C2P2's Consume This!

As part of the Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention’s (C2P2, Suite 134) initiatives last year, they produced a fantastic colour booklet called Consume This! Buying that Matters. The guide was developed to introduce youth to the concept of sustainable consumption.
The booklet tackles resource conservation, consumer behavior, and environmentally-friendly production. The roof garden at 215 Spadina
even made an appearance in C2P2’s guide.
For more information and to view an online copy of the guide visit:
www.c2p2online.com

Giller Nominations

Congratulations to Cormorant Books (Suite 230) who had two titles nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize this past fall.
The books, The Perfect Circle, a translation by Sheila Fischman of the
French-language novel, Le Cercle Parfait, by Pascale Quiviger; and Home Schooling, a collection of short stories by Carol Windley, each received recognition from Canadian publishing’s highest honour.
www.cormorantbooks.ca

 

 

Green Corner: The Robertson's Local Flavour

This fall the Robertson Building hosted a contingent of Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) representatives who were in Toronto to attend their National convention and trade show. The Robertson Building was one stop on a tour of interesting local venues, flavours, and people that work to uphold environmental, organic, and sustainable values.

Part of their curiosity involved not only the heritage building, but also
what happens in this creative space. They were impressed by the community of creative and socially innovative tenants who fill our
spaces with dynamic ideas, programs, and initiatives.  The group was also impressed by our living, breathing biowall and our commitment to biodiversity and species conservation on the green roof. Many delegates were intrigued by the potential for organic rooftop food production in an urban area as a mechanism to support local flavour, local food production, and improved food security in Canadian cities.

Back at the convention, the group was introduced to the inaugural set of National Organic Products Regulations with the hope that the first set of national organic product standards would be born as a result of the convention.

The Federal government first began discussions about developing a
national framework to support organic food production in Canada in 1990. In 1995, a draft set of regulations were developed and then turned down by stakeholders. In 1999, the Standards Council of Canada approved a national voluntary standard for organic agriculture. In 2002, revisions to these voluntary standards led to improvements and eventually to
their approval, 16 years later, as a National Standard for Canada in
2006. Watch for this logo as the National Standards for Organic Products move across the country.

For additional information contact CHFA Director of Regulatory Affairs
& Quality Assurance: awilkie@chfa.ca
www.chfa.ca

Happy 30th PWAC

The Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC, Suite 123)
celebrated it’s 30th anniversary in 2006 and did it up in style with a
fantastic celebration in Ottawa.

As one of the founding tenants of the Centre for Social Innovation
(Suite 120) PWAC has thrived in the co-location environment. The
association was started by a tiny group of Toronto and Vancouver
writers and has grown steadily into the national association it is today,
with 600 members-- all working freelance writers -- and local chapters in every region of the country.

PWAC provides Canada's working writers with networking opportunities,
media access, professional development, markets information, and is a powerful advocate for public and private arts and culture funding in Canada. They are also a lead organization in the ongoing copyright reform process.
www.pwac.ca

PACT's Theatre Listing

Published by the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT, Suite 210) the newest edition of The Theatre Listing contains detailed contact information for 350 professional theatres, theatre rental venues, arts service organizations and key government agencies across Canada. This up-to-date annual print resource has become an essential reference tool for producers, playwrights, actors, designers, and other theatre professionals, as well as for students, agents, and arts organizations.
To purchase a copy, please visit Suite 210 or www.pact.ca.

 

 

Profile: Sage Centre

The Sage Centre (Suite 363) and its Ontario Project Manager Doug Kerr
are rather new additions to the Robertson Building community. After nine years with the United Way of Toronto, moving to 215 Spadina Ave., and a position where he will work primarily with virtual co-workers across the country, we thought Doug might be feeling a bit lonely up on the third floor. We hope that featuring him in our profile this month might help introduce and welcome him to our community. We encourage all of you introduce yourselves to Doug. We know you'll get along famously.

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The Sage Centre was established five years ago in British Columbia as a sister organization to the Tides Canada Foundation (Suite 363), Canada's first national public foundation focusing on the environment, social justice, and innovation in the non-profit sector that connects donors with innovative projects. Both organizations recently opened Toronto offices at the Robertson Building and after only a few months on the job Doug is already busy fielding requests from a network of small organizations and independent groups interested in talking to him about how to get their ideas off the ground.

Sage represents a pretty unique model of organizational support acting as a structural backbone to emerging and new projects, or as Doug refers to it: "an umbrella for people with really good ideas. In essence Sage takes care of all the practical issues around finances, human resources, governance and infrastructure allowing the project leaders to spend their time working on the ideas. The projects must meet Sage's mandate of charitable activities with environmental and social sustainability objectives in order to be considered. As Doug explains: "Small is beautiful. Especially in Canada where we have so much diversity and so many emerging communities, we need organizations that are closer to the ground. So we work to support emerging charitable activities."

"One of the things that's exciting about this job is I get to work with a
lot of people with really great ideas who are trying to set up organizations or movements. It can be challenging because a lot of them think that the way to move forward in the non-profit world is to set up their own organization, which isn't always the case. So a lot of what I do is to show them there are different models and ways of achieving their goals." Clearly Sage is one such alternative model, but there are others and shedding some light on these choices is one of the things Doug is looking forward to working on. It's difficult right now, because there isn't really even language to talk about what Sage does, but the hope is that through example, Sage can influence the shape that organizations take in the
future and the nature of charity law, which is restrictive to innovative
models and in need of revisions.

It is clear that Doug is very passionate about what he does and as a
self-proclaimed "organization nerd" he is also well versed in the intricacies of organizational infrastructure. There are amazing organizations like Roots of Empathy (Suite 160) and Mary Gordon who is passionate, dedicated, and managed to form an organization that is working well. But that's not the best route for every initiative. Every day Doug encounters people doing really significant work who are struggling to find funding. This is the vital question in Doug's opinion and certainly central to his work at Sage; where do people who don't want to form an organization go to find funding?

With their new office in Toronto, Sage is extending their mission of project incubation for groups working on environmental and social sustainability issues to a new province. This holds some challenges for Doug, but he is
definitely up for it.
www.sagecentre.org

Yummy Holidays at 215

As part of our holiday celebrations this year Urbanspace Property Group hosted a Tenant Holiday Breakfast for the community at the Robertson Building.
On a sunny morning in December tenants came down to join us for some delicious organic treats from Vert Catering and shared some time with their fellow neighbours.
It was great to see folks meeting each other for the first time and discovering interesting possibilities for collaboration.
As part of our continuing efforts to help people in the building connect
we launched a new website this past fall. Working with 215 Spadina tenant Phillip Smith of Community Bandwidth (Suite 131) we created a more functional site for the Robertson Building that provides information about the building, current images, electronic copies of the Pipeline newsletter, and a special section just for tenants where you can upload your profile and events. Everyone can see who and what is happening in the building. Please check out www.robertsonbuilding.com to see what's there.
All the best in 2007!