![]() ![]() ![]() As Vannini puts it, “some are making virtue out of necessity”. Why preserve produce when slightly softening bell peppers could be thrown out and replaced in the nearest grocery store aisle? For Ron and Joanna, hopping the timberline into the estranged wilderness was about refusing a piggyback and learning how to walk alone.īut not all off-grid homes are inhabited by those drawn to the dirt-under-fingernails lifestyle of Thoreau. The only control of consumption had become price point. They had lost the skills of curing and canning. Now, the average person leans on some farmer in California. In the span of time between his parents’ lives and his – things had drastically changed. And he realized his plight was not unique-it was the result of being dependent on others. While working at an electronics company, Ron felt that his passion was withering under fluorescent light. Ron is an industrial electronics engineer and Joanna is a registered dietician. Vannini says that’s a romanticized myth-one largely fuelled by photographers drawn to the visual appeal of Woodstock caricatures under the smothered glow of oil lamps in remote cedar cabins. It’s a common stereotype if you live off-grid, you’re a hippie or apocalypse freak by default. Photo: Jonathan Taggart What he discovered was a counter-narrative to the rainbow-child, gemstone-healing generalizations of social media portrayal. Over two-and-a-half years, Vannini and photographer Jonathan Taggart would document the experience of 200 people living on nearly 100 off-grid sites in Canada. What was it like for those who chose to step away from the grid completely? What did it take to become self-ruling? He began to become more mindful about where his resources were coming from. His water had always been supplied by the city, but when he moved to Gabriola Island, a 22.2 square mile crumb in the Gulf Island’s archipelago, he was forced to move his own water. Up until five years ago, when Royal Roads Professor Phillip Vannini turned on the tap, the water just flowed. As Phillip Vannini sat in the kitchen of their two-storey wood house, built only using hand tools, he suddenly felt overwhelmed by the sound of silence. Ron and Joanna leave only twice a year for supplies – once before the freeze and once after the ice melts. The only way in or out is by float plane. In a frostbitten valley in the deep bush of Northern Saskatchewan lives the most isolated couple in North America-100 km away from the nearest unpaved road. ![]()
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