The people are the place
Today I showed two visitors from Montreal around CERES Brunswick East.
I pick them up early outside their hotel to beat the heat.
We walk into the park and apart from a community gardener soaking their tomatoes before the clouds burn off there isn’t a soul around.
Wandering through the empty playground past the giant millipede, through the Indonesian village and the compost heaps, down past the fruit trees on the Village green, the shell of the old ATA building and the Bike Group, passing the paper-making tables, the Eco House and through the energy park into the human-powered classroom I find myself struggling to explain what CERES is.
Later when CERES Grocery opens we grab some breakfast and look out over the Honey Lane farm.
Below us a farmer arrives to check the drip irrigation lines in the garden beds.
A magpie and its fledgling lands on the fence beside my delighted guests. I explain there are two resident magpie families here and that over the years the Site Crew have come to know all of them by name.
People wander in through the archway and say hello on their way to shop or sit down for a coffee.
On a bench beside us a girl not more than four years old calmly reassures her dad that everything’s going to be alright before skipping off to put her icy pole stick in the bin.
And just like that the park is alive and my Canadian companions are wishing out loud that they had a CERES in Quebec.
It’s funny but without the kids playing, farmers in garden beds, cyclists fixing bikes, shoppers picking up produce, school groups making paper, people learning how to compost, this park is just a collection of classrooms, offices, shops, sheds, gardens and play equipment.
And while I’ve been stumbling about with my guests attributing beliefs to our buildings, principles to the playground, vision in our veggie beds actually the people are this place.
And as I drive them back to their hotel the long way down around Yarra Bend and through Collingwood I look at my city through visitors’ eyes but it’s not the old shopfronts along Johnston St I see now.
It’s all of us.
We’re this place.
The good and the hard.
The sweet and the sour.
Just us.
Pretty much all over the place.
Have a great week
Chris
Our first delivery for 2025 is this Tuesday 7th of January. Orders close 7pm Monday.
