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. (pics on: Flickr). He has now moved from Vancouver to Manitoulin Island 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 business, cycling, disabled sports, web technologies and is innately curious about spiritual truth and 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 even gone on to run I.E.S. more recently. 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.

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.

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.