By Sean Yoon A lifestyle that promotes healthy living by integrating nature into our daily lives, permaculture is an ongoing dialogue in our community. Last summer, Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, or VACS began its permaculture project around Vancouver called placemaking, transforming public spaces like front boulevards into gardens. One of these spaces was a front boulevard site converted into a pollinator garden on 23rd and Mackenzie.  VACS has begun a new permaculture project for this year called Permaculture InAction. As one of the project’s leaders, Patrick Colvin was born and raised in a small city in Northern Ontario. He then went on to complete his bachelors of honours in engineering at Queen’s University in South Ontario. Throughout his degree, Patrick was discovering and wanting to address issues that are currently afflicting our society. In particular, he was concerned with the environmental issues arising from the chemical industry, which in many cases, has produced chemical waste destructive to our environment. The city of Sarnia in Southern Ontario for example, close to where Patrick studied, is a region that is host to numerous chemical facilities. And in Sarnia, there is a river called the St. Clair River that has a history of having chemical waste being dumped into it by local chemical facilities. The St. Clair River is currently still being listed as an area of concern because of chemical pollutants.  “Permaculture is interesting because it provides an alternative way of thinking. It’s a different way of looking at what we do as a people on the planet. It brings together plants, our land and us as stewards of the land – it allows us to reimagine this world that we live in. For me there’s a lot to learn about and I feel like I...

By Keiko Honda Community Engagement Chair, Kerrisdale Community Centre Society Why Needs A Collaborative Garden in Kerrisdale? Who Needs? How do we build a community through a garden? Why Permaculture?  These are the kinds of questions I have been often asked by our staff and kCC board members, while the Community Engagement Committee has been spearheading the Kerrisdale Permaculture Garden project with the core team of visionary community collaborators and volunteers since last summer.  It is always good to remind ourselves that community is built best through using our bodies and hearts together – sowing, planting, digging, sweating, singing songs, harvesting, eating together, sharing poems, and handing things to each other. That is how the community is build. As we create together, it reflects us all. As such, the Kerrisdale Permaculture Garden is the act of creating a shared vision based on a community’s needs and assets, culture and history, and local sustainability. Every community, every school, and every household needs a garden. Simply put, the benefit of the garden is creating a social capital and a source for healthy foods.  Permaculture is about becoming conscious. Permaculture guides us to mimic the patterns and relationships we can find in nature. At the heart of permaculture is creativity and the ability for people to adapt and evolve in light of the conditions of modern life. We can say that a garden is a reflection of permaculture – its the integration of everything. A garden will be memorable, beautiful, functional and resilient over time because it integrates all these different considerations.  Kerrisdale Community at large desperately needs opportunities to renew our connection to nature and its aesthetics, create resilient communities, and empower children to both survive and thrive. As there is no space and culture at the centre that explicitly fosters the constantly growing and evolving global movement based on an ethical...

By Chris Kay Photo Courtesy of Chris Kay The word community is one we hear frequently in the news and in our personal lives. In Vancouver, we might read a story that mentions the business community or the artist community. A controversial development is sometimes said to be opposed by the local community. We even have a network of buildings across the city called community centres! Clearly community is an important thing. So what exactly does it mean? It turns out there is no single definition of what a community is. But people who study communities have come up with a few ideas. Many communities we experience are groups of like-minded individuals, or people with a common practice. The running group you meet every Thursday evening or the knitting circle that you attend every Saturday afternoon are communities, based on common interests. There are also communities related to our vocation. We might feel part of a community of medical professionals in a hospital, or a community of small business owners on a particular street. For example, in my work I’m part of a community of scientists. In my neighbourhood I’m part of a community of gardeners. These communities tend to evolve naturally as we find people who do the same things we do. When people spend time together through hobbies or work, they tend to become familiar with each other. But people who don’t know each other also form communities, sometimes connected by their identities. The community of a specific race or religion may share common needs, challenges, or beliefs that bring them together for advocacy, even if they don’t have specific activities in common. In this sense, a diverse place like Vancouver has many communities of identity, overlapping in countless ways. As a...

  Announcement     Dear Kerrisdale Friends,  KCCS Community Engagement Committee is delighted to announce that we have granted the Park Board permission to move ahead into the detailed design phase of “Kerrisdale Permaculture Garden (tentative name), which was proposed to be located in the south-west corner of the Kerrisdale Community Centre building (5851 W. Blvd.) near the playground. We are in the process of team building and community involvement prior to the anticipated official approval in January 2016. Kerrisdale Permaculture Garden, will be a collaborative garden and maintained collaboratively by the KCCS Community Engagement and Garden committees, community volunteers and our community partners including, but not limited to, Vancouver Edible Garden Society (VEGS), Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society (VACS), Frisch Farms, Southland Farms, and Kerrisdale Lumber. We will be hosting several public meetings in the next coming month. We need your involvement. Please stay tuned. Thank you,  KCCS Community Engagement and Garden Committees (Chair: Keiko Honda) About the naming,,,,, Permaculture garden emulates patterns in nature. The three ethical principles of Permaculture are as follows: Care of the Earth  Care of People  Return of surplus to Earth and people (also called “Fair Share”)  The ancients knew that humans needed community. All living things are interdependent on each other, including people. We humans are communal and social animals, and just like the rest nature. When we share our surplus produce, when we share our skills, knowledge and experience, these actions builds bonds between people which all works to foster a sense of stable collaborative...

By Dave Wheaton   You may have noticed an increase of community gardens in Vancouver over the past couple of years, and with the positive impacts they seem to have on the community, it’s no surprise. Gardens can turn a vacant space into a sanctuary, provide a great place to get together with friends, and make connections between neighbours. And let’s not forget the obvious – local gardens grow some of the tastiest produce available. There’s nothing better than digging in to a plate of fresh food, and you can’t get any fresher than community gardens. So it shouldn’t shock you that over the last five years, Can You Dig It project co-ordinator Cinthia Page has personally been involved in three dozen projects all over the local mainland that create community gardens in urban places, transforming vacant spaces into thriving community sites.   The Kitsilano community garden, located next to the community center, is built into a small tightly wound space that borders the community center. At first, it might seem like an unusual place for a garden. It’s much smaller than you’d expect and isn’t shaped like the gardens we’re used to seeing. But this is exactly the type of place that Cinthia hopes to find when starting a new project. “We are using pieces of land we wouldn’t have thought of using before”, she explains “But if we’re going to make this work we have to be more creative with how we use space”. The Kitsilano community garden is well worth a visit. If you go, you’ll see garden plots that have been elevated and shaped to get the most possible surface out of the small piece of land. It’s this exact sort of creativity that allows these urban plots to flourish...