With the exception
of berries and other very small fruits, most of what we put on our tables in
Canada originates from somewhere else.
Plums, pears, peaches and even the lunch bag staple sweet apple are not
native to this country.
More than 860,000
pedestrians pass through Yonge and Dundas every day.
Samuel de Champlain
planted apples in Quebec early in the 1600s.
More than two
hundred small fruits are native to Canada.
That might sound like plenty, but most don't appear in our pantries.
Indigenous people
used silver buffaloberries to flavour, as the name suggests, buffalo meat.
The gingko is
considered a living fossil because it has remained unchanged (the only member
of its genus, family and order) since before the time of the dinosaurs.
Japan is home to a
tree-climbing school and has led the way in using trees for a lot of
therapy. Through a Tree Climbing Japan
program called TreeHab, a 57-year-old woman left her wheelchair in 2001 and
became the first paraplegic person in the world to climb 78 metres up a Sequoia
tree.
Forest bathing can
activate human natural killer cells, a part of the immune system that works
against cancer.
A few days ago, I
picked up a pint box of blueberries from the large farmers market at Halifax's
seaport. It's the oldest continuous market of its kind in North America,
established by Royal decree in 1750.
The number of cars
in Canada went from roughly 1.5 million in 1945 to 2.6 million in 1950.
The growth of fast
and processed foods from the '60s on, while convenient, fed food
illiteracy. What's followed is a jump in
type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
