Tag Archives: York University

ChocoSol Traders

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I first encountered ChocoSol Traders around 4 or 5 years ago. It was at a guest lecture in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. A recent grad (likely Michael Sacco) was helping cater the event and was introduced as a chocolate maker who was working with farmers in Mexico. While the topic of the lecture has long ago faded from my memory, the chocolate hasn’t. It was different than any chocolate I’ve had before – it was dark, only lightly sweetened and the texture was a bit gritty. It was so different from the refined chocolate I was used to – but it was so good. When the lecture ended the remaining chocolate was brought out to the lounge and I lingered long enough to help finish it.

I found ChocoSol again at Dufferin Grove Farmers’ Market a year or so later when we were still living in the west end. Jim and I went up to the booth and got a full on the spot lesson about chocolate including where and how the cacao was grown, a taste of the raw bean followed up by the roasted bean, a taste of the chocolate and the drinking chocolate. The chocolate is solar roasted, stone ground, and pedal powered. It comes in dark, vanilla, hemp, coconut and chilli varieties. ChocoSol is a different kind of business and their “mission statement” says a lot:

ChocoSol is a community of innovative and dynamic individuals engaged in a trans-local trading relationship that goes beyond mere commerce to intercultural dialogue and reciprocal relationship building.

Sol means the sun in Spanish, earth in French and in English sounds like Soul… Our own source of vibrancy.

ChocoSol is a learning community/social enterprise that uses artisanal chocolate as a symbolic product that incarnates the values that we make part of our art of living and dying with dignity.

We offer chocolate foods as opposed to candies or commodities.

We host social gatherings known as Chocolatadas to celebrate friendships, the seasons, artists, community initiatives as well as our freedom as free-thinking individuals who believe that other worlds do and can Co-Exist.

The Appletree Market, close to our current apartment in midtown Toronto, has ChocoSol as a year round vendor. They also now sell coffee – which is the best we’ve had. So good, that Jim suggested to Michael that he should be charging more than $10/lb for it. This was a suggestion that wasn’t taken and we’re still paying $10/lb. We’ve started to bring our own containers now and get bonus chocolate. We’ve even been invited to come to Mexico to meet the farmers and see first hand where our chocolate comes from. I’m thinking that should be next years’ vacation (if we don’t have to travel for a wedding!)

For Canadians wanting to make the most ethical and environmental food choices, chocolate (and coffee, tea, sugar, bananas, etc.) is a dilemma. Our climate means that we can’t grow cacao. Most of us never meet the farmers that grow our cacao or the processors that make our chocolate. And as a result we never get to hear or see first hand how the cacao was grown, how the farmers live, and how the raw ingredients are transformed into the product we buy. We have to rely on certifications to understand how the cacao was grown (organic) or how the farmers’ are paid (fair trade) and on ingredient labels to understand how the chocolate was processed. There is now an array of certifications and standards out there – some legitimate and some green washing – and it can be hard for even committed foodies to navigate, never mind the average consumer. ChocoSol offers an alternative to the certifications with a personal connection, stories and artisanal products.

Reviewing Activehistory.ca

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So, I just reviewed this book (Booze) for a very innovative organization full of world-changing leaders of tomorrow. Here’s the punchline: these world-changers are historians.

Led by these historians, Activehistory.ca is the coolest and most important website in the Twitterverse. Sure, as Editor-in-Chief of the second coolest site in the Twittervese, it pains me a little to say such things, but it’s totally true. The Daily Gumboot is, however, lucky enough to share the mind of Active Historian, Jim Clifford, who moves seamlessly between the two blogs online magazine online journals websites like a nineteenth-century farmer from the Lower Lea River Valley who spends his days tilling the fields and his evenings sabotaging the industrial workshops that will soon overwhelm and consume his pristine lands. Interpret this outstanding metaphor as you like.

Moving on…

So, what is this relevantly historical website? Activehistory.ca “is a website to help connect historians with the public, policy makers and the media.” Basically, it explores and celebrates history that makes a difference in the world and (this is my favourite part) “is transformative” to communities.

The website uses podcasts, blogging, photos, maps, videos, and other social media widgets to engage communities and make the issues and ideas of today relevant from a historical perspective – as it turns out, a lot of our mistakes and successes have happened before. History? Social media? Blogs? Videos? Interactive maps? What?! Hmmm…imagine such a thing actually being developed and, eventually, transforming the entire discipline. All you dusty tenured professors out there, well, it might be a good idea to be a little nervous and, hopefully, get a lot relevant.

In time, Activehistory.ca will be one of the most powerful twitblogs on the Interscape, too. Because, in addition to putting topical events of our contemporary world into important, relevant, meaningful, and interesting historical contexts, they also know how to build community. For you see, good readers, the Twitterverse’s two coolest sites recently joined forces in an innovative new way that involved someone other than Jim Clifford. Today, you can click over to Activehistory.ca and read my superawesome review of Booze: A Distilled History by Craig Heron. Disclaimer: “superawesomeness” may subjectively vary depending on tolerance of semi-colons, nerdiness and appreciation of unique approaches to historical study.

Here is an excerpt of the my recent review of Booze: A Distilled History:

So, a wild buffalo, four twelve year old boys and Jenny the Alcoholic Bear walk into Joe Beef’s tavern in Montreal.

Seriously. That really happened…in 1859. Regardless of when it was, I bet that the mechanical bull you rode last week doesn’t seem too cool anymore, does it?

And this is why Canadian history doesn’t get much better than Booze: A Distilled History. Craig Heron’s thoroughly enjoyable – and enjoyably thorough – romp through Canada’s boozey past is as approachably prose-worthy as it is an interconnected analysis of the social, economic, political, sexual, medical, racial, and cultural impact of alcohol on this country.

It gets better from here, too. And I can tell you’re already hooked! Booze analyzes and storytells all the things we love and hate about alcohol and community – drunks and drunkards, social agency, politics, business, sexuality, and, of course, drunken bears (see Alex Grant’s and my commentary about March Madness to confirm this fact). It’s a tour de force of Canadiana and I encourage you to visit Activehistory.ca to check it out in full.

To the editorial team at Activehistory.ca, I thank you for the link love, the collaboration and, most importantly, for the opportunity to be a part of your meaningful online experience. As a self-professed history nerd – albeit not an academic one – it was an honour that meant a lot.

- JCH

Urban Tomatoes

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My engagement with urban agriculture started with a gift to my husband Jim a few months before we moved to Toronto.  A close friend gave him eight small yellow envelops of seeds as a birthday present.  The uneven typing  on the envelopes read “White Queen,” “Tigerella,” “Lime Salad,” “Purple Cherokee,” “Yellow Pear,” “Black Seaman,” “Peasant’s Paste,” and “Druzba.”  They were heirloom tomato seeds from a Seed Sanctuary in Kingston, Ontario.

The following February we bought a seed starting tray, potting soil and a cheap grow light and planted a full tray of seeds.  The thought of growing tomatoes from seed, especially in a basement apartment with a north facing window, seemed like we were setting ourselves up for failure.  Up until this point the only tomato plants in my life had come from garden centres.  Every June, my parents would take us to buy tomato seedlings from warm, humid greenhouses scented with chemical fertilizers.  And now here we were starting tomato seeds in February, months before the potential plants would head outside in what seemed to be a totally inhospitable environment for heat and sun-loving tomatoes.

I was wrong about the tomatoes.  We ended up with over 40 healthy seedlings when it came time to transplant them to larger pots.  And then there was the question of where to put them.  The patch of grass outside our apartment window was ours to use but our landlord was insistent that we were only allowed to plant in pots.  It could handle a few plants, but what about the rest?  The need to find a place for our tomatoes led us to find Maloca Community Garden at York University, where Jim and I were both studying.  The initial e-mails sent to the garden were slow to be answered but in a short time we were showing up to regular community work days and had negotiated a plot for most of our tomatoes.  This was my introduction to community gardening and urban agriculture.

A lot has happened since that first introduction to growing food in the city.  That first year we invited a couple of on campus friends to help us out with our plot of tomatoes.  The tomatoes grew into a dense thicket (and were delicious).  That fall Jim and I were elected to the community garden’s steering committee and we spent the following season leading workdays, setting up a blog, fighting to get the garden on the campus map and trying to grow the “community” part of the garden in addition to the vegetables.  The third year we passed responsibilities of the garden over to a new steering committee but helped to get a new water tank and grew not only enough tomatoes for ourselves but also many for our communal plots.  That summer was when I started working in Markham, a large suburb north of Toronto, with a big part of what I’m focusing on related to local food and urban agriculture planning.

Community gardens and urban agriculture are moving into the mainstream.  And whether the trendiness of the 100 mile diet or the necessity caused by a global recession is the source of this current interest, there are a lot of reasons why our Canadian cities should be embracing community gardens and figuring out how agriculture can work in cities and suburbs.  Beyond the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of our food by growing and eating food we grow, there are other environmental benefits including reduced use of pesticides (most community gardens prohibit the use of all but the most natural pesticides), onsite management of organic waste through composting and much needed plant variety for our pollinators.  Plus community gardens can serve as great site for eco education and with a bit of management can help beautify communities.  Beyond the environmental benefits, there are also social, cultural and economic benefits to community gardens, including healthy food and physical activity, improved community safety, access to culturally appropriate foods, welcoming public space, increased food knowledge, affordable program to maintain, and improved partnerships throughout the community.  And there are also a lot of ways that cities can support community gardens including supportive land use policies, financial support, public-private partnerships, technical assistance with site and design, management of programs, education and design.