When is a robin not a robin? Well… … when is a stone not a stone? Colour is not random. The world is not built around metaphor. There is […]
Care
Healing Climate Change in the Grasslands of the Okanagan
In the last couple of posts, I talked about the industrial, environmental and social costs of growing fruit in the Okanagan Valley. You can have a peek in this post: The True Costs […]
What if History Were Not Over? I Mean, for the Kids’ Sake
History is the study of what has happened in the past. But what if the Big Sage below, weighted with snow, were history instead? There comes a point where the inner heat […]
Dogwoods Reveal Their Ancient Healing Secrets
The great medicinal being, stektektsxwíIhp, aka red osier dogwood or red willow (be careful with that; more than one plant bears that name), reveals her anti-inflammatory secrets when her leaves stop making […]
What Colour is Big Sagebrush?
Great Basin Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), a member of the aster family, rolls across the hills of my country. You could say that where it is home so am I. Not just the […]
Let’s Set the Delicious Apocalyptic Dream of Settler Culture to Rest
“Settler Colonialism” is a serious thing. In fact, in North America it is one of the most serious things of all. It should be handled carefully, like the toxic nuclear waste it […]
The Role of a Post Colonial Literature in Canada
It is possible to have a stream that is dry, that is nonetheless still a stream. The land teaches that. It teaches that “streaming” is not a function of water but that, […]
A Sad Day for Farming in British Columbia
So, money for fruit farmers, right? $4.2 million dollars, even. https://www.vernonmorningstar.com/news/federal-funding-will-support-tree-fruit-industry/ Yes, but what money, really? Why, according to Erin Wallace, manager for research and development at Summerland Varieties Corporation, the business […]
Towards a New Cartography 8: Robin Did It
Maps are power. We could look at the hill in the snow. And map the slope angles and relationships of the hill (not the contours but flat planes), or those parts that […]
Towards a New Cartography, Part 2: Canada is not the Land…yet
The land has stories. To say “Hawk hunting chickadees on the edge of The Vineyard at the Rise in Vernon” is not the land’s story. That is the story of a mapped […]
Okanagan Okanogan 