Tortillas dished up with heart and soul: Co-op founded 30 years ago, Maria, 84, starts work at 2 a.m.
Morning comes early for Maria, a worker at the Tortilleria. The 84-year-old woman is always the first to arrive. Her shift begins at 2 a.m., when she pulls out bowls of flour and water and starts to make the first of hundreds of tortillas that will be served in the co-op that day.

Inside Art: Creating positive change for inmates with art
For the last two and a half years, you might not have known that history was being made right on your doorstep. Did you know that at Kent and Mountain Institutions, there were some successful inmates who were not living off the institutional pay (your tax dollars) but in fact were generating their own income, paying room and board back to the prison, paying income tax, and donating to the community? This is the result of a relatively new business venture, a ground breaking art marketing cooperative, called InsideArt which sells the artworks of inmates and outmates (successful artists not incarcerated) side by side on the web, giving inmates a bigger vision for the future and giving them the skills they need to set up a legitimate business on the outside.

Board of Directors Decide to Wind up Warkworth Co-operative
Warkworth Co-operative Services will be closing at the end of next week, announced its board of directors today. The co-operative has sites in Norwood and Warkworth, and focuses on agronomy, livestock feed, fuel products and services and has farm hardware and related goods at its stores.

Prairie coalition raises CWB questions
The debate over the future of the Canadian Wheat Board is more complicated than the Harper government is making it out to be, a coalition of Prairie farm groups said Thursday. The coalition released more than two dozen questions farmers should ask themselves before supporting Ottawa’s plan to end the wheat board’s sales monopoly.

Fair trade effort needs members
Fair trade crafts are helping build self-sufficient communities in Latin America, but the society organizing the initiative needs new members. Formerly known as the Paraguay Project, the Canadian Society for Equitable Partnerships with Latin America (EQUIP) is best known for its fair trade craft sales.

Rosedale-Queen Mary United Church creates new Community Centre Association
The sizable community halls at the Rosedale-Queen Mary United Church are looking for new tenants. On Sunday, Oct. 22, the RQM United congregation agreed to the creation of a new Community Centre Association. The new association will be a not-for-profit organization that will operate the church halls as a community centre project for the social economy sector.