Click for enlargement
Jack Thornburg watches booth 2006
The Alberni Environmental Coalition has
had a booth in the valley's fall fair as far back as 1989. Below is a very
short summary about what was on display for some of those years. Some
subjects were on display for many fall fairs running, such as logging on the
Beaufort Range, sustainability of the forest industry, logging
threatens natural habitat areas, need for wild life habitat protection,
parking lot in Cathedral Grove, organic gardening, recycling, , fish farming,
protection of watersheds, air quality, tire burning and other environmental
concerns.
Every
year the coalition has sold copies of its trail guide and invited people to join
this non profit organization.
- 1996 Photographs and text mounted on display about our
environmental youth team project on the Log Train Trail etc.
- 1998 There were photographs and text mounted on standing
display boards about our environmental youth team project on the Log Train
Trail, a raffle for a book and a display about the
Hog Fuel piles along the river.
- 1999 Photographs and text mounted on display about
our environmental youth team project and other projects in the
Alberni Valley. There was a book draw, no cost for tickets. A
display about Dioxins and
Round Up linked to cancer. We ran
a video about the Ahousat fish farm protest in Clayaquot sound -1997.
Merve Wilkinson's Selective logging farm - horse logging and Frank Stini's addition
to the Log Train Trail.
- 2000 At the Fall fair this month,
the AEC booth received high praise. Mike Stini's video of bears in their
natural surroundings... and their manifest non-aggressiveness in spite of
human presence... was a magnet to the public.
Telling photos of logging ops in the Beauforts and at China Creek attracted much attention, and sale of the Trail Guide was brisk. Many thanks to all involved.
Observations were made at this time regarding the deterioration of cedar trees in particular in the area. Global warming was cited as a possible culprit.
A sad intimation... the dumping of household and other garbage on local trails and secluded areas was seen to be continuing. (Perhaps it would be reassuring to know the miscreants do not eat pork or bacon; illegal dumpers are bad enough, but cannibals?...ugh!)
Information on various issues - fisheries, forestry, what's in your food, tire burning, pesticides and other pollutants. The new trail to Cold Creek Water falls was a feature display with maps, pictures and handouts.
- 2001 One of the main features this year was a
display by Ed Cernigoj who shared information about Bats of the Pacific
Northwest. We had a bat house with information on how to make one.
There was also information on local issues such as logging on the
Beaufort Range and
recycling telephone books.
- 2002 This year we shared our booth with Ten
Days for Social Justice - this group put up a model of a greenhouse.
Along with environmental information and posters, we highlighted a
Natural Step promotion, and gave
information about the WCWC plan to double the size of Cathedral Grove. Tanya Giesbrecht
shared her display about the impact of
bull frogs being introduced to our environment. Along with our local
issues we had on display.
- 2003 We featured organic gardening in our
exhibit. Sheena from Urban Greenery provided materials for the display
and donated a big bag of special potting soil for the draw. Aileen
Devereaus donated two paintings. Gary Swann gave a talk on organic
gardening on Saturday evening at the Center. Gary had on display posters
on organic gardening along with articles on portable compost bins and soil
blocks. We displayed the process of recycling
telephone books that are collected from the
schools each year. We displayed
Ted Anderson's memorial scholarship for
2003.
- 2004
- 2005 The theme was Global Warming. We displayed and
handed out posters and pamphlets on global warming and the green house effect.
We displayed an electrical bike, a solar oven, made by some local children and
other earth friendly, energy efficient products.
- 2006 The theme again was Global Warming. We displayed
large posters from the Natural Resource Climate Change Canada
www.climatechange.nrcan.gc.ca
we asked people to pin their suggestions, to a wall, to help curb global
warming. We raffled off the book 'The weather makers' and an 'inconvenient truth' by Al Gore. There was a colouring competition for
children to win David Suzuki's 'You are the earth'. We also showed a
clip on Global Warming from
Leonardo Dicaprio's site.
- 2007 Still with Global
Warming as the focus, this years display for fall fair was on 'Think
Globally eat locally!' Promoting people to buy locally grown food
and/or growing your own vegetables to help prevent Climate Change.
From compost.bc.ca, the compost Education Center in Victoria, we raffled a book 'The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide', displayed a worm compost where people were invited to put on gloves to feel and find the worms, along with a collection of brochures about composting to hand out, printed from compot.bc.ca.
For posters we displayed a collection of photos taken of local vegetable gardens within the community. A poster reading 'why import food that can be grown locally?' with pictures cut out from local supermarkets of produce imported (80% comes from California). Other posters read '50 years ago 80% of Vancouver Island's food was grown locally, now its less than 5%'.
'25% of fossil fuel use in North America is for production and distribution of food: 5% for production, 20% processing and transportation. We can cut down fossil fuel use by 20%, a huge reduction, larger than Kyoto, if we grow our food locally'.
We displayed an article about Victory Garden with a poster displayed back in the 40's promoting people to grow Victory Gardens, we displayed in large lettering 'We need Victory Gardens to win the WAR on Climate change'.
Other posters 'Save fossils fuels, Grow your own food'. 'Composting reduces Greenhouse Gasses'. Posters on 'Grow the air you Breathe!' and 'How to grow fresh air'.
There was a petition for a Solid Waste Composting Program -for your health and the planets health.
Reid Robinson also displayed a poster on KARST to draw peoples attention to local Karst issues.
Jen fisher Bradley added material to the booth about Women's Food and Water Initiative proposing a neighbourhood composting service trial.
We displayed a photo of Sue Frazer a long time activist with the Alberni Environmental Coalition who recently passed away, Sue will be missed dearly.
