Capture the Rain campaign hosts second workshop
The Cowichan Watershed Board’s Capture the Rain campaign is bringing a second workshop on harvesting rainwater for your garden use on Saturday, Jan. 20 from 10 a.m. to noon.
This second workshop in the series on effectively capturing rain, features rainwater harvesting specialist and trainer Ken Nentwig, who will discuss case studies and examples of a variety of rainwater harvesting systems. Topics will include the pros and cons of common recommendations, and applications for irrigation, flushing, fire suppression, and stormwater management.
Participants are encouraged to bring their roof dimensions and as a group the workshop will calculate and discuss your rainwater catchment potential. This will be an interactive session with time for questions and ideas.
The event takes place at the Island Savings Centre in Duncan, in the Mesachie Room. Pre-registration is required through Eventbrite: https://capturetherain.eventbrite.ca, and there is a fee of $10.
Mairs Memorial coming Sunday
The 14th annual Joseph Mairs Memorial, which commemorates this local labour martyr, is coming up Sunday, Jan. 21.
The event, which begins at 1 p.m. at St. Mary’s Catholic Church Hall in Ladysmith carries the theme “Our Common Condition”.
The keynote speaker this year will be Radhika Desai with a talk titled “Oh Capitalist, Imperialist Canada”.
Desai is a professor at the department of political studies at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. She is the author of several books and numerous articles.
After the address there will be a group discussion.
“Through this event, we hope to provide an opportunity for all of us to consider the realities of our country without the veil of the romanticism and false history we are encouraged to indulge in,” said event organizer Eden Haythornthwaite.
There will also be live music by local musicians linked to the labour movement including Art Farquharson and friends and Beverly McKeen and friends.
After the indoor program there will be a procession led by piper Frank Nichol to the cemetery to place flowers on Mairs’s grave.
Mairs was a trade unionist and coal miner. He died in 1914, a month short of his 22nd birthday, after being arrested by government troops in the Occupation of Ladysmith. This struggle, which coal miners on Vancouver Island waged, was for the eight-hour work day, health and safety regulations, and union recognition.
“A Martyr to a Noble Cause – The Emancipation of His Fellow Men” is the inscription on Mairs’s cairn.
Film brings attention to addiction, homelessness
To bring attention to the issues of homelessness and addiction, Us and Them is touring Canadian communities, and will be coming to the Cowichan Valley on Jan. 23.
The response after every show has been incredible; audience members are leaving with a newfound compassion and desire to help the chronically homeless, says a news release for the event.
Us and Them was written and directed by Krista Loughton and award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Abbott who joined the project in 2013. Abbott is the co-director and editor of the widely acclaimed film The Corporation, one of Canada’s most successful documentaries.
The Canadian tour of Us and Them will continue into 2018 and the line-up so far has included an exclusive screening on Parliament Hill for all of Canada’s MPs on Sept. 26, 2017. The Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, hosted the event. The film also screened at the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association’s (CHRA) Annual Congress in May 2017, and at the Union of BC Municipalities Annual Conference in September 2017.
Cowichan is joining Us and Them’s national efforts to raise awareness about homelessness and addiction through a compassionate lens. At a time when Canada is in the midst of both a housing and opioid crisis, a national effort to raise awareness about homelessness and addiction through a compassionate lens has never been more relevant.
The viewing of Us and Them will be held at the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre at 7 p.m.
A panel of guest speakers will follow that features filmmaker Loughton and with her will be local advocates, people with lived experiences, and people working in the field.