Earth Day is right around the corner and the Forest City’s Earthfest “is set to be Canada’s biggest celebration.”
Featuring more than 80 interactive exhibits ranging from music, art, games and speakers, this year’s free event happening in downtown London will be arranged in themed zones including Water, Climate Action, Nature, Local Food, Bike Zone, and more.
Heenal Rajani, Earthfest coordinator, wrote in a statement that the 2023 celebration “aims to raise awareness of the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental well-being, to celebrate the work of London’s environmental community, and to provide opportunities for learning, volunteering, and collective action, with a focus on reconciliation and respectful relationship with the earth and its peoples.”
London’s first Earthfest took place on the grounds of Victoria Park last year, with over 350 attendees and 30 exhibitors.
Mary Ann Hodge, an organizer of Earthfest, said that she was left “feeling uplifted” following the 2022 celebrations, saying she looks forward to seeing how the event unfolds this weekend.
“We started off with a goal of getting 50 exhibitors out and we’ve roughly doubled that,” she said. “So we’re quite hopeful that our hopes for the attendance of Londoners will also exceed our expectations.
She added that “too often, Earth Day is seen as the day to clean up the earth and clean up our messes. But there’s a growing movement around the celebration of the earth, and that we have been slowly losing our connection it, and this is one day to remind us that we really need to get back into that connection.”
This year’s organizing committee said that “embedded in Earthfest is the desire to celebrate the Indigenous understandings of living in harmony with nature.”
Speaking with Global News Thursday, Ron Hill, cultural resource coordinator at N’Amerind Friendship Centre, said that the now annual event is not just important for environmental sustainability, but for reconciliation.
“Not the new terminology that we’re using, but reconciliation in a way of thinking that encourages us to be more responsible to Mother Earth,” he said. “We need to ensure that it’s in place for the next generations. For our great, great grandchildren to be able to go into the bush, or swim in the lakes, or enjoy the outdoors. So it’s important that we keep that in mind.”
Hodge added that “we need to be walking together with the Indigenous communities in the area to really embrace the fact that we do need to be developing and strengthening our relationship with the earth.”
Heather Jerrard, owner of My Landscape Artist, will be talking at Earthfest about ways one can connect to nature through various forms of meditation in the woods such as forest bathing, or grounding.
“It’s the idea or the concept of being connected physically to the earth, without anything manmade impeding that electronic exchange between yourself, your body and the earth,” she said. “I’m a big believer in the healing power of gardening and gardens, healing spaces that are outside, even just the colour green has a whole bunch of healing benefits, which still blows my mind.”
“There’s an extraordinary healing power that we have access to in our gardens,” Jerrard continued. “They’ve helped me heal, they’ve helped me become a better person, a better designer, and if I can help share that passion and that love and education about what these green spaces can do for us, for our mental health, for our wellbeing by bringing people together and creating a sense of community by doing things together in the garden, that’s something really powerful that I’m excited to be sharing with everyone.”
Earthfest 2023 will take place this Saturday, Earth Day, at Dundas Place, Citi Plaza and the Central Library from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
For more information, visit earthfestlondon.ca.