Georgie
Donais is a homeschooling parent living in Toronto, Ontario, who is
involved in dance, music, graphic design, cob building and her local
community. She was a recipient of a 2005 Clean and Beautiful City
award and, as a finalist in the 2007 Green Toronto Awards, she
received an Award of Excellence.
NL: The City of Toronto has recognized your
community-based activities regarding a cob building project in a
downtown park. How did you become interested in cob?
Georgie: I spent much of my youth holding the
trouble light or extra nails for my carpenter father. Unfortunately,
I had a fear of power tools and a difficulty with measuring that put
me off building things myself. I chose instead to sew, finding that
cloth was more amenable than wood to being stretched and shaped.
Many years later, I came across a book on strawbale
building and was intrigued. Through strawbale, I found other
techniques, each more elemental than the last, until I came across
cob. This technique sang to me, holding within it the possibility of
shelter building that seemed unattainable to me before. It espoused
the values of “small” and was quiet, gentle, inclusive and
ecologically sensitive. I realized then that the desire to build was
always there, but I had only just found the right medium.
For my first project, I convinced my mom in
Saskatchewan to let me create a cob fireplace and low courtyard wall
in her backyard. When I got back to Toronto, I spent four months
hauling materials into my tiny backyard to build an earthen oven,
using Kiko Denzer’s book Build Your Own Earth Oven as my
guide. I got my clay from a local disposal yard, where they got a
bit of a chuckle out of me, wanting to use this stuff that everyone
else was throwing out.
NL: What do you like about cob as a building
material?
Georgie: For me, cob is the penultimate
do-it-yourself building system. It is simply the mixing and
application of sand, straw, clay and water. Tools required include
hands and feet, though a tarp, a shovel and some buckets are also
helpful. The work is gentle, low impact exercise that conditions and
tones legs, arms and back. Connection between participants happens
naturally because conversation is not overwhelmed by the sound of
power tools. The extreme amount of labor required to build a cob
house invites the creator to think small and design a building that
will fit like a glove, with no wasted space. That, combined with the
use of local, free and often un-valued material, means it can be
extremely ecologically sensitive, which really matters to me.
NL: So how did you come to be building cob
structures in a park in downtown Toronto? 
Georgie: In 2005, I spearheaded the creation
of a cob courtyard wall in Dufferin Grove Park (which I’ll refer to
as “DGP.”) I had heard that the Public Health department was
requiring the installation of hand-washing sinks by the wading pool
and playground, where park staff runs a summer café. Fresh from my
two small experiences, I proposed a sort of enclosure without a roof
that would house the sinks, as well as a cooking fireplace and
baby-changing station. It would be built of earth, using cast-off
material and volunteer labor. The park’s advocate, Jutta Mason, was
skeptical at first, but I seemed to know enough about the idea that
she was willing to support my proposal. The city’s Parks, Forestry
and Recreation (PFR) officials were themselves bemused but
supportive. And that summer we turned a hot, dusty corner of the
park into a bustling hive of activity, as approximately 500 people
dropped into our free, ongoing earthen building workshops.
Throughout that process, many people said to me,
“The sinks are fine, but what we really need is a toilet.” Since I
knew from my own children that the other park washrooms were too far
away from the playground for little kids to access them quickly and
safely, I began to look into possibilities. PFR said that a flush
toilet was out because of plumbing issues and, since I was familiar
with the idea of composting toilets, I began to consider that as
another option....
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Wendy Priesnitz is
the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist with over 30 years
of experience. She has also authored nine
books. Read her
blog.
