Wednesday 22 March 2017

Thinking about sustainability in Ancaster and taking a trip to Transition Town Totnes



What is a transition town and just how does a small town in England become an inspiration to towns all over the world?   

If you have never heard of the Transition Town network, check it out, it is an important movement of consciousness at a practical community level.  It is about sustainability and working towards goals of renewable energy and low carbon foot print.  It is about a community caring enough about each other that they by moral default, at all levels of government and business, and not for profits, make choices that benefit the community and greater good over profit and corporate greed.  It is about a community that chooses to unite and care and be kind.   

Upon arriving to Totnes, I was struck by the size of this thriving town.  I had been driving through the country side seeing small villages, and had in my mind expected Totnes to be similar but with a hippy feel and I had expected some type of self-promotion of the Transition Town movement.  There was none of that.  Totnes is about the size of Dundas/Ancaster, with a Main Street, it has colleges, and churches, and castle ruins.  It is a busy town. 

I had been emailing with the volunteers asking questions about their food supply and food distribution channels, and they gave me some shop names to visit, but had seemed somewhat befuddled by my questions.  I parked my oversized car in an oversized lot after trying to navigate the rather narrow ancient streets and started my walk around the town camera in hand, expecting to find some great inspiration to bring back to Ancaster.  I did, but not what was expected.

There are only a few official "Transition" office volunteers for Transition Totnes, I found the whole community is generally volunteers, and while there are some grants to help cover costs, mostly they just do it because it is important to them.  The transition movement is not organizing, they are facilitating, the community does the organizing on a micro level.   There is a group for just about anything, and if your passion is not already being talked about, boom another group just popped up. 

I found that local food is not even a topic here.  I was asking questions like, “What percentage of food in the shops is locally procured?”, “How are you supporting your local farmers?”.  My questions were falling on deaf ears.  I think they all thought me a bit dim for asking the questions in the first place.  Almost all the food is local and organic, it just is, people expect it, there are no soups from concentrate, or imported meat over local grown without proper labels. Every produce laden truck rolling down the motor way has “organic” and “local” splattered on the side, the local food distribution system is working here.  It is regional and it is supported by the consumers, not just in Totnes but generally-speaking in England and throughout Europe.

In Totnes, as in most small to mid-sized towns and villages, you will not find commercially prepared fast foods.  No MacDonald’s or Burger King or Wendy’s, really - seriously not one did I see until I got close to Bristol at a high way service station.  They don’t exist, and they don’t exist because people don’t support them.

Their main street is busy and thriving and people are talking to each other and engaged.  Everyone is volunteering and part of a discussion group, their civic center in town is active with local groups they are collectively hosting meeting and events, and it just is, it is isness, it is the doing, not the talking.  As a collective, they have “woken up” that they want to make the world a better place, and many of these people I would like to point out are active seniors, this is not just a hippy movement for millennials, this is the retired and semi-retired keeping young and engaged in their community.

Meanwhile back at home in Ancaster we are busy, driving our SUV’s and parking in oversized parking lots, tearing down Heritage buildings and replacing them with McCafe, tearing up farmer’s fields in our west end only to cover them with concrete, we shut down aspiring Farmers Markets to allow yet another box store. 

We are busy denying local business the opportunity to do business on our “Main Street” with complicated and cumbersome and completely un-necessary zoning regulations.  Instead of interesting and local clothes shops we have two “Winners” and a “Walmart” and a “Costo”!  It is no wonder the Heritage District in Ancaster is struggling to stay viable. 


We have numbered companies buying up all the desirable commercial properties and leasing them back to struggling small business for profit over community. 

Sustainability and transitioning out of a fossil fuel dependent economy is not something that can be preached It must be felt, individually, and then collectively.  It is an evolution of thought, where community and environment naturally comes first, without question. 

We must do it for ourselves, it is something that we need to feel inside of ourselves and care enough to make it happen.   We need to elect local officials that are committed to sustainability measures and we need to support local business that support the community.  We need to stop spending our dollars on business where profits leave the community and we all need to get involved.

So, Ancaster, what do we say, let’s get involved, lets prevent our West End from becoming another Meadowlands, let’s keep our Farmers Fields, let’s in-fill and grow our Main Street and help small business thrive, together we can do it, in fact it is the only way!

Find your passion and volunteer! 

For more information on the Transition Town Networks follow this link

For more information on how Ancaster's Farmers Fields became a box store haven follow this link -

 - the making of the Meadowlands - how Ancasters fields became Hamiltons suburbs https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/18291/2/parsons_jeremy_e_201509_MA.pdf)