When Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon released their book The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating in 2007, I don’t know if they realized it would become a media phenomenon. But that’s exactly what happened. Smith and MacKinnon instantly became an important part of an environmental wave in Canada that made many of us take a much closer look at how we ate and where our food came from.
But like many great ideas, the inspiration for dedicating an entire year to eating food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Kitsilano apartment in Vancouver began simply.
“It really all started with this one meal we had in northern B.C., in this cabin that we own and stay in part of each year,” says James. “There's no road access there – you have to get in by boat or by train – so you can't just run out to the corner grocery or the supermarket. We put together a meal out there that was totally drawn off the local landscape … and it turned into this incredibly flavourful meal, because everything was just so fresh.” And that one delicious meal, harvested with their own hands, really got the two thinking.
Since Earth Day is on April 22, Smith and MacKinnon seemed the perfect team to create this playlist for us. Here are their picks:
1. “Moon Over Marin” by Les Thugs.
MacKinnon: “I worked as a reporter for an alternative newsweekly during the 1993 logging road blockades in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island – scene of the largest mass arrests in Canadian history at the time. There was still a lot of Janis Joplin, etc. in the air, but some of us had grown up in the punk scene and, well, we found each other. I remember driving to the blockades at 5 a.m. listening to this Les Thugs cover of the Dead Kennedys classic. The song has since evolved into punk's answer to Silent Spring – it continues to endure, with new covers emerging every few years, including a recent one by Matthew Good.”
2. “Summer of Fear Pt. 2” by Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson.
MacKinnon: “I think most people – other than those in deep denial – have had a moment when climate change suddenly changes from a theoretical threat into something you really feel. For me, it was driving through B.C. in the middle of a heat wave several years ago. Wildfires had broken out all over the place; by day the sky was yellow with smoke, and by night flames glowed in the mountains. It was balefully surreal – for the first time in my life, the weather seemed unnatural. When I hear Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson sing about his summer of fear, this is what I think of.”
3. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by the Proclaimers.
Smith: “This is a great hiking song. In fact, I had it in my head one day during the craziest hike I ever did – I walked over 100 miles [180 kilometres] in a week, from my front door in Vancouver to the wilderness of Chilliwack Lake. My feet were very sore. I definitely felt like the one falling down at your door, as the lyrics say.”
4. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Ingrid Michaelson.
Smith: “Recently I had an environmental dream, and it had a soundtrack, too. While I had never heard of Ingrid Michaelson, her rendition of this old Elvis song captures the way it was in my dream. I was standing on a bridge over a canyon, like one on the Skeena River in northern B.C. – so beautiful. But I was sad because the last wild salmon swimming through the river were going to be extinct soon. I hope my dream doesn’t come true.”
5. “Stadium Love” by Metric.
MacKinnon and Smith: “Why this song? Because it has animals in it. Because of the line, "Every living thing, pushed into the ring," which kind of captures the state of things at this point in history. But mostly because it's a love-fueled fighting song, and make no mistake, real change is going to take a fight.”
Related links: