“As they’re about to turn 50, and wanting to adopt a more healthy lifestyle, Josée and Michel decide to plant a vegetable garden outside their home in the suburbs of Drummondville, Quebec. Their backyard had little sun exposure, so they decide to set up the garden in the front yard. Once the garden beds are in place and the vegetables have started growing, the city asks them to remove their garden to put lawn back, but the couple decides to fight.”
YouTube
Thanks again to Jay for finding another good site.
More videos where this came from.
C. McDee:
I suggest looking through this couple’s blog to get the specific answers you seek.
Their blog is in French
http://lepotagerurbain.blogspot.ca/
For those interested, here is a google translated link to English, but it’s also easy for someone to translate it to just about any other language they choose using the google menus at the top.
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Flepotagerurbain.blogspot.ca%2F&act=url
I really love this one. I especially love it when you “stick it to the man”. Haha. Way too much government, be it city, county, state and of coarse federal. All people want to do is live and have “rights” on their own property. It seems American government has dirtied Canadian government too. I’m real glad for these and other like minded people of Canada. Great garden! Great video! Great post Owen!
Beautiful garden. Being in Quebec I suppose your winters are very cold. What do you grow during the winter? Also, do you can, freeze, root cellar, dehydrate your bounty to get through the winter?
They well get sued by Monsanto! Nice nanny country we have. The whole thing about food not being identified as GMO or not is really bugging me. I wont eat any seafood anymore. I think it is either chemically poisoned or radio active. I don’t think there are many places where you can grow veggies in your front yard without getting hassled or fined. (sad)
My favorite part of this video is when they describe how they organized 1000 emails per day to be sent to every city council member. It was part of their petition system. That was genius.
I can imagine that it was difficult for the council to conduct any other business because of the flood of messages over one citizen’s front yard.
People shouldn’t have to go to such lengths over something like this, but that’s the kind of world we live in now. I look forward to the day when hundreds or hopefully thousands of politicians are replaced by those with more reasonable minds. It can’t happen soon enough.
Yowsers! Thanks for posting Ken O’Keefe’s talk. It’s beautiful and inspiring. Living on the edge of the Middle East (Turkey), it touched me deeply. The Media is key to transforming the consensus regarding geopolitics. And humanizing ‘the other’ is an integral part of breaking down walls of hate and fear. ‘The majority of the world just want to live dignified lives.’ So true. What a super project. It reminds me of the Gezi TV channels set up this year in Turkey in response to the mass media blackout throughout the protests. And it had a massive impact, not least in that everyone realized just how many people there were that were sick of the status quo… Interesting times indeed.
Ken is doing great work. I hope more people watch that video. This is the sort of high level project that can bring major change. And I sure hope the housing project we’ve been working on gets built. It could turn into one of the largest natural building projects in the world if it goes as planned. I’ve been itching to report on it, but have to wait for Ken’s go-ahead. His TV show may set the project back…
I like his point that we have the power to change and improve things, we just have to realize we have that power. Sometimes the systems seem immovable, but we have to remember they were created by us.
I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Ken O’Keefe. We’ve been working together on a major housing project. He’s just started a TV show in London called the Middle East Show. Ken is very intelligent and well spoken. He ties together everything going on in the world with events in the Middle East. The same corrupt governmental system is at the root of so many of our problems — and that includes bureaucratic overreach that makes it very difficult to build your own affordable housing. These issues are all interrelated as he so aptly explains. Here’s an intro to his show. Ken is a great guy. Please spread the word.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeQUXe15qMU
Such a great story. I agree Owen. The bureaucrats need to be led sometimes. There was a similar story in Portland with the City Repair Project where they wanted to turn a neighborhood intersection into a plaza for the neighbors to congregate. The city turned them down when they asked because they said it was illegal. The neighbors got together anyway, painting the street with a mosaic, adding benches and books and other implements. The project was a success and the city came back and made a new ordinance to make it legal. If something makes sense, you just have to give the bureaucrats some of their own bullshit back sometimes and do it anyway. It’s often the only way anything changes.
Yep.
This is a prime example of how bureaucrats go too far and enact ridiculous regulations.