Top activist to speak at Green Expo
By GALEN EAGLE , EXAMINER STAFF WRITER
Peterborough Green-Up has scored one of Canada’s most influential environmentalists as a speaker for the 2011 Green Expo this spring.
Rick Smith, a prominent Canadian author and environmentalist and executive director of Environmental Defence Canada, will be one of the speakers on tap for the April 30 expo.
Smith was co-author of the 2009 national best-seller Slow Death by Rubber Duck, a book exploring how plastics poison our daily lives.
A biologist by training, Smith completed his doctoral research on an endangered subspecies of freshwater harbour seal in Arctic Quebec with a nearby community of Cree hunters.
From 1997 to 2002 he was executive director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s Canadian office.
Smith led successful high-profile public efforts to end Ontario’s spring bear hunt, won a groundbreaking Supreme Court of Canada ruling striking down the patenting of higher life forms and spurred the adoption of Canada’s first federal Species At Risk Act.
As executive director of Enviro n m e nt a l Defence Canada, Smith is considered one of the country’s leading environmental campaigners with efforts such as the high-profile Toxic Nation campaign, which has tested prominent Canadians for measurable levels of pollutants in their blood.
Other new government policies that he has played a leading role in shaping include the Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt, the largest in the world, Ontario’s Endangered Species Act and Canada’s recent decision to become the first jurisdiction in the world to ban bisphenol A from children’s products.
Peterborough Green-Up runs the annual Green Expo, which is held at the Evinrude Centre.
The theme of the 2011 expo, which runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., is Water: Every Drop Counts. Green-Up is marketing the event throughout Peterborough and surrounding area, and into Belleville, Quinte, Northumberland, City of Kawartha Lakes and Durham Region.
NOTES: The event features exhibits, speakers and information about products and services available that can help promote an ecofriendly lifestyle…. Science journalist Bob McDonald will be the keynote speaker…. A new website has also been launched at www.greenexpo.ca
geagle@peterboroughexaminer.com
