Christopher Mackay’s Blog

Potato Fest & Maritime Brunch @ Cape Jourimain Nature Centre

August 23 & 24, 2008

Celebrate the potato with us and learn about many of the varieties we can get locally. What are CSA’s, what is organic agriculture? Have some fun trying out new potato dishes!

Our Brunch on the 24th will focus on the potato and will be a Maritime Brunch with food only from the Maritimes, with most of it grown within 100 miles of the Centre!

For more information call Sabine at 506-538-2336″

(Via ACORN Organic.)

Joggins Awarded UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site Status | Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada:

The World Heritage Committee, at its annual meeting in Quebec City, has announced that Joggins will be inscribed on the list of UNESCO World Natural Heritage Sites”

Congratulations to everyone on the team at the Joggins Fossil Institute and CREDA. Well done!

Bay of Fundy Blog: “Fundy fossil takes a walk….”

Terri has a story about Dr. Laing Ferguson’s Arthropleura fossil — whose tracks adorned the walls of what was then called PEG when I worked there in the mid-1990s — going home to Joggins.

David Shepherd and Travis Price, grade 12 students at Central Kings Rural High School in Nova Scotia, have taken an admirable stand against bullying.

• I’ve Stood Around Too Long —Halifax Chronicle Herald

Here’s something to be proud of: New Brunswick mentioned in an Esquire article about ‘Idiot America’:

• Greetings from Idiot America

Gwynne Dyer (channelling Prof. Boris Worm of Dalhousie University):

A major human food source — the principal source of protein for one-fifth of the human race — is going to collapse in the next generation unless drastic measures are taken. The world’s fishing fleet needs to be reduced by at least two-thirds, bottom-trawling must be banned outright, and widespread fishing moratoriums for endangered species and even for whole areas need to be imposed for periods of five or even ten years.

Unfortunately, the minimum measures needed to prevent ecocide in the oceans would cause major short-term disruption and throw millions out of work, so they probably won’t be taken. It will be much easier politically to ignore what is happening now and let the collapse happen later, on somebody else’s watch.

And governments worry about terrorism.

First of all, who knew there were organic bees? (Then again, why wouldn’t there be organic bees?)

This story (out of PEI), which was #1 on Reddit today, “No Organic Bee Losses“, proposes some very simple causes for the Bee Colony Collapse issue.

In the name of profit, Hershey has pulled out of Canada. First it was the Smiths Falls, Ontario, plant that closed. Now the Dartmouth factory is closing in favor of Mexican facilities.

Buy Canadian, buy Ganong.

I’ve just gotten EastLink high speed internet at the house. I can send email and everything.

The technician showed up at 4:35 this afternoon, near the end of the work day.

He’s efficient, pleasant and accommodating. He doesn’t even mind that my dogs try to scare the shit out of him (I warned him about the dogs).

Here’s the kicker: it turns out that he called ahead (I gave my work number) to let me know he’d be at the house in 15 minutes. Apparently the folks at the office told him I’d like that.

They were right; I would’ve liked that. Instead, they told me that there was no way to phone ahead, so I had to take the day off work and wait around the house all day. Somebody needs to get their shit straight.