I spent last weekend visiting my sister in Victoria and on Saturday we went to the Organic Islands Festival & Sustainability Expo. This was held at the Glendale Gardens and Woodlands. If you are looking for a tranquil place to visit in Victoria I would suggest you check out this spot.

In its fifth year the festival had all kinds of organic food and drink to sample and purchase. There were many artisans selling their wares. Many community groups and organizations were there to give us ways to live in harmony with the planet. The festival was powered by a community solar collector array and tried to be as near zero waste as possible.

It was an incredible way to spend a day, dreaming of inhabiting a planet in a harmonious, sustainable manner. Making sure that there will be a world of plenty for the future generations. It gave me hope that we could reach that critical mass where this would become the accepted norm.

The theme of this year's program was "Reviving the Vancouver Island Diet". As little as forty years ago 85% of the food supply was locally grown; now 90% is grown off the island. Local food activists Bill Code (Heritage Island Food Services Co-operative), Tom Henry (Small Farm Canada), Carolyn Herriot (The Garden Path) and Jen Bradley (Women’s Food and Water Initiative) presented a panel discussion on Saturday.

I think that is one thing we forget when we look at the insurmountable problems that we face is that most of the damage is fairly recent and can be healed. For most of our existence we did live in some degree of harmony with the planet. We don't have to go back to living in caves and hunting mammoths especially if we utilized our technological brilliance to serve the needs of the planet rather than creating wealth.

Rejuvenated by my weekend trip and armed with a wealth of new ideas and sources of information that I picked up at the festival I returned home to New Westminster to see what I can do to make my little corner of the world a better place.