By David Jordan
| Image: Ellen Ho |
Published: November 20, 2009
With a natural gift for sound bites, Tzeporah Berman is milking her 15 minutes of fame to issue a clarion call for green energy
“I can’t remember: are your eggs free-range?”
It’s 9 a.m. on Thursday morning and Tzeporah Berman is scanning the chalkboard at Gastown’s Brioche Café. The sun casts dappled shadows on the scarred wooden floor, and the morning quiet is broken by the occasional trolley bus passing by on Cordova Street.
Reassured that the café serves only certified organic eggs, Berman orders an egg croissant, then settles in for her media interview—the first in a full day of appointments. If her Daytimer is particularly packed today, it’s because she hopes to cram in a handful of meetings before jumping on a seaplane to join her husband and two sons for dinner at their home on Cortes Island.
Berman’s ruffled blouse and black slacks are more likely hemp than Holt’s, but there’s clearly no mistaking the stylish 40-year-old for the 25-year-old protestor who was arrested for leading the logging-road blockade during the infamous War in the Woods at Clayoquot Sound in the 1990s.
It’s been a long journey, and Berman has lost none of the drive and conviction that first brought her to the West Coast to study endangered species in the early '90s. But today the mother of two is more likely to be found rubbing shoulders with corporate executives and federal ministers than manning the blockades.
Not content to rest on her reputation for saving the Great Bear Rainforest, Berman has a far more ambitious goal in sight: steering Canada away from its fossil-fuel fixation and toward a low-carbon economy.
By
Lesa Dee Tree
| Image:
Courtesy UBC Farm and by Jeannette Ordas
|
Published: April 06, 2009
Lesa Dee Tree talks with the Friends of the UBC Farm’s Andrew Rushmere about the plight of the UBC Farm and how they plan to save it.
Learn about food security and organic gardening programs on the UBC farm, and understand the implications of the Official Community Plan on the farm. Plus, find out who’ll be speaking and performing at the Great Farm Trek of 2009.
Photos are by Jeannette Ordas and courtesy the UBC Farm.
By
Lesa Dee Tree
| Image:
Courtesy UBC Farm and by Jeannette Ordas |
Published: April 06, 2009
On April 7, the Friends of UBC Farm are organizing the Great Farm Trek of 2009. While this is an opportunity to celebrate the farm and its community of supporters, organizers of the event also hope to encourage the UBC Board of Governors to support the proposed preservation of the 24-hectare farm in its current location.
