Who are you?

My card says “Katie Burns, Sustainability Coordinator”.  I grew up in Maitland, Nova Scotia (once a prosperous shipbuilding community but now a village of fewer than 200 people).  After collecting a few university degrees in history and environmental studies, I’ve found my niche in the field of community sustainability.  I now work for the Town of Markham, a suburb of Toronto, and spend my time on the community sustainability plan, local food strategy, community indicators and climate action plan.

What do you do for fun?

I like to get outside and move, including running, cycling, walking and the occasional race.  I also have a green thumb and grow a wide variety of tomatoes and basil on my back deck.  I find almost everything about food and beer fun and especially like visiting farmers’ markets, picking up our weekly CSA share, describing delicious beers and having our beer guys turn them into reality, spending a couple of weeks canning a year’s worth of tomatoes, and of course sharing food and drinks with friends and family.

What’s your favorite community and why?

I love Toronto and that so many communities can coexist within one city.  A few of my favourites include:

–          The Stop Community Food Centre (www.thestop.org) which is one of Canada’s first food banks.  They are doing innovative work in increasing access to food.  I’ve researched the development of their new location, volunteered for their food bank and met our CSA farmers at their Green Barns Farmers’ Market.

–          Fermentations (http://www.fermentations.ca/), which is a small business where a group of us make beer, wine and the occasional cider.  It is fun, delicious and has been the starting point for many great evenings with friends.

–          The Junction, which is the neighbourhood where Jim and I first lived when we moved to Toronto, named for the 3 railways that meet there.  It is home to a great arts festival (http://www.junctionartsfest.com/).  Unfortunately, it is gentrifying fast but hopefully it will be able to keep some of the grit which I think makes it so great.

What is your superpower?

I’m a generalist.  I’ve always had a hard time focusing on a single issue or topic.  For a long time I thought this was a weakness, especially when I was studying history and everyone around me started to happily narrow their focus.  I preferred to dabble in new topics and couldn’t imagine ever spending more than a term on anything.  But I found my niche in sustainability, which is often described as “everything and nothing” because of how broad and general it can seem.

How does your power help you build community?

I’m now working on Markham’s community sustainability plan.  It will establish a vision and goals for a sustainable future and set targets for 2050 and beyond.  The plan is addressing social equity, identity and culture, individual health, shelter, food security, access and mobility, education and skills, economic vibrancy, material management, water efficiency, ecosystem integrity, and energy and climate.  It is a pretty ambitious plan and we have a fairly small team working on it.  Being a generalist helps me to not only understand each of these areas in isolation but also how they can potentially work together to make Markham a better place to live.   I really enjoy the diversity of subjects that I get to explore everyday and hope that it will have a positive impact on one of Toronto’s largest and most diverse suburbs.

My three favourite things about Katie Burns are…

1. Maitland, Nova Scotia is exactly like Merville, BC. Well, maybe not “exactly” the same, but Katie and I had very, very similar upbringings. Canada is great for that. Whether in Nova Scotia or on Vancouver Island, two folks can share entirely different and similar upbringings – my childhood in Merville probably involved a little more “hippy-spiritualism” than “christian-traditionalism” and Judy Burns can sew clothes in a way that Janet Horn, well, my mom can’t sew clothes (she has an infinite number of creative talents, though). Anyway, whenever Katie and I get together we always shake our heads and smile at the seemingly impossible parallels and synergies regarding our Maitland/Merville upbringings.

2. She makes everything from scratch. Everything. Break, pizza dough, cookies, shoes, computers, bicycles, tomato plants. Everything. Sure, I made some of this up, but only with the purpose of driving home the point of just how organic Ms. Burns really and truly is.

3. Markham, Ontario will be sustainable by 2012. Pretty much. The role of a Sustainability Coordinator in an interconnected (community-wise and transportation-wise and culturally-speaking) urban centre is one thing – people kinda sorta get it. But taking on such a role in the suburbs, well, becomes a challenge not unlike the daunting task of the Maple Leafs making the playoffs. Making Markham sustainable takes gumption, creativity, intelligence, uncompromising vision, and the capacity for a myriad kind of community-building. And Katie Burns has it in spades. Good luck, Katie. Only two years to go!