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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-CA link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>England is certainly far and away ahead of North America in terms of green burials. Canada only has 2 “green” cemeteries (Cobourg and one of the Vancouver islands) at this point. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>My project for the Ecopreneurs class was to pitch a green business, so I’ve already done some research into what is currently available and where I’d like to see us go. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Museums and taxidermists already use dermestid beetles to consume the flesh and leave just skeletal remains. But a taxidermist in the US said fat can be a big issue. Then I thought whales – lots of blubber that has obviously been successfully dealt with to produce the skeletons we see in museums. You may recall the big blue whale that washed up on the east coast and the county there couldn’t afford to deal with it. The ROM in Toronto took charge of it and they’ve been composting it in huge shipping containers. Quite the operation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>And here’s where life gets interesting. The company that was hired to do this is owned by the brother of Janet May, formerly the anti-pesticide activist at the Toronto Environmental Alliance and now a friend of mine. And the only reason I know this is that our respective families met up in cottage country a few years back when we were cottaging in the same area and there had just been an article about her brother in the local cottage rag. I like when the universe comes full circle. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I corresponded with the directors of two “body farms”, that you mentioned here, Greg. (attached to U of Tennessee actually, and in Australia.) Both women. The Aussie was in Canada for several years, an academic who started up the Forensics programme at U of Ontario in Whitby). She turned me in the direction of dermestid beetles. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>So I’m getting over my life-long anxieties about death and dying. The progressive re-absorption of any dead creature, human or otherwise, back into earthly atoms is fascinating with its succession of maggots, bugs and internal digestive acids. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>When my mother died, I was surprised how important it was to me, at least initially, to have a “location” for her (and now my father). I’m hoping that as we rethink dying and death, the ceremony for the bereaved will become far more important in the grieving process than the need for a specific burial site...as fascinating as old graveyards are and the stories they tell. 8-)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Susan K <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Gregory C. Michalenko [mailto:gcmichalenko@uwaterloo.ca] <br><b>Sent:</b> 3 May 2016 11:31<br><b>To:</b> Susan Koswan<br><b>Cc:</b> executive-bounces@gren.ca<br><b>Subject:</b> RE: [GREN-Exec] my plans for the next year<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>Dear Susan, <o:p></o:p></span></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>I've read reports on "green" burials in England. i suspect that administrative logistics will eat up a lot of your time at the outset, but then you are very capable at jousting with planners and bureaucrats, as well as stubborn but weak-kneed politicians.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>There are lots of unofficial burials, however, that avoid such problems of officialdom. I used to watch a BBC travel program on PBS that featured a wacky UK traveler who went around the US visiting really weird places. One program included a visit to a forensic burial research facility in Virginia. Once through the secure fences and entrance to the facility in a pleasant area of farms and small forests, things got pretty spooky. Corpses donated "for scientific purposes" were strewn about, buried, or disposed of in a bewildering variety of ways. There was a rusty old car with its trunk lid ajar and a well-weathered leg sticking out. Its next-"door" neighbour's extremities were poking out from under a heap of leaves and garden trash. Another donation was eroding out from a faithful replica of a hurried night-time burial (what the press refers to as "a shallow grave"). There were dumpsters of various sorts, lids on or lids off, some with just a body within, others with bodies poked into the usual accumulation of pizza boxes, old clothing, garbage bags, broken toys, soiled pampers, and household detritus of all sorts. There were many mounds positioned in different types of soil, designed to determine the rotting chronologies of the wealth of different soil ecosystems with their teaming menageries of delighted specialist necrophagists. And then there was the matter of clothing: none, some, or fully decked out; organic cottons vs the most microorganism-resistant of synthetics (something that is probably bitterly detested by the awaiting hungry and disappointed bacteria and fungi). The facility was scientifically designed NOT to be scavenger-proof, and some stiffs were just dumped into the woods, and voluminous data meticulously recorded about the ability of the local critters to tuck into the unexpected feast and scatter the hard parts. The featured traveler noted that the place "didn't smell very nice".<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>Such wonderful opportunities await you, dear Susan! Good luck!<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>All the best, Greg<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>ps Full disclosure:<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'> (1) I follow the Bosma murder trial every day. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>(2) I love old cemeteries. They really trigger my emotions. What could be more achingly poignant than the grave, on a wind-swept headland in the Iles de la Madeleine, of Marie, wife of a fisherman lost at sea, buried with 3 predeceased children aged 3, 4, and 8, along with an inscription on the side of the old rugged stone "and 2 infants, buried somewhere in these islands"? <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>(3) Our much-loved felines, Dusty, Tilley, Gizmo, and just this last January 24, Shadow (who had belonged to a street kid) have all had eco-burials in the native plant corner of our yard, beneath the alternate-leaved dogwood, redbud, wild ginger, maidenhair ferns, twinleaf, dutchmen's breeches, and various wood sedges. Oh yeah, I forgot, also dandelions, which I know you approve of.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>A speculation: if Gaia does Know All, perhaps those who ecoslumber in the enveloping substrata of our ancient woods, can hear it when a migratory white-throated sparrow announces that it is early spring, or take comfort from a prothonotary warbler in the boundary layer of life between terra-firma and the cosmos which surely has its own comforting cadence, every bit as brilliant as it shining plumage is to the human eye<o:p></o:p></span></p><div><div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:black'><hr size=2 width="100%" align=center></span></div><div id=divRpF560368><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:black'> Executive [executive-bounces@gren.ca] on behalf of Susan Koswan [susankoswan@execulink.com]<br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, May 02, 2016 3:16 PM<br><b>To:</b> 'GREN Executive'<br><b>Subject:</b> [GREN-Exec] my plans for the next year</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Hi GREN Exec,</span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> </span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Just wanted to let you know that I will be taking a hiatus from GREN for Sept/16 to May/17 because I was accepted full time into the Green Management Certificate program at Conestoga. Not sure if this is woohoo...or am I out of my *<b>expletive</b>* mind???? </span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> </span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>I took the Ecopreneurship class this winter and quite enjoyed it and even scored an 89 for my final mark. (Yes, I’m bragging a little bit here). My somewhat ulterior motive in doing this is to build my skill-set to create a real business plan for a true eco-friendly process for preparing and disposing of human remains (ie green burial) that doesn’t involve embalming or cremation – which are both nasty, nasty, nasty, environmentally-speaking.</span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> </span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>I have some ideas that I’ve been researching, if you’re interested. Not totally for the faint-hearted or squeamish, but I think there is a growing niche-market ... 8-)</span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> </span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Susan K </span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> </span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'> </span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>