David Suzuki

During my prep work for a class, I looked at the list of required readings and groaned – “Not another environmentalist essay!” Why is it that no ESL student can get through a course without being subjected to ecology? I braced myself for a preachy and tedious reading.

Maybe you relate to my feeling that reading environmentalist stuff is about as much fun as spending an afternoon with Eeyore. But in this case, I was pleasantly surprised. The essay was actually an excerpt taken from a book called David Suzuki’s Green Guide by the man himself. The title interested me because it suggested practical points of action at the personal level. I was also interested in reading something Canadian with more of a political edge.

I checked out the book from the library and it’s been my subway reading for a few weeks. It’s broken into chapters on home, food, travel, simplicity, and citizenship. Some of the suggestions are predictable – live close to your work, eat less meat, bike instead of drive, spend more time outside. There were many things, though, that surprised me:

·         Changing how you eat can have a bigger impact than switching from a gas to electric car 

·         Out of reduce, reuse, recycle, reduce is by far the most important

·         Raising livestock has a larger impact on the environment than the worldwide transportation sector

·         Producing beef requires 70,000 liters of water per kilogram

·         By 2006, the clever Swedes had reduced their greenhouse gas emissions to 7.2% below 1990 levels, surpassing their Kyoto target

·         A townhouse consumes 22% less energy than a detached house, and an apartment unit consumes 40% less energy

·         An article published in The Economist magazine stated that GDP is “badly flawed as a guide to a nation’s economic well-being.” It overlooks trust, community, rest, and, of course, the state of the environment. It’s not hard to see this point when you realise that the wealthiest person you know is not often the most satisfied with life.

·         In the long run, environmental choices almost always save you money

Another thing I appreciate about the book is the “Inspiration” sections sprinkled throughout each chapter. These show how people and companies and governments have put the principles into practice with great success. For example, the German government passed rigorous legislation to cut down on the packaging waste going to dumps and incinerators. Since the law came into effect (sometime in the 1990s), they have reduced waste by 70%.  Now that is a refreshing break from the Eeyores of ecology.

Source

David Suzuki and David R. Boyd. David Suzuki’s Green Guide. Greystone Books: 2008.

Windows onto Old Toronto

Sometimes I like to walk around Toronto streets and wonder what it all would have looked like in the beginning – back when it was called “York.” What was it like to walk along Bloor St. when St. Paul’s was a ‘countryside’ church and there was mostly wilderness to the north? Today, we walk the same streets under the same blue sky, but I imagine the city would be scarcely recognizable to an early settler.

This past week, I came across two resources that have been like a window onto the streets of old Muddy York. The first is a website dedicated to showcase historical maps of Toronto. Here is my favorite one:

Unlike a typical map, this gives you a perspective as if you were flying over Toronto Island looking north. It’s done in the most intricate detail – difficult to appreciate when you look at the whole. But you can zoom in to find each street and building as it appeared in 1876. Here’s what my neighborhood, St. James Town, looked like then:

Today it's home to about 24,000 souls living in 18 high-rise buildings. Imagine!

To get a perspective closer to the ground, there is a wonderful book titled Pen Sketches of Historic Toronto by J. Clarence Duff. The Red Lion Hotel, pictured below, gives a sense of the rural atmosphere on the city borders. The hotel was popular with locals, with its tavern and dance hall providing a warm atmosphere for social events.

I love this second one. The Church of the Holy Trinity was built on the outskirts of the city when it had about 20,000. Here, it’s pictured surrounded with peaceful cottages and greenery. 

 

What surrounds it today? That’s right, the Eaton Centre, the beating heart of our city shopping scene. At first it seemed to me a great shame that the church lies mostly forgotten when it used to be the focal point of the community around it. But perhaps that's what makes it a place of tranquility today. As summer is coming up, the leafy courtyard is well worth a visit for its own sake.

Sources

Historical Maps of Toronto. "1876 PA Gross Bird's Eye View of Toronto." Compiled by Nathan Ng.

J. Clarence Duff. Pen Sketches of Historic Toronto. Volume 2.

Catholicism in Quebec: Then and Now

Canada doesn’t stand much chance of ever winning a soccer title. But who needs soccer when your nation produced the Pope? Well, we came close (according to Maclean’s), but sadly cardinal Marc Oullet was bested by Jorge Bergoglio in last month’s papal election. The event got me thinking about Roman Catholicism in Quebec and how it developed to its state today.

Cardinal Marc Oullet with the former Pope Benedict XVI

From the founding of New France until the middle of the 20th century, the church was a defining feature of social life in Quebec. Religious leaders saw the new world as virgin territory, a haven of piety against the growing secularism in France. Did you know that Montreal was originally intended to be an outpost of religious devotion? 150 years later, while the Revolution raged in France, Catholic historians saw the hand of Providence in shielding religion in the St. Lawrence colony from secularism in the mother country. Even until 1960, Quebec had more clergy than both Ireland and France.

Today, the 80% of the people still identify with the Catholic Church, but only 20% attend church services. By Maclean’s assessment, they have become “allergic to the worship of their own deity.” So what happened? Essentially this: Quebec went though the same breadth of social change that took France 200 years. Let’s look at the forerunners of that change.

On August 1948, when Marc Oullet was just four years old, a group of painters in Montreal published the Refus Global. In the same tradition as The Communist Manifesto, they challenged the materialism and repression they saw in society. They accused the clergy of enslaving people in a regime of fear: “They have extorted with us a thousand times more than they ever gave.” Against this, they sound a call to freedom for the masses – “submissive slaves” – and their emotional development, material progress, and collective hope.

A sample work by one of the Montreal painters, Jean-Paul Riopelle. La Forêt Ardente

To be sure, power is often a corrupting force, and there’s no doubt that the artists had legitimate grounds for protest. At the same time, it would be unjust to forget that the church was the sole provider of social services to the sick, poor, and marginalized - not to mention the only caretaker of education for hundreds of years. I think it’s a shame that we're so quick to forget years of faithful service.

Well, what was the reaction to the Refus Global? It was condemned – universally. Hundreds of newspapers and magazines published articles overnight censuring the manifesto. Paul-Emile Bourdas, the lead writer, was fired from his position as an art teacher. The public wasn’t ready to question the church – not, at least, until the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s.

You may remember the scene from The Devil Wears Prada: Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) is consulting with her fashion minions when Andy (Anne Hathaway) snickers at their discussion over two apparently identical belts. Miranda turns and fixes her with an icy stare. In the dressing down that follows, she rebukes Andy for her false pride and points out that her ‘decision’ to buy the sweater she is wearing was, in fact, a choice made for her by the fashion industry. What was once avant garde trickled down into society where it shaped the fashion choices of Andy and millions of other unsuspecting people.

In much the same way, the Refus Global stands as the forerunner of secularism in Quebec. Though rejected at first, its ideas would later motivate the wholesale departure from the church – whether people were aware of it or not.

Sources:

Maclean’s article, “Cardinal Marc Oullet: The Canadian who Could be Pope,” gives interesting commentary on Oullet and the state of Catholicism in Quebec:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/02/18/the-canadian-who-could-be-the-next-pope-2/

You can read the full text of The “Refus Global” here:

http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/refus-global-manifesto