By Cari Kilmartin

Kaz Haykowsky is a fifth-generation Treaty 6 person, gardener, and social entrepreneur, dedicated to creating regenerative culture. He heads up Newo’s work on food sovereignty and permaculture.

life story so far

An Edmontonian through and through, Kaz was born and raised in Alberta’s capital, and the city has yet to find a way to shake him. The garden of the home where he and his younger brother and sister grew up is still tended by their father, though some things have changed since 1996.

The apple tree a young Kaz planted in the backyard is still standing, but where grass once commanded prime real estate, greater ecological diversity has taken over.

“Over the years, 26 years now, that yard has completely turned into a garden. There’s not really any lawn at all anymore, it’s just pathways weaving around fruit trees and ornamental trees and all kinds of flowers, apple trees, cherry trees. It’s really a total jungle in there.

“That house is where I learned to cook, and that’s kind of where my connection to gardening started, in that garden. So it’s really awesome that it is still going, and I get to go visit and pick fruit and hang out with my dad there.”

With a writer for a dad and an artist for a mom, both with a penchant for cooking and gardening, creativity and an attentiveness to the world of food are common threads in the lives of all the Haykowskys. Kaz’s sister is an artist, while his brother works in the food and service industry and “loves to serve and connect people with good food.”

“I think it’s been impactful for me and my siblings to have some of those lessons from my parents, and just to see the way that they live in the world,” Kaz shares.

turning points

Kaz considered becoming a chef himself, but decided against it because it didn’t seem practical at the time. Instead, he pursued his interest in science and biology and went to the University of Alberta for a botany degree, but quickly determined that life in a lab was not for him.

“There was always something in me that was more curious about plants and food on a broader level. I don’t think I could ever spend all my time in a lab just dissecting plants or looking at their genomes. They’re just so much more powerful than that.”

So, he switched to a human geography and political science degree, where he was able to “weave together politics, sociology and plants.” He explored geographies of food and health and looked at how food access is affected by place, politics and power, and came to see how food is often used “as a tool to oppress some people and to keep some out of access to the goods of our system,” rather than to empower and feed the world.

His studies led him to permaculture, which he recognized as a practical expression of what he was learning and an avenue by which to live out his principles. In 2016, during his fourth year of university, he started Spruce Permaculture Landscaping Company.

“That was kind of a little rebellion against The Lawn, and against city bylaws that keep people mowing their little patch of grass and keeping up with the Joneses, who’ve got their beautifully manicured and sprayed yard,” he says. “We were just wanting to buck that trend and help people to plant cherry trees instead, and mulch their yard and dig swales and plant native species and plants for pollinators.”

It was around the same time that Kaz took the Spirit of the Land class at Augustana, and first came into contact with Newo.

“I think Spirit of the Land helped me to even further coalesce a lot of the things I’ve been learning and thinking about around spirituality and connection to land, reconciliation, food, politics, geography. It all came together in that class, which was really remarkable.”

Connections made at Spirit of the Land eventually brought Kaz to Newo in a more official capacity, and in late 2019, he joined the Newo team to explore the space of food sovereignty.

core values

When Kaz looks at the systems we use to organize ourselves, or some of the widely accepted practices and norms of our society, “There are so many issues, it’s hard to not be kind of overwhelmed,” he says.

“There’s this huge world of political and social ramifications around food that I’ve always been drawn to learning more about and doing something about. The way we organize economically, the way we think about food, the way we travel and communicate, it’s all intertwined.”

To illustrate his point, Kaz, who has Ukrainian heritage, brings up the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Because of this conflict, grain shipments from the region are hindered, and a lot of people go hungry. That’s contributing to a massive hunger issue in the Horn of Africa and across sub-Saharan Africa, which is exacerbating conflicts there, and contributing to people being displaced and families being torn apart,” he says. “And all of that is having impacts on climate and on water, it’s displacing people and moving them around the world to places where maybe they’re not able to practice their culture or where they’re not welcome.”

Besides examining things on a macro or global scale, he also believes small steps and intentional individual actions can be revolutionary.

“Do what you can. I do think that it’s important to just to keep moving, but also to actually hone what you’re doing and to take a step back and recognize, OK, is this a part of the current paradigm that I want to support? Is the stuff that I’m doing really as impactful or as revolutionary as I want it to be right now?”

rooted in people or place

The lifelong Edmonton native has done his fair share of exploring far and distant lands, but it doesn’t take him long to identify where home is and why.

“I visited some really beautiful places, but they almost feel like a magical other realm, like travelling through the wardrobe into Narnia or something,” he says, laughing as he describes the novelty of seeing iguanas sunbathing in Mexico and rainbow-coloured mud and geysers in Iceland.

“What’s very homey for me is Edmonton, and the Aspen Parkland especially. Open plains and glades, and these forests of aspen trees and tamarack and spruce, the smells of those spaces and the seasons changing here — I feel very at home in that,” he says.

“I like to know where I am, and I like to know where people are to have a sense of connection. I like to be able to name pretty much all of the plants that I see around me. That’s something that I have here in Alberta, where I can walk through the forest and recognize the plants around me. It’s almost like knowing my neighbours.”