When he began his new role two years ago, David Cox, executive director of Mountain Culture and Environment at The Banff Centre had a vision. “With environmental awareness at an all-time high around the world, there is a huge opportunity to be highly creative – and the Centre has such amazing resources for the development of new ideas.”

The Banff Mountain Festivals is the latest in a series of special events in the Bow Valley that have committed to keeping at least 80 per cent of their waste from going to landfill disposal. To do so, a total of four Resource Recovery Centre stations were set-up around campus. “The idea was that people had to think about what they had to do with their waste. They had an item and they had to figure out which bin to place it in,”adds Peck.

Mountain Culture recently released Splash! a learning journey in mountain freshwater on its Bow Valley Mountain Forum website. The website is dedicated to publicizing community events, activities and information for residents of the Bow Valley. Splash!, created for children, is an animated tour of the relationship between mountains and freshwater and explains how mountains store water and help create precipitation, how lowlands depend on mountains to store and release moisture at appropriate times, and how climate change is impacting this critical relationship. Finally, interactive features quiz site visitors about freshwater …