Abra Brynne was formerly a project manager with CFICE’s partner Food Secure Canada.

CFICE is an action-research project that seeks to engage effectively with the community across a variety of different research hubs. In order to achieve our goals, there are many significant people involved that work to initiate and foster relationships between community and campus through brokerage and partnership. Abra Brynne is one of these important figures.

Abra Brynne was previously a project manager of (FSC) that works predominantly with the community side of the Community Food Security hub of CFICE. In this role, she acted as a liaison between CFICE and FSC, and collaborated on a few projects each year, checking in to see how work was progressing and providing any support the projects might require.

Abra says that her time with CFICE has allowed her to gain an understanding of how the academic world works and what constraints and opportunities go in-hand with academia.

“It was really interesting to me to learn how I can be connecting more effectively with academia in my own work, but also making that information more broadly accessible with communities with which I work,” said Abra.

Canadian Association of Food Studies team.

CFICE has also shown her the kind of support systems for engaging directly with communities that exist within some of the academic institutions, such as community-based research and community service learning models.

Of her time with CFICE, Abra says that it has been interesting to see from a community perspective how the project has evolved. Through community-campus partnerships, Abra says that CFICE has helped identify that the dichotomy and division between community and academia is rather artificial and arbitrary.

“There are many activists within the academic community. There are researchers within the community base, and so some of those divisions are artificial and arbitrary and I think the CFICE project has shone a light on that,” says Abra.

Listening to Cathleen Kneen speak at a conference.

CFICE has helped bring the two together and create a deeper credibility and recognition for the research and knowledge generation that comes out of the community. Abra says this has been a really important contribution of the CFICE project.

CFICE has also provided its partners with historical background, analytical skills and data that can provide communities with context to help leverage their own work. In addition, Abra says that CFICE has given her, and other partners, opportunities for learning and building relationships with like-minded individuals through such activities as supporting Abra’s attendance at conferences such as the �����DzԴڱ����Գ���.

“I’ve also really appreciated the opportunity to attend the various academic conferences…that has allowed me to strengthen relationships, make some new ones, and get exposure to academic work on food systems that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.”

Abra Brynne and Cathleen Kneen were close colleagues and friends.

Of her experience with CFICE, Abra says that the people she has worked with have been amazing and patient as she navigated her role and found where her perspective was of value.

Abra would especially like to acknowledge and pay tribute to Cathleen Kneen from FSC who passed away in February of this year.

“She is irreplaceable for her wisdom, her generosity, her incredible support, her analysis, her feisty feminism and willingness to learn and adapt. My only consolation in the face of this enormous loss is that her legacy is almost as large and available to us in many ways, through her presentations, her writing, and her wonderful editorial drawings.”

Cathleen Kneen, Community Co-lead of CFICE’s Community Food Security Hub

On February 21st, 2016, our friend and colleague,��Cathleen Kneen, passed away. Cathleen has been a huge part of the CFICE community since the beginning. As the former director of Food Secure Canada, she served as community co-lead in the Community Food Security (CFS) hub. Cathleen strongly believed in CFICE and in the potential power of knowledge co-creation between community researchers and academic researchers to address the many social and environmental challenges facing Canada. Her strength of vision will continue to guide us moving forward.

Cathleen has had an enormous impact across Canada, from her days in the 1970s and 80s as a feminist organizer in Nova Scotia, to taking a lead role in establishing the BC Food Systems Network in the 90s, and in working to build bridges between that network and indigenous food sovereignty activists in particular. Cathleen also had a huge impact on the national scene in Canada, as the main organizer of Food Secure Canada and a strong advocate for community organization participation in the Canadian Association of Food Studies. This preoccupation was central to shaping the role that the CFICE CFS hub played as an interlocutor between those two organizations in recent years.

For those in Ottawa, there will be a visitation on Friday, February 26, from 2-4pm, at the Ottawa Funeral Co-operative, 419 St. Laurent Blvd.. There will be other celebrations all over the country throughout the spring as well. You can also visit and share some of the tribute pages to help celebrate the amazing legacy Cathleen Kneen has left:

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to , the , the , and/or /.

Below are some additional thoughts on Cathleen shared by CFICE Co-investigator Mustafa Koc:

“With great sadness I am sharing the news about Cathleen Kneen’s death. Cathleen and Brewster Kneen have been an inseparable duo, activists, caring citizens, community organizers and bon vivants. I had a chance to work with Brewster at the Toronto Food Policy Council during the early 1990s. I had worked with Cathleen even longer, in organizing the Working Together Conference at Ryerson University in 2001, and working closely in the following years to organize a series of conferences that eventually lead to the formation of Food Secure Canada and the Canadian Association for Food Studies. She was among the founders of the Canadian Association for Food Studies and Food Secure Canada. It was under her leadership Food Secure Canada adopted food sovereignty agenda.

As two passionate people, we were not always in agreement on everything, but we respected our differences and it was pleasure to work with her, learning from her passion for change and determination to work for a better world. My last exchange with her shows that until the last few days, she was not ready to give up. Last time when I visited them in Ottawa, she was planning about the Food Secure Canada assembly in Toronto in October 2016. I will miss Cathleen, her passion for life, her commitment to social justice, her desire for social change and her love of life. I hope we can celebrate her life wherever we are, in our communities, in our kitchens, with our friends and family.

-Mustafa Koc”

Terry Audla, Inuit leader and President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), shares a northern  perspective on food security in this followed by a and answer period.

Cathleen Kneen,��Editor, The Ram’s Horn and Chair, Just Food Ottawa shares her perspective on  followed by a.

Peter Andrée, Associate Professor of Political Science, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University, shares his perspective on followed by a .

Diana Bronson, Executive Director, Food Secure Canada provides on food security followed by a brief .

Additional Resources

Yordy, Chris. Want amid plenty. 

Community Academic Collaborative: (webinar).

An outcome of the panel discussion was a nation wide set of webinars, one in English, one in French where the UN  Special Rapporteur on Food Security, , shared his findings regarding Food Security in Canada sponsored by .  Over 1000 individuals in over 50 communities in Canada heard his report then followed with a conversation on what that meant for local action thereby erasing the global local distance.