Living local, living well in Peterborough
Transition Town’s Purple Onion Festival is another success
When Transition Town Peterborough throws a party, people show up. And they showed up in happy droves at last Sunday's Purple Onion Festival in Millennium Park. The powerhouse behind the event was TTP's event coordinator, Andrea Connell, who recently penned an open-arms piece for this paper kicking off Peterborough's Local Food Month. It was an informative and upbeat invitation to celebrate Peterborough and it's bounty by attending local festivals and patronizing local producers. And for many, the Purple Onion Festival was our Food Month's crowning event.
A community of makeshift tents transformed Millennium Park into a pop-up mecca of local pride. There were vendors and political and environmental awareness activists. Musicians and spoken word artists entertained in style.
Health professionals offered personal vitality and well-being enhancement. Kid's games, produce, craft beer, honey, but most pivotal of all, a cornucopia of local food – all were a collective tribute to Peterborough's bounty and self-sufficiency. And commerce was done in our very own currency the Kawartha Loon – the $KL.
For the many who are accustomed to Canadian Mint currency, using the $KL for Purple Onion Festival transactions was a novel mode of trade.
"Can I use those Kawartha Loonies at Walmart?" one woman was overheard asking her companion.
"It's Kawartha LOONS, Dorothy. And Walmart won't take them. It's only the participating markets and stores in Peterborough. But there's a whole bunch of them."
I don't know if Dorothy's wellinformed friend went on to explain that big corporations skim off our local cash and send it out of country. But $KLs save you 10 per cent right off the top and the money circulates only in Peterborough benefitting all the people who live here.
If you work at a big-box chain, or as a contractor, server or professional, it may be difficult to see how using $KLs is of personal benefit, but keeping wealth local means thriving businesses and prosperous customers. Folks who are flush are more likely to tip well, order new windows, fix up that sagging garage roof, and just plain be easier to deal with.
As for keeping patronage local, our computers weren't made in Lakefield, but our corn and tomatoes were grown south of there. Dog-walking hikers? – Made a long way from Bewdley where we get our garlic.
We don't normally wash our Bridgenorth-area peppers in our Mexican-made bathroom sink, but we get our honey from just up Chemong Road. We pickle beets, beans, cucumbers and turnips and patronize local markets. Cell 'phones seem to have become mandatory, but it's for sure that the profits from their immense financial yield aren't harvested locally. So... we escape economic captivity wherever we can and eating locally is a major way of doing that.
In the face of current major outsourcing, patronizing local growers and businesses now means checking labels, interrogating market vendors, demanding local produce from supermarkets and sometimes, changing what we consume. Imports are nice luxuries but supply is uncertain: climate change is affecting yield, and shipping food by air has been pared back drastically because of high fuel costs. That's true for container shipping as well. And people in the food industry know it: they cite rising fuel costs as being the biggest challenge faced by food exporters of everything from limes and grapes to avocados.
That's only going to get worse. Beyond the eco-damage of rampant fossil fuel use is the inevitable day when those fuels dry up. And planning for when that occurs means thinking seriously about keeping our local sources prosperous and diverse.
Many in our area do. Much credit is due Transition Town Peterborough for the Purple Onion Festival and other vital initiatives, but eating local is a torch borne by a number of farsighted civic groups. Nourish, Farms at Work, Peterborough Green Up, Community Gardens (40-plus of these in our area), Peterborough Pollinators... Google any of these on this far-fromcomplete list and you will discover a broad collective of dedicated visionaries. And underpinning the push to support local is Peterborough's Community Sustainability Plan, also worth a look on-line @ https://sustainablepeterborough.ca/community-plan/sp-community-plan/
Captain Climate Change was the Purple Onion Festival’s most visible superhero, and his presence was an approachable way of highlighting the greatest threat to life ever faced by future generations: an unpredictable and over-heated global climate. Indeed, behind the beautifully sunlit enjoyment of last Sunday's Purple Onion Festival was the more serious sense that today's party will be tomorrow's necessity. And it's hopeful: Transition Town's research cites the huge economic benefits of buying local food: potentially hundreds of millions of dollars over a 10-year period.
Here in our city, events like Transition Town's Dandelion
Day and the Purple Onion Festival are clear evidence that we in Peterborough look after our own. And yes, it's serious way of hedging our future bets. But being conscientious can be fun. And last Sunday's Purple Onion festival was a whole lot of good oldfashioned fun.