By Nancy Dorrance
with photography by Bernard Clark
Kingston designer Joyce Hostyn has a compelling vision: to restore our relationship with the land — as well as our fellow species — and to rethink how we live and work in urban landscapes. The terms “rewilding,” “biodiversity” and “multi-species approach” fall frequently from her lips.
Joyce is also a self-described rule questioner, whose most recent efforts culminated in last year’s amendment to the city’s lawn bylaw. “Now we have one of the most progressive in Canada,” she says happily. “There’s a short list of prohibited plants, as well as turf grass … but nothing else. The fact that someone objects to a lawn’s appearance is no longer a legitimate complaint.”
Sitting in her book-lined, cat-friendly, open-concept living room during Kingston’s mid-February freeze, Joyce and I sip cups of tea brewed by her adult daughter, Sasha, a highly ranked professional gamer who is home for a visit from Korea. When the family gets together for board games now, “there are certain games we have to avoid playing, because Sasha would just win, and that might cause some issues in the family,” jokes her mother. Joyce’s story begins in Saskatoon, where her father, Gerald Hostyn, was posted with the Canadian military. The family “moved a lot” through Saskatchewan and Manitoba during her early years, arriving in Alberta when she was beginning kindergarten. . . .
