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Sections cover Events, General Interest, and On Being Green.
Links to back issues, subscribe/unsubscribe, and join the SGI Greens are at the end.
August 31-September 2, starting at 9 am The annual Saanich Fair has been a major event in the community since 1868. Be there! Bring your friends and neighbors. Have some fun!
Visit our SGI Greens tent just inside the entrance gate. Talk to Elizabeth May and other Greens. This is one of our main events for outreach to the community. Help us create some buzz!
The BC Greens tent is next to ours, and their local candidates in the upcoming provincial election will be there. This is a great opportunity to get to know them.
SGI Greens (Green Party of Canada) news and events:
August 31-September 2 – Saanich Fair
Fun for everyone in the community, and a chance to talk to Elizabeth, too!
September 7-8 – Salt Spring Island Fall Fair
Another great opportunity for everyone to have fun.
This year’s theme: Beauty and the Beets.
September 4-14 – Community Meetings
Elizabeth May, our Green MP for SGI, will be holding Community Meetings throughout the district. These are non-partisan events where she provides a brief update and fields questions from her constituents. Highly recommended if you haven’t been to one! And if you have, it’s a great way to find out what concerns are top of mind locally. Plus you can talk to Elizabeth about your concerns.
October 19 – Last day for nominations to the SGI EDA Executive Committee
October 26, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm – SGI EDA’s Annual General Meeting
- Our Executive Committee meets monthly and posts meeting minutes on our website.
BC Greens news and events: (because we’re friends)
- The next provincial election is scheduled for October 19th and the BC Greens are busy! They need all available hands on deck (to be repaid next year during the federal campaign)! Want to learn more? The fabulous Candidates are here and the list is growing weekly. Events throughout the province are here. If you are uncertain of your electoral area (there have been changes) you can find that at Elections BC.
- The four ridings (and their candidates) that overlap parts of the SGI area are:
Saanich North and the Islands (Rob Botterell)
Saanich South (Ned Taylor) – Join him at a coffee chat!
Oak Bay-Gordon Head (Dr. Lisa Gunderson)
Victoria-Swan Lake (Christina Winter)
- Other nearby ridings in the Capital Regional District are:
Victoria-Beacon Hill (Sonia Furstenau – BC Greens Leader)
Esquimalt-Colwood (Camille Currie)
Langford-Highlands (Erin Cassels)
Juan de Fuca-Malahat (David Evans)
All of these candidates would appreciate help with a variety of volunteer activities.
Community Information:
September 11 – Seniors for Climate cross-country webinar
Seniors for Climate is organizing seniors that are deeply alarmed by the climate crisis. One in four Canadians, seniors have outsized political, economic and social power. And they vote!
Canada-wide actions are planned for October 1st, Canada’s National Seniors Day at more than 50 locations, including Sidney, Salt Spring Island, and Victoria — here’s the event map.
On Wednesday, September 11 at 6:30 pm ET, the 2nd national webinar will bring everyone up-to-date on what is happening across the country. Climate champions Dr. David Suzuki, Dr. Courtney Howard (a Green Party leadership contestant in 2022) and Amber Bennett, will provide encouragement and advice on how to transform National Seniors Day into a National Seniors Climate Action Day!
Find out how you can become engaged if you aren’t already.
Please share this invitation far and wide to your family, friends, associates, groups and networks. (You can also download the promotional poster.)
If you are a senior who cares about the climate emergency or knows someone who is, this is a wonderful opportunity to get together with like-minded elders to stand up for what you believe in.
September 16–21, 7:30 pm – Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories
UVic’s Phoenix Theatre (250-721-8000) presents stories about ordinary people surviving these extraordinary times: A fishing guide who took his boat into flooded farmland to rescue an alligator. An actor rushed to the hospital for heat stroke after performing in front of the legislature. A mother figuring out how to prepare her child for the future after fire flattened their town.
Every performance is followed by a facilitated talkback giving audiences an opportunity to process the stories they’ve just heard and share their own experiences of climate disasters. Confirmed hosts so far:
Sep 17 – Lana Popham (BC Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport)
Sep 20 – Sonia Furstenau (Leader, BC Green Party)
Sep 21 – Dean Murdoch (Mayor, District of Saanich)
An additional 2:00 pm matinee on Sept 21 is also scheduled. Tickets range from $18-$34.
September – various dates
The folks at Creatively United have an excellent online calendar of local events.
General interest:
Good news snippets
- From that radical environmentalist magazine, the Financial Times: “Bikes are also becoming a cultural urban norm. I see this in Paris, where only one in three households now owns a car, and cycle paths are full even in January, something that I used to be told would never happen. Bikes move faster in Paris than cars, city hall’s statistics show.”
- The northern bald ibis was extinct in central Europe for 300 years. Now they’re being taught to migrate from Austria to Spain.
Climate (and other) solutions
- Here’s a great story about a B.C. business owner doing what he can for the environment. He uses a very thoughtful approach to reusing that has great implications for the entire fast food industry.
Is this greenwashing?
- LNG… now RNG. What’s this? FortisBC is touting how green it is with Renewable Natural Gas: “We’re proud to share with you we’re the first energy utility in North America to designate RNG to customers.” Don’t be fooled. Fortis claims RNG and fossil gas “are always more cost-effective and as good or better for the environment than alternatives like electric heat pumps. Neither of these claims is true.”
On Being Green:
Our readers
– JS
It’s easier to be Green if you’re rich. Even getting the energy assessment done before you can qualify for the retrofit grants costs $600. Hopefully, this new Saanich municipal program will help some people get over that hump. I thought it might be worth promoting in the next SGI newsletter.
The District of Saanich is participating in BC’s new virtual Home Energy Planner pilot program and we need your help!
This is a free online tool, where you answer a short questionnaire and get a free home energy report, which includes an energy score and recommended impactful upgrades. You can then choose what home energy upgrades you’re interested in to get a personalized plan for your home.
This provincial program is free – it’s simple and quick. If you own a home in Saanich we need your help in testing the tool in this pilot phase! Complete your questionnaire now!
– KL
What we’re reading
If you don’t subscribe to the “Reasonstobecheerful” newsletter you should. It’s a great antidote to the doom and gloom that dominates so many headlines today. The articles are not rose-coloured pap, but feature real life stories that make a real life difference. Here’s one about ‘naturescaping’ – creating habitat for insects and birds – that can make even the smallest outdoor spaces more biodiverse.
Published by the Saanich-Gulf Islands Electoral District Association of the Green Party of Canada.
Please send feedback and contributions to this newsletter to sgiedanews@gmail.com.
Saanich-Gulf Island Greens publish two newsletters:
- The monthly SGI Greens Newsletter
- The weekly Good Sunday Morning — Elizabeth May’s perspective
Current and back issues of both are at https://sgi.edagreens.ca/news-events/
To subscribe to one or both newsletters, go to sgigreenparty.ca/signup_2020.
Click here to unsubscribe from one or both newsletters.
Join Us! Be a SGI Green!
We acknowledge and respect the W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples, on whose territory we live.
The SGI EDA aims to work with them towards a meaningful and mutually beneficial reconciliation.