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DEN Enews
Diocesan Environment Network
May 26, 2026
The Diocesan Environment Network (DEN) is inviting you to a listening-focused conversation about the future of the Diocese.
June 4, 7 pm by Zoom
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE? Anyone who cares about creation, Anglicans, people connected to DEN, ecumenical or community partners.
As someone who has a connection to DEN and who is committed to caring for creation, we believe that your voice, experiences, or perspectives will enrich the conversation.
We want to hear your thoughts.
To register or for more information contact:
The Rev Marian Lucas-Jefferies, Coordinator, Diocesan Environment Network
902-483-6866
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We are offering a series of hikes again this spring to different parts of the wilderness area for all types of terrain for all skill levels. Our guided hikes are for those who want to explore the woods but feel more comfortable in a group with others leading the way. Spaces are limited, and registration is required.
Join us at Ash Lake, 7km, June 6, 9:00 am / Charlies Lake Lookoff, 2.2km, June 13, 10:00 am/ Charlies Lake Loop, 3.5km, June 20, 9:30 am
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The Atlantic School of Theology is offering the following seminar in Truro with two very exciting presenters. The link below will give you more information.
Only two days left. To register: https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/ticketing/webinar-how-to-grow-a-food-forest?
With thanks to Jesse, one of our Advocacy editors, here is proof that pressure via petitions does have an impact. Enjoy the good news but there is still a need to keep the pressure up.
Public pressure and petition signatures do make a difference. A few months ago, DEN shared a petition about Royal Caribbean, the global cruise giant planning to bulldoze the Maya jungle to build their "Perfect Day" water park. This monstrosity is not development but devastation to precious jungle, the 300+ species living there, the community against it, and the world’s 2nd largest coral reef. After all the construction, the 2027 plan is to start dumping 21,000 tourists a day into this fragile coastal village of fewer than 3,000 inhabitants. What is remarkable, is that civilians across Mexican have declared themselves an army. They are banding together in environmental advocacy to stand for this small village and the ecosystem around. The petition is closing in on an astounding 5 million signatures! It’s a rare reach, and it’s forced the Mexican president to suspended the project. However, the battle is not over and Royal Caribbean will not be giving up. The petition is in Spanish but can be translated. Add your name to support an inspiring movement showing what people can do when we stand together to protect by saying no.
with thanks to Jesse Hamilton and Eva Evans
Our MPs need to hear from you! The federal government is trying to ram through the biggest rollback of pesticide protections in a generation. This is bad news for people, pollinators, and the planet. Buried in Budget Bills C-30 and C-31 are sweeping changes to the Pest Control Products Act. This includes the Cabinet gaining power to override the Health Minister’s science-based risk assessments. It also includes the Health Minister being forced to consider undefined “economic” and “food security” interests, and scrapping mandatory 15-year re-evaluations ensuring pesticides meet current scientific standards for weaker “assessments” with limited information and no public participation. For more than 20 years, Canada’s pesticide law has sought to prioritize human health and the environment over industry interests. These backroom amendments open the door to unacceptable risk. Canadians deserve pesticide decisions based on science, not political interest.
World Bee Day was on May 20th. Spend a few buzzes for our pollinator pals with this petition collection against “apollen” poisonous pesticides. The first link holds 7 petitions to areas across Canada, with other links covering the UK and USA.
Petition · Tell the EPA and FDA to ban Monsanto’s cancer-causing herbicides - United States · Change.org
Our government is fast-tracking major projects by rolling back Canada’s environmental laws. Consolidation of Cabinet power is happening to create environmental sacrifice zones across our beautiful country. This is how the pre-approval of pipelines and other industrial projects are being planned and guaranteed. You may have heard about the ‘God Squad’ in the U.S. with powers like deciding species extinction (such as the Rice’s whales). This is happening now in our backyard too. Our environmental safety net is being dismantled to benefit mega-profitable fossil fuel, mining, and other companies. Canadians fought hard for our laws to protect people, water, wildlife, and future generations. This includes no fast-tracking projects without credible review and consultations, and includes no political bypass of science-based decisions. The Carney government is now proposing to gut these laws or introduce powers to bypass them without credible justification or adequate consultation. This is an erosion of democratic process. The federal government is expected to introduce legislation that guts environmental laws shortly after the June 7 consultation deadline. Please send a message demanding your MP vote against any legislation that threatens species at risk or creates federal sacrifice zones.
with thanks to Claudia Zinck
Use Your Resources
As Grandma sat in her pew this Sunday, it felt as though our lay minister’s lesson was “preaching to the choir”.
He told the story of three brothers whose father, the chief of the village, had gone away on a long journey just as a hard winter settled in.
One brother had a gift for tending the olive trees. He cared for them lovingly and knew how to help them flourish. But the winter grew so bitter and the village ran out of wood. In the end, the villagers had no choice but to cut down the precious olive trees for heat.
The second brother had a gift with animals. He knew how to keep sickness away from the sheep and care for the flock. Yet the hunger became so severe that the sheep themselves had to be sacrificed to feed the people.
The third brother had the gift of dance. He could lift the spirits of the entire village with joy and laughter. But he decided he would not dance until his father returned home. By the time he finally tried, he had become stiff and uncertain, he could no longer dance at all.
The moral, our lay minister reminded us, was to use the gifts and resources we have while we still can.
Grandma sat there thinking how true that is, not only for talents, but for all the resources we are given.
Do we use them enough?
So often we save things “for later.” We store away good dishes, beautiful fabric, extra seeds, spare lumber, knowledge, kindness, or even our time, waiting for the perfect moment. Meanwhile, there may be someone nearby who needs exactly what we are holding onto.
A bag of soil can become a community garden. A handful of seeds can become flowers for pollinators and food for families. An extra chair can become hospitality. A person who knows how to knit, garden, bake bread, fix bicycles, or comfort a grieving neighbour carries resources just as valuable as money.
Communities are built when people stop guarding every little thing and begin sharing what they have.
Grandma has seen it over and over lately. One person donates his knowledge and work and suddenly there are six new garden boxes. A farm market sets out free pollinator seeds and hundreds of packets travel across the province. Volunteers gather around tables filling seed envelopes, sharing stories while quietly helping feed pollinators they may never personally see.
None of those people likely felt wealthy or important.
But together, their shared resources became abundant.
Perhaps that is one of the quiet lessons communities still need to remember. Resources are not only meant to be stored. Gifts are not meant to sit unused. Sometimes the greatest blessing comes not from what we keep, but from what we are willing to share while the season is still here.
And perhaps, every now and then, we are also meant to dance before we grow too stiff to do it.
Food Resources
I know Grandma has mentioned food-saving apps before, but since a new one has appeared, there is no harm in going over them again. Every little bit helps these days.
In all of these cases, you download an app, browse what is available nearby, purchase the items through the app, and then go pick them up. Each app works a little differently, but they all help reduce food waste while stretching grocery dollars.
Flashfood
Once you install the app, you browse a map showing participating stores, check what they have available, and place your order.
For Grandma, most of these stores are not exactly nearby, so my trick is this: if I know I am heading to Bridgewater or Halifax later in the week, I keep checking the app each day beforehand to spot good deals.
You usually have seven business days to pick up your order. When you arrive at the store, you go to customer service and give your name. Frozen items are kept in a freezer, while fresh items stay refrigerated until pickup. Everything is usually packed neatly in bags or shallow boxes.
Sometimes you get surprise combinations. A produce box might include a variety beautiful citrus, and perhaps eight limes! Grandma certainly does not use eight limes at once, but in summer I add frozen slices to big jugs of water. At $4.99 for a good sized bag of produce, I am not complaining
Grandma especially enjoys getting foods that normally feel expensive, like avocados or sweet potatoes. Avocados can actually be frozen and later added to casseroles or sauces for extra creaminess. Sweet potatoes never go to waste around here either. The dog loves them mixed with leftover chicken.
Too Good To Go
This app is used by grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, and gas stations.
Grandma often picks up the Circle K “surprise bags” for $4.99. Inside there may be a sandwich, baked treats, a drink, or other items approaching their “best before” dates but still perfectly good.
Pickup is usually the same day. Restaurants often have narrow pickup windows, sometimes as late as 8:30–9:00 PM. They package meals made from food prepared earlier for customers, and many meals cost only about $6.99.
A few local grocers also prepare bags or boxes whenever they have extra food available.
Here is my most recent $5 surprise pack from Circle K. Maybe not glamorous but would make a lunch with some left over.
Food Hero
Food Hero is the newest app, and Grandma has not tried it yet, though it looks promising.
Like Flashfood, it works with grocery stores such as Independent locations. So far, Grandma is seeing more frozen meat offers than produce boxes, but that may vary from store to store.
Grandma is not opposed to any honest way of saving money on food.
Once groceries come home, meat is often rewrapped and frozen properly. Produce gets sorted, cooked into meals, or prepared for the freezer to use later. A good pantry and freezer are built slowly over time, not all at once.
I still remember the day, and this certainly gives away Grandma’s age, when canned vegetables were twenty-five cents each, but five could be bought for a dollar during a sale. Grandma proudly spentan extra two whole dollars on canned vegetables and felt positively wealthy afterward. Then came the next question: where on earth would I store all those extra tins?
But storage is a story for another day.
Have fun exploring these apps, and hopefully they help stretch the grocery budget just a little farther.
Seed Share
This little office feels wonderfully big this morning.
The giant seed tub is gone, along with boxes of envelopes, reused margarine containers that were full of seeds, and all the little piles that seemed to block sunlight from entering the room at times. Grandma still has financials to finish and final reports to write, but for now Seed Share is going to try to rest quietly until grant season returns in September.
Later there will be the proper reports filled with glowing gratitude and careful lists of everything accomplished this year. But for now, it is enough to say we achieved what we hoped for back in November.
We reached six thousand packets, actually 6,115 to be exact.
We supplied two additional regions within our Diocese, and then the project spread even further. Seed packets found their way to other denominations, schools, community gardens, youth groups, a family farm market, and two Pride parades.
That feels like enough for one season.
Would you like to be part of this next year? No place is too small, or too large, for the Seed Team to tackle. Thank you to everyone who helped plant this little idea and watched it grow.
Meanwhile, Grandma is grabbing a roll of weed barrier and heading down to the community garden to finish preparing the new garden boxes. After that comes the hunt for Raschel netting and the task of punching holes in eavestroughs to prepare the fog fences for all six new gardens.
Yes, the list continues on.
Happy summer!
Summer Activities
Take time to claim your strength; they are gifts of God.
Take time to have fun; it's God's way of teaching you your strengths.
Take time to grow yourself; only you can grow you.
Take time to trust yourself; God trusts you.
Take time to be self-reliant; it is better than being dependent.
Take time to share with others; they will bless you, and you will bless them.
Take time to have hope, you are a child of God.