“Make your world your world,” Mr. Smiley said as he walked along a new 6.2-mile nature trail on the inn’s converted golf course. If you make small daily changes, like reducing waste and eliminating plastic, you will feel good.”
Deep River, Ontario
“I think the climate crisis can cause people to have such paralysis, like it’s almost too little, too late,” said Shannon MacLaggan, who created Anupaya Cabin Co., with her husband Pete, as a wilderness retreat and incubator for climate action. in 2021. “There are huge esoteric concepts about how to address global warming, but this is something tangible and applicable.”
The 12-acre property (nightly rates from $232), along the upper Ottawa River, features a lodge, private beach and eight renovated cabins, each with a kitchen, grill, fire pit and veranda overlooking the Laurentian Mountains. Anupaya invites every guest (inner city youth groups receive a 50% room discount) to join the environmental movement in any way they can.
This could mean participating in housekeeping through the hotel One Pound Promise Initiative (60,000 pounds of trash have been collected so far), picking workshops, planting fruit trees and berry bushes, or learning to grow and harvest food in the garden, where guests are often found pulling up invasive plants and gathering ingredients for the ‘salad. Visitors can also work on trail management projects with local people Friends of Rivière du Moine non-profit or maintain nearby trails Conservation of the four seasons. “The reason we started Anupaya is to remind people how much we are all part of nature,” Ms MacLaggan said. “If you love something, you feel a sense of responsibility towards it.”
Anupaya is introducing more formal volunteer opportunities in 2024. The Sustainable Saturdays initiative, which will run from May to November, will offer free two-hour educational sessions on composting, starting a medicinal garden, raising chickens and more Still.
