Creating a space to listen to our living systems
On a calm Tuesday evening our group of stewards, contributors and collaborators join us to enjoy local treats like Earnest ice cream and beer from Main Street Brewing, while we chat and create magnetic poetry on white boards. We are neighbours whose paths have merged through the coFood Collaborative Garden. Some of us have been invited to join through word of mouth, some have simply walked by and felt the urge to get involved, and some of us have our own unique story about how we ended up here tonight.
We come together on the traditional territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples, each of us with ancestors from around the world. This land does not truly belong to any of us, but we belong to the land, and tonight it warmly hosts all of us. Many of us are here to develop an understanding of our living systems — in the same way the plants around us nourish the insects, the plants also create oxygen for our every breath. Everywhere we look, we can see the synergy between plants, humans and animals with all living beings.
Our Community
I sit down with my ice cream and my beer next to a woman who’s new to me, named Naila. Originally from Lebanon, Naila is visiting Vancouver, and potentially moving here next year. She tells me the story of how her great-grandparents, grandparents and parents instilled in her the importance of growing her own food as a child. She reminisces on how normal it was for her family to grow their own food and regularly serve it to friends and family, as a sacred form of bringing everyone together. When she moved to Alberta as a young woman to raise her family in Canada, she looked for ways of doing the same in her new home — and she did.
In Alberta, she raised funds with a group of community members to begin a garden in an empty lot behind a church. They began growing a variety of crops and using them to cook many types of cuisines during potlucks in the community. I see Naila’s eyes open with pride when she talks about how the small plot of land has blossomed throughout the years. It has brought neighbours together to explore different people and food from the community. This feels familiar to what we are doing here, I think to myself.
“What brings you here tonight?” I ask Naila. She tells me that her “second son” (her son’s best friend) lives in the building across the street. When she would come to visit him, she would walk by the coFood Collaborative Garden — a garden that very much reminded her of the community garden in Alberta. She felt drawn to the coFood garden each time she walked by and noticed the signs encouraging neighbours to join, so she did.
Our Journey
What brings me here tonight? I ask myself. I think about what journey brought me to this garden and to this group of people. I remember being involved in endless volunteer positions and workshops as a young undergraduate student. I was eager to meet like-minded people searching for innovative ideas that connected us to the land — similar to Naila. It is through this exploration that I met some of the people here tonight. Six years ago we were brought together through intentional and synchronous ways, and decided to take a chance on a common idea. We started building on the notion that people in the city longed for food knowledge. Our vision was to design a new type of platform where individuals from all backgrounds could find a safe network of information and develop collaborative relationships to learn about food-related topics in the city. We did this by facilitating educational dinners and starting a local collaborative garden in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant area.
Thinking back to when this all started, I notice that some of us are still here and some of us have moved on. Some people tonight just want a nice garden in the neighbourhoods to socialize, while some people are eager to join our efforts. To the best of our ability, we welcome them all. I am no one to say one way or the other. I have been absent from this group for the last two years and I have come back to this space very recently. The group, the people, the knowledge and the culture is constantly evolving as people come and people go. I can say for certain that one thing is common in this space: We are all here to try to figure out how we can keep this going. You might ask what “this” is? Is it a feeling of hope for our planet?
Our Purpose
As I look around the garden, Naila and I are just two of the contributors who have joined tonight. There are some people I recognize and more who I don’t. We’re all here for a similar purpose of getting together to talk about creating a regenerative world where food, community and love can come together in a fair space. I see this reflected in words as I walk over to three white boards full of words and emojis, which had been jumbled in separate directions at the beginning of the night.
While some of the words are still itching to be joined, many of them have already slid together by anonymous authors. Some of them catch my eye: “multilingual forestry,” “fearsome reciprocal habitat” and “intercultural tomorrow,” to name a few. I also see a beautiful short poem that reads: “while a soft-spoken grandmother plays near the Salish Sea a lavender snapdragon laughs.” I witness a clear sense of connection with the natural world and the community in these configurations.
The sun begins to fall and people slowly begin to wander home, as the crows spread their wings above us towards their own home. I think about Naila’s story and I think about my story, while I read the words from the magnetic poetry. I look to my side and witness a toddler giggling as she spills her ice cream over her face. I look up to the winged sky and into the blooming garden. I feel hope for the future of our living systems.
