Justin Tilson has an MBA in Sustainable Development from http://bgi.edu and has been studying permaculture for several years. Justin completed his PDC in 2007 at O.U.R. Ecovillage and followed it with a teacher training program at the Bullocks’ Homestead.

Justin’s interest in permaculture developed after founding a guerrilla garden (aka the Railroad Garden) in Vancouver in 2004. The Railroad Garden has grown to cover the full width of a city block, providing much needed beauty, function and bounty in an otherwise garbage ridden space. He moved from Vancouver to Manitoulin Island in 2011 to transform the 5-acre property he grew up on into a permaculture demonstration and education site and is the host of this Permaculture Design Course.

He has a background in entrepreneurship, cycling, disabled sports, web technologies and is innately curious about spiritual truth and conscious evolution. More info can be found at his blog: http://shibumi.net

Paul Salanki B.A.Sc., M.Eng, M.Sc.

Paul is an organic/biodynamic farmer, beekeeper, carpenter, engineer, and very much a continuing student exploring the relationships between our culture and its food systems, agriculture, permaculture, and every other kind of culture of our food, and the environment, ecosystems, and soil and biology that our food and all living things are part of.

While Paul is passionate about exploring and sharing insight into the awesome beauty and wisdom of nature’s processes through the windows and tools of theoretical sciences, he also realizes the need to ground knowledge in practical application and relationship to the context around us. By deepening our understanding of the place we’re in, we can then mindfully yet creatively use the tools and resources available to us to work with soil, plants and the landscape responsibly. Paul is also careful to maintain an awareness of the “bigger picture perspective”, or spiritual consciousness, of the challenges our current paradigms are forcing us to face.

Heather Thoma, M.A., M.Sc.

Heather is an organic and biodynamic market gardener, whose love is social ecology: cultivating relationships between people and people, and people and the land. She has offered a Community Supported Agriculture program on Manitoulin for the last 7 years with her partner Paul and LoonSong Garden. Heather teaches gardening, weaving, and awareness about the complexities of growing community food systems. Heather uses her interdisciplinary ways of seeing and thinking in her work to support non-profit groups around the region and the province. She works with organizations focused on food systems, environmental issues, the arts, and social healing.

Dr. Gino Cacciotti, M.M., E Arch. is a Professor of Natural Building, and Master Architechtural Stone Mason. Dr. Gino also holds a Master´s Degree in Earthen Architechture. He is currently teaching at, and presiding over The Natural Building Institute of Ontario, located on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada, that of which he founded in 2004. He is also a father, and proud to be a farmer.

Michael Murray grew up on the south shore of Manitoulin Island, off the grid, with alternative energy though originally by candlelight. At the age of eleven, he began installing alternative energy systems with his father, James Murray, the founder of Independent Energy Systems (I.E.S.). Michael has continued with this work for the better part of two decades, and has gone on to run I.E.S. After studying Electronics Engineering, his heritage of environmental awareness led him to Industrial Design, and the hope that he could contribute to creating more environmentally friendly products. Currently, he is studying Industrial Design at Humber College and continuing to run the family business.

Mary grew up in Alabama and learned gardening and wild food foraging from her mother. She received both her BSc in Microbiology and her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Auburn University. She moved to Ontario in 1985 and has been at various times, a certified organic grain grower, a rhea farmer, an herbalist, and is still a practicing veterinarian at her clinic, The Island Animal Hospital in Mindemoya, Ontario.

She has been growing much of her own food in mixed food forest settings for nearly 30 years and has been an avid member of the North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) for those years as well. A lifelong student of botany and healthy ecosystems, she has a special enthusiasm for perennial vegetables, medicinal herbs and tree crops.

She is currently establishing a permaculture farm on 200 acres in Tehkummah, Ontario. A field trip to this site is a possibility.

The first small food forest of 30 trees was planted 2 years ago and last year nearly 1000 useful trees and shrubs (over 35 species) were added to it. Another 1000 will be planted in 2012 along with the seeding of around 50 species of forbs and woodies. A mix of self-seeding annuals, perennial vegetables, fruits,nitrogen fixing plants, dynamic nutrient accumulators, insectaries, and windbreak plants will be introduced into suitable soils (dry, meso, wet, etc) in group associations that will hopefully sort themselves out into viable,sustainable ecosystems. Hugelkultur beds and rainwater collecting swales are also planed.

Once established, these ecosystems (aka permaculture farming) should produce large volumes of a wide variety of food, fibre,firewood,forage,farmaceuticals and fun for generations with minimal maintenance requirements. The main work at the mature stage is harvesting.

Mary took Dave Jacke’s 2 week course, Edible Ecosystems Emerging – A Forest Gardening Intensive, last fall at The Farm in Tennessee.

Shantree is a Permaculture Teacher, Ayurvedic Live-Food Nutritionist, Therapeutic & Shamanic Herbalist, and Constitutional Iridology Educator with 35 years experience in the Natural Healing Arts. He is an expert on the medicinal and nutritional properties of trees of Carolinian Canada.

He is the founder and co-director of The Living Centre (1983), and Living Arts Institute.

Shantree received his doctorate in Nutritional Medicine and Herbalism in the 70′s. Since then he has been exploring the effect of food and herbs on one’s physical, mental and emotional health. His passion and study has lead him to explore the benefits of a high energy Ayurvedic live-food approach to nutrition. He has had the honor to teach, counsel and empower thousands of individuals on their health and educational journey.

A past Vise-President of the Ontario Herbalists’ Association, Shantree served on the OHA board for almost 10 years and a member for over 20 years. Shantree is dedicated to providing an integrated preventative approach to well being, applying the healing wisdom of the East and West. He formulates and dispenses his own herbal preparations “HerbSpirit Botanicals”.

Shantree’s deep spiritual connection to the Earth has drawn him into the teachings of shamanic and earth wisdom practices as well as Carolinian Canada native plant preservation and studies. He is a passionate edible forest gardener, permaculture teacher and well known for his unique circular medicinal-wheel garden and medicine trail with over 1,000 species of edible and medicine plants and trees through the 50-acre botanical sanctuary.

Shantree combines his passion for forest gardening with newly emerging scientific information from many fields – resilience science, deep ecology, regenerative design, living nutrition, bioregionalism and health science. Visioning to reveal a regenerative path toward better stewardship of the natural world. A spiritual activist at heart.

Shantree is the author of ‘Ayurvedic Tongue Diagnosis’, the first book of its kind to be published in the west.

Roland Aeschlimann is a Journeyman Carpenter born and educated in Switzerland. He has 17 years experience and extensive international training through his membership in a traditional travelling Carpenter’s Guild. Roland specializes in Natural, Energy Efficient homes with an emphasis on Timber framing, Strawbale and Loghome building. He currently lives with his family on Manitoulin Island.

Dr. Neil Lawrence

Neil is a small animal veterinarian with an interest in poultry. He has worked with a variety of livestock over the years in Ontario and in Trinidad. He has taught 4-H veterinary science classes, run remote spay/neuter clinics in Moosonee, done rehab on birds of prey in the Caribbean, and invited crows to live in his house while on the mend! He and his wife have been working towards growing and preserving more and more of their family’s fruit and vegetables. Their most recent project was a strawbale chicken coop for their fledgling flock of Chantecler hens.

Jeff Wahl B.A. CIT-CWQA

Jeff is the owner of Wahl Water located on the beautiful south shore of Manitoulin Island.

His involvement with water began in 1991 while studying for a Bachelor of Arts Geography Degree obtained from Wilfrid Laurier University.

He is certified with the Canadian Water Quality Association and has extensive knowledge of water quality, aquifers, groundwater, wells, water treatment and source water protection.

His experience with water sources across all of Manitoulin Island provides an invaluable resource and perspective on the many aspects of water.

Jeff is passionate about what he does and understanding the human impact on water supplies. Leaving the stress of the city behind Jeff and his wife relocated to Manitoulin to raise their children in a peaceful natural environment, they have never looked back.

Nathalie Gara-Boivin is the co-owner of the Auberge Inn Hostel on Manitoulin Island since May 2010. She has been passionate and involved with environmental projects from a young age and throughout high school.

Her passions for the environment lead her to an Honour Bilingual Degree in Environmental Studies and Geography in 2003 from the University of Ottawa. In 2004, she completed a Post Diploma Certificate in Eco-tourism Management at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Haliburton, Ontario.

In 2004 as the coordinator of the Greater Sudbury Environment Network, Nathalie created and published the “Keen to be green” a green directory and organized the first edition of the Earth Day festival at the Downtown Farmer’s Market in 2006. She then became Communications Specialist for Drinking Water Source Protection with the Nickel District Conservation Authority giving presentations to school & community groups about water conservation and protection.

Nathalie was a staff Scientist & Special Events coordinator at Science North. She formerly chaired the City of Greater Sudbury’s bicycle advisory panel. In 2010, Nathalie was trained by Al Gore as a Climate Project Canada presenter and has given over 15 presentations to the public since then. She was the Eco-Coordinator for the 2011 Greater Sudbury Francophone Games where she initiated and coordinated the first ever City of Greater Sudbury Special Events Composting Pilot Project.

Lorenna Bousquet-Kacera is a Creativity Coach and founder of Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Teachings, a revolutionary earth-based spiritual practice, which reawakens the capacity to connect directly with Self and Nature. She is the co-founder and co-director with her husband of The Living Centre and Living Arts Institute. Lorenna is a Certified Permaculture Educator with a specialty in evolutionary regeneration at the personal, ecological and spiritual levels.

She has a passion for embodied transformation and offers profound wisdom and insight into the understanding of consciousness. A study into the mysteries of life and how to invoke the primal elements of nature have shown her how we may reclaim the knowledge of the elemental energies in the earth and in oneself.

Lorenna is trained in nature connected movement, dance, sound, meditation and earth-ritual practices. She draws on these ‘old arts’ as the mediums for self-expression, spiritual awakening and liberation of our lives.

Lorenna’s life-long interest in holistic lifestyle and nutrition has led her to become a certified educator in Ayurvedic Live-Food Nutrition and the Sevenfold Path of Peace. Her 40 years experience in the field of personal transformation, spiritual evolution and holistic ecology has gifted her with a diversity of regenerative modalities and wisdom, which she is deeply honored to share with others. Lorenna’s passion for self-realization and the awakening of consciousness has been the guiding force in her life.

Lorenna had the privilege of twelve years of intense spiritual education with master teachers. This led her to an exploration of earth-centered cosmology which she believes will be the new spirituality of the future. She says that everything we need to know about how to live happy, radiant and creative lives we can find the answers to in Nature.

Lorenna sees that our hope for the future is to adopt a new concept of human ecology; one in which we celebrate the gifts of the Divine Feminine, of imagination and creativity. Her passion to offer an educational model that sees our creative capacity for the richness it is, imbues all of her teachings. Lorenna believes that it is our creativity and balance of the Feminine and Masculine values that support life that will guide us to the answers that change and empower our lives, our world and future generations.

Lorenna’s spiritual values are woven into her life as she is committed to meaningful spiritual transformation in both her marriage and her community.