On April 23rd, CAFES spent a wonderful afternoon celebrating Earth Day at the Our Power Our Planet: Working Together for the Next Generations event, hosted by the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg - Nagadjitòdjig Akì Land Guardians and the Ottawa chapter of Seniors for Climate Action Now! (SCAN). This event was one of 76 nation-wide Earth Day events organized by SCAN.
We gathered at 12:30 pm at Knox Presbyterian Church, where Anishinaabe Elder Claudette Commanda opened the event with a moving speech. An Akì Land Guardians Coordinator then spoke about their incredible work monitoring and stewarding lands and waters, and how it could help shape Ottawa for generations into the future. Newly-elected MPP Catherine McKenney followed, with an inspiring talk and Q&A about coming together to move climate and environmental work forward.
World Changing Kids got up on stage to deliver a presentation on UNDRIP, there were amazing musical performances, and there was even a flash dance mob outside! Several organizations, including CAFES, were there with display tables and we all enjoyed some nice snacks.
Be sure to check out SCAN! to see more of the incredible work they do for climate action in the Ottawa region.
On Sunday, March 30th, in partnership with the Greater Avalon Community Association (GACA), CAFES co-hosted a wonderful event at École secondaire publique Gisele-Lalonde in Orléans. Despite the challenging weather, attendees were treated to informative and inspiring presentations from the Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa and Pace E-bikes, highlighting the latest in sustainable transportation. While the freezing rain prevented us from hosting the planned test drives, we look forward to future events where we can offer this exciting opportunity.
We were pleased to hear from MPP Stephen Blais, Ward 2 Councillor Laura Dudas, and representatives from several Orléans Community Associations, who delivered thoughtful remarks about the importance of sustainability and community efforts to combat climate change. In addition, Melanie Ouellette from the Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library (located right in Orleans!) shared a few words and had an information table where attendees could learn more about their efforts to preserve and share native plant seeds.
After a tasty lunch, attendees participated in Climate Fresk, an interactive and educational climate change board game that encourages collaboration and learning about the geo-physics, relationships and causalities of climate change. The event was fully bilingual, ensuring that all community members could participate and fully share in the experience.
The event brought together members from all three Orleans wards, fostering meaningful connections and networking. We hope that this will be the founding event of a dynamic greater Orleans region CAFES sub-caucus -- the first of many events to come. We are grateful for the dedicated participation and the positive energy shared by those who attended, despite the challenging weather, and we look forward to future gatherings that continue to build a greener, more connected community.
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If you want to co-organize an eco-day in your community and stage an EV info and demo session or a Climate Fresk session, do not hesitate to contact Mitzi at info@cafesottawa.ca .
We have some very exciting news to share! On February 22nd, CAFES' very own Executive Director, Angela Keller-Herzog, was recognized by the Government of Canada for her contributions to the community with the King Charles III Coronation Medal. This medal is awarded to Canadians who have made a significant contribution to Canada or to a particular province, territory, region or community in Canada, or have made an outstanding achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada.
Angela attended a lovely ceremony on Feb 22nd at the Sir John A. Macdonald building where she was formally recognized for her dedicated service to the Ottawa community and presented with the medal by Member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre, Yasir Naqvi.
Angela has long been active in Ottawa as an environmental and social justice advocate and active citizen observer of municipal affairs. She is a trained economist and has over two decades of experience in consulting, programme management, policy development, risk management and international development with the Canadian International Development Agency.
Angela is the founding Executive Director of CAFES and served as co-chair from 2015-2020, prior to the incorporation of CAFES in January 2021. Through CAFES, Angela has made a tremendous difference by speaking out in support of progressive municipal climate policy, building a strong, cohesive network of environmental leaders from across the city, and facilitating impactful community-based projects and events.
Angela leads Horizon Green, an economic consultancy organization that focuses on environmental and economic sustainability, is an active People's Official Plan (POP) Coalition leader, and is still active with Ottawa Centre Refugee Action (OCRA), after co-founding it in 2015 to sponsor and support refugees settling in Ottawa.
Angela has previously served on a number of boards and committees, including Co-Energy, the Energy Evolution Sounding Board within the City of Ottawa, Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-op (OREC), and the Glebe Community Association. Prior to COVID-19, Angela also ran an eco-friendly B&B.
Congratulations Angela for this incredible achievement, and thank you for your unwavering dedication to your community!
From September to December 2024, CAFES partnered with a 4th-year Public Policy and Administration Capstone Course at Carleton University to support students in applying policy frameworks and knowledge to real life policy challenges and situations.
The course used case studies and community engagement to learn about the interplay between evidence and values in the policy process, and at the end of the course students produced final toolkits and reports that included different methods for packaging community benefit funding.
During the term CAFES' Angela Keller-Herzog periodically joined the class to meet the student team, introduce CAFES, attend student presentations at different points in their workflow and provide feedback.
Check out our groups' fantastic final report which dives into community benefit agreements contextualized in clean energy production and renewable energy landscapes.
The Peoples Official Plan Coalition (POP) organized an outstanding Community Stewardship on Public Lands Meeting on Saturday, February 8th, 2025 at Trinity United Church.
This important meeting brought together representatives from local organizations and citizens groups with experience in community gardening, green initiatives and stewardship of public land. The purpose of the event was to discuss ideas, listen to broad perspectives and share current challenges in order to proactively prioritize and align policy action items and our policy 'asks' prior to City Council meetings on:
The meeting began with a wonderful Land Acknowledgement from Harmony from Assembly of 7 Generations, presentations from Just Food's Moe Garahan and Kate Veinot, and Bel Air Community Association's Harry Fischer, who first initiated the idea to hold this workshop and is an active member of Maitland Area Pollinator Projects (MAPP).
The event proceeded to feature breakout sessions to discuss specific and shared concerns related to planting on public lands in Ottawa - mainly City of Ottawa lands, but also included NCC lands and institutional lands like schools, hospitals, etc. Topics included, but were not restricted to:
After the breakout sessions and a wonderful lunch, we held large-group discussions to deliberate where there were agreements and conflicting opinions regarding certain policy 'asks'. With the help of excellent facilitation from Moe, we were able to come to a consensus on what we believed were the most important priorities to push at the municipality. Some identified priorities included a streamlined application process for community stewardship, removal of invasive species from the city's planting list, priorities for planting edible trees, city-provided insurance or the transition to a waiver for stewardship activities, better consultation and recognition of community leaders as subject matter experts, protection of wetlands, allowing permanent raised beds for edible plants in the ROW, and better city-wide public education on the benefits of trees, tree maintenance, pollinators, native species, and gardening with biodiversity in mind (among many, many more!).
Thank you to all who attended - your participation will help positively impact city policy and planning for years into the future.
Stay tuned for a POP report coming soon summarizing the meeting discussion and next steps.
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CAFES had an excellent time connecting with students at Carleton University's Future Ready Conference on Saturday February 8th and Sunday February 9th, 2025. The Future Ready conference was organized by a passionate group of Carleton University students who were looking to make a difference in Ottawa's climate and environment community, and was dedicated to exploring the importance of science, engineering and policy reform for climate resilience. The conference featured exciting speeches from industry experts, local community organizers and environmental professionals, and attendees were able to engage and network with like-minded people.
On Saturday, CAFES' Communications and Community Engagement Coordinator, Sarah Bell, delivered a presentation about the work we are doing at CAFES including our recent projects, advocacy efforts and community engagement initiatives, and shared how students can get involved.
On Sunday, CAFES' Executive Director Angela Keller-Herzog participated in a panel presentation discussing our recent work advocating for stronger climate resilience at the city, transitions to renewable energy technologies, and our environmental future.
Check out Sarah and Angela representing CAFES!
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On January 30th, CAFES hosted a successful lunch & learn and networking event with about 100 attendees at Hub350 in the Kanata North Tech Park. Attendees learned about how innovations in battery energy storage systems (BESS) can help maintain our power reliability. The event brought together local residents, community leaders, not-for-profits, business leaders, tech people and engineers, Ottawa Hydro, and not least a half dozen Ottawa councillors. The session was opened by Councillor Cathy Curry, speaking both as Kanata North Councillor and as acting Deputy Mayor.
BESS are devices that enable electrical energy to be stored and released when the power is needed. This allows so-called "load shifting" where we store energy when it is plentiful and then use it when demand peaks. BESS is becoming increasingly vital in the modern energy landscape. These technologies are essential to quicken the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy, and will be a key link between renewable energy supply and electricity demand. BESS offers numerous benefits including energy resiliency and grid stabilization, integration of renewable energy resources, enhanced energy independence and lower energy costs.
WATCH: The highlights or full coverage of the event.
The January 30th BESS lunch event featured the launch and presentation of the latest Dunsky Energy Report giving an outlook for the Ottawa region regarding BESS. This was followed by a panel discussion focused on:
Read more from the Dunsky report below:
And you can check out this article from The Energy Mix covering our event by Gaye Taylor with files from Mitchell Beer, which features findings from the Dunsky report and discusses how batteries offer the best and cheapest path to energy resilience in rural Ottawa.
Stay tuned for a full BESS project report by CAFES covering this event - coming later in February.
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Throughout the fall of 2024, CAFES and Carleton University partnered with six Community Associations (CA) and Fletcher Wildlife Garden to conduct our 4th annual CAFES-Carleton Community Engagement Project!
The intent for this annual project is for students in a 2nd-year sociology/anthropology course to partner with CA representatives and create products and deliverables that will ultimately benefit the CA's neighbourhood and address particular environmental concerns - with each year having a new topic. This year, the theme of the project was on pollinator gardening, and the class was taught by Professor Phil Primeau, whose expertise was invaluable in guiding the students through such a memorable and engaging experience.
This year, the following Community Associations participated in the project:
For the CA leads, this project was an opportunity to learn and engage with important issues relating to pollinators, biodiversity and gardening in their community, connect with the students in their group, and have their neighbourhoods benefit from the deliverables the students are able to create for them.
A highlight from this year's term was a tour in the second week of class to the Fletcher Wildlife Garden (pictured below). Both CAs and students were able to see the different sites at FWG and learn more about pollinators from experts Sandy Garland, Ted Farnworth, and Dr. Heather Kharouba.
Another highlight was a walking tour in week four led by the CA representatives in each of the participating neighbourhoods. This was an excellent opportunity for the students to see the CA's community gardens, learn about particular issues experienced by the community, and visit important spots in the neighbourhood.
Throughout the term the students analyzed and discussed insights and experiences gained as they brought their conceptual learning from the course together with their experiences working towards real-world objectives in their chosen communities.
This year, the students' ingenuity was evident in their creation of gardening videos, creative social media posts, community garden maps, plant signage, infographics, beautiful posters, news articles, elementary school curriculum activities, high school presentations, community planting events, pollinator dialogue events, and more.
Read on to check out some of the projects and deliverables created by the students for each participating Community Association. Also be sure to read this article from The Charlatan by Marissa Meilleur that features the project!
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1. Hintonburg Community Association - www.hintonburg.com
Students from the Hintonburg group created a variety of stunning graphics, posters and presentations about pollinators as well as plant inventories, labels and maps of all the community gardens in Hintonburg. They created a pollinator gardening school curriculum and activities for grades 4-6 and a workshop for grades 5-6 accompanied by a parent/educator survey. Students also created a brand new social media account. The Hintonburg students designed their projects around the themes of visibility, accessibility and connectivity. Thank you to community leaders Patrick J. and Barbara L. for representing Hintonburg!
Below is an educational presentation created by the students.
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2. Westboro Community Association - www.westborocommunityassociation.ca
The students in the Westboro groups approached their projects around increasing pollinator awareness, education, and engagement. They focused heavily on organizing community events - with one being a successful planting day at Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), another being a presentation to a grade 9 high school class, and yet another being a pollinator talk with Dr. Jessica Forrest. Other deliverables included a pollinator brochure, newspaper article in the Kitchissippi Times (read it here!), and a high school module for a grade 9 Indigenous art class. A huge thank you to Deb C. for working with the students as Westboro's representative!
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3. Centretown Community Association - https://www.centretowncitizens.ca
The students working with Centretown created an outstanding series of "how-to" gardening videos - check them out HERE! They published creative social media posts centred around pumpkin carving and "deck the trees" events in Ottawa, created informational posts every Friday with quizzes on Instagram, designed posters on the Dundonald Park and Frank Street gardens that link to information documents and a DIY garden guide. The students revamped the CA's volunteer on-boarding materials and survey, and actually created new Discord channels for volunteers to use complete with a plant identification bot.
Thank you to Sam R. and Dinah R. for representing the Centretown CA!
Above and below are the posters for the Frank Street and Dundonald Park gardens, and below the posters you will find a video made by the students featuring some of the community garden volunteers.
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4. Overbrook Community Association - www.overbrook.ca
Students in the Overbrook group centred their pollinator projects around enhancing diversity and collaboration with regards to pollinator initiatives. One of their projects was focused around a planting day in October, pictured below. Students created an infographic about pollinators in multiple languages, made a job posting for an OCA volunteer coordinator position, wrote a series of articles about pollinator gardens and community engagement which were published in the ConneXions newspaper, and attended an Overbrook Community Association meeting. Thank you to David F. and Deborah D. for your work representing Overbrook CA!
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5. Glebe Community Association - www.glebeca.ca/
The students created a garden sign to be staked in the Glebe's community gardens with a QR code, beautiful hand-drawn activities designed for school-aged kids to be shared with local schools, an interactive pollinator garden map with various locations throughout the Glebe, a Linktree resource toolkit, five social media posts, and an article in the Glebe Report newspaper - read it here!
The students also participated in the Glebe Farmers market by setting up a table and displaying posters.
Thank you to Della, Jim and Linda for representing the Glebe CA!
Below are the incredible hand-drawn activities created for kids to learn more about pollinator gardening!
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6. Bel Air Community Association - www.belaircommunityassociation.ca/
The Bel Air CA was represented by the Maitland Area Pollinator Project (MAPP).
Students in this group attended the Bel Air CA's Annual General Meeting, created an wonderful commercial/video on taking action for pollinator gardening, went door to door in the neighbourhood to speak with community members about pollinator gardening, created a great infographic on MAPP and the community gardens, and made a new website page including important information about pollinators.
Thank you to Harry, Andrea, and Pam for your participation in this project!
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CAFES would like to extend a huge thank you to all involved, including Professor Phil Primeau, the students, the six Community Associations and their representatives, Dr. Heather Kharouba, and Fletcher Wildlife Garden - especially Sandy and Ted who led the students around the gardens. Meaningful engagement, relationship building and learning was experienced by all involved, and the student projects undoubtedly made a big difference in supporting the creation of a greener, healthier and more sustainable city of Ottawa.
To read more on the previous CAFES - Carleton University community engagement projects, visit the links below:
If you or your Community Association are interested in joining a future community engagement project with CAFES and Carleton University, please contact us at info@cafesottawa.ca!
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On January 17th we enjoyed a fun and engaging evening at St. Paul's Church at 3760 Carp Road featuring the Climate Fresk Board Game! This night was co-hosted by St. Paul's and Dunrobin United Church and CAFES Ottawa. We enjoyed some delicious pizza and drinks while connecting with fellow community members in meaningful discussions about climate action.
Climate Fresk is a game and workshop designed to enhance our understanding of climate change. Whether you're exploring these topics for the first time or seeking to deepen your understanding, this workshop offers valuable insights and fosters community connections.
During this interactive session, participants collaborated to navigate the complexities of climate issues through the Climate Fresk game. Utilizing a series of 42 cards that illustrate the cause-and-effect relationships of climate phenomena, this workshop encouraged teamwork, creativity, and critical thinking. The game is ideal for ages 16 and up, and no prior knowledge of climate science is required.
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CAFES had an extraordinary evening at the Red Bird on January 10th for our "Roots for the Sky" Climate Action Concert and Fundraiser!
This event supported CAFES' capacity to continue our impactful environment and climate action projects and initiatives. We enjoyed incredible live musical performances from Brother Bones, Maria Hawkins, John Sobol, and Vince Halfhide, as well as an exciting silent auction. See more information below on each of the artists. A huge thank you to the amazing performers for a wonderful evening and to all attendees for coming out to support both the musicians, and the work we do at CAFES.
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Brother Bones is back at the Red Bird to celebrate the work of their favourite climate action champions. The band has been gigging around Ottawa for twenty years, offering a lively blend of original material from three songwriters whose influences range from The Band and Tom Waits to Elvis Costello. Brother Bones are: Dave Munroe, acoustic guitar, vocals; David Paré, acoustic guitar, mandolin, vocals; Paul Paré, electric guitar, vocals; Richard Pinet, drums, vocals; Paul Skene, electric and upright basses.
Maria Hawkins brings her powerful vocals to an eclectic repertoire of blues and soul music. For three decades, Maria has been a major force in Ottawa’s music scene and a champion of arts education. She co-created the Ottawa Blues Society and Blues in the Schools alon with her own programs, Blues 4 Kids and Stop the Bullying.
John Sobol is a spoken word wizard who happens to play blistering sax in just about any genre you throw at him. At 15 he was playing five nights a week in Montreal jazz clubs and in the decades since he's performed in hundreds of venues across Canada and internationally, as both a performance poet and musician. A tirelessly smart and wry wordsmith, John alternately provokes and inspires audiences while getting their hearts thumping and their feet tapping.
Vince Halfhide is a veteran of the Ottawa blues scene with a long resume—a master guitarist and inspired songwriter who started making waves in Heaven's Radio, the legendary Ottawa blues and reggae band fronted by Terry Gillespie. Vince has played sideman with artists like Sneezy Waters, Missy Burgess, the Toasted Westerns and the Mighty Popo (recipient of the 2007 Canadian Folk Music Award for Best Group - World Music). Most Thursdays you’ll find him performing in the All-Star Blues Jam house band at Irene's Pub in the Glebe.
