Sitting across the table from Jim Brown and Joan Lee in their warm, light-filled renovated farmhouse in the heart of Kingston, it is immediately clear that the conversation they want to have is not really about them. “When people read this, we hope it is not about Jim and Joan,” Jim says. “It is about loving this planet and acting as though all life depended on it, including ours.”
For them, environment, and regeneration all come back to relationship. They were deeply struck by a recent appearance by David Suzuki and his wife Tara. Jim recalls that their play, What You Won’t do For Love, was created “to share their love story and a new way of getting people to think about the planet and what they can do to preserve it.” What stayed with him was Tara’s observation that this work “is a complement to the science that David did for his whole life, because science does not really change minds. It is the heart that does it.” Jim and Joan have taken that to heart. “All of the research we keep coming back to is about relationships, in particular our relationship with the planet,” he says.
A pivotal moment for them came in Montreal, when they happened to be there as Greta Thunberg joined a massive climate march. “We were just out walking, and we saw them all gathering on Mount Royal,” Joan remembers. “We thought, we are here, let us join in.” Spending the day marching “with thousands of people” crystallized something. She was moved by “the fact that she was such a young person trying to speak truth to power,” telling older generations that “you have had the reins and nothing has happened, so we need to galvanize some action.” When they returned to Kingston, they felt a renewed responsibility to act locally.
Today their philanthropy and daily choices are guided by a focus on local, tangible action, especially in support of young people. “A lot of it comes down to three main things,” Jim explains. “Keep the action local, start now, and focus on youth. Show up for them.” For Jim and Joan, community is the scale at which change feels both possible and meaningful. They believe in supporting organizations and projects that help the earth regenerate, that restore balance between people and the natural systems that sustain us. As Joan puts it, “We need a new way of thinking that allows the earth to regenerate and allows us to be in equilibrium with the planet, so that needs of humans, plants and the animals are in balance and of equal priority.”
That new way of thinking has changed how Joan tends even their own yard. She remembers being “caught up” in conventional gardening, choosing “all these lovely things from the garden centre” because they were pretty. Now, she pays close attention to native plants, insects, microbes, birds, and the ecological web to which we belong. “We do not talk about the insects or all the things we are sitting on top of in this pyramid of the earth,” she says. “It involves every creature, every tree, every plant. It is so obvious, but people do not think about it. You are not born knowing. You learn and you try to change.”
Underlying all of this is a belief in connection and conversation. Jim and Joan place great importance on community, on building networks of people who care about regeneration beyond sustainability and are willing to act close to home. In a world overshooting its limits, our compass must point not to more, but to sufficiency and enough. It begins locally. They want readers to know they are not working in isolation. Their invitation is simple: reach out, join them for a walk and a talk, and be part of a growing circle of people in Kingston who are ready to act locally, from the heart, for the planet we share.
