On the eve of the debut of her new opera, celebrated Canadian author Margaret Atwood had another place to be.
At the Waterfront Fairmont hotel, the Christian environmental organization A Rocha held it’s annual Green Gala event in order to raise funds to support its projects.
A Rocha, which means ‘The rock’ in Portuguese, started as a Christian bird observatory in Portugal, founded in 1983. Since then, the organization has expanded to include environmental projects in 19 countries, one of which is the Brooksdale Environmental Centre located in south Surrey.
Atwood had been linked with the organization for some months; environmentalism was one of the main concepts throughout her book The Year of the Flood. Published in 2009, it detailed a sect called “God’s Gardeners” who had survived an apocalyptic event. They were rooftop gardeners and bee keepers, but they ceased to be fictional when, in February of this year, Atwood met some individuals that were introduced as being “real life God’s Gardeners”.
Appearing as a guest on the Christian talk show Context with Lorna Dueck, Atwood met Leah and Markku Kostamo, leaders in A Rocha Canada. The three traded observations on the inter relationship between humanity and the environment, and ended the episode with some basic steps that could be taken at home to better steward the environment.
At the Green Gala event, Leah Kostamo and Atwood continued their dialogue that had started on Context, with Atwood even going as far as to sing a hymn she had written as part of the God’s Gardeners celebrations.
At the event, The Peak had an opportunity to speak with Rick Faw, VP of programming for A Rocha Canada.
“I think [the Green Gala] is a chance for us to demonstrate that we share common cause with lots of people,” he said while guests filtered into the mingling area at the event.
At the end of the festivities at the Green Gala, Atwood asked the audience to give a pledge to drink only coffee that was made from arabica coffee in order to preserve the forest canopy where the coffee was grown.
Faw also offered a simple principle for people to take home: “Take the townhouse living scenario: we can live in our townhouse, go down the enclosed garage, get in the car, drive to work, get in the underground garage, get out and reverse, and never actually experience the weather.”
He continued, “Society needs to, the way I’d say it, to cultivate wonder and gratitude. Maybe it’s just, ‘I’m going to commit to going outside for five minutes every day.’ What a novel concept? [. . . That] is the kind of pattern of living that can make it easier for us to ignore other aspects of creation.”
