Earth Day Canada
The first Canadian Earth Day was held on Thursday, September 11, 1980, and was organized by Paul D. Tinari, then a graduate student in Engineering Physics/Solar Engineering at Queen's University. Flora MacDonald, then MP for Kingston and the Islands and Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, officially opened Earth Day Week on September 6, 1980 with a ceremonial tree planting and encouraged MPs and MPPs across the country to declare a cross-Canada annual Earth Day. The principal activities taking place on the first Earth Day included educational lectures given by experts in various environmental fields, garbage and litter pick-up by students along city roads and highways as well as tree plantings to replace the trees killed by Dutch Elm Disease.
Earth Day Canada (EDC) is a national environmental charity founded in 1990 that provides Canadians with practical knowledge, tools, and simple easy-to-accomplish actions to support a healthier environment through EDC's year-round and award-winning programs.
Education: EcoKids supports teachers and students, grades K-8, with free educational resources, curriculum-linked lesson plans including ESL and FSL, and homework help and games for students. EcoMentors offers youth the training and resources they need to facilitate local environmental education workshops with their peers and other young Canadians.
Action: EDC's challenges, contests and campaigns promote practical, culturally relevant and cost-effective solutions to help individual Canadians support a healthier environment. EDC also encourages action by supporting individuals and community groups in the organization and delivery of local Earth Day (April 22) events.
Recognition and Financial Support: Toyota Earth Day Scholarship Program recognizes tomorrow's environmental leaders providing twenty $5 000 scholarships to graduating high school students going on to post-secondary education in the discipline of their choice. The Hometown Heroes Award Program recognizes environmental leaders at the community level with an individual and a group award (each with a cash-prize of $10 000), and business leaders with a small business award. Earth Day Canada's Community Environment Fund funds sustainable community projects in Ontario providing grants of up to $20 000 to schools and not-for-profit organizations.
The Diversity Engagement and Inclusion Initiative helps the environmental sector to better communicate with, engage and activate Canada's diverse social and cultural communities. The Employee Engagement program works with employers to achieve business and sustainability goals through inclusion of best practices.
Read more about this topic: Earth Day
Famous quotes containing the words earth, day and/or canada:
“Oh sure, everyone goes back to the earth at some point, but life itself is a thread that is never broken, never lost. Do you know why? Because each man makes a knot in the thread during his lifetime: it is the work he has done and that’s what gives life to life in the long stretch of time: the usefulness of man on this earth.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)