Femke Woud's Story

My name is Femke Woud and I moved to Victoria with my family from Toronto, 2.5 years ago. The contrast in air quality, access to nature, and natural beauty that surrounds us here, is something that I appreciate everyday, and makes me respect my friends in Toronto even more for their commitment to bike through that city everyday!

I grew up in the Netherlands and remember biking to school was the most normal thing to do....I don't even remember anybody ever being brought to school by car. In a country the size of Vancouver Island with about 14 million people, bikers and bike lanes are everywhere. However, after an accident in Toronto (where I broke my wrist in two places getting stuck in tram track) I lost confidence in biking through Toronto's busy streets and only biked 'for pleasure' on the bike paths along the lake. Here in Victoria I have regained some of my confidence, and enjoy biking with my daughter, on the back of my dutch bike, through Victoria.

Still, I have to admit that I do drive my daughter to her Waldorf preschool, but carpool with another mom. My partner takes the bus to work everyday which takes him about an hour. He enjoys it.

I feel good about only using natural cleaning products for my house (water and vinegar works wonders and some essential oils for the smell), using organic fertilizer for my new hobby gardening, community composting, using plastic crates for my shopping supplies (or cotton bags, which by the way is 'normal' in Holland...you actually pay $0.25 cents for every plastic bag you purchase and has been like this since I was little in the sixties), eating locally organic foods whenever possible, wearing an extra sweater indoors in the winter, and recycling clothes and toys. My next project is to get our house assessed for energy conservation/loss. Kari, you inspired me!

My own personal passion is in studying and using the power of 'energy medicine' (acupuncture, shiatsu, homeopathy and quantum healing) as the medicine of the 21st century, and exposing the truths about pharmaceutical companies and their questionable goals in true health. I feel honored to be part of this great initiative here in Victoria.

Femke Woud (Shiatsu Therapist)

Kari Jones' Story

My name is Kari Jones. I live with my family in Victoria. My climate change story is about renovating my house. Two years ago my husband and I started renovating the basement of our house in Fairfield. We tore everything out of the basement, leaving only the structural stuff like the beams and struts. Then we called City Green Victoria to come and do an energy audit of the house. Their representative, Wendy, came and checked the whole house—the windows, the doorways, the attic, everything. Then she put a huge fan contraption in our front doorway and measured how many air exchanges we had each hour.

A normal house that is moderately well insulated is supposed to have 3-4 air exchanges in a hour. We had 12. Yyppes…..

Wendy gave us a number of suggestions such as putting a thicker insulator in the basement walls before we rebuilt and adding a vapour barrier to wick out moisture. Over the next six months we slowly built our basement back up, replacing single paned windows with double paned ones, putting in warm and beautiful (though kinda’ expensive) cork flooring, and insulating for all we were worth. When we were done Wendy came back for a follow up visit, and phew… we are down to 6 air exchanges an hour.

Still more work to go, obviously. We have to insulate the upstairs and get better insulation in the attic. But we’re on the right track. Our house is so much warmer! And… our heating costs are half what they once were.

I’m looking forward to meeting everyone somewhere between Nelson and Victoria!

Kari Jones, Co-author of Hiking Adventures for Children