Adria Vasil helps you to make your home greener

"We spend so much time at home—why not make it a sustainable haven instead of a polluting, off-gassing cesspool?”

Yeah, why not? Come and learn from Adria Vasil how you can make your home greener. Her new book, Ecoholic Home: The Greenest, Cleanest and Most Energy-Efficient Information Under One Roof, has just been released, and Octopus Books is excited to co-host the launch with Arbour Environmental Shoppe.

The launch will take place at the Arbour Environmental Shoppe (800 Bank St) on Monday November 9 at 7:00 pm. Free Admission.


Ecoholic Home offers reminders and tips on how to keep your castle (however humble or small) clean, energy-efficient and healthy. The book addresses the green side of the economic crisis, and includes a resource guide for finding designers and contractors, and for renovating and shopping green.

Ecoholic Home is the highly anticipated follow-up to the massively successful and bestselling Ecoholic.

Sunny Saturday at the Main Farmers' Market

What a relief it was to wake up for a sunny morning on October 17 --- the outdoor event with Thomas Pawlick wouldn't be blown away by an autumn storm!

Indeed quite the opposite, for at 11 am when Pawlick started to talk about his newest book "The War In The Country", the Main Farmers' Market was autumnal warm and sunny, and buzzing with people. In his speech Pawlick emphasized the importance of locally produced products in order to keep our food nutritious and safe. He encouraged the audience to support local farmers and congratulated the market and its vendors for good work: "The goal is to have as many farmers' markets as there are supermarkets!"

Market Manager Greer introducing Thomas Pawlick.

Crowd listened carefully what Pawlick had to say about decreasing levels of nutrients in our food, factory farms and government politics towards small scale farmers.

The winner of the lunch with the author was a two-week-old baby! She and Thomas enjoyed the delicious food of the Green Door Restaurant and saw eye to eye on things.

Buy a book! Participate the free raffle! Come to our next event!

Only three days more...

... to the amazing 40th birthday party!

Excitement is building up as the details are being finalized.

Invitations have been sent to left and left... Posters have been (and are still being) spread all over the city… Delicious snacks have been ordered… Cake, the beautiful Octopus cake, has been ordered… Decorations for Friday evening are being prepared… Final to-do-lists are being made and lost and re-made… “Whatelsewhatelsewhatelse, have we forgotten something” is being thought. And re-thought. And re-thought.

Yes, we might have forgotten something that we don’t even know about yet. But after all, all that matters are people. YOU. That you will come to the party, enjoy your time there, share your story, share your experiences in and memories of the store with us and with the many other Octopus-friends. With your help, the store has been kept alive for forty years and we wish to thank you and celebrate with you on Friday

See you soon!

BDAY PARTEEE!

It's hard to figure out how to mark the 40th birthday of a bookstore that has seen hundreds of people behind the scenes, keeping it alive and thousands of customers who have stuck with us through it all. BUT! We think we have done it - a little something for everyone who has helped make it what it was, what it is and what it will be.

If you have ever volunteered, worked, shopped or visited the store please join us for a great celebration of all that is good in the world!

(www.pinkcakebox.com)

Friday October 30, 2009

The Carleton Tavern 223 Armstrong Avenue (at Parkdale and Armstrong)

Doors open at 6:30

7:00 Jean-Claude Parrot (of CUPW fame) - his theme "the past 40 years - where have we been,where are we going?"

8:00 Jennifer Whiteford (local author and one time Octopus staff member ) will read some of her newest work

9:00 Archival Footage - a fabulous local band will kick off the musical portion of the evening (p.s. three former Octopus staff members in this band!)

10:00 The Brothers Creeggan

11:00 The Bidiniband

It promises to be a night of fun, friends and fabulous entertainment.. Please join us for all or some of it!

www.davebidini.ca
www.brotherscreeggan.com
www.myspace.com/archivalfootage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Parrot

Thomas Pawlick brings The War In The Country to Ottawa

After a looooong blog silence we're on fire today... second post within half an hour!

We're getting very excited about our next 40th anniversary event - the launch of The War In The Country - How The Fight To Save Rural Life Will Shape Our Future by Thomas F. Pawlick.

The book launch will take place on Saturday at 11 a.m. at a fresh, local and organic venue - the Main Farmers' Market (223 Main St.) Come early to fill your shopping basket with local products! www.mainfarmersmarket.org

In addition, we'll have a raffle: two lucky winners will go home with a copy of the new book, and one lucky winner will take Mr. Pawlick for a a lunch at the Green Door Restaurant.



Pawlick's new book The War In The Country is a provocative look at rural communities and a passionate call to arms to save them. Rural life in North America has changed dramatically over the past fifty years and the few remaining family farms now struggle to survive. They have been replaced by corporate-backed factory farms, mining interests, and large-scale tourism developments, all favoured by governments with little understanding of or sympathy for traditional rural life—a life that is sustainable and healthy.

Pawlick, himself a farmer, uses the microcosm of his own rural community in eastern Ontario to portray the groups involved around the world who are waging a war to save their rural way of life. The outcome of these clashes will decide not only the future of rural life globally but also the quality and sustainability of our food, our water, our soil, and our air—of the environment on which we depend for survival. The War in the Country argues, passionately and persuasively, that every one of us must join the fight to secure our food future.

Thomas F. Pawlick has more than thirty-five years of experience as a journalist and editor, specializing in science, environmental, and agricultural reporting. He is a three-time winner of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association Award and received a National Magazine Award for his agricultural reporting.

Flashback from August

Better late than never... If you missed our August 26 event We All Have A Right To The Truth or want to refresh your memory, you can finally watch the presentations and Q & A session at:

http://www.vimeo.com/6636789 (presentations)
http://www.vimeo.com/6636560 (Q & A)

You can also listen or download the Rabble podcast at:

http://www.rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/needs-no-introduction/2009/08/we-all-have-right-truth-surveillance-detention-interrog

The event with its heavy topic - violation of the human rights and civil rights, increasing surveillance, torture, and accountability - attracted over 80 people to the Glebe Community Center. Moderated by Carleton U human rights instructor, Bill Skidmore, the two-hour discussion was enlightening and thought provoking.

The first speaker, Abdullah Almalki, a Canadian who was detained and tortured in Syria based on the information provided by the Canadian government agencies, told that the release from the Syrian prison in 2004 was only a beginning for a new struggle – search for justice in Canada: “My life has been destroyed, my family has been severely affected and a good number of Canadian citizens have faced similar ordeals but until today not a single government official has been held accountable.”

Yavar Hameed, the counsel for Abousfian Abdelrazik (another Canadian whose civil rights were violated by the government) pointed out the need for solid journalism in order to make cases like this public, and to correct the misinformation that the government tends to spread whenever higher levels of governance are or have been involved. Hameed also reminded the audience about the importance of grass roots involvement: in Abdelrazik’s case, the project Fly Home was launched and over 100 courageous Canadians helped to purchase a ticket for him, even though they could have been subjected to federal prosecution.

The final speaker, Maureen Webb, the author of Illusions of Security, linked Almalki’s and Abdelrazik’s experiences to the new global security environment. This environment, including the creation of global registration system and the global surveillance of movement has lead to intensified international data sharing and mining. “Surveillance is used not just to follow up on leads, but rather to generate leads. And it’s used even more alarmingly, to predict who among us might be a terrorist.”

We All Have A Right To The Truth

Here at Octopus Books, we been watching closely as case ofter case of Canadian citizens having their civil rights trampled by CSIS, the RCMP, and the government keep making the news... barely. Instead of just reading about the torture of Canadians and the creation of a tiered citizenship in Canda, we decided to confront the issues and celebrate our 40th anniversary all at the same time by hosting an evening of discussion with Abdullah Almalki, Yavar Hameed, Maureen Webb, and Bill Skidmore.

Wednesday August 26, 7:00 pm

Scotton Hall (Main Hall)

Glebe Community Center

175 Third Ave.

Admission is free. Wheelchair accessible.

We All Have A Right To The Truth is a panel discussion on the shocking abuses of civil rights of Canadian citizens by our government. Please join us to learn from and discuss about the experiences of:

Abdullah Almalki - Canadian citizen who was detained, interrogated and tortured in Syria.

Yavar Hameed - Human rights lawyer, counsel for Abousfian Abdelrazik

Maureen Webb - Human rights lawyer, co-chair of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and author of Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Bill Skidmore, who teaches human rights at Carleton University and is particularly interested in torture and other forms of political repression, as well as the impact of warfare on human rights.