Contact:
Anne Gagnon

TRU Canadian Studies Coordinator and
Director, Centre for the Study of Canada,
(p) 828-5057

The Thompson Rivers University’s Centre for the Study of Canada invites the public to a lecture by James (J.B.) MacKinnon, co-author of The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating on Thursday, March 6, 2008 from 12:30 to 2:30pm in OM 2621, with a public reception to follow.

When James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born.

The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They discovered a host of new flavours from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to purslane, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep.

MacKinnon and Smith are credited with raising society’s awareness of “food miles” and challenging the way we think about food.

The talk is to celebrate Canadian Studies Day and is sponsored by the TRU Canadian Studies program along with the TRU Human Rights Committee, the Department of Philosophy, History and Politics, and the Council of Canadians. Members of the campus and general public are invited to this lecture and dialogue about food security and environmental sustainability.

J.B. MacKinnon, winner of three National Magazine Awards and the 2006 Charles Taylor Prize for his book Dead Man in Paradise and Alisa Smith, a freelance writer published in Outside, Explore, Canadian Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Utne, among other periodicals, and have since become “celebrities of the blogosphere” while Maclean’s magazine named them to its 2006 Honour Roll and they were also named to the Outside 100.