Connecting to people, place and plants – A short story of my internship at Éco de la Pointe-aux-Prairies

23-10-19

Reading time - Temps de lecture: 5 minutes

Have you ever stepped into unknown territory and felt an almost-instant sense of belonging? Did it make you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside because you felt at home, even if you couldn’t yet locate the nearest washroom? Maybe you were excited because you knew you’d come to the right place to make new friends. And,dare I add, feeling a little anxious? That might be because it took you over an hour to drive to so-called ‘unknown territory’ in mid-summer heat and bad, bad traffic with broken air conditioning and Google maps doing a less-than-perfect job of estimating delays… and you think to yourself… well, this better be worth it! At the start of my internship at the Éco de la Pointe-aux-Prairies, that is what I experienced. Warmth and fuzz in my belly, coupled with excitement, and a pinch of anxiety.

Éco de la Pointe-aux-Prairies (Écopap for short) is a non-profit community organization based in Rivière-des-Prairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles, a borough to the far east of Montreal. It is run by a handful of smart, dynamic, and passionate women (and recently, one man) who care about people and the planet. Like me, they dream of a society where each of us has the tools and the knowledge to live more harmoniously with nature. At Écopap, they walk the talk. They promote the adoption of a more sustainable lifestyle through their Éco-boutique. They diffuse knowledge to the general public about environmental issues (and solutions!) through community activities and events. They get their hands in the soil during the gardening sessions and workshops they host at collective and community gardens. Écopap is probably best-known for its push to make urban agriculture a key feature of the borough. By translating the radical ideas of residents into more-realistic-and-actually-feasible but still radical urban agriculture initiatives, they are contributing to creating meaningful change.

As soon as I learned about Écopap’s existence, I knew that doing an internship there simply made sense. Not only is urban agriculture a central theme of my Masters’ research work, but I felt that my knowledge about our local waste management systems (nothing more captivating, I know) and experience with transitioning towards sustainability (in my life outside of academia, I am a sustainability advisor for SMEs) made me a good fit as an intern. Plus, I wanted to gather the secrets and the wisdom of expert gardeners.

Going into the internship, I had five personal objectives.

1. Become an insider of the borough – get to know it through the lens of Écopap’s activities.
2. Network – with the community, and its resident groundhogs.
3. Discover urban agriculture initiatives – and meet the changemakers who lead them.
4. Learn to garden – a superpower, if you ask me.
5. Be useful and helpful to Écopap – how could I contribute meaningfully?

I spent my first day collecting trash while conversing with a city official who explained to me that the public park we were walking through was created out of citizens’ desire to transform an old railway (in terms of objectives, I was killing it). That afternoon was reserved for team-building activities, including watering plants in a garden while blindfolded and having directions shouted at me by multiple individuals I had met hours ago.

Over the following weeks, I helped organize the distribution of hundreds of trees to local residents, I animated a gardening workshop for daycare children, I attended the launch of a collective garden (in mere weeks, an overlooked and overgrown patch of green on the side of a busy road was transformed into a colourful shared space occupied by planter boxes, smart pots and budding plants), I did some research to uncover the secrets of successful gardens elsewhere in the city, and I helped to produce an interactive map of urban agriculture initiatives led and supported by Écopap.

Weekly on Tuesdays, I planted, watered, weeded, and harvested at a collective garden established over a decade ago and still thriving to this day. Here was a place of memorable encounters, compassionate exchange, and care for plants, animals and soil.

Thanks to a serious hustle on the part of all Écopap employees, the local community gathered to celebrate the organization’s 20 years. During this event, I hosted an educational bowling game (no less). I was shocked at how effective a healthy dose of intergenerational competition could be for teaching people how to better manage their waste! I fired questions at participants (‘how do you dispose of….chewing gum?’) and, when participants responded correctly, they bowled for points, throwing a mini softball at a dozen dirty plastic water bottles. I also animated a game where the names of plants had to be associated to their images and seeds. While I cheated on every occasion then, I now can confidently identify mustard, echinacea and marshmallow seeds.

By early Fall, I had connected meaningfully with a community, embarked on a journey of amateur gardening, networked, networked some more, learned about a borough through lived experience, felt inspired by the leaders of promising urban agriculture initiatives, and as far as I know, had been useful and helpful to Écopap. And lest I forget, I sweated through seemingly endless hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Summary: Last Summer, I worked as an intern at Éco de la Pointe-aux-Prairies (Écopap), a not-for-profit community organization whose mission is to educate the public about sustainability. Écopap plays a key role in diffusing and promoting urban agriculture, a central theme of my masters’ research. The experience taught me a lot about a place I knew almost nothing about, about people who love gardening and about growing organically. Through my participation in a diversity of activities and events, I laughed, I networked, and I developed a sense of belonging to Écopap’s dynamic community of changemakers.

Keywords: urban agriculture; community; connections