Quality of Island Life Cooperative

The title of this story is borrowed from a public lecture at UPEI on May 21, 2009 about a quality of life issue for people labeled mentally disabled. Dulcie McCallum spoke on the impact of guardianship laws that hold people with mental disabilities to be incompetent, and how such a decision removes their opportunity to exercise their right to make decisions over many aspects of their lives that are unrelated to their disability. She described how the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities is of great significance for people around the world as well as locally.

A set of PowerPoint slides on the Quality of Island Life Coop.

I have been attracted to Islands all my life. As a child on summer holidays, with my family, I visited many small Islands off the coast of Britain, then as a young adult, going to Bornholm, Westmann Islands, Lofoten and the Magdalen Islands. So my concept of Islandness was formed from these experiences of small rocky Islands lashed by waves It is not surprising therefore that from my first visit to PEI circa 1970 (I arrived in Souris by ferry from Cap aux Meules) to today I rarely feel as if I am on an Island when on PEI.

Re-thinking Development Conference
Antigonish, Nova Scotia
June 20 to 24th, 2005

These were just some of the comments heard in the rich spaces between sessions at this conference.

It was billed as the second International Conference on Gross National Happiness, local pathways to global wellbeing. Some of the world's most articulate and passionate advocates for socially and environmentally responsible development gathered at St Francis Xavier University in June. They included a delegation from the Himalayan state of Bhutan

Here are a few of the highlights from my perspective:

The past decade has seen rapid growth in the use, range, and sophistication of social and sustainability indicators in jurisdictions worldwide, at all levels of government, in the non-government sector, and in industry. This complex phenomenon stems from multiple converging forces. For the past half century, it has become increasingly apparent that traditional economic indicators provide only a one-dimensional view of the impacts of growth and industrialization, failing to capture social and environmental implications, and thus misrepresenting the true balance of costs and benefits.