expert bios
And here they are. The men and women who are willing to help you and share what they know.
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Andrew McMartin
Andrew is the founder and Executive Director of The P.I.N.E. Project, a non-profit organization created to connect people and place through nature based learning and play.
He enjoys eating plants that others think are weeds, getting grass stains and mud on his clothes, and spending time in nature. He is currently working on his stick collection, and you’ll often find him pretending to be a coyote with his morning class of 4-6 year olds.
Andrew is passionate about education and the environment, and has spent the last 12 years as an outdoor educator in various capacities including teaching, outdoor educator, adventure guide, and has studied with various specialists in survival skills and primitive technologies. He has degrees in Biology, Physical and Health Education, and Education from Queen’s and Lakehead Universities. |
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Andy Thomson
Andy brings over a decade of green building technology, 3D and energy modeling, and international design experience to seed+stone. His professional career has been marked by a passion for creating a more sustainable future by building less complicated, more efficient, and higher performing structures.
After receiving his graduate degree at the University of British Columbia in 2003, Andy worked with several architectural firms throughout Canada and The United States designing high performance public and private structures. Andy successfully ran his own firm, where he worked to pursue his lifelong passion for ‘reducing entropy’ in residential design through his work on the miniHOME, a concept for sustainable housing and community.
Andy’s work has been widely published and publicly recognized by such supporters as Oprah Winfrey and David Suzuki, among thousands of other architects and design professionals. |
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Cam Mather
Cam Mather has lived off the electricity grid with solar and wind power for 12 years. He grows an increasing amount of his own food and paid off his mortgage 15 years ago while earning below the median Canadian income. He is author of "Thriving During Challenging Times, The Energy, Food and Financial Independence Handbook" and "The All You Can Eat Gardening Handbook." |
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Carl Chambers
Carl Chambers spent 16 years in the British army as an infantry soldier and a sniper. Carl has trained all over the world from Kenya to within the Arctic Circle. He was also awarded a mention in dispatches for gallantry from HRH Queen Elizabeth II. After leaving the army Carl set up School In The Woods (www.schoolinthewoods.ca) and now teaches wilderness skills from survival training to winter expedition training. Carl also delivers Canadian Wildlife Federation Programs. |
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Doug Getgood
Doug has been practicing wilderness survival since 1985. He spent a long Toronto winter sleeping in a hand-made debris in a local ravine and also lived alone in a remote log cabin in Northern Ontario for one year.
He has extensive knowldege in the area of edible and medicinal plants and likes to improvise outdoor tools and equipment. |
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Laurie Varga
Laurie is a knowledge junkie who loves to work with her hands and dreams of living off the land in a quiet place surrounded by lots of trees. She currently lives in a big city and does the best she can to make her backyard her own private oasis and grocery store. Laurie also likes to make things herself, especially out of wood, yarn or fabric and improvise with found objects.
In addition to self-sufficiency she is fascinated by survival psychology and teaches self-defence. |
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Paul Tarsitano
Is a paramedic and a Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician (W-EMT). He has taught First Aid/CPR with St. John, Red Cross,
Cardiac Safe City, and Heart & Stroke. In addition, Paul has instructed with Wilderness Survival Challenge School and has taught special education at a high school for over ten years. He has experience with the Canadian Ski Patrol, Search & Rescue, Marine Unit, and has appeared on several TV shows. |
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Reg Varga
Reg has recently retired after working as a firefighter for the City of Calgary for 32 years. After receiving specialized training from the Canadian Federal Government in Ottawa he spent 8 years working as a Disaster Services Officer and a volunteer with the Red Cross.
His areas of expertise include; disaster management, emergency response, incident command, heavy urban search and rescue, health and safety, emergency centre operations, telecommunications, and co-ordinating across multiple agencies. He has also designed & adjudicated mock, large-scale emergency exercises to train and test first responder personelle.
In 1993 Reg assisted the American Red Cross as a Logistics Courier Co-ordinator during the Great Mississippi Flood in St. Louis, Missouri. |
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Skeet Sutherland
Skeet Sutherland, director and lead instructor, founded Sticks and Stones Wilderness School in 2007. His unique passion for living and breathing the integral life studies of wilderness skills training and stewardship education has proven to be both inspiring and practical to thousands. For over a decade, Skeet has played an active role in the Headwaters Community of southern Ontario through teaching wilderness skills, coordinating stewardship projects and events and providing ecological consulting services. When he isn't teaching you can find him volunteering his time facilitating the growth of the community through the Headwaters tracking club, local Stewardship projects and helping to coordinating the Headwaters Gatherings in Ontario. |
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