By Kathryn Stocks
Our Earth Day event is supposed to take place on Saturday, April 25 at the Port Union Community Centre from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. This will only happen if the COVID-19 pandemic slows down considerably and our community centres reopen by then. As I write this at the end of March, the number of cases is on the rise and it seems unlikely to happen.
We are living in unusual times and everything the CCRA had planned in March was cancelled, including both our Spring Dinner/Dance and the coyote information meeting.
We don’t know when our community centres will reopen but I’ll tell you about our Earth Day event anyway because CCRA President Kathy Rowe put in a lot of time and effort to update it for this year. Instead of bird houses, the kids would make nest boxes for native bees. The Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot group would have an interactive booth planting milkweed seeds with the kids and teaching them about the life cycle of monarchs.
A mini repair café was going to be an important part of the day. Repair cafés are popping up across the city and volunteers come out to fix your broken stuff. Up to 10 “fixers” would be in the café at this one. They would repair household appliances, clocks and watches, clothing, and phones, computers and printers.
Kathy had also arranged for the Backyard Urban Farm Company to come out and give us all some expert gardening advice.
Another important feature of Earth Day is the Scout Recycling Fundraiser. It would be moving to the West Rouge Community Centre this year. This is a massive event in which a variety of things are collected to be recycled.
Earth Day began in 1970 to put environmental concerns for the planet on the front page. It marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. For Centennial, one of the most important features of the day is our community cleanup. So even if our event is cancelled, we encourage residents to embrace the cleanup part on their own. Spread out across Centennial to pick up some of the litter and debris that has accumulated over the winter. It makes our community look so much better and gives you something to do with the kids.