Monthly meeting, movie night, shoreline cleanup and tree planting!
Transition KW
Greetings Transitioners,
We’re getting our fall events schedule underway, so get ready to mark your calendars! We’ve got a monthly meeting, shoreline cleanup, movie night and tree planting! Phew! Here are the details, and below that, we have some community events, green news roundup, and volunteer opportunities.
Monthly Meeting - September 19, 7pm. LSPIRG Office, located on the 3rd floor of a house t 165 Albert, Waterloo. Not an accessible space, unfortunately.
Tools for Change Movie Night - September 25, 7pm. REEP House for Sustainable Living, 20 Mill Street, Kitchener. Cost is free, but please register in advance, as space is limited: http://tfcmovienight.eventbrite.ca/. We’ll be watching Gasland - “Gasland is an urgent, cautionary and sometimes darkly comic look at the largest domestic natural gas drilling campaign in history, which is currently sweeping the U.S. and promising landowners a quick payoff. Part verité road trip, part exposé, part mystery and part showdown, Gasland follows director Fox on a 24-state investigation of the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing. What he uncovers is mind-boggling.....”
Transition Families invites you all to a couple of family-friendly events this Fall:
Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-Up - September 21, 12 noon. Waterloo Park. The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup is a national program, providing all Canadians with the opportunity to make a difference in their local communities.The clean-up of the area around Silver Lake at Waterloo Park is hosted by the Laurier Naturalists. Transition Families will meet to play at the park afterwards. For information and to register, see: http://www.shorelinecleanup.ca/en/cleanup/event/fall2013/silver-lake-waterloo-park
Tree Planting with the City of Waterloo - October 5, 10.30 am. Transition KW is registered with the Environmental Reserve Community Planting & Education Project to help plant hundreds of trees and learn about conserving our natural areas. There is a FREE GRT shuttle bus. Planting lasts 1 ½ hours and all equipment is provided. Please email tlr...@gmail.com to register.
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Sylvie Spraakman
Facilitator, TransitionKW
Facebook | Twitter | Blog | www.transitionkw.ca
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Community Notes
1. Wheelchair Relay Challenge: Are you up for the Challenge? Build a Team, Re-Build a Life!
For More information, please contact Sheila O'Neill, Community Development Officer at 1-866-433-9888 ext. 223 or by email at sheila...@sciontario.org
When: Saturday, September 14, 11am-2pm
Where: Waterloo Town Square
2. Open Streets Uptown Waterloo: Open Streets Uptown Waterloo is a series of community afternoons inviting everyone to come walk, ride and play in our vibrant urban centre along King Street. Barterworks will have a booth there! http://openstreetsutw.ca/
When: Sunday, September 15, 1-5pm
Where: King Street in Uptown Waterloo
3. Waterloo Region Line 9 Proposal: Line 9 is a 38-year-old pipeline that has been transporting light crude oil between Montreal, Quebec, and Sarnia, Ontario. The pipeline runs through hundreds of communities, the territories of many Indigenous nations, and dozens of watersheds, including the Grand River. Enbridge Inc. has applied to reverse the flow of the pipeline and send diluted bitumen (dilbit), a form of heavy crude from the tar sands, through Line 9. This will threaten life around and downstream from the pipeline.
Line 9 was not built to withstand the transport of diluted bitumen, a toxic compound that poses a particularly dire threat to communities and ecosystems. In 2010, a break in the nearly identical Enbridge pipeline in Kalamazoo, MI, caused the largest inland oil spill in American history, which the company is still struggling to clean up three years later. When Enbridge proposed essentially the same project as the Line 9 reversal in 2008, under the name Trailbreaker, it was successfully opposed based on safety concerns. Just because Enbridge is currently seeking approval for the project piece by piece—the reversal of the first half last year, and the second half plus the transport of bitumen this year—there is no reason for us to accept it now. The threats remain just as serious.
To get involved with this issue: Contact waterlooregio...@gmail.com
Website and petition: http://noline9wr.ca/
Next information meeting: Saturday, September 14, 1-3pm, Queen Street Commons Cafe. A public forum hosting representatives of other communities affected by Line 9, such as Aamjiwnaang/Sarnia, Six Nations, Hamilton, Toronto, Kingston, and Montreal
Rally against Line 9 at Regional Council Meeting: Wednesday September 18, 6pm, 150 Frederick Street. https://www.facebook.com/events/299911386814056/
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Green News Roundup
Set Your Alarm: It’s difficult at best to know when the effects of climate change will overwhelm our planet and humanity. It’s even harder to predict if and when our governments will wake-up to what’s happening. Here’s what the U.N. climate chief has to say:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/09/03-2
Unwelcome Guests: Most of us have experienced (or perhaps been) guests who overstay their welcome. These guys weren’t invited, aren’t welcome and, due to climate change, it’s going to be tough to get them to leave:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/08/climate-change-pushing-pests-poles
Cash Crops - No Cash, Just Cost: If your tomato plant(s) withers, it’s no big deal, right? Well, if a farmer lose a lot of them, there’s a huge co$t:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/08/government-pays-17-billion-crop-loss
More News From the Farm: Free Trade wasn’t designed to be fair trade. It’s purpose was and is to enrich wealthy conglomerates and indenture the poor. That’s immoral enough, but Free Trade has also decimated sustainable farming in poor countries and consequently, worsened our environmental woes:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/25
Trust Us, We’ve Made it Better: That great champion of the environment - the Harper government - says it’s all good. Environment Minister Leone Aglukkaq claims they are “taking real action to conserve our environment for the future”. (To me, “real action” is like “real Canadians”, completely unreal. Are there really “unreal Canadians”?). Sure, they cut the budget for the environment and censored the amount of “savings” when they had to release their documents due to an access to information request. But, unless you think maybe they’ve lied to us before, we should believe them, right? Colour me dubious:
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Volunteer Corner
Repair Cafe: We have the opportunity to host a repair cafe at the KWArtzLab space in Kitchener. Anyone can bring in something broken from their home and have it looked at by some pro “fixers”. We are looking for volunteers who are interested in coordinating logistics and advertising for this event. Contact us :resilientc...@transitionkw.ca!
Casual: Right now we are looking for very low commitment volunteers who can be our “ambassadors”. These volunteers would help us connect with organizations that we don’t know yet (in the social justice, community or environmental fields), or would help us learn about events throughout the community and contribute to our community calendar. If you could contribute a few hours per year (that’s right - nothing more than making a few phone calls or sending out a few emails every year), and are connected with other organizations that can make us better, then please contact us a resilientc...@transitionkw.ca.