NO FLYER CAMPAIGN 2009/2010

IF YOU WANT TO SKIP ALL THE VERY INTERESTING STUFF  BELOW AND JUST GET THE INFO TO STOP YOUR ADVERTISING SIMPLY GO TO PAGE 5 (SEE LEFT COLUMN)  AND READ THE INSTRUCTIONS - IF YOU WANT TO HELP US GET A NATIONAL LAW PROHIBITING PEOPLE FROM CONTRAVENING A NO FLYER SIGN AT PERSONAL RESIDENCES - PRINT OUT MY PETITION AND GET IT FILLED OUT AND SEND IT TO YOUR FAVORITE MP

My first city to city, door to door campaign with a petition was in 1995.   This is my third.  My campaign is not towards banning flyers but to make changes to the way they are produced in order to minimize the use of trees, and to reduce the wasteage.  This time I think there will be a national law passed.  There is much more environmental  concern among the general pubic today. 

A friend of mine who is also a social activist once told me, 'the only way to help and make a difference in our society is to use the law - to use the force of the law to change and impliment laws that are just and equitable because we live in a hard and fast, ruthless time'...

The main focus of the campaign is to  towards changing the law and changing the way flyers are made; to make citizens aware of the waste, and requesting from the government legislation designed to minimize the waste.  The petition can be viewed on the left column. 

Please excercise your right to petition - and print it out and get 25 signatures in your neighborhood.  It is self explanitory.  Read the full info on left culumn (Esp. 6&7) to find out why changes are needed asap.

Did you know:  98% of flyers end up in the waste stream in Canada.  

It takes 3-4 times the energy to recycle as to produce a flyer.  Recycling is NOT the answer.  I find it ironic that nature lovers go to Banff and Jasper year round and believe these towns are on the cutting edge of all things modern and progressive.  Not so.  You will see the mounds of flyers overflowing the waste bins in the foyers of the local Postal outlets. 

Only Canada Post obeys NO FLYER signs (By policy) at houses and condos.  Many others who deliver do also.  Canada Post  only distributes 23% , however.  And they STILL do not obey NO FLYER signs in apartment blocks and community boxes unless you write a letter and put it in the mail box in some cities. 

 The only municipality in Canada to have a by-law as far as I know - making it mandatory for anyone delivering flyers to obey NO FLYER signs is Montreal QB.

We need to do the same on a national scale with a national law.  We have many bad municipal  laws, such as the law 'criminalizing' youth who wash car windows at intersections; laws opressing homless people; laws criminalizing the less fortunate and vulnerable.  For example, on my stop over in Calgary I learned that they hired 60 cops who ride around the downtown on mountain bikes to 'crack down' on the homeless.  I watched as they ticketed many homeless people for various things.  If they find homeless people's belongings in the bushes they confiscate them and the homeless often never get them back.  Those belongings are the only things these people own.  In Saskatoon there is an advetisement on television telling the public directly and specifically, 'DO NOT GIVE TO PANHANDLERS' yet businesses can invade our privacy anywhere TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, buses, computers, at our doors on Saturday and Sundays on and on and on...Amazingly, this ad is allowed to air. Incredibly cruel  and mean legislation and an incredible double standard in our country. .. It's the law. 

We do not consider it worthy to impliment a by-law criminalizing the insane waste of millions of hectres of trees in Canada.  Because the law 'might' effect the rich businesses in our country.    

  THE NO FLYER CAMPAIGN

My doctors told me to avoid stress and find something more sedentary to do for a year or two, so I'm not involving myself in any social activism/protest stuff. My activities will for the next few years be environmental activism only and settling down with a quiet uneventful life compared to the past.  I have written/added some stuff about me in here as well as stuff following it about the 'campaign'.   I am still compiling some info if and when I meet hoppers but only for my book.  The denoument will deal with the dangers and reasons not to hop and statistics.  Some nice happy ending stories will be there too, including a couple of people who settled down and have kids etc, a couple who are in university, as well as some 'real' hoboes who will never stop their romantic 'journey'.

  A link to a recent article is here: 

http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7209&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

 I am heading out on the road  in 2009!  I will be taking a federal petition (Left side of page) and also giving NO FLYER signs.  I will be going door to door to bring awareness to the issue of the great waste of our natural resources.   

I  nearly died in 2005 while writing about train hopping - I contracted double pneumonia and have other permanent health issues as well becasue of a rare bacteria called Mycobacterium gastri.   I may return to social activism and I may never return to it.  Physical health is not my concern, however, stress caused by seeing corruption, ineptitude, and apathy causes a lot of activists and others working with social issues to burn out or quit.  At this point in time I think a change is needed in my life personally and I think I can fit better into the environmental movement.  You can only do so much in one area sometimes before it 'affects' you too much to be of any good. 

Aside from the monumental waste of our precious natural resources - Nearly half a billion dollars of of taxpayers money to handle paper waste - money spent needlesly!  

Why a door to door campaign?  Because there is more support and sympathy for environmental causes for one.  Because things are different now than in the 90s.  We can get a million signatures now!  Since global warming has become  a frontpage topic worldwide people are finally becoming aware of the things environmentalist have been warning about for decades!  Some may say, '..door to door?, aren't you being a hypocrite then? invading the privacy of our citizenry?' 

My answer, '...as a concerned citizen of Canada I feel that a little annoyance for the cause of helping save the planet is justifiable'  

Although I have medical disabilities I think it is important for a person to 'do what they can'.  As John Steinbeck set out in 1960 (Travels with Charley) on his cross country trip in 'Rocinante' his camper with Charley his dog, he was not a well man.  In fact he had a serious heart condition and had to be careful to take medications.  He even admitted later he thought it may have been a 'one way journey'.  But there are more important things in life than 'life' - freedom; happiness; a sense of duty; etc.  

As a social activist and journalist I will also be interviewing other wanderers who 'are on the road' as time permits.   As I said on my picture website, these people I've interviewd for years are special people, in a way I regard them as my family.  I was homeless once when I was young.  On my picture site '..Special people living in a world of their own.  Individuals.  Free, happy, sometimes tragic because it is not an easy life, but with more character and color than most of us.  

  http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7209&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

   Here are some very - very - interesting facts to interest you!  There are more on page 6 and 7!  ... Hemp grown for the production of biomass fuels can provide all of our gas, oil, and coal energy needs and end dependency on fossil fuels.  It can also replace trees as a source for paper! 

 In 1916, the U.S. Government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees need to be cut down. Government studies report that 1 acre of hemp equals 4.1 acres of trees. Plans were in the works to implement such programs; Department of Agriculture . 

  AND...trees are the lungs of our planet, are of vital importance to sustain ALL life on earth... and are also being rapidly destroyed!  AND...About 500 full-sized trees are needed to absorb the carbon dioxide produced by a typical car driven 20,000 km/yr. See # 6 on left margin for more info on hemp.

This campaign is not about hemp - it is about stopping a massive waste of a vital natural resource and the waste connected to the flyer industry in general.  One of the main problems regarding waste on our continent in particular is our attitude to waste. 

John Steinbeck mentioned about waste..way back in 1960..'...cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash - all of them - surrounded by piles of wreckeg cars and rusted automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish.  Everything we use comes in boxes, cartoons, bins, and so-called packaging we love so much.  The mountains of things we throw away are greater than what we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exhuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index...  I do wonder if there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness...'

 Of course more signatures could be garnered by networking, and I hope that will be done, of course, (Online signed petitions cannot be read in Parliament) By going across Canada and door to door all year long to every city in our country will bring attention to this problem too. 

My intention is also to inlist the aid of others to join the crusade and help eradicate the evil in the form of waste , overconsuption , and greed.

since 2003, the last time I went door to door Across Canada, much attention has been brought forward about many environmental issues, mainly because of the alarming issue - global warming and  because the media has been on top of it and spreading the word.  We are now seeing the importance of ecology, sustainability, and reduction of waste - and that the mindless plunder of our natural resources is not going to be tolerated any longer. 

 This website will publish pictures, imformation, and links to help those who want to help us and the public at large to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and limit the waste of tree pulp paper and the cost to the public to maintain a massive amount of waste paper in our landfills.  Keep posted!

It's been my expericence that I can get more done alone and that's what I do. 

 

 

 

 

     Listen to the messengers!

Environmental groups out there in Canada are certainly good at what they do - informing the public about very real and serious issues concerning our environment.  we see in the daily news how environmental issues are ,indeed, becoming more urgent!  Full time environmental groups have been spreading that message for years - please listen to what they have to say if they come to your door! - in later years we will see that these messengers of urgency are the vanguard of a new and brighter world.  If we do not start now to make a difference there may be no bright future for our planet - or our children!!!

In 1994 I decided to start a grassroots campaign to limit flyers and junk mail in my neighbourhood in Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada.  I was a struggling freelance journalist at the time but was very interested in environmentalism as well.  I had worked in the bush as a youth in northern British Columbia and Alberta and as a smoke jumper for many years as well.

After doing research on flyers and junk mail in Canada I found that there was a tremendous waste happening!  In the summer one year in the 90s I decided to take my campaign on the road and went from city to city with a petition asking that '...in Canada all distributors of flyers would have to obey NO FLYER signs at personal residences and also to use only recyclable paper in all flyers (Unaddressed ad mail), produced in Canada'.

I also provided information so that citizens could find out how to get off mailing lists, stop flyers to their residences, and even to limit phone soliciting.  I found the response was quite welcoming indeed!  I also went to the Winnipeg Folk Festival (The largest of it's kind in N America!) each summer and got thousands of signatures each year!  Bill Blaikie read the petition as well as others.  However, in order to see a petition work at all you need a massive amount of signatures.  In the 90s, although I tried hard, I couldn't get the number I was looking for. 

But recently, because of more environmental consciousness I believe that with networking and aid from other - maybe larger groups too - we can achieve that large number of signatures (Solidarity!)  So, although I am aging and slowing down some - I am going to attempt again - to go across Canada in 2009 and get one million signatures on the petition and then our government(s) will not be able to ignore the issue!