‘I Built a Passive House.’ Meet Tom Grimmer

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In my job at The Tyee, I have the pleasure of talking often with the folks who choose to keep us going and I want to introduce you to one of the many people who make our journalism possible.

Meet Tom Grimmer, Tyee Builder. Tom resides on Vancouver Island, studied journalism in university and proceeded to have a career in international communications. He is passionate about environmental issues, particularly passive houses, and he was kind enough to take the time to answer a few of my questions. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Em: What do you love about living on Vancouver Island?

Tom: I love pretty much everything. I like to ride my bike, ski and paddle, and we have plenty of opportunity for that. As far as purchasing, the ingredients one can buy to cook with are superb and there are good bookstores too. There are also a lot of like-minded people here, and some of the most impressive NGOs I have ever encountered. You might say we have both physical and intellectual stimulation — does it get better?

What fascinates you about passive houses and what is your involvement with them?

Passive houses are something tangible we can do about climate change. I read about them in George Monbiot's 2006 book Heat, and it sounded like magic; a built environment that takes care of its own heating or cooling just by sitting there (hence ‘passive’). I built a passive house on Vancouver Island that I finished in 2019 just before the pandemic. I am about to embark on another project that will be more focused on accounting for embodied carbon. My goal is to prove that passive houses are affordable for everyone because that's how we make a real difference.

What motivated you to study journalism and what makes for great reporting?

I think most people who go to J-school do so because they want to change things. I was no exception. Those days, in the early '80s, weren't exactly the heady times of the '60s and '70s, but we had solid stuff to work with, such as nuclear proliferation, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, cruise missile testing, and the emergence of the Greens. And let's not forget the Reagan years and their reverberations in Canada.

Great reporting is driven by curiosity, skepticism and a sense of historical perspective. If you have those things, everything else falls into place. I count among my heroes people like I.F. Stone, Seymour Hersh, Christopher Hitchens, David Suzuki. These are people who question.

Why do you support The Tyee? Why did you decide Tyee journalism is a worthwhile investment?

I just love getting The Tyee's email every morning. Seldom a day goes by I don't read something profound in there. Most recently was a wonderful piece debunking a major energy provider's greenwashing nonsense. The mainstream press tiptoes around things that The Tyee meets head-on.

I value The Tyee’s curiosity, healthy skepticism and its enthusiasm for saying "bullshit" to much of what we are asked to believe. It is refreshing.

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