I spent most of a recent week on an island off the west coast of Canada, at a small conference called “Media that matters.” The 30 or so attendees were an eclectic range of media innovators and progressive activists. There were slightly more Canadians than Americans, and about equal numbers of women and men.

Two — web entrepreneur and former TV journalist Sudha Krishna, and Rinku Sen, publisher of ColourLines magazine — were of South Asian origin, and one — Adrian Harewood of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — was a black Canadian whose parents had immigrated from the Caribbean. Another, Judy Rebick, is Canada’s best-known feminist activist and publisher of rabble.ca.

“We’re a tribe,” is how Rick Searle, the Canadian executive producer of ekosTV.com, a new media company that produces video documentaries on environmental topics and publishes them on the web, puts it. “We’re far-flung, but we are a tribe. It’s a sense of shared purpose. At the risk of sounding corny, each and every one of us here believes that through our work in media we can make the world a better place.”

Cortes Island is breathtakingly beautiful: forested, nestled between huge Vancouver Island and the coast, commanding views in two directions of snow-capped mountains. There are deer, migratory birds, seals and other wildlife. It’s an extremely restful place and, even though it does have wireless internet access, and even though I did go online several times to send necessary emails, I was not tempted to visit any news websites.

To be ignorant of what’s happening in the world is a luxury, and the location’s serenity and isolation made the retreat the intellectual and spiritual equivalent of a fast: an occasion to cleanse the mind and soul of all the junk and flotsam that usually pollute them. By freeing us from distractions, it allowed us to take an interest in each other and to share visions and projects in a healthy spirit.

Grace Stahre, an American technology consultant and documentary producer, echoed the feelings of many present when she told me: “We’re able to engage in a critical dialogue about the media that we create, because the environment at Hollyhock promotes trust.”

For me, the most refreshing and intriguing aspect of “Media that matters” was the opportunity to meet so many Canadians and learn about the enterprising and clever work they’re doing at the leading edge of media evolution and reform. Judy Rebick and her colleague Wayne MacPhail told us about their adventures with and ambitions for rabble.ca, which bills itself as “News for the rest of us.” Katherine Dodds runs HelloCoolWorld, an “idea distribution” network that uses Web-driven strategies to engage audiences on — and offline and helped make the documentary film The Corporation a big hit.

Nate Jolley, Andrew Naysmith and Adam Cormier are crackerjack young filmmakers. Adam showed us a trenchant and very funny snippet from his documentary in progress, Fixing Capitalism. Nate and Andrew are working together on a hard-hitting film about a longstanding conflict over unsustainable logging by Weyerhaeuser, the world’s largest logging company, on tribal lands on Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) near Alaska. “There’s a lot to be learned from looking at other people’s battles and how other people have been successful, because everyone faces these battles in every part of the world,” Nate told me.

Despite the two countries’ long border, few Americans make such connections or learn about such work in Canada, unless we actively seek it out. Matt Thompson, a Canadian writer, producer and online strategist, articulated to me another valuable aspect of the cross-border dimension. “One of the reasons it’s important that the conferences are in Canada is that Canadians understand Americans better than anyone else,” he said. “And the reason for that is necessity. I think that’s something unique that Canada can offer: rendering America more intelligible to the world.”

I found Matt extraordinarily thoughtful. “Media is important because at this point in our history it’s like a nervous system for our planet,” he said. “And we’re at a point where cooperation is no longer optional.

“Media are like the eyes and ears of the planet. In some ways we have leased our senses to corporations. I don’t think that corporations are necessarily malevolent, but fostering the kind of international cooperation that the planet requires right now is not their priority. So we need to reclaim this planetary nervous system that has so much untapped potential.

“One of the biggest dangers to us all is the clash of fundamentalisms. I think part of what we’re learning, as progressives, is that our own version of fundamentalism is not the answer. We need to suspend judgment long enough to figure out why our opponents are powerful, and why their messages appeal to so many people. These conferences are providing the techniques we need to do that.”

I plan to return to “Media that matters” next year. Meanwhile, thanks to having met Wayne MacPhail, soon I’ll be launching a regular podcast on Pakistan and related issues on the rabble podcast network.