I've just been reading on Green Living Ottawa that Canada's capital became a Transition Town last fall. Sheesh, how did I miss that? Transition Towns first got traction in the UK and are now appearing in different spots around the globe, including about a dozen Canadian communities. Such towns possess a citizenry (usually a small group) committed to dealing with climate change, peak oil, the whole deal. Transition Ottawa has carved out a space for itself on the Ning community platform and shares this self-description:
Transition Ottawa is an informal place where those interested in a more sustainable, more self-reliant way of living, can gather to exchange ideas, share resources, learn from what others are doing, become inspired, encourage each other, and come together as part of the larger 'Transition' network. It is a grand and ambitious social experiment. None of us pretends to have all the answers. But we're learning. Fast.
This is welcome news, long overdue. I'd love to see Ottawa join the vanguard and take the steps needed to become a sustainable place to live, work and play for all of its inhabitants. Getting on top of suburban sprawl and the mistakes of suburban development has to be job #1.
Our family is also in transition, as we're getting ready to leave Ottawa for a more rural existence. We've purchased a piece of land on the edge of a small town outside of Ottawa where we intend to keep doing many of the things we love (walking and cycling most places that we need to go or want to explore, growing some of our own food, providing our children with access to nature and the time and space in which to discover the world) along with some new ones.
I'm in the process of building a new blog, Starting from Scratch, which isn't quite ready yet. I love this oft-used quote by Carl Sagan:
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." There are apple trees on our bit of land, so I'm hoping to take something of a shortcut, but you get the idea. Inventing a universe sounds pretty cool anyway.
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