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Alternative Routes
Blog posting #14
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
![[image]](http://www.briarpatchmagazine.com/batches/shaydom/lofstedt1.JPG)
We recently had an intriguing conversation about the (un)sustainability of communal living. Paul, who has lived at Lofstedt Farm in Kaslo, B.C., for the past 5 years, said that he doesn’t think living communally is sustainable. From his perspective, “it’s tiring.”
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #12
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
![[image]](http://www.briarpatchmagazine.com/batches/shaydom/edge1.JPG)
There is one community I had been postponing writing about. This group of people so embodies what we have been seeking on this trip that to put their story into a single posting seemed a daunting task.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #11
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
Bonnie’s home in Pic River.
What seems like lifetimes ago now, when we were staying with the Belzers in Nova Scotia, Ed Belzer said something that has stayed with me ever since.
“The best thing I can do for myself,” he said, “is to surround myself by people who help me to be who I want to be.” This was part of the motivation for starting a co-operative housing project on his land.
I was reminded of Ed’s words again while visiting Bonnie in Pic River, Ontario. When I asked her what it was about the small First Nations community that first appealed to her, Bonnie replied, “I think it makes me make more sense to myself.” As a Native person who moved around a lot before settling in Pic River, she said it is the first place that has felt like home for her.
Since moving to Pic River 15 years ago, Bonnie has put a lot of effort into creating a physical space that helps her to be who she wants to be. The location, with nothing but vast wilderness across the narrow rolling river that runs behind the house, provides her with a certain tranquility that seems to nurture her soul.
Though she lives alone with her teenage daughter, Bonnie has made her space conducive to attracting the type of people that will cultivate the person she wants to be. A passionate musician, she designed her house with music in mind, with space for house concerts and a guest suite for traveling musicians. She organizes the concerts, feeds and accommodates the performers, and in return asks for a lesson, or for them to record something with her, or anything else they feel like bartering.
“It gives me access to the music that I love, without having to leave home,” explains Bonnie.
It is with memories of Bonnie’s creative space, and Ed Belzer’s words still in my mind, that I happened across a book titled Dwelling, just yesterday. River, the author, describes making a personal living space as “one of the highest and most profound creative experiences of life.” Her words brought into perfect perspective this concept of creating a space for ourselves that nurtures the people we want to become:
“We have cheated ourselves too long of this experience, allowing professionals and experts, developers and businessmen, politicians and bureaucrats, to determine for us the very shape of our living space. At great personal cost (for huge corporate profits), we have given away one of our greatest potential gifts — the creation and expression of ourselves in the form of our shelters.”
I think it’s easy in our society to blindly follow the path that has been laid out for us. Ed Belzer calls this “sleepwalking through life.” The stories of these people have inspired me to be more creative with my own life — to think more deeply about who I want to be, and how I can create an environment that will nurture that person.
Dom has already drawn up plans for an underground, dome-shaped, solar-powered, straw bale home, complete with built-in wall cubbies and woodstove for heating and cooking.
Shayna and Dominique are traveling across Canada in search of community, and sharing what they find with Briarpatch readers. Read their introduction to the project here.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #10
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
Ed Belzer and his grandson Joe tilling the garden.
We city-folk, myself included, tend to romanticize rural life. As we visit these communities, and see them for a brief moment through our outsiders’ eyes, it’s easy to continue this tendency. We probably don’t see a lot of the trials and struggles, conflict, tension, and difficulties inevitably associated with sharing our lives with others.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #9
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
Maison Emmanuel
A lot of the people we are meeting talk about community as an alternative to institutionalization.
Nowhere has this been more tangible than with the communities of people with disabilities with whom we have spent time — l’Arche Saint John (described in the previous posting) and Maison Emmanuel in Quebec.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #8
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
Shayna, John, Gray, and Debbie dancing at Debbie’s
birthday party.
“If we are accepted with our limitations as well as our abilities, community gradually becomes a place of liberation.”
I am sitting at the kitchen table in a community called l’Arche Saint John, in Saint John New Brunswick.
L’Arche Saint John is part of a network of l’Arche communities worldwide [http://www.larche.org/] that provide a community environment for people with developmental disabilities. Live-in assistants share their lives with the “core members” with a be with rather than do for mentality.
I am reading a book by Jean Vanier, the founder of l’Arche. Vanier starts off the book by describing some of the challenges of living in community. He describes community as a place where “our limitations and our egoism are revealed to us.”
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #7
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
The Causeway connecting Prince Edward Island to the mainland
Victoria-by-the-Sea, a town on Prince Edward Island of 140-some people in the summer (and half that in the winter), has me thinking about the need that many people feel to know where their energy is going, and to see its results. This need is the spirit of entrepreneurship, and it runs deep in Victoria.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #6
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
Touring the Waldegrave farm with participants from the Otesha Project
For me, this trip is largely about matching our behaviours to our words; about putting our philosophies and theories and complaints aside, and replacing them with tangible, authentic action.
One community we visited, a place called Waldegrave Farm, outside of Tatmagouche, Nova Scotia, fully embodies this spirit of action.
Alternative Routes
Blog posting #5
BriarpatchMagazine.com
by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton
I knew for sure that Newfoundland was a unique place when the man at the next picnic table began talking to us. We were sitting in a small park in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, filling up on french fries from the Rips Chips truck stationed next to the park.
