FESTIVAL OF GUEST NATIONS & PUBLIC SAFETY INFORMATION DAY

Sep 18, 2023

Leamington, ON – The highly anticipated Festival of Guest Nations took place this Sunday, September 17th at Seacliff Park in Leamington. The Festival celebrates the diversity of migrant workers in the community, the sacrifices they make in coming to Essex County, and their contributions to the community and the local economy. With over 15 years of success, this Festival has been an opportunity to facilitate engagement and community building between workers and the communities at large. This year’s Festival attracted over 1000 participants from the community who came out to enjoy music, food, entertainment, and meet with service providers and each other.

This year, in celebration of the outstanding community collaborations that have happened in Essex County in recent years, the Festival included Public Safety Information Day coordinated with the Windsor Essex Local Immigration Partnership (WE LIP) and the Windsor-Essex Regional Community Safety and Well-Being Plan (WERCSWB).

Public Safety Information Day is an opportunity for newcomers, migrant workers, and the broader community to connect with service providers and public servants who work to keep Essex County safe and healthy. These providers included O.P.P., the Leamington Fire Departments, Essex-Windsor EMS, among other healthcare, mental health, and public safety organizations. These connections provide newcomers and workers a chance to get-to-know their neighbourhood providers, learn about the systems in place to keep them safe and healthy, and where to go if they are in need. As well, it supports the development of trust and familiarity in the community, leading to improved outcomes and sense of well-being.

This year, as part of the Community Safety and Well-Being Plan, the Municipality of Leamington partnered with O.P.P and community partners on a downtown ‘Safety and Crime Prevention Walk’. Residents were invited to meet at Dieppe Park at 10:30 AM to participate in the community walk. While exploring their neighbourhood, residents learned how to prevent opportunities for crime, change the way they see and walk through their neighbourhood, and learn personal safety tips. Individuals had the opportunity to participate in the discussion and ask questions along the way.

The combined Festival of Guest Nations and Public Safety Information Day celebrated our guest workers with food, live entertainment, special guests, raffles, prizes and giveaways!

Source : City Windsor

Video: From Conventional to Regenerative: Will Groeneveld’s Journey Back to the Land

"You realize you've got a pretty finite number of years to do this. If you ever want to try something new, you better do it."

That mindset helped Will Groeneveld take a bold turn on his Alberta grain farm. A lifelong farmer, Will had never heard of regenerative agriculture until 2018, when he attended a seminar by Kevin Elmy that shifted his worldview. What began as curiosity quickly turned into a deep exploration of how biology—not just chemistry—shapes the health of our soils, crops and ecosystems.

In this video, Will candidly reflects on his family’s farming history, how the operation evolved from a traditional mixed farm to grain-only, and how the desire to improve the land pushed him to invite livestock back into the rotation—without owning a single cow.

Today, through creative partnerships and a commitment to the five principles of regenerative agriculture, Will is reintroducing diversity, building soil health and extending living roots in the ground for as much of the year as possible. Whether it’s through intercropping, zero tillage (which he’s practiced since the 1980s) or managing forage for visiting cattle, Will’s approach is a testament to continuous learning and a willingness to challenge old norms.

Will is a participant in the Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL), a social innovation process bringing together producers, researchers, retailers and others to co-create a resilient regenerative agriculture system in Alberta. His story highlights both the potential and humility required to farm with nature, not against it.