Transition Town North Bay began in early 2009 when Dr. James Truong, an emergency room physician, became very concerned about peak oil and the increased number of patients he was seeing who were suffering from environmentally induced illness.  Looking for a support system, James was referred to Jeremy St. Onge, a local environmentalist who teaches the environmental technology course at Canadore College.  

Serendipitously, Jeremy's mom had just sent him an email about Transition Town Peterborough.  News of this fledgling movement fired Jeremy's hope...a description of a community strategy for dealing with climate change and possible food shortages.  

One phone call, one meeting, and two servings of falafel later, Transition Town North Bay was born.

The Transition Handbook gives a model and an antidote for dealing with the personal isolation of being one of the few people who understands the seriousness of peak oil and climate change.  It provides a means of networking with others who have similar concerns, and helping your local community become better prepared for the future.

It was in my university years that I began to see beyond my little world of family, friends and place to the global village. I especially recall the injustices in South America ....this deeply troubled me. When Robin and I were deciding to sponsor a 3rd world child .... I struggled with the dilemma ...'we should be helping communities become more sustainable not just one child!'  My theme song: sustainability involves social environmental and economics.

As a teenager, I lived in Germany, Dad was in the Armed Forces. On one of our school field trips we visited a forestry station. I was very drawn to this service of managing forests, taking care of it and everything to do with it. I enrolled in a College Program hoping to learn how to recreate this  job for myself.... instead I found myself taking  inventory of the forest .... not what I had in mind!

I switched to the University program for Community Development. This exposed me to the Natural Step, a global non-profit organization committed to helping communities and businesses become sustainable.

"We need to step back, reconnect with our neighbors and nature." Jeremy St Onge.

Jeremy....  life partner with Lucy.... a dad....a trapper....a fisherman.....a gardener....a neighbor and a teacher at Canadore College. Interdependency and access to local food production builds resiliency. Jeremy is familiar with survival. He grew up in the country with a small hobby farm. The local animals and birds fascinated him. He could not imagine doing anything else with his life!

He obtained his Biology Degree from Nipissing University and Canador College and for the past four years has been teaching the Environmental Technology Program.

Jeremy and Lucy with their three children value independence. They are both Biologists. They have chosen a very simple life style. Both know how to grow and harvest their own food and how to trap and fish. They enjoy sharing this knowledge with others.

Jeremy’s hopes for Transition Town North Bay are:

• to help people get to where they want to be
• to bring community together
• to foster food projects like Community Gardens

Lucy feels that ‘food security’ can be exciting because each day we get to choose our relationship with food! Food security is approachable – not like solving the atomic energy struggle!

Jeremy does a lot of ‘glouting’, he’s free to live a simple life style. He likes to bring people together to share good food and good conversation.

Scott Daley is a practicing physician in North Bay who is active in the environmental and sustainability movement. He understands the importance of environmental and social justice as a determinate in good health outcomes for the people of Canada and our world.

Dr. Daley received a degree in Biochemistry from the University of New Brunswick and completed medical school at Dalhousie University in Halifax Nova Scotia. He pursued residency training in Family Medicine in Alberta and an additional year of Emergency Medicine Training in Northern Ontario.

Dr.  Daley is currently working as an Emergency Room Physician at the North Bay Regional Health Centre and currently serves  as the Chief of Emergency Medicine. He previously served on the local board as President of the Medical Staff. He is the founding member of the Ferris Medical Clinic which has been able to attract new physicians to the area and has served as a vital link in providing medical care for patients without access to a family doctor. Scott has been a strong advocate for health promotion and has been actively involved in the campaign for eliminating smoking and junk food from hospitals.

Dr Daley is a founding board member of Transition Town North Bay.

Retirement, for Kay, is the beginning of a new vocation in which she feels called to the Earth.  Originally from the Alberta prairies, she breathes more easily when the horizon is in view.  Living within steps of Lake Nipissing feeds her soul.    

Kay’s earlier vocation was ministry where she specialized in experiential education.  For many years she taught in a feminist theological school in Toronto, preparing [mostly] women for ministry in United and Anglican churches.  Her feminism was heightened, and her innate love for the earth became a passion, especially when she discovered the connection of women to nature and the oppression of both women and nature by patriarchy.  In 1970 Kay was living in downtown Toronto and riding her bicycle to work well before it had become accepted as a mode of travel.   Her friends learned to dress warmly when they visited because she kept the house cool…yet her young son survived just fine and remains a joy in her life.

Along with her two sisters Kay played in a family trio all her growing years.  Now, in retirement, she is returning to music---playing violin with the North Bay Symphony, in string quartets, and teaching beginner violinists.

Kay first encountered Transition Town through a United Church Observer article [January 2009]. Shortly after she saw a video of TT Totnes and was inspired by its vision . Kay believes that TT has the potential to turn the world around, towards life instead of death, through respect for the land, the water, the beings on this earth.

Hi, my name is Sharon Miller and I am one of six directors on the Founding Board of Transition Town North Bay.

For a long time, I stared at the water caressing the rocks, the diamonds on Lake Nipissing, sun dancing with waves.... Was it really 40 years ago, as a young Sister of St Joseph full of hopes and dreams for a gentler world that I first experienced this encounter?

Those dreams carried me twice around the world, training healers in Canada, USA, Nepal and India. Those hopes carried me to 13 different Indian Reserves .... both as healer and as student. My Psych PhD, gave me the opportunity to share many heartfelt moments with those suffering from addictions.

Forty years later, today I know that the words of Brian Swimme speak to my hopes and dreams. "The Universe is seeking new patterns of emergence. The Universe can surprise us beyond what we can imagine."  I believe that the universal surprise Swimme refers to is the positive synergy that comes from working, living and doing together. The Universe is US, you and I. Our present challenge is to construct livable cities and to cultivate healthy foods in ways congruent with Earth’s patterns.

Transition Town North Bay provides us a platform to enhance and evolve our local community in reaching for this resiliency.