Parent Teacher Night at Harold M. Brathwaite Secondary School

This past Wednesday April 9th, Dayle and I participated in the parent teacher night at Harold M. Brathwaite Secondary School to promote the One Planet Living Challenge, create awareness about the Emerald Energy from Waste expansion project and encourage folks to register for Bike the Creek and other cycling events taking place in the city over the next few months. We had great conversations with both parents and students about the history of Earth Day, the importance of living within planetary limits and the joys of cycling and other forms of sustainable transportation. The student ambassadors were wonderfully supportive, coming to our table and asking how they could help. Report cards must been favourable to the students because everyone seemed to be having a good time!

Sustainable Procurement – Brampton’s Community Benefits Workshop

Friday April 11th, I participated in a Community Benefits Workshop hosted by the City of Brampton at the Rose Theatre. It is a fair question to ask what a Community Benefits Workshop has to do with building a sustainable Brampton. Lot’s it turns out.

The Power of Purchase is something that Dayle and I have been interested in for more than a decade. At the retail level this is called conscious consumerism where the consumer makes buying choices based on their values. When large volumes of consumers consciously choose to buy sustainably sourced products from ethical companies, using fair trade practices it sends a powerful market message that environmental and social responsibility is important.

Companies that ignore this message can see sales and profits negatively impacted. The threat is often enough to change how products are designed, manufactured, distributed and disposed of at the end of their intended life. A good example of this is McDonald’s Restaurant chain that, in 2018, replaced plastic straws with paper due to a customer-led campaign.

Customer-led change, however, is relatively rare because of the challenge involved in building a swell of spontaneous feedback. Sustainable corporate procurement practices, on the other hand, can be an even greater market force for good because smaller numbers of buyers are involved in very large purchase decisions both in number and scale of transactions. Corporate procurement, therefore, when driven by a “community benefit strategy”, can be a tool that unlocks transformative local economic opportunities, empowers workers, and leverages social value in creating conditions that will encourage and drive a circular economy.

The circular economy is a model of production and consumption that extends the life cycle of both raw materials and products. It does this through mechanisms of sharing, repairing, repurposing, refurbishing, recovery, and recycling. Each time material goes through one of these cycles, rather than being disposed of, it continues adding value to the global economy through job creation and product utility. The objective is to have these products and materials continue providing economic value in perpetuity, generating more wealth and prosperity while limiting the requirement to extract “virgin” material from an earth with rapidly depleting resources.

The City of Brampton is developing a Sustainable Procurement Strategy to leverage large infrastructure projects to improve the quality of life for Brampton residents by requiring community benefits from suppliers while stimulating the local circular economy. This has started with the implementation of a supplier diversity program and a fair wage policy. The current step involves adding a community benefits policy which involves buy-in from potential city partners and suppliers. Hence a reason for last week’s workshop.

The workshop was led by Dr. Mervyn Jones a globally recognized procurement expert with a PhD in Climate Change and over 25 years of sustainability experience. Dr. Jones used his home country of Wales as an example of a community benefits procurement strategy.

In 2015 Wales passed the. “Well-being of Future Generations Act”, which uses the indigenous “seven generation” approach to decision-making, that takes current and future impacts into account.

The Act requires municipalities in the country to work to achieve seven well-being goals, that aim to balance, social, environmental and economic objectives. It also defines five ways of working including, balancing short and long-term needs, integrating objectives of all public bodies, involving people that reflect community diversity, be open to collaboration and, acting to prevent problems from occurring or worsening.

Finally, the Act outlines 50 key performance indicators that are used to measure progress while ministers are required to set milestones in relation to those national indicators.

Brampton’s Community Benefits Policy is a transformative initiative, harnessing the City’s purchasing influence to create economic opportunities, promote inclusive training programs, and expand employment opportunities for residents, especially those from equity-deserving groups. It is paving the way for lasting change and the enrichment of the economic, social and environmental fabric of our community.

Reconnect Brampton’s “Sip & Stroll”

On Saturday April 12th, Dayle and I led a “Sip & Stroll” walking tour organized by Halley Patel the Regional Coordinator at Reconnect Brampton. About 15 participants met at Ryan’s Chai Cafe and enjoyed a complimentary hot brew before starting the tour.

Created by Environmental Defence, the Reconnection Project is designed to connect people with nature and community by making it easy to, know about, and participate in, local events that focus on the outdoors.

The tour used seven stops to illustrate how climate change is affecting Brampton’s downtown area and to discuss the City’s plans for managing flooding, creating new development opportunities and encouraging active and sustainable transportation. The tour also highlighted a bit of Brampton heritage and how residents can be more involved in the City’s planning process.

Wards 3&4 Earth Day Event at McCandless Park

Sunday April 13th, Dayle and I met up with BEA Board members Yarim and Amisha at Councillor Santos’s Earth Day Event in Andrew McCandless Park. There were several environmental activities to keep participants busy including, a tree-planting hosted by Credit Valley Conservation, and a park clean-up hosted by People Against Littering. There was also information about the City’s Plant-based Treaty initiative, which I’ve written about in a previous post.

While it was nice being part of this important environmental day and saying hi to friends and colleagues, one of the reasons Dayle and I wanted to attend this specific event was that we had a significant amount of electronics for recycling. Friends and family had added to the pile over the past several months and the collection included old cathode ray TV sets, rotary dial phones, a Blackberry Pearl phone, (with flip-down real keyboard), a night-side table radio with built in lamp, and a host of computer and stereo sound system equipment.

Alison, Rebecca and the other volunteers from the electronics recycling organization “Let’s Get Together” helped unload our van and then weighed and sorted all of the old retired items. LGT is a not-for-profit whose mission is to support the circular economy by repairing old computers and other electronics and then working to ensure that every youth has access to technology and equal opportunity allowing those youth to pursue higher education without barriers and with “purposeful support”. So far LGT has redistributed more than 5,000 computers back to the community, has diverted more than 120,000 pounds of e-waste from landfills, and has provided more than 12,000 digital literacy workshops.

Credit Valley Conservation hosts Fletcher’s Creek SNAP Workshop

On Monday April 14th, I attended a workshop hosted by Credit Valley Conservation Authority (CVC) in support of the Fletchers Creek Sustainable Neighbourhoods Action Program (SNAP). SNAP takes an integrated approach to improve the environment in a chosen neighbourhood, building climate resiliency by greening local infrastructure and encouraging positive behaviour change among the residents through programs, events, and education. The SNAP was initiated by Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), Both TRCA and CVC have delivered SNAP projects in Brampton including, County Court Blvd, Bramalea, and Fletchers Creek. Each project is unique and engages the residents in helping define project priorities and actions.

The Fletchers Creek project is focused around 5 themes, Living Parks and Nature, Green Streets, Strong Schools, Resilient Homes and Businesses, and Active People. Within those themes, 27 actions have been completed or are in progress. Highlights over the past 5 years include

• Installation of rain gardens at three schools,
• Delivery of a “Your Green Yard” program,
• Numerous tree and rain barrel giveaways,
• 5,628 trees & shrubs planted,
• 7,717 wildflowers, grasses, and sedges planted,
• 11 community projects started including a catchment basin painting project,
• 388 sustainable actions taken at homes
• 345 events hosted, and,
• 7,472 people engaged in the neighbourhood!

Each table was assigned one of the 5 themes and was asked to reflect on the accomplishments over the past 5 years, and help define the priorities and capacity requirements for how the project should evolve over the next 5 years. It was great to see the level of commitment, passion, competency and experience demonstrated by the workshop participants. I’ll write another blog once the workshop results have been synthesized and shared with the group.

April 22, 2025 will mark the 55th anniversary of the first Earth Day celebration. April 1970 represented a rare time for U.S. environmental activism, where Democrats and Republicans joined with labour and business leaders, as well as members of the public from all walks of life to support legislative action that would start to curtail human caused environmental degradation. The first Earth Day was the catalyst for change but the seeds of that change had been planted during the previous decades.

After WWII and up to the end of the 1960’s, the public and press had been largely ambivalent to concerns about the effects of a polluted environment on human health. Without legislation or regulation, industry was allowed to disperse vast quantities of toxic pollutants into the air and water. Automotive companies were allowed to build large heavy automobiles with inefficient engines that burned huge quantities of leaded gas. Lead, and its combustion related byproducts, are known carcinogens and neurotoxins. Research reported in Psychiatrist.com has linked the decades use of leaded gasoline to increased rates of violent crime, mental illness and other negative psychological effects, the impacts of which linger even today.

In addition, oil and chemical spills were a regular occurrence in the 50s and 60s. There were stories of waterways, so polluted with industrial effluent that they caught fire, the most notable being the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland Ohio that went up in flames on June 22, 1969.

In the 1940’s the chemical industry invented synthetic pesticides most notably DDT. These chemicals were used in large quantities to control insect transmitted diseases such as malaria and typhus and as a way to improve crop and livestock yields. But they also had nasty side effects including animal reproductive disruptions and “bio-accumulation”, meaning they would build up in the tissues of plants and animals which further accumulated up the food chain until toxicity levels caused the plant or animal to die. It took the 1962 book called “Silent Spring”, written by Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist and environmental activist, to begin raising public awareness of the escalating human and ecological dangers, associated with the unrestricted use of these toxins.

Senator Gaylord Nelson, spurred to action by a large 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara California, struck a committee with the aim to bring national attention to air and water pollution. He convinced Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman to co-chair the committee. They engaged a young activist named Denis Hayes to organize university campus teach-ins and engage national media to raise public awareness. They chose April 22, 1970 to be Earth Day because they though a weekday falling between spring break and final exams would allow for large student engagement. They were right, An estimated 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day, making it the largest political demonstration in U.S. history at that point. The movement led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. and Canadian water pollution regulations including, the Clean Water Act and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

Since President Trump and his team entered the Whitehouse in January they have fired or threatened the jobs of hundreds of EPA workers and have targeted hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the protection of the great lakes. North of the border, Prime Minister Carney has eliminated the consumer carbon tax and has promised to streamline project reviews to make Canada an energy superpower.

On the other hand, the Prime Minister has committed to continued support for focused green incentives for energy retrofits and EV charging infrastructure. He will maintain an “improved” industrial carbon tax as well as maintain the oil and gas sector emissions cap. All of these initiatives would be scrapped under a government led by Pierre Pollievre, according to the Conservative party platform.

The point is that no matter who you vote for on April 28th, make sure the candidates and the party understand that you feel it important to maintain strong environmental regulations that will encourage environmental innovation, hold companies to account for environmental damage and prevent catastrophic climate change and ecosystem collapse. Our forests are already burning more than they need to because of climate change; we don’t need our rivers ablaze again as well.

What you can do.

• Vote for the party that has the best vision for an environmentally sustainable Canada,
• Write to or speak with your local candidates to let them know that economic growth must be in balance with the need for a sustainable environment,
• Stay informed about local environmental issues by subscribing to the BEA newsletter,
• Join the BEA and take part in environmental events

Earth Hour, Earth Day, Earth Month – What’s the Difference?

• Earth Hour:
  • What: A global initiative where people, communities, and businesses turn off non-essential lights for one hour (8:30 PM to 9:30 PM local time) to raise awareness about climate change and environmental issues. 
  • When: Typically on the last Saturday of March. 
  • Focus: Symbolic action to highlight the importance of environmental action and encourage people to take action against climate change. 
  • Example: In 2023, Earth Hour took place on March 25th. 
• Earth Day:
  • What: An annual event on April 22 dedicated to promoting environmental awareness and action. 
  • When: April 22nd every year. 
  • Focus: A day to celebrate the Earth, raise awareness about environmental issues, and encourage people to take action to protect the planet. 
  • Example: The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. 
• Earth Month:
  • What: A broader period in April that focuses on environmental awareness and action. 
  • When: The entire month of April. 
  • Focus: A month-long celebration of the Earth, with various activities and events to promote environmental protection and sustainability. 
  • Example: Many organizations, including the National Environmental Education Foundation, celebrate Earth Month throughout April. 

This year’s event was held at Gore Meadows Community Centre located in Brampton’s northeast at the corner of Castlemore Road and The Gore Road. A good weather day would have brought out hundreds for the festival and celebration event. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other ideas, which was a disappointment for the many exhibitors who lined the boards of the covered but outdoor skating facility.

Three current City Councilors attended including Deputy Mayor Harkirat Singh, Wards 9 & 10 Councilor Gurpartap Singh Toor and Wards 1 & 5 Councilor Rowena Santos.

A past Councilor, Doug Whillans was also recognized at the event receiving a well deserved Grow Green Environmental Stewardship Award in recognition for his championing of environmental causes while in Council and for his support for community gardening and his contribution of thousands of food packages to local food banks over the years.

Other award winners, Heart Lake Turtle Troopers received the Organizational Environmental Stewardship award for their work in protecting turtle habitat and educating the public on the eco-system services provided by urban wetlands.

The Climate Change Award was presented to the Community Climate Council for helping organize a Brampton Climate strike and for their work creating climate literacy through programs such as, Camp Climate, the People Planet Pages Book Club and the Climate Hub.

Shailly Prajapati was recognized with the Youth Award for her work with the Peel Environmental Youth Alliance including hosting events and workshops as well as receiving the Brampton 2040 Vision Youth Visionary Medal. Shailly is also the President of the Human Impact Eco-Club and a member of the Brampton Environmental Advisory Committee. Unfortunately, Shailly was not present to receive her award in person.

Indigenous leader Dr. Hopi Martin led a drum singing and smudging ceremony with a sacred fire burning outside near the storm water pond. The electric bus returned with their bike rack and this was our first view of the new all electric fire truck.

TRCA and CVA, CCET, and many other groups hosted information tables and delighted us with their information. BikeBrampton provided bike valet and Sierra Club Peel sorted the waste from the free, tasty lunch. All the while, People Against Littering volunteers were seen cleaning up the park, their job made all the more difficult because of the wind.

After the award ceremonies were over, the attendees arriving by bike started their journey home against the wind. They’d just started when one of the group got a flat tire. Fortunately they were close enough to return to the Community Centre where the flat was repaired in more comfortable conditions inside.

Maybe 2025 will be the year the Earth Day celebration will enjoy a spring-like day!

Some would argue the environmental movement merely slows down progress and adds costs to development projects. History shows, however, that unbridled progress often leads to unintended environmental consequences and the potential for human catastrophe. Let me offer a few examples.

I was 18 years old when the first Earth Month and Earth Day were celebrated. When I was growing up, few people would consider swimming in Lake Ontario, its waters so polluted as to make swimming unpleasant if not downright dangerous. And Lake Erie was far worse, considered little more than a dumping ground for industrial waste. In fact, water quality in the Great Lakes had been deteriorating since before the turn of the last century. In the early 1900s sewage and industrial effluent caused outbreaks of cholera and other diseases. By 1909 the situation had gotten so bad that the US and Canada formed an International Joint Commission, (IJC) to look at ways to manage Great Lakes water quality. A bacterial analysis was conducted in 1912, concluding that human-caused biological and industrial waste was ruining water quality and killing fish and other wildlife in and around the Great Lakes. Yet it took until 1972 for the two governments to sign the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement with the intent to restore and protect the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Great Lakes waters.

After the agreement was signed, water quality began to improve. Within a few years, salmon were reintroduced in the Credit River near my childhood home although swimming by anyone other than the stalwarts like Marylyn Bell, who was the first person to swim across Lake Ontario, was still considered unhealthy. Today, many people crowd the beaches and shorelines from Kingston to Hamilton during the hot summer months. And the Credit is home to runs of chinook, steelhead, coho and Atlantic varieties of salmon. I remember the signing of water quality agreement being celebrated as a win for people and the environment. No one spoke about the 60 years of missed opportunity or how the water quality was allowed to deteriorate in the first place.

Then there was the banning of DDT in 1972, heralded as a major win for naturalists and the environment. DDT, a synthetic chemical, was invented in the 1950s. Initially used to combat malaria mosquitoes, it was found to be very effective at killing all manner of insects. My parents used it at home to combat ants, wasps and bees. We even sprayed it on the dog to prevent fleas. But, as the use of the chemical grew, danger signs began to show. It was found that because of its chemical stability, it would bio-accumulate meaning it concentrated in animals higher up the food chain, including, birds, fish and people. Higher concentration levels led to toxicity resulting in reproductive issues, disease and even death amongst people and animals alike.

Yet, despite public outrage and the obvious ecological risk of unregulated pesticide use, sparked by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, it took another 10 years for the US to ban DDT. Canada followed suit in the early 80s. And even today, DDT is still being used in many countries. How much damage will it take before DDT is banned completely? And what of today’s neonicotinoids, a modern day pesticide used in agriculture that is protecting crops while threatening total population collapse of bees and other pollinator insects.

Here’s another example. Most of us think that the biggest world threat in the 60s and 70s was nuclear war between the US and the then Soviet Union. In reality, however, the bigger threat was coming from our refrigerators!

In the late 70s, scientists discovered growing holes in the Earth’s ozone layer. The ozone layer protects the earth by absorbing much of the harmful UV radiation from the sun. Without it, life on Earth would be impossible. It didn’t take long for scientists to figure out that the reason for the holes was the use of ozone-depleting substances such as freon gas, then a popular refrigerant. But it took almost a decade for the governments of the day to take action.

In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was signed that banned the use of ozone depleting chemicals. The agreement was successful. No one talks about killer ozone holes anymore. But, it will take another 40 years for the holes to completely repair themselves and we came perilously close to frying all life on earth. Why did it take so long from the time we recognized the danger for governments of the day to act?

The point is, the environmental movement is not just about saving trees, swampland, frogs and other animals. We need the environmental movement to counteract the forces of unfettered development based on the principal that anything driving short-term economic growth must be good. We need the environmental movement to overcome the inertia of governments of all stripes unwilling to take swift decisive action, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence of real threat. By acting as that voice of prudence and underscoring the interconnectedness of all things in nature, the environmental movement is key to our very survival.

During this Earth Month of April, get out and enjoy the spring but also think about the environmental crisis that we are in. This year’s global Earth Day theme is, “Invest in Our Planet”. What investments are you prepared to make? Will you resolve to reduce your environmental footprint by evaluating and changing your lifestyle habits? Will you take steps to hold our governments’ collective feet to the fire and demand they take action for a sustainable future?

The City of Brampton is hosting an Earth Day event on Saturday April 22nd at Norton Place Park from 12:00-4:00pm. Ride in to the event on your bike with a group. Come out and learn about all the environmental groups and initiatives in our City. Volunteer your time. Support them financially if you are able. If not, then then at least make the opportunity to thank someone in the environmental movement for their advocacy and passion. What they do is valuable work, no matter how small. The work is tough and the challenges many. As Kermit the Frog used to say, “It ain’t easy being green”. But the alternative is even worse.

It was a brisk, enjoyable and energizing day at the first ever Grown Green Awards Celebration held at Norton Place Park this past Saturday April 23rd. Norton Place Park is a hidden gem in the heart of the City with a small lake beautifully surrounded by trees and trails. The Earth Day event was about celebrating the Brampton City’s and its residents contributions to a more environmentally friendly world.

A number of environmentally focused organizations were represented including, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Brampton Horticultural Society, People Against Littering, Human Impact Environment, Community Climate Council, Friends of Dorchester Park, Heart Lake Turtle Troopers, Heart Lake Happenings, and BikeBrampton/Brampton Cycling Advisory Committee.

City of Brampton Environmental Planning staff organized the event with help from the Brampton Environmental Alliance, with Sierra Club providing a waste sorting activity to ensure a zero waste event. There was lots to see and do including nature, rides, interpretive sessions and demonstrations. There were also free giveaways including a ‘Sure-close’ kitchen compost bin, and a prize pack given to the lucky winner of the scavenger hunt.

Other organizations came out to show their support including, Animal Services, Fire and Emergency Services and volunteers from the nearby Decathlon store. Brampton Transit brought one of their new electric buses. It proved to be a great hit, providing shelter from the wind and cold. Argo Development Corporation helped sponsor the event.

Lynn Viau-Morin, a volunteer with the Brampton Horticultural Society was enthusiastic about the day. “We had a steady stream of visitors [to our booth] despite the weather”, she said . “The event was terrific. The scavenger hunt was a great idea.  We had some great exchanges with young people that otherwise probably wouldn’t have come to see us”.

When it came time to hand out the Grow Green awards, Michael Hoy from the City’s Environmental Planning Group was Master of Ceremonies and Councillor Whillans presented the awards to each recipient with Councillors Medeiros, Bowman and Fortini in attendance.

People Against Littering (P.A.L.S.), an enthusiastic crew working to clean up the city, were given the Group Stewardship Award. Stacey Wilson received the individual Stewardship Award for her work heading up Friends of Dorchester Park as well as her many other environmental contributions.

Akeem Gardiner, past Co-chair of the Brampton Environment Advisory Committee (BEAC) handed out the well-deserved youth award to Rajbalinder Ghatoura, current BEAC Co-chair and founder of the youth environmental organization Human Impact Environment.

We, Rosemary Keenan and David Laing, each received a Grow Green Environmental Legacy Award in recognition of our contributions over the past decade and more. We are both honoured and humbled to have received these awards and for the volunteer support from our respective organizations. Their help is essential to our work and accomplishments.

Kudos to Elise Mackie and Kristina Dokaska for spear-heading the implementation of this well-organized event! There were 16 ‘booths’ altogether, including a tasty, healthy and environmentally friendly free lunch station with wraps and fruit. A very big thankyou to all the volunteers who helped with the event and to the folks who braved the weather to attend. We know others were there in spirit!

It was great to get outdoors and meet up with everyone in-person.  Looking forward to next time!