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Adventure Traveler Garry Sowerby in his own words:
Wednesday, September 29
Craik and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Environmental Initiative #56
Craik Sustainable
Living Project, Craik Eco-Village, Saskatchewan
Wow!
That was all I could think as the Craik Eco-centre disappeared
in the rear-view mirror.
All aspects of environmentally sustainable
living are right there - a
microcosm and living model for other communities. Four hundred
and twelve people in one town had a mission. "If we're going to
do it, let's go all the way!"
The Craik Sustainable Living Project was born from a community's
decision to choose stewardship over exploitation and from a willingness
to strive for positive, life- and earth-changing action.
The Town and the Rural Municipality of Craik have embarked on
a joint long-term project in search of ways of living that address
the issue of sustainability and rural revitalization through physical
demonstration of viable solutions using ecologically sound technologies.
A wide range of sustainable alternatives - such as those related
to land use, food and fiber production, shelter, energy generation
and conservation, water and waste management, and recycling - will
be featured in the four key activities of this project: Eco-centre,
Outreach and Education, Community Action, and Ecovillage.
The Eco-centre, which sprung up from the prairie floor in just
over a year, is where we were met today by a warm, and oh so genuine,
group of people.
Roy Haugerud, Mayor of Craik, Shirley Eade and Tim Fox, Town and
Rural Municipality Administrators, respectively, Linda McMillan,
Webmaster and volunteer and Maynard and Josie Krenbrink were not
trying to sell us anything. They just wanted to share the simple
yet amazing story of the Eco-centre.
The Eco-centre is a multi-purpose facility featuring innovative
building design, energy efficiency and renewable energy systems.
Just to name a few of the many innovations in sustainable building
the Eco-centre boasts: the insulation for the walls is durum wheat
straw bales; the south-facing windows allow natural light and solar
energy to be used for heat; the window frames are made from fibreglass
which requires less maintenance than conventional PVC, is less
toxic to manufacture and has a longer lifespan.
The building is efficiently heated from the ground up. Solar energy
is captured and stored. In the summer, there is no need for air
conditioning since the air circulation system brings air in at
ground temperature. The roof of the building collects rainwater.
Composting toilets do the dirty work! There is an ecologically-sensitive
and biocide free golf course already operating on site. The Solar
Grill and Lounge is serving up, among other goodies, Stuffed Peppers,
a Solar Club on organic home baked bread and a Mediterranean Veggie
Wrap.
The next stage of the Project is Outreach and Education which
educates the children, youth and adults of the community on climate
change and some concrete sustainable living options. The Eco-centre
is the focal point for these programs and demonstrations.
The Community Action phase is already in progress with individuals
and the community as a whole reducing the size of their ecological
footprint.
The final phase of the Craik Sustainable Living Project will be
the Ecovillage.
Participants in the Ecovillage will build energy
efficient housing and have access to small parcels of land, which
they can use to generate part or all of their income in a sustainable
way. This aspect of the project will be modeled after other successful "ecovillages" that
exist around the world. The land on which the village will be developed
is located next to the Eco-centre.
It was obvious to the Mission Green team that for all of the purposeful
people here today, the Craik Sustainable Living Project is a labour
of love. Their desire was to build a Centre that wasn't just environmentally-friendly
but also retained some of the history of Craik. The Eco-centre
contains actual pieces of the town, like the ceiling beams that
are made from the salvaged timber of a demolished elevator. The
3.000 bricks of the masonry stove, an auxiliary heat system for
the building, are bricks that were recycled from one of the schools
in Craik that had been torn down.
Mission Green thanks Mayor Rod, Shirley, Tim, Linda, Maynard and
Josie for their hospitality and we can't wait to come and have
a cup of tea (organic, of course!) in the future Eco-village. We
were wowed by the concrete results of your determination and vision.
http://www.craikecovillage.ca/intro.html
http://www.craikecovillage.ca/ma
y 03.html
You are now leaving the mission green website to an external website.
Environmental Initiative #57
Flex-Fuel Yukon - Fill 'er
up! Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
The last time I saw Ross Wheaton in Saskatoon, I had just driven
non-stop from Dallas. Obviously, another mission, another time.
It was seventeen years ago and my navigator and co-driver, Tim
Cahill and I were grubby and perhaps a bit cranky from a hard go
through South America. But we were bent on making Prudhoe Bay,
Alaska from Tierra del Fuego to capture the Guinness record for
Fastest Transit of the Americas.
Back in 1987, we had pulled into the Wheaton
Pontiac Buick GMC dealership in General Motors' first production
one-ton diesel GMC Sierra pickup truck ever built. Fast forward
to 2004. the GMC Yukon
from which we greet Ross in today is being fuelled by E85, Iogen's
cellulose ethanol renewable fuel that reduces net carbon dioxide
emissions by more than 90% compared to gasoline, making our SUV
as clean as the small hybrids on the road right now .
"We must stop meeting like this," we joke as
we say hello to the others gathered around the Yukon. It felt
like I was seeing an old friend.
It was Glory Day for the Mission Green Yukon and for the ethanol
that was propelling it across the country. The Yukon met its twin
today. A white version of the Mission Green SUV was waiting in
front of the dealership.
It's a FFV, or Flex-Fuel Vehicle, that is capable
of running on E85 and it belongs to Saskatchewan Liberal Leader
David Karwacki. We had had some of the EcoEthanolT shipped in
to share with David's vehicle, which s o far had never had E85
in its veins. David was excited about the prospect.
We hoped the vehicles wouldn't develop stage fright or ego problems
from all the attention. There was quite a crowd gathered including
Iogen Executive Vice President Jeff Passmore and representatives
from Saskatoon newspapers and radio stations. But the Yukons held
their own during the refuelling, in fact, they were lapping it
up!
When we checked the day planner of the Mission Green Yukon, we
thought we'd better hustle over to its next appointment: a meeting
with the Minister of Industry and Resources for Saskatchewan, Eric
Cline. At the top of the agenda: some good, old-fashioned tire
kicking.
At the Yukon's evening dinner engagement, a fundraiser for the
Liberal Party of Saskatchewan, the twin had once again shown up.
We parked the siblings in front of the Saskatoon Centennial Auditorium.
Jeff and I ventured outside at one point to
check on the 'fleet'.
There's someone inside one of the vehicles. Evidently a bold Saskatoonian.
Yes, it's the Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Finance.
"What's going on in there?" I bellow. Amid
the chuckles, Mr. Goodale checks out the GMC Yukon pair and we
chatted about Mission Green and E85.
As we pull out of Saskatoon, I pat the dash
of the GMC Yukon. It did a great job among the bigwigs yesterday,
nerves of steel, I guess. I realize I've bonded with the Mission
Green SUV. I can't help but feel good about driving such a clean
machine, fueled by Iogen's EcoEthanolT .
I smiled as I thought about David Karwacki's Yukon, with a full
tank of E85.
I figured it was like he had received a box
of premium chocolates. Would he drive gleefully around Saskatoon,
gobbling the 'chocolates'
in one sitting? Or would he horde the supply, savouring the drives
in minute stages, one delectable chocolate at a time?
But I knew the 'chocolates' would be devoured quickly. Based on
my own experience with three girls at home involved in a multitude
of activities, I knew that the EcoEthanolT would be consumed in
shuttling David's family of four children around town. But those
would be the greenest shuttles that Yukon has ever seen!
Environmental Initiative #58
The Synchrotron,
Canadian Light Source, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
We've travelled from Halifax since August 16 to shed some light
on what Canadians are doing to protect and preserve the earth.
We still have some distance to go to reach the west coast of
Canada but this afternoon, here in Saskatoon, we've seen the
light.
Okay, enough with the 'light' jokes. I'm
sure that Tracy Walker, Jeff Cutler and Matthew Dalzell have
heard them all.
We were at the remarkable Field of Beams, as the Synchrotron
is fondly called, at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
The football field-sized synchrotron has been built by Canadian
Light Source Inc., a company owned by the University.
Upon walking in to the facility, I immediately thought of Dr.
Richard Noble, my first-year university Physics professor at
Mount Allison University. He was very much the physicist or what
I imagined a physicist would be, the way he looked, the way he
spoke and the way he taught.
I remember his first words to the class: "Let
me start by telling you that there is only one real formula
in physics. Everything else is in relationship to that formula."
F=MA. Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration.
"In simple terms," Dr. Noble continued. "Nothing
is free."
That formula and the simple breakdown that Dr. Noble related
has come back to me many times and in many places over the past
35 years. Late nights on a death-defying highway in central India,
exhausted and hypnotized on the endless Atacama Desert, pushing
myself to finish the drive around the world, complete the project,
achieve the goal.
Everything always comes back to F=MA. Nothing is free. The synchrotron,
when you consider the technology and research behind, it is a
clear example of this.
The sheer science of the structure we had entered and the volume
of possible extensions emanating from the research in this facility
produced one of the truly slack-jawed moments of our trip. We
were speechless and stunned.
How did anyone ever figure this out? Not only how to build it
but why? How would one ever know its possibilities?
Jeff, Senior Industry Liaison Scientist and Acting Co-director
of Research , Tracy, Synchrotron Outreach Coordinator, and Matthew,
Communications Coordinator were excited about the grand opening
next month (actually in 22 days, 12 hours, 14 minutes as the
live countdown on their website shows) of the first Canadian
synchrotron, one of only 40 such facilities in the world.
What in the world is a synchrotron? A synchrotron
produces extremely bright light -- millions of times brighter
than the sun -- by using powerful magnets and radio frequency
waves to accelerate electrons to nearly the speed of light.
This infra-red, ultraviolet and X-ray light is shone down beamlines
to end stations (small laboratories) where scientists can select
different parts of the spectrum to "see" the microscopic
nature of matter, right down to the level of the atom.
So what can you do with a synchrotron? This "super microscope" can
be used to probe the structure of matter and analyze a host of
physical, chemical, geological and biological processes. Information
obtained by scientists can be used to help design new drugs,
improve our understanding of the behaviour of poisons in the
environment, help in finding new ways to clean up contaminated
mining sites, develop new materials for safer medical implants,
and track how pollutants move through ecosystems, to name just
a few applications.
Until CLS built the synchrotron here, Canada was the only G7
country without one. Countries with synchrotrons include Brazil,
China, India, Korea, and Taiwan.
At present, more than 300 Canadian scientists and students travel
to other countries to use this rare, unique light at foreign
synchrotrons. Once the synchrotron is up and running, up to 2,000
researchers per year will use the facility.
A clean environment is, of course, the ultimate goal but beyond
the science, Jeff also explained some social and cultural advantages
to Canada having a synchrotron. The construction of the facility
was a multi-national endeavor. There is technology from Norway,
Britain, France and the US cemented into the building.
A financial savings for Canada is inherent as well. This type
of research no longer has to be farmed out to other countries.
The facility will attract industry, researchers and scientists
from all over the world bringing renewed economic vitality to
the region.
Scientists from one nation will come and conduct research in
one area using the lightbeam. Meanwhile, another nation's researchers
are working on a different hypothesis and a third yet another.
Imagine the conversation in the lunch room, each nation talking
about their particular project, exchanging information.
The synchrotron becomes a multi-spoked hub with the earth as
the greatest benefactor.
Ask any Saskatoon cab driver and he or she will fill you in
on the synchrotron. The fact that the citizens can drive by and
peer into through the wall of windows that line one side of the
facility, a unique feature of the CLS synchrotron, does much
to dispel the image of the mad scientist toiling away in a darkened
lab, unaware of the time of day or night.
The myriad of methods that Canadians are using to reach the
goal of environmental cleanup really struck us today as we moved
through the range of technologies in use in just one day. From
Craik's environmentally sustainable Eco-centre this morning to
filling up Mr. Karwacki's Flex-Fuel GMC Yukon with Iogen's cellulose
ethanol earlier in the afternoon to the new research possible
through the intense lightbeams of the synchrotron, it was truly
an enlightening day.
And as we took our leave of Matthew, Tracy
and Jeff, I had the urge to shout: "Thanks for brightening our day!" But
I held back.
http://www.lightsource.ca/
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