Shawna Henderson was flipping through an old copy of Harrowsmith Magazine sometime in the early 1990s when she came across a feature article on Dan Roscoe, a Canadian architect and pioneering solar home designer known for his unconventional approach to building and unbridled enthusiasm for passive solar design.

At the time, Henderson had moved from her home in Vancouver and was living in Vermont where she was studying alternative architecture, ecology, and applied technology, often immersed in lively conversations about climate change, environmental concerns related to the housing industry, and solutions that might mitigate its heavy toll.

Inspired by the magazine piece, Henderson wrote to Roscoe and told him she wanted to come up to Nova Scotia and work on his build sites. Keen to learn, she said, "I'll pick up cigarette butts, I don't care — I want to see how these houses go together, and I want to pick your brain on how you're designing these houses."

Roscoe, then chair of Solar Nova Scotia, called back soon after and chatted with her for an hour, ultimately offering up a job working on a book on passive solar home design that the organization was going to publish with ACOA funding.

"It was supposed to be a 10-month contract and I’ve been in Nova Scotia for 30-some years!" Henderson says with a laugh from her home in Halifax.

"That whole trajectory, from age 26 to about 30, was a revolution that brought my life to where it is now,” she says. “I was thinking, 'How we can fix this massive (environmental) problem that is coming. I can see the train coming and can't get out of the way.' Then I was able to gather myself up and do what I could to leave the existential dread behind me."

The experience was formative for Henderson, ultimately positioning her as a leader in her own right as a designer of, and consultant on, green, net-zero or high-performance housing in Nova Scotia and across the country.

A self-professed science wonk, Henderson has been working in the field of energy-efficiency and housing since 1992 when she started out as an R-2000 evaluator and then inspector. She also became one of the first licensed EnerGuide for Houses evaluators in Canada, while doing applied research with the National Research Council and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

The work, in addition to her earlier studies at British Columbia Institute of Technology and the Institute for Social Ecology, spring-boarded nicely with the creation of one of her first companies, Bfreehomes Design Ltd., which provides a range of services for homeowners interested in improving their energy efficiency, building or renovating their homes using sustainable materials, and reducing space and water heating costs by up to 90 per cent.

"For the last 20 years that I've run a company, I've never done any advertising," she says, adding that before the pandemic she was booked out for two years. "It's always been word of mouth and when people come to me, they say, 'Nobody else does this.' There are absolutely more people who want this, and I could never fulfil that whole need."

To address that 'need,' in 2012 Henderson co-founded Blue House Energy, an online building science and energy efficiency education site that offers mostly asynchronous courses for tradespeople, contractors, renovators, and energy efficiency professionals to do at their own pace. Classes cover everything from whole house energy retrofits and thermal bridging to the fundamentals of indoor air quality and passive solar gain.

Their inaugural class — Building Science Basics — is marking its 12th-year anniversary and more than 10,000 people have used their courses over the years.

"The focus for Blue House Energy is, how do we get all of those people to get the 'why' behind energy conservation, so that when they go out and do this work they understand the importance of it," says Henderson. "Everybody should understand this stuff, whether you're an architect, a builder, a real estate agent, or a home designer."

She is also passionate about serving as a role model and getting more women into an industry she says can be toxic, unwelcoming, and one in which they make up only four per cent of the workforce.

Henderson has expanded her educational reach across Canada and is a provider of mandatory training to the Ontario New Home Warranty Program, continuing education credits to British Columbia's housing program and various organizations in the States. She has also launched a home performance accelerator program for people who want the training of an energy advisor but may not want to pursue a career in the field.

Henderson, who’s also an author, blogger, and podcaster, says she didn't imagine she would end up spending her days immersed in the science of healthy homes after starting out as a dressmaker, tailor, and graphic designer when she was young.

"If someone had said to me, most of your adult life is going to be spent wallowing in the joy of applied physics, I would’ve been like, 'You don't know me at all,'" she jokes. "But this whole space was just so much fun to work in once I got past the 'Oh my gosh, there's so much to learn.' It's been wonderful and I really love teaching people and helping them get into it."

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