Many ways you can make a difference

If you want to take climate action in your community, you can. Join one of our many projects described below.

EcoFair Toronto

The EcoFair team is already working towards this November's EcoFair Toronto. 

At this one convenient position posting you can sign up to volunteer on the day of the EcoFair, or to be on a team that will help organize and set up the EcoFair. 

We have a great system for making the EcoFair work, but it definitely helps to have more hands on deck.

Toronto Nature Stewards

I (Andrew) personally met with Toronto Nature Stewards recently to remove invasive species and plant native species in the Don Valley. It was really fun to do, but also pretty scary to see how invasive species have taken over parts of our city.

Toronto Nature Stewards meets every other Thursday night at Flemingdon Park to remove invasive species and support native species. You can join.

Healthy ecosystems store carbon, and dying ecosystems do just the opposite. Invasive species an important issue, so help out if you can.

TreeMobile Spring 2024 was a success!

Once again, TreeMobile planted over one hundred trees in a day, with even more in other communities. We had more volunteers than we can even show in a reasonable number of photos, and we appreciate all of you so much! We had enough people helping that it ended up being one of our easier-to-plant years despite the HUGE number of trees. Thank you, and special thanks to the Sringeri Vidya Bharati Foundation for bringing so many volunteers!

If you'd like to volunteer with us in our fall planting, please let us know by email, or sign up for the TreeMobile newsletter to receive notifications of when we need planters.

Volunteer Profile: Clifford TIndall

While we do our planting throughout Toronto this May 6th weekend, we’re profiling volunteer leader Clifford Tindall.

KA-BOOM, like thunder (which there thankfully wasn't any of on Saturday), Clifford Tindall gets our Rexdale planting done, while the Pocket also sees amazing volunteers building our city's tree canopy.

Volunteer profiles aren't something I think we've ever done, and probably that should change since there are so many Transition Toronto people who deserve to be profiled (and we salute you!). Today we're profiling Clifford for his critical intervention in what otherwise would have been an unacceptable disaster for us. 

Clifford Tindall is a long-time, and super-dedicated TreeMobile volunteer. He also runs his own Spiritleaf retail store in Little Italy.

We needed to get a huge order of trees planted on April 29th and we were scrambling to build crews. Every crew needs a leader. Virginie Gysel, TreeMobile's founder, was committed to our planting on the same day in the Pocket. I wasn't available on the 29th. TreeMobile is a pretty lean group, so we didn't have anyone else who we knew could lead a TreeMobile crew. But we did know Clifford.

Clifford Tindall first volunteered for TreeMobile in 2016, and he made sure he did a good job of staying in touch with us. He made the effort to stay part of the team, and due to those efforts, we were able to call him in on special jobs like our smaller, but still important, fall plantings. He's planted many trees with us, he's seen how we operate, but he runs his own business and he's a busy guy. We didn't know if we could get him to run a planting crew on his own for the first time, but he rearranged his whole work schedule so that he could take care of the Rexdale crew for us. THEN on the day of the planting it rained and was a totally miserable day. He said, "That's what raincoats are for." 

He showed up. The crew showed up. They got the job done, and now Rexdale has the equivalent of a new food forest, as well as some BIG carbon-sequestering shade trees (they were some of the biggest trees TreeMobile has ever planted). 

Judson Chiu was also essential to the Rexdale planting. Judson doesn't live in Toronto anymore, but he drove in from out of town to bring past TreeMobile planting experience, his vehicle, as well as his own experience with trees and farming. Thanks so much to Judson, the other Rexdale volunteers, and everyone who planted with Virginie in The Pocket. There are lots of trees where before there were none, and we have all of you to thank for that. 

 

Clifford at Spiritleaf

Now, you already know, based on things like our local (super-not-crypto) currency project and EcoFair Toronto, that we're a huge proponent of local business and we see the link between local business and resilient communities. Well Clifford has a local business, so we were inspired to let you know about it, since he did such a huge favour for TreeMobile and Transition Toronto. Clifford is an owner of Spiritleaf Little Italy, and the Spiritleaf franchise understands the contributions that make local business a part of resilient communities, too. They operate with the specific goal of creating deep and lasting ties within local communities. 

Here's Clifford at his shop in Little Italy a few weeks ago when the weather was approximately a billion times better than it was on the day of the Rexdale and Pocket plantings.

Thank you so much to all our volunteers who planted on April 29th, who will plant on May 7th, and who will work with us in the future!

Let us know what you think about us continuing volunteer profiles in the future. We've had so many great volunteers in the past. If you know someone (or are someone) who should be profiled, don't be afraid to send us a nomination. 

TreeMobile volunteering April 29th

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO PLANT TREES IN REXDALE AND THE POCKET.

Sign-up forms:

Rexdale, April 29, 2023: https://lnkd.in/gQQ2jRxX

The Pocket, April 29, 2023: https://lnkd.in/gmSCTFnN

TreeMobile is a non-profit project driven by Transition Toronto. The project delivers and plants food-bearing trees and shrubs in Toronto. It recently got some media attention from CityNews, which gave us a great bump in demand right as we closed the season. With so much demand for trees, we’re really happy but a little shorthanded. We need your help to build food security in vulnerable areas of the city.

We have two plantings on April 29th that need volunteers urgently. The first is in Rexdale, where we’ll plant 32 trees and and 10 shrubs (sign up here: https://lnkd.in/gQQ2jRxX). The second is in The Pocket, where we’ll plant 13 trees and 14 shrubs (sign up here: https://lnkd.in/gmSCTFnN).

Sign up using the google forms for either Rexdale, or The Pocket. We’d really appreciate the help. Each form links to more information about the plantings (timing, what to bring, etc.)

With plenty to celebrate, there's plenty to do

2022 has posed some challenges, but we’ve been able to weather them and come out strong. While an array of challenges prevented us from opening the online TreeMobile store for our normal spring tree planting season, our partners and frequent TreeMobile collaborators such as TRCA and Not Far From the Tree were able to support us and we still planted (with them) dozens of trees and shrubs. A new partner, Mission Green Toronto, was also able to win a grant that funded more than 10 trees and should see 40 more planted in 2023.

At the same time, Food Up Front once again made the huge effort to sort and pack thousands of seeds, sending out garden starter packs to hundreds of new gardeners. Those gardeners are now fully equipped to grow food, not lawns. Scoring another massive win, in 2022 Food Up Front started educational efforts to help Torontonians participate in the seed economy.

Meanwhile, EcoFair Toronto made a hard push, with our biggest organizing team ever, to re-emerge as an in-person event, having spent two years as a virtual EcoFair. We very much appreciate the hard work of the EcoFair team, who ended up drawing over 1,000 people to the EcoFair this past November. It was not just an inspiring event, but an event where a lot got done due to the partnerships between organizations that hadn’t met in person for many, many months.

Our last “news” post on this site was about growth. We have grown, and we continue to grow. That means we have many volunteer positions open, all of which you can learn more about at the links below.

While we don’t have any volunteer positions attached to this year, we’ll be taking part in the Circlo mutual credit clearing system, which provides a means of trading outside of the conventional economy. If you do want to join our alternative currency project, email us to let us know.

We’re really well-positioned to have a great 2023, and we’d love it if you wanted to help out. Check out the links above to learn more about they ways you can do that.

Growing Transition Toronto

In the past few years we've seen a lot of success, and with your help we can do even more to mitigate climate change in Toronto.

A Transition Town's mission is to decarbonize communities. In a city as big as Toronto, that mission means scaling up, and diversifying the types of projects we do. Our ongoing achievements set us up to do more, and more great things need to happen in this city. We want to do more projects, and that means we need more people to lead and deliver work. In particular, we're looking for new steering committee members.

We're also looking for people to join our local currency project, help with the EcoFair, and to volunteer in capacities other than steerers. If you're interested, please email us to let us know.

Where we say "our ongoing achievements", we truly mean "our".  Thank you to all the volunteers and gardeners that worked with us to make an impact this year. That's the only way decarbonization of our communities can work: We work together.

10 years of Transition Toronto and we still need help with the EcoFair

10 years of Transition Toronto

Hi, it’s Andrew Knox, and I can’t help but indulge in a little self-reflection at our 10-year mark. It was 10 years ago when I was settling back in to Toronto, having been living in Devon, UK, when Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu set up a day in the park for me to talk about what I’d learned about Transition Towns.  That then turned into a presentation at a Post-Carbon Toronto meeting where the first members joined our first steering committee, and that started Transition Toronto.  10 years later, we have so many more members and partners, we have so many great projects under our belt, and we’re still going strong!  I’ve loved it, and it’s given no small measure of meaning to my life.  Thank you all for making Transition Toronto possible and for supporting what we all do together.  Thank you!

Help make the 2019 EcoFair Wonderful!

One thing that hasn’t changed in the past 10 years: We need help with the EcoFair! Right now there’s a specific job that badly needs doing: We need someone to send emails to an existing list of businesses to ask for items that we can sell in the silent auction. Emails would be sent from the Ecofair email account, and if you're able to send these emails you'd also need to monitor responses. If you can do it, please let me know by replying to this email! The silent auction is important to helping the EcoFair break even each year so we can keep running EcoFairs annually!

GO TO the ECOFAIR Nov. 3!

Even if you can’t volunteer for the EcoFair at the Barns, you should go to it!  It’s Sunday Nov. 3rd, there’s food, and it’s always fun. 

The EcoFair at the Barns is a free, family-friendly event that informs and inspires greener choices in our homes and communities. At the EcoFair we showcase the exciting programs, products and services of over 40 environmental not-for-profit organizations and eco-friendly businesses. It is a chance to celebrate the great things that people are doing locally for the environment. It’s inspiring!

TreeMobile was great

TreeMobile always leaves us a little too exhausted to brag so we haven’t said anything about it in the months since we planted hundreds of food-bearing plants in April and May, but, seriously, it was great this year, just like it is every year! If you want to join the TreeMobile team, just hit reply and let us know (we could use the help). It’s about time to start organizing another awesome season! Thanks to our partners in Hamilton for helping us expand into their great city for the first time!

Ways you can help promote TreeMobile

TreeMobile is Transition Toronto's (and Transition Guelph's) not-for-profit and volunteer-powered project to supply people with food-bearing trees and shrubs.  The project is closing for the season on April 16th, with all plants for Toronto customers to be delivered in the last weekend of April or first weekend of May.  

If you want to help promote this project, you can use the following sample tweets.  Many of them have room for you to add your favourite (relevant) handles, or attach appropriate pictures.  There is also a sample facebook post you can use, and if you're not into social media, you can print our flyer and post that IRL.

Sample Tweet 1

Apple lover? TreeMobile has 6 kinds of apple trees for sale. They delivery and plant for you, too! bit.ly/1PxSlST #TreeMob2018 #foodsecurity #organicfood #torontolocalfood #torontotrees

Sample Tweet 2

TreeMobile will plant your garden for you <$55 per tree, not-for-profit. Closes April 16th! bit.ly/1PxSlST #TreeMob2018 #foodsecurity #organicfood #torontolocalfood #torontotrees

Sample Tweet 3

Nothing more local than your garden! TreeMobile has apple, cherry, pear trees, $53 at most. Plus shrubs, berries. bit.ly/1PxSlST #TreeMob2018 #foodsecurity #organicfood #torontolocalfood #torontotrees

Facebook post

TreeMobile is a not-for-profit volunteer-powered project that delivers food-bearing trees and shrubs to your yard, with volunteers ready and able to plant for you.  Trees are $43-53 each.  Apples, cherries, pears, plums, and this year even Russian almonds available.  Grow your own food and make the city more sustainable!

https://www.transitiontreemobile.org/woo-commerce/purchase/

#fruittree #transitiontoronto #foodsecurity #organicfood #ediblelandscaping #torontolocalfood #plantatree #torontotrees

Good old-fashioned flyers

If you want to promote TreeMobile in physical space, you can print off our flyer and post it in appropriate places, with permission, throughout the city.

Thanks very much!

Celebrating success, Garden Grant open, and asking for some TreeMobile drivers

 

With all the cool work going on, you may have noticed we barely have time to write emails let alone celebrate success but 2017 was a great year for Transition Toronto, and if we never celebrate it, it's not as fun.  Fun's important, so take a read over some of the highlights of last year while you consider helping out with TreeMobile in 2018.

Do you want to drive the TreeMobile?  We're revving up the engines again for 2018, and while the store isn't quite open yet (watch this space), what we always need a head start on is delivery drivers.  If you can drive, please take a look at this position description.

And how about some fruit trees for your school, faith group, community garden, or non-profit organization?  TreeMobile isn't rolling just yet, but its Edible Community Garden Grant is!  You can get food-bearing plants and advice on caring for them.

More details on both the driver position and the grant are below.

GEDO (Green Energy Doors Open) Mixer

Green Energy Doors Open (GEDO) is an event we've been helping to promote for years, but in 2017 we partnered with Find a Way and GEDO's organizers the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association to host the first ever live promotional event for the Ontario Green Energy Doors Open weekend.  It ended up being a great night with speakers including Josh Fernandez form YIMBY, Ryan Dyment from the Tool Library, Jennifer Bryan from SolarShare, Paul Cairns from SMARTNet Alliance (pictured above in front of that Hollywood-type banner), of course Nick Hebb from OSEA, and we had Glen Alan from Find A Way who was joined by his band and other musical acts.  It was  great night to be a part of.

HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team)

Our HEET team delivered some very well-received events to help people save energy in their homes in late 2017.  Attendees were equipped to take action and lower their carbon footprints.  HEET also teamed up with HESI to help with HESI's workshops, pool efforts, and combine skills.  HEET is now looking for new and innovative ways to engage people in saving energy in their homes, so if you have ideas or examples of what works to inspire deep savings, let us know.

EcoFair at the Barns

2017 continued the streak of successful EcoFairs at the Barns!.  We once again had great attendance, great food, great workshops, and great exhibitors like Carbon Neutral Shredding, Free Geek Toronto, Nude Smoothies, The Roots Collaborative, and dozens more.  Thanks very much to everyone who attended, and our deepest appreciation to the volunteers.

Drive for TreeMobile

TreeMobile delivers food-bearing trees to peoples' yards to encourage sustainable urban agriculture, but we can only offer as many trees as we can deliver.  Our access to vehicles is usually the project's bottleneck.  If you're able to drive a team in 2018, you could make a big difference.  See the details on what's needed.

Edible Community Garden Grant

If you have a school, faith group, community garden, or non-profit organization that needs to grow more of its own food and you want TreeMobile to supply and plant for you, take a look at our Edible Community Garden Grant.  This year we've got the new "Fedge" (food hedge) grant.  Find out what that's about.

A few other neat things to celebrate include last year's Toronto Climate Film Festival, all the work by TCAN and it's members (including a huge lift on #transformTO work), the Tool Library's successful crowdfund (and related Feb 22nd party), and while I think I mentioned it before I'd like to reiterate that TreeMobile increased it's impact again in 2017.  Can we do it again in 2018?  Only with your help!

Andrew

H.E.E.T. Events Sept. 27th and Oct. 10th

We've got TWO Home Energy Efficiency Team (H.E.E.T.) events coming up.  Learn about actions you can take to lower your home's carbon footprint, and even learn specifically what to look for in the hardware store when you want current-generation efficient showerheads and lightbulbs.

The first event is on Wednesday Sept. 27th between 7-9 pm at St. Anselm Church, 1 McNaughton Road.  The second event will be on Tuesday is Oct. 10th between 7-9 pm at Runnymede Library, 2178 Bloor Street West.  

Green Energy Doors Open Weekend and Kick-Off Mixer

We've been tweeting up a storm about the Sept. 22nd Green Energy Mixer (so give us a retweet when you have a minute), but that event is kicking off a whole Green Energy Doors Open Weekend.  All through the province there are open houses showcasing things like the Clean Energy Zone at Ryerson, the green energy features at Steam Whistle Brewery, and the electronics recycling at Free Geek Toronto.  Learn about it at the mixer, and visit sites all weekend.

EcoFair, Nov. 5th

As much fun as you can have in the next few weeks between H.E.E.T. and the Green Energy Mixer, you have to admit that the year wouldn't be complete without a trip to the EcoFair at the Barns.  Learn about a new neighbourhood solar power initiative, get an awesome lunch, donate used electronics, take part in hands-on activities, and come away with a deeper connection to the green options and enterprises in your city.

We're also screening the film "Demain", which, after we screened at York, we were asked to show again downtown.  So if you missed it last time, the EcoFair is your chance.