Text Box: Environmental Education Centre (The Brother Brennan Centre) Vertical Scroll: Canadians now see the Environment as their number one concern. We all know about global warming, have concerns about clean water, species extinction, and habitat loss. However, despite the concerns, many people don’t know how they can make a difference to improve the environment or understand how their actions may be having a negative influence. Unfortunately, with modern day expectations of sterile homes, visits to malls and transport via cars and planes we are tending to become more and more isolated from the natural world, even to the point of sometimes developing ‘biophobia’ - a fear of living things (insects, bacteria, ‘weeds’ etc). Children are growing up in a society that values convenience and appearance more than real necessity. The emphasis of our western culture is on ‘economic growth’ and persuading everyone that ‘more is better’. People are busier than ever, often earning more than ever and trying to give their children opportunities that were unthinkable several years ago. All of this often without realizing that there are environmental consequences to every action. If we want future generations to truly care about the natural world they have to be given opportunities to experience it. Only by experiencing it will they learn to love it and only then will they care enough to want to save it. Here in Newfoundland we are truly fortunate to have vast areas of ‘natural’ environment. Many people truly love it, but there are also many who don’t have the opportunity or time to expose their children to the great outdoors. When students visit the Environmental Education Centre they are immersed in an atmosphere that focuses almost entirely on helping them appreciate the natural environment and on helping them realize how our everyday actions can be affecting the environment, sometimes thousands of miles away. Our philosophy is simple—make the children feel safe and comfortable, give them fun in the outdoors and then they will be able to learn. They learn through hands on environmental activities, through living a policy of ‘little or no waste’ and by being given opportunities to feel a sense of wonder and excitement about the forest, ponds and bogs of our beautiful land. Rachel Carson (The Sense of Wonder, 1956) wrote that she would like to give “Each child in the world .. a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength”. Our visiting students are with us for only two or three days, but in that short time we hope to give them happy memories that last a lifetime and give them ideas to take home for living a more environmentally sensitive life. The work is not complete, but it is an empowering step that can be built on later at school and home.

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Student doing painting of nature sceneBeaver pond adjacent to Father Shea Pond