water

TRADITIONALLY DRENCHED IN pesticides and fertilizers, Canada’s wineries are quietly shedding their bad environmental reputation, and opting for a deeper shade of green.

Stephen Cipes, owner of BC’s Summerhill Pyramid Winery, believes it’s much more than a marketing ploy. “When I started in 1987, we wore protective suits and goggles to spray,” he recalls. “I was aghast that my children were exposed to those chemicals, which also washed into the lake. I immediately sought ways to operate in a more environmental way.” After eliminating the use of pesticides, and with plans to install geothermal and solar energy systems, Summerhill Winery is now the largest organic winery in the country.

Is it just me or has energy replaced child pop star Justin Bieber as this year’s hot topic? There are advertisements for clean energy on television, signs on the side of the road about wind farms, newspaper headlines describing yet another catastrophic oil spill, and Oprah is asking me to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs! But amid this energy talk, I’m left wondering why water, energy’s no-less-deserving cousin, rarely makes the news.

Many will recall their high school biology lessons about how energy from sunlight and water are two of life’s essential building blocks. But somewhere between having braces removed and getting that first job, the textbook recipe for all living things faded from most people’s memory.

I DON'T KNOW if George Lilley saw her in the viewfinder of his camera on that summer afternoon of 1952. After all, there was plenty of action taking place that day in Macdonald Park, about a 10-minute walk from downtown Kingston, Ontario. About 60 people are visible in the photograph, most of them sitting on benches or standing along the shoreline, looking out over Lake Ontario. Several children are playing on a raft anchored metres off the shore at the place known as Richardson Beach. Even though she appears near the centre of the photograph, her presence may have escaped Lilley. But he managed nevertheless to snap his picture at exactly the right moment – for my purposes, at least. …

In Alberta, Canada’s freewheeling, economic success story, a market-based economy rules. So it’s not surprising that in 2002, the Alberta government chose to counter growing water problems in Southern Alberta with the province’s first water market. In anticipation, Theodore Horbyluk, an economist at the University of Calgary, said he believed the new system would effectively “transform historical licences into marketable commodities.” And in Southern Alberta, where some 20,000 licences make claims on water, there is considerable history to market. ...