Halifax

Chris Benjamin  
Faithful Footprints' Atlantic Coordinator 

“Climate justice is core to my faith but cycling to church is not just transportation; it’s meditation, the real beginning of my worship,”

- Christine Boyle, United Church Minister, Vancouver Chapter Organizer, and Director of Fossil Free Faith.

In June, over the duration of two weekends, Faith & the Common Good offered faith communities across Canada a challenge: leave the car behind when traveling to worship in favour of a “low carbon” mode...

It can be exhausting to reduce our environmental impact in a society that tells us to consume and has little substantial regard for ecosystems or creatures beside ourselves. Despite the many merits of walking or biking, cars tend to be much more convenient in cities built for single-passenger vehicle transportation.

Interfaith ‘get to worship without your car’

Did you know that transportation comprises 40% of an average faith community’s carbon footprint?¹ Transportation is the second largest source of Canada’s GHG emissions.² That’s why traveling green is one of the most important ways we can be stewards of our planet.

^{Stephen Sollows, Green Enthusiast at Beacon United Church, sits beside a storm water garden that the church planted to help stop rainwater damage in the Community Garden.}

At 22,000 square feet, Beacon United Church and its attached community space is not easy to heat. Especially so in a cold, humid climate like Yarmouth, a small town of just under 6,800 on the southern-most tip of Nova Scotia.

This report was written by Rev. Margaret Collins for St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church, in Crapaud, PEI (Celebrating 175 Years of Worship & Witness 1841 – 2016). It is part of a report prepared for the Anglican Church of Canada’s “Creation Matters” initiative in partnership with FCG, where by with the help of grants through this ACC’s initiative, 19 Anglican Parishes across Canada participated in FCG’s Green Building Audit between 2014 and 2015. 12 of these parishes have had a year to make some of the improvements recommended for their places of worships. These parishes are planning public events to showcase the audit later on in the year.