Discover our first BESIDE destination in Lanaudière
Conversations with nature-empowered people who think, create and live differently.
The wonderfully multidisciplinary Montréal creator Khoa Lê opens up about his love of incongruity, intimacy, and celebrating our elders, in this interview from Issue 13 of BESIDE.
Solios creates solar-powered watches that are the pinnacle of minimalist, sustainable design. They’ll be sharing their innovative vision for ethical fashion at Toronto’s One of a Kind Show.
Boreal Folk crafts natural skincare products from locally sourced wild botanicals, gathered and processed using a 99-square-foot mobile workshop. They’ll be bringing their carefully curated lineup of goods to Toronto’s One of a Kind Show.
BEDI is a design studio creating sustainable, minimalist fashion and accessories from upcycled, locally sourced, and future-conscious materials. They’ll be bringing their innovative ideas to Toronto’s One of a Kind Show.
The singer-songwriter known as “P’tit Belliveau” once thought you had to go to the city to make a career in music. Now he’s returned to his rural roots to reconnect with his musical identity. From BESIDE Issue 13
A member of the Nlaka'pamux Nation, tattoo artist Dion Kaszas explains the transformative power of ancestral skin-marking practice.
Tequila is more popular than ever, but the art of harvesting agave is in decline. Meet Antonio González Magallanes, one of the jimadores who are preserving this centuries-old tradition.
For the LA creatives who attend the All Hands Weekend every month, tending the earth is its own reward — that, and a beautiful meal.
For the celebrated Brooklyn chef Sophia Roe, food equals freedom, and freedom is the only kind of power she craves.
Author and comedian Catherine Ethier reflects on the power of pleasure and laughter in the darkest of times.
We were taught to take climate change personally, but real change is collective.
How Peter Bellerby’s London globe-making workshop strives to carry on a tradition that nobody even noticed had gone missing.
For marine ecologist Alannah Vellacott, saving the Bahamas’ coral reefs is a fight to protect her home.
When things took a turn for the worse in the summer of 2020, Toronto writer Tayo Bero decided to refresh her life with a new apartment full of plants. As it turned out, they taught her more than she could have anticipated.
After a rogue wave nearly killed him off the coast of South Africa, Beau Miles began seeking a different sort of adventure: the kind he could find outside his front door.
For nearly a century, right up until her death on May 22 last year, landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander tended her garden, greened the concrete of big cities across the world, and sowed seeds that became forests.
“I am my own ancestor,” says Myia Antone, a Skwxwú7mesh language teacher, in this interview about land-based education and intergenerational love.
Down the winding roads of Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia’s fertile Annapolis Valley, you can find classic Italian cheeses as authentic as any from the old country. Ciro Comencini is a lifelong casaro (cheese maker) who has dedicated his life to handcrafting traditional cheeses from his small farm near the Atlantic coast.
Stacey L’Écuyer and Philippe Choinière founded Oneka personal care products over a decade ago. Patience and learning remain at the heart of their journey.
At the foot of the mountain in Bromont, Noah Forand runs fast but grows up slowly and a little differently than others. Without knowing it, he’s teaching his family and friends l’art de vivre.
The entrepreneur behind Montréal’s Montloup wants to reinvent the textile industry.
A poem by Jean-Christophe Réhel
Flamingo Estate is California’s most sought-after luxury CSA. Its founder, Richard Christiansen, is on a mission to restore our sensual connection with nature.
Tariq Ahmed built Revel Cider from a rare passion for fermentation and a commitment to authentic flavours. Fans of his natural ciders are only getting thirstier.
At the Reford Gardens, the coastal plant nursery has found an ecological solution to shoreline erosion: lyme grass.
In the heart of the Québec Appalachians, Maggie Lamothe-Boudreau raises queen bees and sells them to beekeepers across the province. Her little-known work is crucial to our food sovereignty.
For the Grassroots Grandmothers, protecting the Sipekne’katik River in Nova Scotia is a seven-generation calling.
When Francesca Hong's livelihood was threatened by the COVID-19 crisis, she found an opportunity to build community through food.
Five years of doubts and joyous bonfires. Five years of passionate humans and projects that were a little (very) crazy. Five years of imperfect paths, which we wouldn't trade for the world.
To combat declining ocean health in the Gulf of California, Brandon Rus is creating a sustainable industry out of invasive algae.
On a small farm in Ontario, two old friends reimagine farm work as a sacred art form.
Floral designer Sophia Moreno-Bunge’s wild-foraged arrangements celebrate the magnificent strangeness of plants.
By embracing the imperfections in her work, potter Janaki Larsen taps into a more resonant beauty.
Meet three Yukoners forging their own paths in a land of ice and snow.
Shelma Jun answered our questionnaire from her 1980 Automate travel trailer outside Bishop, CA.
Sisters Emma Teal Laukitis and Claire Neaton live with the seasons in Alaska. They shift from sea to land, fishing northern seas and running their business, Salmon Sisters, from shore or—network permitting—their boat.
Marc Séguin responded to our Questionnaire one late afternoon last summer, with the sound of waves coming in through the open windows.
Colleen Cooley is part of a growing number of Indigenous river guides who bring a vital understanding of the importance of water to their work in the outdoor recreation industry.
For 30 years, Christian Barthomeuf has been refining the art of making ice cider with neither additives nor overtime.
The mountaineering community is rallying around a citizen-science initiative to track the growing phenomenon of “pink snow.”
Taming the trails of Medicine Bow National Forest, the work of the snow groomers often goes unnoticed. We shed light on the nocturnal labours of Tim Bishop.
For the past three years, Marilyn B. Armand has devoted herself to the art of making sustainable quilts that will last a lifetime.
Two portraits of people who travelled to the Gaspé Peninsula and decided they never wanted to leave. See, through their eyes, the land of the northern gannet and the endless sea.
Ben Jacobsen tested sea water up and down the Pacific Northwest coast in order to find the perfect salt. He discovered it in the waters of Netarts Bay.
Geneviève Lugaz and Christian Laforge share a company, a duplex, and the happy title of parents. Des Enfantillages is the result of their professional and personal journey: an inspiring studio with a fun and poetic approach to making toys. In collaboration with BESIDE, they’ve created “Guess Who Inspires Me?”
In a smithy in Québec City’s Lower Town, blacksmith Thomas Lefebvre uses traditional craftsmanship and his creativity to make objects that defy planned obsolescence. In collaboration with BESIDE, he gives us durable fireplace tools with a minimalist design.
Jinny Lévesque, a glass artist, and Catherine Cournoyer, a textile print designer, first met in a visual arts class in college. They became fast friends and soon joined forces to design their first ethical textile products. A decade later, they’re now collaborating with BESIDE to make a unique log carrier.
To dive into the world of Énamour products is to fall in love. Designed for the whole family, Marie Custeau's soaps are 100 per cent natural and plant-based. Her next mission? Create the perfect mosquito repellent, so we can better enjoy our time in the woods.
Common Roots Urban Farm in Halifax provides a place for immigrants and refugees to plant cultural seeds and cultivate community.
Rooted in the Intimacy of Bodies
A meeting at the summit with the Chèvres de montagne.
Following her mother’s murder, Amber Tamm Canty found healing and purpose through farming. Now, with thousands flocking to her cause, she’s aiming to change the landscape of food security in New York, starting with Central Park.
The environmental movement has an inclusion problem. Leah Thomas is a leading voice to make sure that caring for the planet is inseparable from caring for the people who live on it. All of them.
Brooklyn photographer Naima Green creates portraits of people of colour—artists, activists, community builders—in urban oases of greenery of cities which bear significant histories of Black migration to the United States.
Whang-od Oggay is the last traditional tattoo artist from the old generation in the Kalinga region in the northern Philippines. This internationally acclaimed tattooist has single-handedly ensured the survival of this traditional art for the next generation.
When Jane-Anne Cormier returned to Le Havre to start Les Vagues after 10 years in the city, she had a goal—to combine her two great passions: the river and SUP.
This is a story of Polarhagen, a regenerative market garden, and two first generation farmers sowing seeds in Norway’s Lofoten Islands.
Parc national du Mont-Tremblant is celebrating its 125th birthday. Behind the lush scenery, people are passionately working to preserve the land.
A surfer, a mother and an entrepreneur, Sarah Zed lives near the waves in rural Nova Scotia, where she’s built a small community around Rose & Rooster, her bakery-café.
Vignoble Les Pervenches on winemaking in Quebec and rediscovering centre in uncertain times.
The wild origins of land art.
At Candide, Chef John Winter Russell is concocting a blueprint for a hyperlocal, hypersocial gastronomy.
From November to March, volunteers run a daily shuttle to save northern red-legged frogs.
In a time of social distancing, Toronto’s Winter Stations exhibit provides an opportunity to reflect on how we gather around art and nature.
We all wish for blue skies. They love cloudy days.
From Milano to Montréal, Italian chef Massimo Bottura is creating social tables that combine art, food, design, and charity.
After 12 years of hard work and sacrifice, Josiane Lanthier is just starting to make a living off her paintings. We offer a portrait of a sparkling artist who’s more and more at ease.
A modern-day explorer travels to the frontiers of human endurance to raise awareness about plastics in our oceans.
Weaving Greenlandic identity.
Hidden away on an Oregon farm, Sophia Weiss is raising a herd of Tibetan yak on her own. Influenced by her Buddhist upbringing, she’s developed a special bond with her animals, who are a source of both love and sustenance.
Most people associate salmon fishing with expensive trips to remote rivers. But in Toronto, the salmon are just a subway ride away.
What nature has to teach us, in the workplace and beyond.
Portrait of the woman who inspired an entirely new generation of floral designers.
For the Incas time had a circular structure: The past, present, and future influenced each other continuously. This idea became the foundation for Mater Iniciativa, the agricultural and culinary laboratory headed by Malena Martinez and her brother Virgilio, the internationally renowned Peruvian chef.
How a Montana rancher is giving life to a lost art.
Architect Pierre Thibault makes nature his laboratory, and beauty his philosophy.
French polar explorer Vincent Colliard on his quest to cross the 20 largest ice caps on the planet to help document melting ice fields.
For this pair of Canadian snowboarders, their love of the sport reached new heights once they left the chairlifts, the competitions, and the rules behind.
More and more runners prefer braving wilderness trails rather than roads. A mere whim? No. It’s an impulse written into our DNA, according to scientists.
Mustangs are deeply woven into America’s historical fabric, but the ongoing debates over public land are putting them at risk. Mustangs to the Rescue strives to elevate the public’s view of wild horses to protect the iconic breed.
Yvon Chouinard has been wearing the same flannel shirt for 20 years. The 81-year-old conservationist, outside-the-box thinker, athlete and craftsman is also an outspoken anti-consumerist and always pushing Patagonia, the company he founded, to find solutions to the global environmental crisis.
With her all-women climbing festival and community of climbers, Shelma Jun is reaching territory—on and off the rocks—that has never been reached before.
Fred Campbell reels in new followers by sharing his love for fishing with Hooké.
Portrait of a tightly knit paper company at the forefront of environmental best practices.
Chas Christiansen is a charismatic artist, entrepreneur, and bike racer with an instinctive style and outlook on the world—all this from his years working as a bike messenger in San Francisco. From street racing to jungle excursions, he’s become a true ambassador of fixed gear cycling as a simple yet empowering way of life. And to this day, he still embraces every moment with wits, authenticity, and pure adrenaline.
His recordings capture powerful expressions of change and what it portends in localized wild habitats. When change happens in a landscape that resident animals have evolved to understand from an auditory perspective, they may never be able to readapt.
At his shellfish and seaweed ocean farm, and his non-profit, Greenwave, Bren Smith is creating a simple, replicable system of water-based farming that is regenerative, rehabilitates the oceans, creates jobs, and, likely, is the answer to growing food in the face of climate change.
The instant you step outside, the smell of conifers, prickly as their needles, sweet as their sap, is, if you pay close attention, always with you. Your first encounter with this expansive northern territory is through your nose. The Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of Québec is half the size of Alabama and twice as big as Belgium.
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