Faith and fixing at the Repair Café
Four years ago, my father Albert Kiang passed away. He was the ultimate Mr. Fix It, whether it was cars, computers or electronics. He was always tinkering away. When he died, the grief I felt spurred a deepened faith in God. So as I reflect on the recent Repair Café event that was held at…
Caring for creation, one ice cream pail at a time
People hear every day about garbage mountains growing, icebergs melting and species going extinct. With every plastic bag and old cell phone people throw away, they are contributing to the problem. The average Canadian produces 777 kilograms of garbage a year, as of 2009. But one family is striving to challenge the norm and get…
A tale of two hills outside Lalibela
Two hills, sitting side by side in a valley outside of Lalibela, Ethiopia, have a story to tell. One hill is brown, its vegetation stripped away by livestock and deforestation. Deep gullies are carved through the hillside, where the unprotected soil was washed away by the rain. Trees have disappeared, cut down for firewood. Look…
Crossing the (pipe) line
I never expected that Enbridge—the Calgary-based pipeline company best known for its contentious Northern Gateway proposal and a nasty spill from one of its U.S. lines in 2010—would push its way so far into my life. It started with a trip last August to B.C. first nations along the route of the proposed Gateway project,…
Care for creation and environmental justice
When Bob Lovelace, a chief of the Ardoch Algonquin of Northeastern Ontario, wrote about his people’s struggle over uranium exploration on their land, he did so from a Canadian maximum security prison. To protect their traditional territories from uranium exploration, the Ardoch Algonquin had set up roadblocks. For his part in the nonviolent resistance, the…
