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June 2010 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Biodiversity The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte Mosaic Book Reviews

TRAUMA FARM
A Rebel History of Rural Life
By Brian Brett
Greystone Books
373 pp., $35 hardcover

THE WAR IN THE COUNTRY
How the Fight to Save Rural Life Will Shape Our Future
By Thomas F. Pawlick
Greystone Books
344 pp., $24.95 softcover

CITY FARMER
Adventures in Urban Food Growing
By Lorraine Johnson
Greystone Books
256 pp., $19.95 softcover

THE EDIBLE CITY
Toronto’s Food From Farm to Fork
Edited by Christina Palassio and Alana Wilcox
Coach House Books
312 pp., $24.95 softcover

Every generation, it seems, experiences its own back-tothe- land movement. But what happens when “the land” becomes too expensive? The regulations too crippling? The traditional knowledge too far gone? And how exactly can we return to the land when more than 80 percent of Canadians live in an urban environment? Judging from the number of books emerging on these themes — from laments for the vanishing family farm and scathing condemnations of industrial agriculture to handbooks on how to grow heirloom veggies on condo balconies — concerns about our relationship with food have become mainstream obsessions.

Looking every bit the farmer in a room full of writers, Salt Spring Island, B.C., poet and author Brian Brett accepted the 2009 Writers’ Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize for Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life, only half-joking that it will seriously compromise his status as an outsider. Writing from that poetic-outsider perspective, Brett neither champions the rural, pastoral clichés nor flinches in the face of the brutality of the natural world. Instead, he simply offers a deeply personal meditation on life on his small mixed farm, known officially as Willowpond but to friends and family as Trauma Farm. As Brett’s storytelling meanders from the pecking order of the farm’s resident geese to a history of farming and his declaration of allegiance to those few who are “taking a rebel stand, returning to the traditional knowledge that grew good food for thousands of years,” he leads the reader on a joyful, shocking, funny and absurdist journey that revels in the beauty of the smallest events — even when those events occur amid crushing debt and the often overwhelming forces of man and nature.

Indeed, the balance sheet is not in favour of the survival of the small independent farm. In The War in the Country: How the Fight to Save Rural Life Will Shape Our Future, veteran agricultural and environmental author Thomas F. Pawlick turns a journalistic eye on the crisis in rural Canada. Never one to shy away from alarmist language, Pawlick opens with an apocalyptic declaration: “Our rural world is dying.” He goes on to chronicle bleak scenario after scenario of small farmers and rural communities in eastern Ontario struggling against the Goliath of corporate agribusiness. It’s an impassioned exposé of the complicated politics and players behind why our food choices in Canada continue to shrink or are driven into an underground economy, as is the case with farm-gate eggs and raw milk. The book, however, suffers from too much polemic and too little personal context. Only in the appendix, for instance, do we learn of Pawlick’s own compelling struggles to hang on to his 60-hectare farm near Kingston, Ont.

Given the challenges of farming in the countryside and the current movement toward relocalizing our food chains, some entrepreneurial agriculturalists are turning an eye to the urban landscape. City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing comes from Toronto-based urban gardening activist and journalist Lorraine Johnson. Through personal anecdotes intermingled with practical how-to information, Johnson covers the broad strokes of the hyper-local food trends sweeping most North American cities. From the exploding interest in community gardens to urban beekeeping and backyard chickens, City Farmer plants the seeds of reimagining our cities as deliberate sources of sustenance.

Many Canadian cities are currently only beginning to grapple with these new demands to integrate food-producing spaces into urban design and policy. The Edible City: Toronto’s Food From Farm to Fork is an eclectic potluck, exploring the forces that have shaped such civic issues as the protection of urban farmland and support for urban agriculture initiatives. Through topics as varying as Hamutal Dotan’s quest for “ethical meat” and Stéphanie Verge’s visit to the rooftop beehives at the Royal York Hotel, 41 essays by some of Toronto’s foremost food writers contribute to the feast of opinions on why Canada’s largest city has always had a visionary relationship with food.

Although a topic as old as civilization itself, food issues are at the nexus of very 21st-century concerns, such as peak oil, carbon footprints, food security, urban planning, resource management and social justice. This current wave of books might just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg lettuce.

— Jennifer Cockrall-King

Jennifer Cockrall-King is a food writer based in Edmonton and Naramata, B.C., who is working on an in-depth exploration of the global urban agricultural movement.

ONTARIO’S OLD-GROWTH FORESTS
A Guidebook Complete with History, Ecology, and Maps
By Michael Henry and Peter Quinby
Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 224 pp., $40 softcover

The phrase “old-growth forests” typically conjures thoughts of ancient giants on the West Coast. Ecologists Michael Henry and Peter Quinby are looking to change that. In Ontario’s Old- Growth Forests, the authors explore the history and ecology of old-growth forests in Canada’s most populous province. Before the Europeans began heavy logging, oaks, red and white pines and spruce of herculean proportions towered over central Canada. Delving into the history of these woodlands, Henry and Quinby explain not only what happened to them but also where and why there are still some tracts of majestic old-growth trees. In between detailed descriptions of boreal and Carolinian forests, there are sketches of everything from the types of mushrooms found in Ontario to the life cycle of the blue-spotted salamander, whose larvae are responsible for eating 98 percent of the mosquito larvae in ponds where they live! Although the maps and graphics leave something to be desired, the wealth of information in this book makes up for it — and will make you want to get outside and explore Ontario.

— Emma Lehmberg

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