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• Corporate crisis, community opportunity –After World War II, muckraking journalist Edward R. Murrow asked Dave Schoenbrun, a bright young interpreter at Allied Force Headquarters, what his post-war plans were. Schoenbrun expressed his desire to return to teaching high school French, to which Murrow responded: “Kid, how would you like the biggest classroom in the…
• Retooling schooling –Quest for Community, a new program of the public school system in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia’s Southern Interior, aims to sow the seeds of community in the most fertile soil there is - the minds of youth.
• Norman Bethune –Was Dr. Norman Bethune truly an extraordinary Canadian? In a new biography of the medical pioneer who died in China in 1939 while serving Mao’s forces, Adrienne Clarkson takes the view that Bethune was profoundly Canadian in his world view, and that his work indeed had an extraordinary impact on…
• Who taught you to teach, professor? –University professors are a curious bunch. Many are gifted and dedicated post-secondary teachers, working hard to educate and inspire their students, while others, despite having succeeded only at school work, exude arrogance and an exaggerated sense of themselves.
• September/October 2009 –The education system represents both our best hope of emancipatory change and the primary mechanism for replicating the status quo. In this issue, Briarpatch surveys this contested space, exploring the challenges and opportunities the current moment presents to allow us to rethink the ways we share knowledge (and consequently power)…
• Letter from the editor –This ship may not yet be going down, but it’s certainly heading straight for the rocks. How do we change course? Or failing that, where are the lifeboats that can preserve us and carry us back to shore? In less nautical terms, these are the sorts of questions with which…
• Six big ways to work for a smaller world –Thank goodness for freegans, who have excelled at showing us how much food we waste every day. Freegans do for wasted food what the 100 Mile Diet has done for eating locally grown food. People who practice freeganism are also showing us how we can pinch pennies and save money…
• Why less is more –As humanity finds itself in the throes of twin crises - the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and an ecological crisis that could threaten the very viability of our civilization - more and more people are grappling with the realization that the human project has somehow gone dreadfully…
• Old growth, new approach –In December 2007, the Council of the Haida Nation and the Government of B.C. ratified a Strategic Land Use Agreement for Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the north coast of B.C., following four years of participatory planning in island communities. The agreement is a bold…
• Salt and earth –I first visited Whole Village in April 2007; over the course of the next 18 months, I lived on the farm in installations, working the land to earn my keep while photographing the community.
• Envisioning ecological revolution –Underlying the goal of ecological revolution is the premise that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis of such enormity that the planet’s entire web of life is threatened and with it the future of civilization. This is no longer a controversial proposition.
• The myth of the wealthy environmentalist –Conventional wisdom tells us that because Finland is wealthy, its citizens have the necessary resources to take action on environmental issues - that prosperity and a healthier environment go hand in hand. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work this way.
• Kick-starting the environmental movement –Some serious socio-economic changes have to be made. We’ve got this unsustainable way of life, particularly in the Western world, particularly in North America. The atomization of the population and the drive towards unwarranted consumerism and indebtedness have created very serious social, economic and cultural problems which have to be…
• Slower by design –The world economic crisis has nations around the globe in panic mode, working feverishly to get their economies growing again. But as Peter Victor suggests in his book Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, citizens of the richer nations may actually be better off if they stop trying…
• Shifting down –The current state of human affairs, characterized by rising levels of joblessness, depleted natural resources and deep-rooted attitudes of indifference and powerlessness to do anything about it, would prove little surprise to E.F. Schumacher, author of _Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered_, a seminal text of ecological environmentalism…
• Generation LESS –This recession has helped me redefine personal achievement - from the number of purchased goods I have to the intangible “goods” I have contributed to society. Those of us in our early to mid-20s have never experienced a recession as seemingly apocalyptic as the one we are in now.
• July/August 2009 –What if the ongoing economic recession is not just a regrettable temporary setback in the never-ending march of growth-fuelled prosperity, but the beginning of a painful but ecologically necessary process of scaling back our footprint to a more sustainable level? How would we go about reorganizing our society and economy…
• Letter from the editor –Crime dominates the news, but the standard political pronouncements on the subject seldom move beyond empty, knee-jerk vows to “get tough” on the perpetrators. This approach to the issue only stokes the politics of fear, of blame, of poor-bashing and insidious racism. An obsessive public focus on the bogeyman of…
• The detestable solution –Under colonial rule, Ghana’s multiple traditional systems of justice were replaced by a single, expensive, incarceration-based penal system. Now, 52 years independent and among the poorest 15 per cent of nations, Ghana is at the mercy of foreign countries for financial support in maintaining its overcrowded prisons, retraining prison staff…
• Anger in action –I first heard about fathers’ rights groups when I was working at a Vancouver drop-in centre for women several years ago. A family law advocate for a similar organization in a neighbouring community told me about a group of men who would show up at court in matching T-shirts to…