Just Eat It – A food waste story : second helpings

So do you remember last year’s VIFF? When I blogged about “Just Eat It”? No? Well go and read it right now:

Source: Just Eat It – A food waste story | Quieter Elephant

Anyway, for no particular reason at all, I just wondered if it was available for purchase (wha’? I do buy things I think are important to support!) yet. Or on general release at the cinema. That kind of thing.

Anyway, it seems that if you live in Canada at least, it’s available for streaming on the Knowledge Network and will even air on TV in early January.

Do yourself – and society at large – a favour and watch it. Get educated! Those of you that live here in Greater Vancouver can even have the extra entertainment of constantly saying “I’ve been there!” or “That’s Canadian Superstore!” or “That’s Pemberton!” or whatever.

If you don’t live in Canada I’m afraid I suspect that the streaming won’t work. Try and dig out a copy though… it really is a very educational as well as entertaining documentary.

Knowledge Network: Just Eat It

From the Knowledge Network site:

Year: 2014
Duration: 73min

“Dining out” takes on a whole new meaning in Just Eat It. After seeing how much of our food is wasted, Grant Baldwin and Jen Rustemeyer, whose previous film The Clean Bin Project followed their efforts to live a zero-waste lifestyle, decide to take on a new challenge: to eat only rescued food for six months. Just Eat It follows the Vancouver couple as they forgo restaurant meals and quit grocery shopping cold turkey. They troll supermarket cull carts and rejected produce at the local farmer’s market, and set aside the “ick” factor as they dive into industry dumpsters. What they find is shocking: truckloads of perfectly edible food destined for the landfill.

Supporting Syrian Refugees in BC

I’ve registered to volunteer and help the 3000 Syrian refugees expected to resettle in BC over the next few months. I can only offer a few man-hours a week  and who’s to say they can use the offer anyway?

Source: Supporting Syrian Refugees in Surrey| City of Surrey

But I’m an immigrant myself. I speak English (after a fashion)  and I still found it a struggle to integrate into a new culture here in Canada. I expect many of these folk – selected as the most needy (single women, children, families) who have been in refugee camps in countries neighbouring Syria for up to 4 years – will have even greater struggles ahead. Not to mention the psychological baggage they can’t help but bring with them.

I hope I can help them adjust, integrate and become part of our rich society. If I’m not needed (many other Canadians have already volunteered – it’s kind of a thing Canadians do), then I hope I can at least bid them a warm welcome and help them cut through all the crap that politicians of various stripes are currently touting.

Source: Imgur

What’s so hard about an apostrophe?!

When I was a kid at school I had a French teacher (ironic as you’ll soon see) who used to call apostrophes “tombstones”. They marked the death of one or more letters, he said. Handy little reminder that’s stood me in good stead over the intervening decades. Didn’t account for the possessive case but, hey ho…

Moving to Canada in my thirties then, I have been irritated almost daily by the national chain of coffee shops opened in 1964 by Tim Horton. The first was called “Tim Horton Donuts” which was completely non-contentious, despite the dodgy spelling of doughnuts.

Source: BlogTO

Then though, it got popular and re-branded as “Tim Horton’s”. Trouble was, those pesky language police in Quebec decided that the possessive apostrophe was a peculiarly ENGLISH thing and simply could not be tolerated in the province of Quebec. Putting “Chez Tim Horton” on all the packaging in addition to “Tim Horton’s” was just too big an ask, so a compromise was reached and they simply dropped the apostrophe. The now defunct Eaton’s chain went  simply by “Eaton” there for similar reasons. And that, dear reader is why we’re stuck with “Tim Hortons” coffee shops.

So I’m OK with all this to a degree, but why, oh why does that excuse the incorrect usage of apostrophes in all their advertising? Especially here in English-speaking BC?

Bu’s Advert (sic)

Power of advertising

After 15 or so years in Canada, there’s not actually a lot I miss about the UK. John Lewis is one though. Their “never knowingly undersold” philosophy saved me a lot of price comparison shopping back in the day. (It’s commonplace in most chains here in BC).

Their Christmas ads have become something of a phenomenon in their own right and this year’s is no exception. Apparently it cost £7M to produce!

Enjoy!