Food Security Workshop Instructors Biographies

Robin Tunnicliffe
Robin Tunnicliffe is an organic farmer and a passionate food activist. She is a co-owner of Saanich Organics, a cooperative marketing business through which she and other local growers market their produce to Victoria-area residents and restaurants. She can be found at the Moss Street market in the summer and researching food policy issues at the University of Victoria in the winter. She has been farming for the past 12 years, and enjoys sharing her love of growing and eating with others. Robin has spoken at food security and farming gatherings across Canada.

Katie Mathieu
A wizard in the kitchen, Katie Mathieu is the chef at Channel Rock whose daily meal preparations incorporate fresh ingredients our heritage garden and orchard, and locally procured salmon and seafood. With 15 years of professional cooking experience under her chef's apron, Katie has created culinary delights in fine dining, macrobiotics, slow food, comfort food and wellness.
 
As well, she has a Linnaea Farm Permaculture design certificate and, in the summer of 2007, she planned and ran master chef Michael Stadtlander’s market garden. She has undertaken ten years of personal studies in the intriguing subject of food and plant medicine. As a speaker at Concordia University's “Blueprints for Change 2007”, Katie re-examined the relationships between trash and food security. She is a non-threatening and inclusive teacher with a real enthusiasm for food and plants!
 
Oliver Kellhammer
Oliver Kellhammer is a land artist working with public sites to highlight and demonstrate nature's sometimes surprising ability to recover from damage. His work facilitates processes of regeneration by engaging the botanical and socio-political frameworks that underlie a landscape, taking such forms as small-scale urban eco-forestry, inner-city community agriculture, and the restoration of eroded railway ravines.
 
His work functions as a kind of catalytic model-making, providing a vehicle for community empowerment, while demonstrating accessible and inspiring methods of positive engagement with the global environmental crisis. Some of his projects include 'Means of Production,' 'Healing the Cut - Bridging the Gap,' and 'Cottonwood Community Gardens.'
 
Oliver Kellhammer has worked as a land artist and permaculture designer for over 25 years. Much of his focus has been on repairing degraded urban landscapes, where he uses permaculture principles to enhance the relationships between people and nature. He teaches permaculture at Linnaea, and he lectures on landscape studies, art and other interdisciplinary contexts at colleges and universities in Canada and the United States.
 
Tony Clark
Tony Clark comes from a cattle farming family in the Comox Valley. He started working in the forest and as a commercial fisherman at the age of 18. For the past 15 years, he has been working designing and building parks and outdoor recreation sites up and down the coast, with a specialty for restoring forests that have been damaged due to neglect or natural disaster. He's lived on Cortes Island since 1993 and the coast all of his life. “Some might say I am a gumboot logger and naturalist all in one,” he says and, “I love my wife, my kids, fishing and my bees (my wife would say not always in that order).”

Tony teaches forest ethics, wildlife tree usage and forest health. As well, he is a master commercial small-scale beekeeper, and has been keeping bees for over 20 years. His hives are located throughout the mountains of Vancouver Island, as well as in his Cortes backyard. He experiments with different worldwide beekeeping techniques, including the African Beehive. He sells his honey in the Comox Valley, raises queens and has mentored many beekeepers who are embarking on paths similar to the one he is so passionate about.
 
Stephanie Asbeck
Stephanie Asbeck is the head gardener at Channel Rock. She loves growing organic food and has been sharing her passion and inspiration at Channel Rock for the last 7 years. She practices permaculture, follows the biodynamic calendar and is a strong believer in composting. Her “Mushroom Yard” and “Hugel Piles” are a favourite with anyone who strolls through the heritage garden. From spring until fall, the garden is filled with berries, herbs, and any vegetable imaginable. By the time October begins, the winter garden is established and the root cellar is full. She grows enough food for everybody who comes through the garden gates!
 
Channel Rocks Garden is known for its diversity. The orchard has an abundance of fruits, and the hedgerow is filled with wildlife and nuts. Bees pollinate everything and supply Channel Rock with honey. The heritage roses are stunning as well as the perennial borders. In her free time, Steph pots around in her own garden and grows organic garlic commercially. Join Steph in the garden: she is a happy, fast paced and excited gardener who will inspire you to grow food, lots of it!
 
Cec Robinson
Cec Robinson has been an shellfish farmer for 20 years and is one of a dozen or so growers on Cortes Island, who does this work full-time. He is the owner of Whaletown Oysters, a specialty brand of oysters that are raised in the pristine waters of Whaletown Bay. Becoming one of the finest shellfish growers on the coast has been the reward for doing all the work himself and his love of being outside, working in the element. Not only is he involved in the growing and harvesting, but he also delivers fresh oysters and clams as a wholesaler to more than 40 Vancouver Island restaurants in his truck that runs on recycled cooking oil.
 
What Cec has learned during his time as an oyster farmer is that, indeed, there are consumers who are willing to pay a bit more for a specialty product, which in this case means a market that wants a fresh oyster and wants to know where it comes from. So, while Cec works in the protected and beautiful waters of Whaletown Bay, giving his attention to producing and delivering some of the most delicious oysters, he's also building and maintaining relationships that are important to Food Security – those that have the most direct link between producers and consumers as possible.
 
Joel Salatin
Joel Salatin is a third generation alternative farmer from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. His family’s farm, Polyface Inc. (“The Farm of Many Faces”) has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, Gourmet and countless other radio, television and print media. Profiled on the Lives of the 21st Century series with Peter Jennings on ABC World News, his after-broadcast chat room fielded more hits than any other segment to date. It achieved iconic status as the grass farm featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma by food writer and guru, Michael Pollan.
 
His farm services more than 1,500 families, 10 retail outlets and 30 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs with salad bar beef, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, pigaerator pork, forage-based rabbits, pastured turkey and forestry products using relationship marketing. He has authored six books and writes extensively in magazines such as Stockman Grass Farmer, Acres USA, and American Agriculturist.