Earth Day in Roberts Creek celebrated its 27th consecutive year on April 24 with an estimated 1,500 attendees.
Event organizer Graham Starsage said the biggest highlights this year were the tribute to Daniel Kingsbury given by Sechelt councillor Noel Muller, the opening speech by Chief Calvin Craigan of the shíshálh Nation and Andy Johnson, who performed a Salish welcome song.
“Overall the biggest impression of the day was the amazing level of content from the booths and the participation of the community,” Starsage said. “Totally fantastic.”
Roberts Creek Earth Day is under the umbrella of the Roberts Creek Community Association, which recently appointed Starsage as a community sustainability coordinator.
“It’s really about networking and talking to people. For example, we were talking about bears getting into the compost,” Starsage said. “It’s a big problem; a lot of people don’t have a compost because of bears. But just over here at One Straw Society, they have an offshoot called the fruit tree project where they will go around and pick the fruit from your house – which prevents the bear problem.
“If you don’t know that, if you don’t come out and meet your neighbours and your community, then you can’t have this sort of resilience that works without having a big impact on your environment,” Starsage said.
Earth Day is technically on April 22, but in Roberts Creek it’s held on the weekend closest to that date to make it easier for people to attend. This was Craigan’s first time taking part in the Roberts Creek Earth Day, and he said it was great to see so many different groups getting together for a unified cause.
“I think people are becoming more aware of the meaning – the real meaning – of Earth Day and the celebration of it, especially here on the Sunshine Coast,” Craigan said. “It’s a wonderful community where everybody is looking to take on responsibility in protecting the countryside, the watersheds, the entire environment, which sustains the entire community.”
Georgia Cyr of the Jellyfish Project also spoke of the importance of networking the various environmental groups on the Coast.
“A day like this is just amazing, because I feel like it gives people hope when they see this many people together who actually care about the environment – it instills that hope in them,” Cyr said. “When you start to read about the realities of climate change, it can make us despair. I find something like this really inspires people to continue doing the work that they’re doing.”
To learn more about Earth Day, see www.earthday.org. For more photos from Roberts Creek Earth Day, see our online galleries at www.coastreporter.net
