by Rebecca Weigand

I sat down, across a zoom screen, with Karma Co-op’s first president, Richard Haney, to learn more about the early days of our co-op. He talked about the magic of enthusiasm, the power of participation, and the importance of being guided by a good decision-making process. Richard Haney will be among many guests at the laneway party of June 25, to celebrate Karma Co-op’s 50th birthday.

Q – What was going on in 1972?

That was a time of incredible social change. We had a co-operative house, and some of us decided to start up a food co-op. We were very tired of going to Dominion and Loblaws, and being just a number. We wanted to be a part of something. We realized that everybody needs food everyday, and everyone wants to be part of community.

It was about ten of us in the furnace room, it almost feels like something out of the French Revolution, sitting in a pack planning something that was extremely collaborative. There was something about the energy in those first months where the whole concept of being separate people wasn’t even there, it was just the group. It almost felt like some kind of a religious movement. 

There were so many people that were like that then. I can list so many things that were coming out of the co-op. We practically got Sewell, the Mayor in office. If it wasn’t for Karma Co-op there would have been no mayor Sewell, who influenced the development in the city, and there would have been the Spadina expressway going through the Nordheimer Ravine. 

Q – What kinds of connections are there between the work you did with Karma and your work as a professor of counselling and mediation?

I was a teacher then, teaching high school, and I was a principal. After a couple of years at Karma, I was getting my M.Ed. and I thought “Hey, if you can have a co-op for food, why not a whole school”, so a group of us started Inglenook Community School on Sackville Avenue, in Cabbagetown. It’s now in its 48th year. Instead of sustainable food, sustainable community, it’s sustainable education, sustainable community. 

Q – We often worry about Karma, but here we are at fifty. What has helped Karma survive?

Well the motivation is very high. The theory is that every ten years, the culture of a co-op changes. The fact that Karma has survived the pandemic is amazing…. it could be something that enhances Karma. Talia has the right kind of energy. Many of the beginning people at Karma had this zeal — zeal for community and zeal for good healthy food. They don’t have to be vegan or vegetarian. They’re communitarian.

Oh, one of the biggest problems was when the meat people said, “Wait a minute, this is a co-op, we want meat here”. So how did we deal with that? 

I think it was in my second year as president. At that time, we had some external co-op consultants coming to help us get set up as a co-op, with not just what works but what doesn’t work. If sixteen percent of the people put something  on the general meeting agenda two days before the meeting, it comes up to the agenda. The board did a survey to see how many people would be okay with having meat, and then it came back to the general membership, and they said yes, they want meat. So it actually involves the general membership twice, which is very different from “this is the way it’s going to be”. With the meat decision, I can’t imagine how we’d ever have solved that if we didn’t have that process. Sustainable community eclipsed vegan versus meat. 

Q – What would you like Karma members to carry away from the 25th anniversary celebration? 

Enthusiasm. It can move mountains, it’s incredible, it’s almost unstoppable. Enthusiasm, and this unbelievable feeling-reality that we’re in a “we”.

The day my first child was born was one of the most memorable days of my life, and the day when the whole co-op stopped working and unloaded this truck, was the next. It was just, wow. Free lumber, free labour, but we were all doing community together. A member found a company that was offering free lumber from demolition sites and one Saturday morning a massive truck with a full load of good used lumber arrived at Karma. The whole store stopped shopping, about a hundred people, and we just unloaded that truck. It would have taken two or three folks a few days to unload and sort all this lumber.  We stopped shopping and formed three or four long lines of handlers and sorted the lumber into useful piles in just two short hours. And then the Heap family, Dan Heap, his wife Alice, and their son Harold, built that first cooler and all the shelving.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.