From the Grassroots: The Company of Young Canadians, Local Activism, and Sustainable Development in Canada, 1965-1975

http://niche-canada.org/2020/08/10/from-the-grassroots-the-company-of-young-canadians-local-activism-and-sustainable-development-in-canada-1965-1975/
Date Written:  2020-08-10
Publisher:  NiCHE
Year Published:  2020
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX24414

This study draws upon and extends recent work that examines grassroots environmental activism as well as government support for such ventures in the Canadian context. In doing so it examines how the CYC became midwife to initiatives that began to grapple with the meaning of sustainable development, from projects concerned directly with the environmental effects of air and water pollution, to urban countercultural communes and cooperatives experimenting with recycling programs and organic food. Though most of these CYC-sponsored projects and their affiliated community organizations were concerned primarily with economic and social development, it is argued here that members of the Company, like others in the nascent environmental movement of the period, were inevitably being drawn towards assessing issues and using strategies that linked people, land, and community in more broadly sustainable ways.