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  • Sustainability at the Edmonton Convention Centre

    For more than a decade, sustainability has been a focus at the Edmonton Convention Centre (ECC). The 150,000 square foot convention centre hosts over 500 events and serves 250,000 meals in an average year. The complex nestled in Edmonton’s river valley is a city-owned not-for-profit — a model that helps drive its environmental goals, according…

  • Pres Winter

    The Viking Bluebird Trail numbers more than 1200 nest boxes and stretches along 275 miles of road in Beaver County. Pres Winter started the massive bluebird trail in 1977 with just 200 nest boxes given to him by the then-director of John Janzen Nature Centre. At 79 years old, he still tends and bands baby…

  • Dale Hodges Park

    Dale Hodges Park is at once a stormwater facility, a public park and an art installation. That threefold purpose was born out of the City of Calgary’s WATERSHED+ program, which brings together planners from Parks and Water Resources as well as artists from Public Art. Artists like Tristan Surtees of Sans façon. “The idea was…

  • Sustainable Development Project Phase IX Rooftop Solar Array

    Around 2004, Stephanie Bennett helped jumpstart the Cochrane High School Sustainable Development Committee alongside another teacher. The first iteration of the student-run club raised close to $50,000 and installed the first set of solar panels on the school’s roof. “Everything just kind of took off from there and we just haven’t looked back,” says Bennett….

  • First Canadian Municipal Long Range Electric Buses

    In 2017, St. Albert became the first municipality in Canada to own a fleet of long-range electric buses. Mayor Cathy Heron, who served as a councillor from 2009 until being elected mayor in 2017, says the move fits in with residents’ concerns for the environment. “They would have pushed us if we hadn’t gone down…

  • Inside Education: Youth Environmental Leadership Summits

    Steve McIsaac says when experiential learning group Inside Education started doing youth environmental leadership summits for students in 2011, they were answering a need that was already there. “We believe and we have learned from students that they’re fundamentally disinterested in waiting until some magical day, in quote marks, ‘when I grow up,’ to make…

  • W.I.L.D. Program for Outdoor Adventuring

    In Australia, some schools include semesters spent at remote outdoor campuses where hiking and kayaking are regular features of the curriculum. When Nancy Pollard returned after a few years teaching in the land down under, she wanted to bring that style of education to Canada. “I just thought we have to make this happen,” Pollard…

  • Conserving Alberta’s Most Fragmented Ecoregion

    The area surrounding Edmonton is considered the most fragmented and densely populated ecoregion in Alberta. In the 1990s, public support for a local land trust began to build. Six organizations wanting to conserve native habitats through public engagement joined forces to create the Edmonton and Area Land Trust (EALT). With only six volunteers, limited public…

  • Sustainability Leadership Council

    MacEwan University’s Office of Sustainability launched the Sustainability Leadership Council (SLC) in 2016 as a means for students to make their dream sustainability projects come to life. The SLC’s volunteer squad has grown from 10 to 35 people and has been involved in over 20 projects since its inception. Since 2017, the SLC has partnered…

  • Natural Asset Mapping: A strong tool for effective local and regional conservation planning, protection and stewardship

    With the release of the Government of Alberta’s Primary Land and Vegetation Inventory (PLVI) in 2010, over 75% of rural Alberta was described by this and other provincial land-cover inventories. While the project mapped rural parts of the province, densely populated urban areas were simply classified as combinations of residential or industrial development and neglected…