The Canadian Museum of Nature is preparing to roll out the green carpet for its first annual Nature Inspiration Awards gala next month, which will feature a Centretown-based organization among the finalists for a new national honour.
Museum president Meg Beckel says the CMN wants to “celebrate other individuals’ and organizations’ efforts to inspire interest in and understanding of nature.”
The idea came about last winter and by this spring the museum had received 34 submissions, divided into four categories (youth, individual, not-for-profit and corporate), with 17 finalists total. Two of the finalists are from Ottawa.
Tree Canada, located at 470 Somerset St. W, is nominated in the not-for-profit category.
“I hope we can do Centretown proud, ” says president Michael Rosen.
Tree Canada works with companies in the private sector to develop programs that people can implement. Over the past 20 years, the organization has greened about 550 schoolyards across the country and planted more than 80 million trees.
“In general it’s all about replacing and maintaining trees in urban areas,” says Rosen. “Eighty-five per cent of Canadians live now in cities and towns and the trees that we have around us we sometimes take for granted. But someone has to plant them and look after them.”
Eleven-year-old Olivia Clement. from Nepean, nominated in the youth category, says the award would mean a great deal to her, as well.
When she’s not in school, hanging out with friends or playing house league hockey, she is running Liv Polar Bear, an organization devoted to the preservation and protection of the iconic Arctic mammals.
It all started three years ago. “I was making clay animals and my mom said I was good at them,” she says.
Clement began making and selling clay bears to family and friends to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund.
Since 2011, Clement has made hundreds of bears and raised more than $13,000 for WWF.
“We’re so proud of her,” says her mother, Julie Clement. “The award is for children across Canada, so for her to be selected as a finalist is just amazing.”
To help narrow down the list, the museum put together a panel of jurists from a variety of different professional backgrounds.
“We wanted a corporate perspective, an NGO perspective, a scientific perspective, a communications perspective and it just grew from there,” Beckel explains.
Geoff Green, executive director of the Arctic expedition program Students on Ice and one of the jurists, says it was “very difficult” to decide on the winners because they were all “impressive.”
“I’d sum it up as inspiring and giving us cause for hope,” he says. “You hear a lot about the challenges and some of the negative forces that are affecting our environment, but there are a lot of great things that are happening out there. So this is an opportunity to showcase and highlight those.”
Clement, Rosen and Green will meet for the first time at the gala on Nov. 5. The private celebration for finalists, jury members and corporate sponsors will honour all of the nominees and announce the winners in each category.
“I think it’s got the potential to become a very successful and recognized award in our country,” Green says.
“It provides a platform which will be visible and recognized and over time, like any award, whether it’s the Nobel Prize or the Order of Canada, all these awards serve a purpose to motivate, educate, raise awareness and inspire, and those are ingredients that we need.”