VISION
A global ecosystem of healthy, thriving communities in which regenerative land management cools the planet, feeds the world, and promotes public health, prosperity, and peace.
Photo by Gaetano Cessati on Unsplash
Mission
Regeneration Canada is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting soil regeneration in order to mitigate climate change, restore biodiversity, improve water cycles, and support a healthy food system.
We strive towards this goal by creating spaces for farmers, landowners, scientists, agronomists, businesses, community organizations, governments, and citizens to learn, connect and take action to regenerate soils.
Photo by Kyle Ellefson on Unsplash
Strategy
Raising Awareness
Network Building
Education
Activities
Membership
Local events
Workshops
Symposium
Communication
Public speaking
Activities Report
We are building an interdisciplinary network of soil and climate passionates.
Through our membership platform we create the place to share knowledge and resources, have conversations and make connections with others in the regenerative movement.
For more information on becoming a member, please see here.
We organize local events such as film screenings, festivals and workshops to raise awareness about regenerative land management and to connect local communities.
If you would like to partner with Regeneration Canada to organize an event in your region, get in touch with us!
We offer workshops for elementary school, high school, and university students, as well as for farmers and business representatives, on soil science and regenerative land management principles.
If you would like us to give a workshop in your organization, academic institution or farm, please contact Antonious Petro.
The Living Soils Symposium gathers hundreds of participants from across Canada and the world. Participants are invited to live a creative and meaningful experience over several days.
We host leaders and pioneers of the regenerative movement to discuss the promising solutions that soil provides for climate change and food sovereignty.
We discuss the science, the methodology, the policy, the business and the art of regeneration.
This event is the cauldron in which the shared knowledge of the movement pioneers shapes the emerging landscape of the Canadian regenerative movement.
Throughout our website and website blog, social media, newsletter, web series, member platform and in collaboration with our partners, we raise awareness about regenerative land management and connect with the various stakeholders of the movement.
We welcome collaborations with other regenerative initiatives to spread the word together.
Please contact us if you have an idea or a service to communicate.
We give presentations on soil regeneration, regenerative land management and building a movement for soil regeneration at various types of events.
Please contact us if you would like one of our team members to speak at your event.
Learn more about our 2019-2020 activities in our Annual Activities Report.
Our Story
Regeneration Canada started as a grassroots initiative. A handful of Montrealers with a mutual passion for living soils met up in the fall of 2016 and were inspired to organize an event on this topic in their hometown. While the regenerative movement was already thriving in the United States, it seemed crucial to start spreading the word in Canada. Montreal seemed like the perfect place for such an initiative, at the junction between the U.S., Canada and francophone countries. The Living Soils Symposium Montreal was born.
In light of the incredible level of interest and engagement around the Symposium, Gabrielle Bastien founded Regeneration Canada in May 2017 to pioneer the regenerative movement in Canada beyond the event.
Photo by Nadia Hunt
Team
Meet the core team of people who contribute to the strategy and management behind Regeneration Canada.
Gabrielle Bastien
Founder and Co-director
Gabrielle’s life mission is to promote regenerative land management as a way to mitigate climate change and foster healthy food systems. This passion arose while obtaining her Master’s degree in Sustainability and Environmental Management at Harvard University, completed in 2016, where she realized that soil regeneration presents the greatest opportunity to simultaneously alleviate the food, climate, water and biodiversity crises.
Interested in diving in deeper in the practical aspects of permaculture, Gabrielle did an apprenticeship on Ben Falk’s Whole Systems Design farm in Vermont in 2015 and focused her Master’s thesis on the economic viability of permaculture-inspired farms in Quebec.
Prior to her graduate studies, she obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing at HEC Montréal and gathered years of work experience in communications, project management and event planning.
Gabrielle led the team that launched the Living Soils Symposium Montreal in 2017 and founded Regeneration Canada.
Sarah Barsalou
Co-director
Sarah is a trained lawyer and holds Bachelor’s degrees in both International Studies and in Law. For several years, she practiced as a lawyer representing victims of workplace harassment and was often asked to speak publicly on the issue during live TV or radio shows and newspaper interviews, as well as during workshops and training sessions for employers or the general public.
When she realized the urgency of the state of our planet, she knew she had to work towards finding solutions to combat climate change. She has always been passionate about cooking and sustainable food systems and first started to get involved by volunteering with organizations whose missions relate to food security and sustainable agriculture, like Santropol Roulant, CAPÉ, the 2017 Canadian Food Law Conference, and Regeneration Canada’s first Living Soils Symposium in 2017.
After travelling the world and working on a farm in Italy that integrated many regenerative practices, Sarah joined Regeneration Canada in October 2018. Sarah helped launch the organization’s membership program and is in charge of managing the community of members, creating partnerships as well as expanding its network of leaders in soil regeneration across sectors. She also coordinates a variety of different projects.
Antonious Petro
Co-director
Antonious Petro is Co-director at Regeneration Canada and a Master’s candidate in soil sciences at UQAT. He has an Undergraduate Degree in biology and a Graduate Diploma in community economic development. Antonious is interested in soil carbon sequestration in agricultural soils and in the ecological services of urban soils. He specializes in simplifying and making scientific concepts more accessible, and focuses on ecology, agri-food ecology, sustainability project management, and citizen mobilization around climate change.
Aviva Lessard
Communications Manager
Aviva’s interest in sustainable food systems and regenerative agriculture stems from working on organic farms, volunteering in community gardens, and starting a group aimed at minimizing food waste called the Community Cabbage in Victoria, BC. She is also an avid cook and loves bringing people together through food. She most recently worked in communications at Food Secure Canada.
Aviva completed her graduate diploma at Concordia University in journalism and has worked for CBC and the Montreal Gazette. She loves to tell stories in a compelling and accessible way and is notoriously passionate about podcasts.
During her undergraduate degree in Anthropology at the University of Victoria, she participated in an archaeological dig on the coast of Vancouver Island, created a digital atlas of the 1990 events at Kanehsatà:ke, and made an audio documentary about pigeon racing in Santiago de Cuba.
Jade Heilmann
Project Manager – Map
Jade is a new mom completing her Master’s in Environmental Impact Assessment at Concordia University. She previously studied Neuroscience at McGill and Design at Concordia and considers herself a research geek with high aesthetic standards. Her professional experience is heavily rooted in startup culture and she feels most accomplished streamlining an organization’s operations. Her passion for soil health sprouted while attaining a permaculture design certificate from Earth Activist Training in Northern California where she was inspired by role models such as Doniga Markegaard and Ed Tunheim who opened her eyes to land stewardship as a real, tangible, and timely solution to climate change. As a first-generation settler to Turtle Island, striving to constantly become a better co-conspirator and improving rather than depleting the land is of utmost importance for her. Alongside her soil advocacy, she has been striving toward a Zero-Waste lifestyle since 2014. Her other love is surf and she and her husband roamed the coast between Vancouver and Guatemala in a Westy for almost two years.
Chelsea Kingzett
Network Manager
Chelsea is a settler originating from a mountain town nestled between the traditional territories of the Coast Salish and Interior Salish First Nations and adjacent to small-scale farming towns. Her homelands taught a holistic view of a food system where people are in relation to the food, the cultivators and the land.
Chelsea (she/her) has a B.A. in environment & urban social geography at McGill University and has been working in community-based food systems for six years. She’s a farmer, having coordinated a collective garden for three years, worked two seasons on small-scale ecological and organic farms, and has supported a team of agronomists in agroenvironmental farm planning. Since 2016, she has been training and adapting her engagement approach to include core principles of accessibility, equity, inclusion, anti-oppression, and harm-reduction.
Sara Maranda-Gauvin
Community Engagement Manager
Sara has always been curious, creative and driven by the search for meaning. It is this awareness of transformative possibilities that led her to study international development and cultural studies at McGill. Sara completed internships in social economy and urban agriculture in Peru, and then worked in community housing and early childhood education. Sara’s interest in the food system and its environmental and social impacts blossomed after attending Concordia University’s City Farm School, which allowed her to combine her interest in pedagogy and vegetable gardening. This experience led her to co-found the organization On sème, which develops local seasonal markets and an urban ecological gardening program. From the first Living Soils Symposium, Sara was inspired by Regeneration Canada’s interdisciplinary and multistakeholder approach to regenerative agriculture as a means to climate change mitigation and sustainability. Outside of the professional sphere, Sara likes to garden with her partner while their dog protects the tomatoes from squirrels and groundhogs; and when not gardening, she likes to escape into the Boreal forest wonderland to connect with nature and contemplate its beauty.
Board of directors
Our board of directors is comprised of passionate soil enthusiasts from various sectors who bring a diversity of perspectives to the organization.
Ananda Fitzsimmons
President Co-Founder, Inocucor
Ananda Lynn Fitzsimmons is an out-of-the-box thinker, visionary and environmentalist, with a passion for soil and growing food. She has had lifelong interest in sustainable food production and land management as well as social change and personal empowerment. She spent many years experimenting with microbial potions based on naturally occurring microbes extracted from plants, composts and soil. In 2008, she teamed up with Dr. Margaret Bywater Ekegard and they founded Inocucor Technologies. The company, now called Concentric, commercializes products for agriculture based on consortia of naturally occurring beneficial microorganisms. She now works as a consultant promoting soil health and regenerative land management practices.
Michael Warren
Administrator CEO, Earth Alive Clean Technologies
Michael Warren (B.A. Marketing, Bishop’s U) has founded and grown a number of environmentally focused businesses over the past 20 years. With his natural propensity for adventure and discovery, he has made it a priority to identify innovative earth- and human-friendly business concepts and bring them to world markets. Michael’s interest in organic food has led him to build and manage LFP Solutions, an organic soil inputs distribution company with a focus on living soils. In 2014, LFP joined Earth Alive before going public, and Michael developed the Agriculture division. In May 2017 Michael was appointed CEO of Earth Alive. He regularly speaks on topics of sustainable business development, particularly agriculture, and still finds time to grow organic food on his family farm.
Marie-Élise Samson
Vice President Agronomist and Ph. D. Candidate in soil conservation, Université Laval
Marie-Elise Samson is trying to determine the best agricultural practices to put in place to store carbon in agricultural soils, and fight against climate change. An agronomist by training, she is passionate about fertility and soil health, which in turn can reduce our dependence on synthetic fertilizers.
James Craig
Administrator Farmer, Banker and Collaborator
James and his family practice regenerative agriculture through their farm working with 50 beef cow calf pairs, 80 acres of pasture, and 300 acres of cropland in Ontario. James is fascinated in the regenerative powers of cattle, humans and pasture. Outside of farming, James works as an Account Manager for TD Bank’s Agriculture Services looking after the financing for 100 industry diverse farmers. James is also the Co-initiator for the Perspectives Potluck which is a symposium style event that brings together decision makers with vastly different perspectives to find commonality and build a more resilient food system.
Elham Hajam
Administrator Management and social innovation consultant
Ecological transition and food sovereignty and security are issues that have always touched Elham deeply. After graduating from a Master of Sciences in Management at HEC Montreal, she completed her studies with a research mandate in permaculture and its potential to feed humanity. At the same time, she was involved with Hectare urbain, a project that encompasses the concepts of permaculture, seed conservation and feeding forest. Permaculture inspired so much that she later completed a PDC. As a management and social innovation consultant, she’s carried out mandates for la Maison de l’innovation sociale, ÉAU (Écosystèmes alimentaires urbains) et le Pôle IDEOS (HEC Montréal). In her free time, she loves walking in nature, collecting small treasures found during her walks, and learning about herbalism and indigenous wisdom. She is deeply convinced that they will be our greatest allies for the years to come.
Brenda Tjaden
Secretary Founder, Prairie Routes, Stony Hill Farm and Sustainable Grain
Brenda is a seasoned and energetic agribusiness professional, with broad expertise across the food sector in Canada and internationally. She is currently launching Prairie Routes, a marketing and distribution company that sells ecologically conscious, farm-branded food boxes to customers in the Winnipeg region. Her business also offers soil health education and strategic planning for organizations seeking to implement regenerative principles.
Ross Macdonald
Treasurer Rancher, MSc., P.Ag.
Ross Macdonald is a student of improved stockmanship, horsemanship, grazing management, of selection for low maintenance cattle and long-term resilience whose practice is rooted in grassland ecology. He owns and operates 98 Ranch Inc in Saskatchewan, located on Treaty 4 Territory, with his wife, Christine Peters. The ranch is a cow/calf/yearling and grassfed operation built on a foundation of rangeland health and low-input cattle selection. The cattle generate profit through grazing and converting forages into beef while facilitating grassland ecological function including soil health, increasing effective precipitation, grassland resilience, wildlife habitat and biodiversity. Ross is an advocate for conservation-based land use, regenerative agricultural production system and always strives to be better!
