It was like déja vu all over again! Earth Day, Saturday April 22, 2023 dawned almost identically to the same day last year, cold, rain and, wind. Perhaps not quite as cold, but almost. As one of the exhibitors expressed, “It’s the Earth crying about all the horrible things we’ve done to her in the last year.”
Continue reading “Great turnout at the 2023 Earth Day Festival despite the Wet!”Graceful Aging Through Connecting With Nature
The Brampton Environmental Alliance is pleased to announce that it has received grant funding from Employment and Social Development Canada to implement a “New Horizons for Seniors” project called, “Graceful Aging Through Connecting With Nature”.
Continue reading “Graceful Aging Through Connecting With Nature”Heat Pump Chronicles Vol2
This is the second in a series of posts on our journey to navigate government grants and loans available for home energy retrofits and to replace our natural gas furnace with a cold-climate heat pump. Click here to see all articles in the series.
A New Beginning
In the previous post I reported the 16-year-old natural gas furnace in Dayle’s and my home started acting up just before Christmas. We’d invested in a furnace maintenance call in the fall that resulted in a part being replaced, a reassurance that our furnace was in good shape, and a $200 bill. So, when the Christmas Eve repairman, left us without finding the problem, only another charge approaching $200, I was not amused. The weather turned really cold on Boxing Day. Our ailing furnace struggled to get the inside temperature above 18°C. I felt like Bob Cratchit, forced to wear double sweaters, tuque and mittens with the fingers cut out. But I was resolved not to replace our current furnace with another natural gas unit. I wanted a heat pump that would be fossil-fuel free.
Continue reading “Heat Pump Chronicles Vol2”Heat Pump Chronicles Vol 1
This is the first in a series of posts on our journey to navigate government grants and loans available for home energy retrofits and to replace our natural gas furnace with a cold-climate heat pump. Click here to see all articles in the series.
The Break Up
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the dormitory, Nothing was stirring, not even the reverberatory, The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes the furnace repair guy soon would be there.
Dayle and I had been thinking of getting a heat pump for quite a while. We’d done all the usual things to make our house more energy efficient. We’d upgraded windows, sealed baseboards and electrical outlets, installed weather stripping on all our doors, and blew more insulation into our attic, bringing it to a lofty R62. Replacing the natural gas furnace perhaps was the next logical step to reduce our carbon emissions. We just weren’t expecting we’d have to start the process over the holiday season.
Continue reading “Heat Pump Chronicles Vol 1”Earth Day 2023 Save the Date!
Save the date for the Brampton Earth Day Celebration and Climate Change Exhibition April 22nd at Norton Place Park from 12:00-4:00pm.
There will be a light lunch courtesy of the City of Brampton.
Local environment organizations, City departments, and others will be on-hand with display tables and activities for adults and kids including
BEA and Lead Now talk carbon caps with Brampton North’s MP Sahota
On Friday, Dayle and David Laing, joined Bette-Ann Goldstein and Lead Now volunteer, Liz Garrison to visit Brampton North MP Ruby Sahota. The meeting’s purpose was to show support for the Government of Canada’s plan to impose a hard carbon emissions cap on the oil and gas industry as part of this county’s Climate Action Plan.
Continue reading “BEA and Lead Now talk carbon caps with Brampton North’s MP Sahota”Peel Talks Climate
Last Thursday evening the BEA was invited to participate in the Peel Talks Climate event sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation. The event was held at Alderlea, a heritage conference building in downtown Brampton.
Continue reading “Peel Talks Climate”We need you to speak out against Bill 23
Yesterday I had the privilege to present to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure, and Cultural Policy regarding Bill 23 More Homes Built Faster Act 2022 that is currently in second reading at the Ontario Legislature.
As stated in a previous article this Bill, unless substantially altered, has the potential to inflict massive environmental damage on communities all across this province but especially on those in the greater Toronto area. Below is the text of my opening remarks to the Committee. If you are like me and believe in building communities that are healthy and happy through environmental, social and economic sustainability, then I urge you to let your MPP know that Bill 23 needs a significant overhaul. An easy way to do that is through the David Suzuki Foundation’s letter campaign.
Continue reading “We need you to speak out against Bill 23”Bill 23, an attack on a Sustainable Brampton
Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act is the Ontario Government’s latest omnibus bill that is being fast tracked through the Provincial legislature. Purportedly designed to reduce red tape and allow developers to build 1.5 Million homes over the next 10 years, this bill proposes sweeping changes to multiple provincial statutes in support of the government’s “Housing Supply Action Plan”.
There are a few positive aspects to Bill 23 including:
Continue reading “Bill 23, an attack on a Sustainable Brampton”Join us Saturday October 1 for a walk/ride through farms and conservation areas threatened by Highway 413
Harvest Ontario Walk/Bike
If you are interested in showing your displeasure about the Ontario PC government’s plan to ram a provincial limited access highway through the heart of the greenbelt all but destroying Brampton’s planned Heritage Heights community, here is your chance.
Several grassroots organizations have banded together to raise awareness about the proposed 413 highway and the 2,000 acres of irreplaceable farmland that will be destroyed and that will set the stage for car dependent development for the next 30 years!
You can join walkers starting from the Heart Lake Garden Centre on Heart Lake Rd. at 10:00am. You can join cyclists starting near Kleinburg or from Mississauga at the Lisgar GO station. Both rides start at 9:45am. Walks and rides end at the Brampton Fairgrounds in Caledon.
At the Fairgrounds there will be music, entertainment and fun! Click here for more information and to register.