Brooksdale’s Site Manager, Alain Boisclair-Joly is new to the role, but is certainly not new to A Rocha.

Alain’s connection to A Rocha reaches all the way back to 1992 when he was a young 20-something sailing on a SALTS tall ship off the coast of Portugal. While on their tour of the Algarve coast he and fellow shipmates toured a little known Christian environmental study centre. That centre happened to be A Rocha’s first site — Cruzhina — run by Peter and Miranda Harris. It was at Cruzhina that Alain first experienced the wonder and joy of handling a live bird during the centre’s weekly bird banding time.

That first exposure to A Rocha and the goodness of creation care bloomed into full-time work a few years later when Alain and his new bride Karin set off for Lebanon in 1998. Karin and Alain worked with A Rocha in the Bekaa Valley for a year and a half. They did everything from hosting visitors to translating French Embassy grants to helping with bird monitoring on the marsh.

Their next stint with A Rocha took them to France from 2002 – 2005 where they served as centre directors at Les Tourades, the French field study centre near Arles in the south of France. In addition to offering hospitality to visitors and oversight to the centre, Alain helped with conservation monitoring studies and received his European bird-banding license.

Now, over ten years since his last position with A Rocha, Alain is back in the fold as he takes up the position of Site Manager at Brooksdale. His job entails looking after the centre’s physical grounds as well as the numerous heritage buildings that make up this special property. When asked what excites him about the job Alain had this to say: “I’m really excited about working with volunteers. The heritage buildings and grounds are beautiful, but they also require a lot of upkeep — more upkeep than one person can do. I’m excited to connect with people who want to be a part of A Rocha’s vision through practically caring for a place.”

To find out more about volunteering at Brooksdale and working alongside Alain caring for Brooksdale’s grounds and heritage buildings click here.