November 25, 2004
The first Conservation Summit was co-hosted by the Conservation Council of Ontario, the Province of Ontario, and the Ontario Trillium Foundation.  200 people came together at the Liberty Grand at Exhibition Place to tackle how Ontario could best create a culture of conservation.

2004 Summit Challenge Paper

Summit participants encouraged the Conservation Council to develop a common and united initiative to promote conservation -- the genesis of We Conserve.  "We Conserve" was launched on July 5, 2005 with a consultation paper and the www.weconserve.ca website.
 

May 30, 2006
A year and a half later, we were back again, with 130 conservation leaders gathering at the Royal York hotel in Toronto.  With "We Conserve", we now had a model for organizing a conservation movement, we'd run our first campaign (Doors Closed) and were set to launch a second campaign (Lighten Up).  We were already demonstrating the potential of partnerships, co-marketing, networking and other innovative ways to promote conservation.  Our main focus was on electricity conservation, following on the August 2003 blackout, but we could also see the potential for We Conserve to be a catalyst for change on a wide range of issues.

2006 Workbook

The second summit laid the foundation for even more collaborative partnerships, some of which will be on the agenda for the 2007 summit. 

2002: the dress rehearsal
Back in 2002, the Conservation Council hosted an Eco Summit as a gathering of conservation and environmental organizations to discuss ways we could work together on common goals and increase funding for environmental groups and programs.  Most of the participants at that summit were from groups that had faced a decade of declining funding for environmental projects.  They saw the need for a new approach and urged the Conservation Council to take the lead in developing a model for cooperation. 

Following from the Eco Summit, the Council produced a strategy paper that first outlined how a cooperative conservation movement could be developed in Ontario.