In April, Rick organized a 40-foot container of donated sports gear to go to Cape Town, South Africa as part of the Hoops 4 Hope project. Just a year-and-a-half ago Rick opened the Hoops 4 Hope Fund at Tides Canada, to support youth and community development in South Africa and Zimbabwe by combining the joy of basketball and soccer with an effective HIV/AIDS prevention and life skills curriculum.

Thanks for letting us know the container arrived Rick.  Keep up the good work! 

From: Rick Gil June 23

"…Hoops 4 Hope and Soccer 4 Hope were in full action at the launch of the new Ikamva Rainbow Center where we have our new H4H offices. Luckily it has a hoops court in the front yard complete with grandstands to handle the inevitable crowds.

The celebration brought the YPO (Young Presidents Organization) to film the event for a short movie on our community development work making everyone feel like stars!

I am sending you these pictures with great pride and joy. It is with the generous support of all of you that we were able to help these kids and many more out. We could not have done this without your support. Thanks! "

Soccer 4 Hope girls from Lwazi Primary School.

Hollywood or the NBA here we come!                                         

New St. George’s Saints uniforms donated from Vancouver Canada, in action in Africa.

Hoops 4 Hope is a not-for-profit organization that supports youth development in Zimbabwe and South Africa by working with schools, shelters, and community organizations.

Hoops 4 Hope provides the most basic tools that young people need to play team sports and face the many challenges of growing up in communities plagued with poverty, crime, and HIV/AIDS. We build basketball courts, organize leagues, distribute athletic equipment collected from around the United States, run coaching clinics, organize tournaments, supply financial assistance for team travel, host international basketball coaches and players, and provide children with a safe, nurturing environment in which they develop more than just skills for the court, they develop SKILLS 4 LIFE!

The sustainability organization began working with the paper in December with the The Globe and Mail newspaper announcing in June its new environmental policy, making it the first North American daily to create a policy of printing on environmentally responsible paper.

Canopy (then Markets Initiative) made history in 2003 when J.K. Rowling agreed to produce Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on forest friendly paper, blitzing sales round the globe and producing the greenest book in history. 

As a result of Canopy’s work, more than 600 book publishers, newspapers, magazines, printers and other large paper consumers are well on their way to reducing their impact on forests, the climate and the environment.

Read more about The Globe and Mail’s decision on Canopy’s website.

Tides Canada hosts a collective giving fund to support Canopy’s charitable work of educating the public and industry about how they can participate in conserving old growth forests.   

Read our Q&A with Canopy founder and Executive Director Nicole Rycroft

Living Oceans Society, Canada’s largest organization focusing exclusively on marine conservation issues, has embarked on an exciting new deep sea expedition called Finding Coral , which kicked off on June 8 World Oceans Day.

Jacques Cousteau himself called the waters off the coast of British Columbia The Emerald Sea, ranking its marine life as second only to the Red Sea in beauty and diversity.

Magnificent coral gardens stretching up from the ocean floor are said to exist at great depths off Canada’s West Coast, but no one knows how widespread these undersea gardens have become.

Dive Down Deep

Join the Finding Coral science team, as they dive up to 500 meters underwater to collect evidence of the coral gardens.  View unique footage from the depths of the Hecate Strait, where most of the coral hotspots are located.

During the expedition the specialized subs will dive in pairs twice a day.  You can follow their progress here as they discover the rainforests of the deep here or on their website.

DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD: Day 10 

Video courtesy of Living Oceans

…Why Now?

"Bottom Trawling is the subsea equivalent of collecting the entire farm, when the goal is to bring in a bushel of apples."  Dr. Sylvia Earle

Jennifer Lash, Executive Director of Living Oceans Society which holds the Oceans Fund at Tides Canada, says coral gardens are being threatened by an increase in bottom trawlers that drag weighted nets along the sea floor, scraping it bare as they scoop up everything in their path.

Video courtesy of Oceana

"Right now there’s no protection of coral in BC, and they’re a vital supply habitat to thousands of species. For example, we know in Alaska they’re important for rock crabs and shrimps, and if we remove their habitat we destroy these species."

Living Oceans Society plans to use the results of their research to increase protection for marine habitats off the BC coast.  You can support this research by donating to Living Oceans Society via their Oceans Fund at Tides Canada.

The award, created by the Canadian Journalism Foundation, was presented in Toronto Tuesday June 9th at a gala attended by many of Canada’s leading journalists, who heard remarks from Governor General Michaëlle Jean and iconic 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer. 

By establishing charitable giving funds at Tides Canada, the Tyee provides fellowship grants to journalists researching under-reported social, economic, and environmental issues  and to writers telling the stories of unsung innovators and leaders tackling tough social and environmental issues in BC and beyond.   

Read the full article  

"Canadians can be proud to celebrate World Oceans Day. Canada’s proposal to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio provided an impetus for its enactment. Despite some failures along the way, Canada has made many marine conservation gains since 1992. In particular, the passing of the Species at Risk Act (SARA) created an obligation to initiate recovery plans for 16 threatened and endangered marine mammal populations in Canada

Killer whales are iconic in our area for a reason – they lead exceptional lives. Our populations of killer whales are among the best-studied whales on the planet. Every individual is known from long-term photo-identification studies conducted by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and these whales are unique among mammals in that both sons and daughters stay with their mothers and families their entire lives. Their populations are small, and have undergone dramatic declines recently.

Killer whales need a quiet ocean to find food.

Canada’s recovery plan will require us to maintain the whales’ habitat to protect its acoustic attributes and prey species. Declining wild salmon stocks and increasing ocean noise conspire to make those basic needs difficult to meet.

In 2008, the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission endorsed a goal of global action that will reduce the contributions of shipping to ambient noise energy in the 10-300 Hz band by 3dB in 10 years and by 10dB in 30 years relative to current levels.

Underwater microphones

Last year, Oceans Initiative and Pacific Wild, another project of Tides Canada, deployed underwater listening devices to collect information on how loud or quiet BC coastal waters are compared to the rest of the world, and whether certain areas get loud enough to disrupt the foraging or communication abilities of killer whales or other marine mammals. We plan to deploy two more hydrophones this summer, and hope that our work can provide a current acoustic baseline against which future industrial development applications, such as oil tanker traffic, can be evaluated.

Our long-term hope is that quiet areas can be identified, and then protected as acoustic refuges that are integrated into Canada’s National Marine Conservation Areas strategy. Our main interest is in conducting research on topics and species that are not yet on the conservation radar, like minke whales and Pacific white-sided dolphins, which are understudied.

A regional or global approach is required when working with highly mobile and migratory species like humpback whales, which cross international jurisdictions when they undertake one of the longest migrations of any mammal. During their migration from breeding grounds in Hawaii to their feeding grounds in BC and Alaska, humpback whales run a gauntlet of human-generated threats including floating plastic garbage, noise from marine traffic, entanglement in fishing gear, and ship strikes. Recently, a humpback whale was struck and killed by an oil tanker in Alaska, while another was successfully disentangled from fishing gear in inshore BC waters.

We all play a role

The threats that marine mammals face now are more subtle than harpoons; there are serious, but insidious threats to ocean habitat. All nations contribute to climate change; we all use the plastic and fishing gear that can entangle wildlife; and we all use the oil and goods that are shipped, noisily, across oceans, thereby putting marine mammals in danger. Together, we can work to understand these threats and to develop solutions necessary to protect our oceans and the whales that live in them."

SUPPORT the Oceans Initiative Marine Wilderness Project: learn more about this project

Erin and Rob conduct research on marine wildlife in British Columbia (BC). They have studied baleen whales in the Antarctic and river dolphins in the Amazon, but work primarily in Pacific Canadian waters, namely, by surveying the animals and habitat between the waters surveyed by US Federal agencies in California, Oregon and Washington and Alaska. They partner on marine conservation projects with government agencies, non-government organizations and First Nations. Rob has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission since 2001.

Joel Solomon has put his millions, and those of a powerful circle including Rubbermaid heiress Carol Newell, into a new business-first socialism 

By Frances Bula published May 25, 2009

Across from Victory Square, a crowd is celebrating the reopening of the historic Flack Block, a monument to Vancouver’s gold-profiteering past that has been transformed into a home for people who believe in changing the world one socially responsible business at a time. Mayor Gregor Robertson, reading a proclamation honouring the restored building, and several of his councillors are here on the fourth floor.

So are a woman with a company that manufactures cloth menstrual pads, a man whose firm delivers organic food to people’s homes, and staff from the collection of like-minded save-the-world enterprises that have decided to bunk at the Flack Block, like Rainforest Solutions Project, IdeaLever, and ForestEthics.

Amid the bustle at what’s now called the Tides Renewal Centre, the man at the centre of the room seems unremarkable…….

Read the full article

We asked Gregg Howald, one of the world’s foremost experts on island restoration and Program Director of Island Conservation Canada, a Tides Canada project, to write about their work to prevent extinctions by removing rats and other invasive species from islands in the North Pacific, including Rat Island itself.

"We are losing the earth’s biodiversity at an alarming rate. Data from birds, our best studied group, show that ancient extinction rates were about 1 species in every 100 years. This is just about the rate at which new species evolve. However, recent extinction rates are about 1 species every year. Data on endangered birds predict that future rates will be about 10 species per year if we don’t act now to protect them.

Much of that biodiversity is found on islands which are hotspots for endemic species and critical habitat for marine vertebrates.

Though islands make up only about 3% of the earth’s land area, they host about 20% of all species and 50% of endangered species. Sadly, extinction rates are also exponentially greater on islands: globally, 50-90% of recorded animal extinctions have occurred on islands, with most of these extinctions caused by invasive species.

Island Conservation Canada’s mission is to prevent extinctions by removing alien invasive species from islands. We prevent extinctions by working where the concentration of both biodiversity and species extinction is greatest – islands – and by removing one of the greatest threats to the continued existence of plant and animal species there – introduced invasive vertebrates.

Once damaging invasive species are removed from islands, native species and island ecosystems can recover with little or no additional intervention, making islands an exceptional conservation opportunity.

To date, Island Conservation has restored 32 islands, protecting 125 species and subspecies from the threat of extinction."

Support Island Conservation Canada by donating to their project at Tides Canada. Visit their website to follow their progress around the globe.

Island Conservation is currently working with Tides Canada to restore islands in the Scott Islands (Northern Vancouver Island) with Parks Canada, and in Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlottle Islands. The objective of these projects is to remove the threats of introduced predators to seabird breeding, and restore habitat for recolonization, or enhance the breeding of seabirds.

Links: Article in National Geographic about IC work on Rat Island

The grizzly bear seen in the footage stops at the base of a large tree, before rubbing his back continuously against the trunk to smear his own scent on the bark, known commonly as leaving a ’scent mark’.

Research of grizzly bear behaviour indicates the scent marks help define their territory, as they wander from valley to valley in wide loops. Offspring have also been seen using the rubbed trees when a male is attempting to chase them away from their mother, rubbing themselves against the scent as a way of protecting themselves by mimicking the smell of the aggressive male (males are known to kill a female’s offspring in order to force them back into the fertility period and he can get a chance to mate).

The cameras are remotely operated in various wildlife-viewing situations above and in the future below the water, with infrared technology incorporated in order to record nocturnal behaviour, inlcuding rare footage of wolves feeding on salmon.  

Photo by Ian McAllister

You can support them through their fund at Tides Canada.  Go to their website to see more footage captured within the Great Bear Rainforest.

Pacific Wild was selected by Tides Canada in 2008 as a Tides Top Ten pick.

Tides Canada hosted the authors at the Vancouver book launch, held at the Tides Renewal   Centre. Guests  from all walks of life came to hear what motivated the authors’ decision to experiment on their own bodies over one week.  

Smith and Lourie demonstrated how levels of toxins in their bloodstream increased following exposure to certain products, such as plastic lunch boxes and microwaved dinners. 

You can see footage of the two authors during their week long experiment on the book’s website.

The book has attracted a lot of media interest, with outlets across Canada featuring findings from the book as both news items and feature stories within their health and lifestyle sections.

"For two days, the men lived in the same Toronto condo. They read, they watched TV and played some Guitar Hero, the video game that simulates being a frontline guitarist in a rock band. Both men left the condo each night. During the day, Smith showered and shaved with consumer products he didn’t normally use, he drank coffee in a polycarbonate cup and ate meals that were heated in a microwaveable container. Lourie ate tuna at every meal and drank tea. Shortly into the first day, the carpet and couch at the condo were treated by a carpet cleaning company….."read Geoff Nixon’s feature piece on CTV.ca 

Some of the results of their personal experiment are highlighted in the book

* Mercury, which is harmful to children’s development, increased by 2.5 times after test subjects ate tuna
* Bisphenol A, a known hormone-disrupting chemical linked to breast and prostate cancer, increased 7.5 times after eating canned foods out of a microwavable, polycarbonate plastic container
* Triclosan, linked to the increase of bacterial resistance, increased an astounding 2,900 times through the use of anti-bacterial soaps and other personal care products 

Protect yourself from toxins - by looking at Toxic Nation’s website.

Read more reviews of Slow Death by Rubber Duck at the Ottawa Citizen, Globe and Mail, and Vancouver Sun

Whether you need to chair a meeting, interact with staff and boards or manage a community consultation, you need sound facilitation skills.

Please join David Berger next Tuesday, May 26th as we bring in David Berger of the Living Education Institute to lead a day long training workshop that will explore the uses and benefits of facilitated approaches to inspire and challenge groups to be effective and engaged.

For details and to register, please visit http://www.sustainabilitynetwork.ca