Inside Vancouver
Local Heroes
By Deborah Campbell published Apr 1, 2009
J.B. MacKinnon’s new project goes far beyond a 100-mile radius
The triumph of a yearlong local-eating experiment can be found in a dodgy DTES drinking establishment where Loverboy blares over the sound system as Vancouver writer J.B. MacKinnon devours a plate of freshly roasted Fraser Valley turkey breast in golden-tarragon white-wine sauce (for $5.50, at that). “When local food has arrived at Pub 340, we know the battle is nearly won,” says the co-author of the best-selling book The 100-Mile Diet. “Somebody decided to create change here.”
MacKinnon’s simple, if challenging, experiment—to spend a year eating only food from within 100 miles of home, chronicling the experience for the local online newsmagazine the Tyee—boomeranged through the blogosphere, resulting in a New York book deal and foreign rights sold as far afield as Taiwan and Australia. The 100-Mile Challenge, a reality-TV series hosted by MacKinnon and his partner and co-writer, Alisa Smith, debuts on Food Network Canada on April 5 and follows 100 Mission residents for 100 days as they abandon beer and Cheetos for local fare. “It still kind of makes my head spin,” says MacKinnon of the way his idea has become shorthand for a movement.
If local eating increasingly has global implications, it’s hardly surprising that MacKinnon’s latest book strays far beyond a 100-mile radius. Back when MacKinnon and I worked together at Adbusters, where he was a senior editor, there were whispers of a side project by Adbusters design gurus Mike Simons and Paul Shoebridge, who were working with actress Mia Kirshner to push the visual/text hybrid format that the magazine pioneered in new directions. The result, published by Pantheon Books, is I Live Here, described as a “paper documentary” and ultimately authored with MacKinnon, who had previously written from Sudan and South America and is an adventure columnist for Explore magazine. The book tells the stories of those on the farthest margins of society through a stunning reinvention of literary journalism that is part graphic novel, part creative-nonfiction text, part something completely different.
