Fire and Ice in the Region of Wood Buffalo, Canada
Thematic learning to help citizens address the wicked problem of climate change
Climate Change in Wood Buffalo
Climate change is a threat because it influences global weather patterns and therefore, contributes to more severe weather events and rapid changes in temperature and precipitation patterns. The impacts of climate change are currently being felt in every inhabited continent across the globe.
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo community is no stranger to change influenced by a changing climate. In May 2016, the Horse River Fire swept into the city of Fort McMurray, which was significant in both scale and impact, being defined as one of Canada’s most costly disasters. The Horse River Fire has been attributed to a low winter snowpack and extremely warm and dry weather conditions in the spring. Later in 2020, the region was hit hard by significant ice jam flooding and the COVID-19 pandemic.
All of these events were devastating for the residents of Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and had widespread impacts on the community. Looking into the future, climate change is projected to increasingly influence hazards, including wildfires and ice jam flooding, that will likely become progressively more severe. All signs point to the need for adaptative change.
Future Scenarios
According to the Global Climate Models from the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium [4], even if we decrease global greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, etc.), the Region of Wood Buffalo will still be affected by climate change. For example, even a low emissions scenario is projected to bring change to the community that requires adaptation as seen below:
Participatory Video (PV) is a proven tool for Indigenous communities to document and share Indigenous knowledge of climate change to inform local, regional and international climate change adaptation efforts and policy. At the heart of the PV approach is a set of facilitated techniques and processes for communities to explore their own issues and adaptation options through video. PV workshops develop participants’ skills to explore, document, collate and reflect on information about local implications of climate change, including culturally relevant adaptation actions, focused on traditional fire management.
What do changes in precipitation and temperature mean for hazards in the Wood Buffalo region?
It is widely accepted now that climate change significantly contributes to disasters being more destructive and frequent than they would be in a world with stable atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. An increase in intense precipitation events and extreme heat can create dry periods that make regions, like Wood Buffalo, more susceptible to wildfires and drought. In addition, wildfires are harder to extinguish when air temperatures are high and soil moisture is low. In short, an increase of 1°C may not seem significant, however, it has widespread and cascading impacts on weather systems and patterns regionally and across the globe.
Change is inevitable and the current turbulence rooted in modern times requires a shift in mindset from a reactive to proactive response to change. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us that the world is not as predictive, linear, understandable, and stable as we may have historically thought, and is instead dynamic, impossible to completely understand, complex, and ever changing/evolving. Climate change further reiterates this mindset shift as reactive responses to climate change impacts will require significantly more resources (time, energy, money) than proactive responses. Moving forward, adapting to climate change will be essential to moderate or avoid harm caused by climate change-induced events and changes.
Program Overview
In May 2016, residents of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo experienced a serious wildfire, named the Horse River Fire. The region was then hit hard in 2020 by significant ice jam flooding and the COVID-19 pandemic. To aid in recovery of the region and its resilience building, the Canadian Red Cross supported a series of workshops and engagement activities, including the Fire & Ice program, that brought together a small cohort from the social profit sector who embarked on a creative learning journey filled with dialogue on topics about resilience and disaster risk reduction.
During the Fire & Ice program, participants learned about ice jams, glaciology, and wildfire, while gaining new skills in writing and photography through a series of expert workshops. Following the workshop series, participants reflected on their learnings and completed individual reflections. This feature highlights the learnings of the program and showcases the outstanding work of some of the diverse voices in the 2022 Fire & Ice cohort.
Workshop Series
The learning journey started with a workshop called ‘Photography as a tool for Storytelling’ run by Meris Kieller who taught participants how to use different photography tools to tell a story. Following Meris, Dr. Shawn Marshall led a workshop called ‘Glaciers, Water, Ice, and Us,’ which introduced participants to the relationship between water systems and life and discussed how this relationship is changing under the threat of climate change. Dr. Uldis Silins and Dr. Kira Hoffman then presented an engaging session called ‘Wildfire in a Changing World,’ where participants learned about how wildfire changes water quality and the relationship between humans and fire in a dynamic world. Wrapping up the workshop series was a ‘Writing about Change’ workshop from Fort McMurray local Kevin Thornton, who provided participants with tips for bringing their narratives together.
Meris Keiller
Meris is a visual storyteller from Guelph, Ontario. Using photography, Meris works to authentically document stories with a focus on people and the outdoor environment. She is most passionate about the power of photography as a storytelling tool. Meris believes that sharing stories visually allows us to experience new perspectives and helps us connect with each other, our communities, and the world we live in.
Dr. Shawn Marshall
Dr. Shawn Marshall is a glaciologist and climatologist at the University of Calgary, where he is Professor in the Department of Geography. His research combines field studies and numerical modelling to examine glacier-climate processes and glacier and ice sheet response to climate change. Dr. Marshall has been seconded to the Government of Canada since 2019, where he is serving as the Departmental Science Advisor at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Dr. Uldis Silins
Dr. Uldis Silins is a professor of forest hydrology in the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta. His research largely focuses on impacts of natural disturbances such as wildfire and Mountain Pine Beetle, along with those of forest management on hydrology, water quality, and aquatic health. For the past 17yrs., he has been leading a large pan-Canadian water research team studying both wildfire and forest management impacts to water with the Southern Rockies Watershed Project.
Dr. Kira Hoffman
Dr. Kira Hoffman is a fire ecologist and former wildland firefighter. Her research focuses on how humans have used fire for millennia to manage and enhance their natural surroundings. In concert with Indigenous and local ecological knowledge, she uses western science to better understand how present-day forests have been shaped by stewardship techniques and how ongoing fire suppression has eroded the resiliency of landscapes and human communities. Currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of British Columbia, she is passionate about linking knowledge to action through science communication and supporting Indigenous-led solutions to environmental problems.
Kevin Thornton
Kevin has over 25 short stories published, as well as some poetry that rhymes and newspaper articles that don’t. He has taught English as a second language, run public speaking courses, and been involved in teaching writing for nearly twenty years. In a past life, he was a soldier in Africa, a contractor in Afghanistan and a communications specialist in Alberta. During the fire of 2016 he wrote articles for the New York Times and the Devon Dispatch. He lives in Fort McMurray with his wife, two sons and a thievin’ beagle.
Participants’ Reflections
The 2022 Fire & Ice cohort gained new knowledge from experts about changes in water systems and wildfire, as well as the essential tools to tell their story through writing and photography, participants went into the field to reflect on their learnings. In the field, each participant took photos of ice, water, snow, and evidence of wildfire, and wrote short narratives about change:
Therese Greenwood
Therese has more than two decades of experience in strategic communications, media, public engagement, and stakeholder relations with public sector organizations in Ontario and Alberta. The recent recipient of an Executive Certificate in Public Sector Leadership from Queen’s University’s Executive Education program, Therese is interested in working with highly engaged teams whose strong relationships and effective storytelling reflect strategic community priorities. She has also worked as a reporter, editor, broadcaster, and journalism teacher, and holds a Master’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario. Originally from the Thousand Islands region, Therese has lived in Wood Buffalo for the past four years.
Unnatural Disasters
Many evacuees described it like finding yourself in a Hollywood disaster movie. I was one of them. One minute I raced out my door in a Fort McMurray suburb already on fire, the next I was trapped at a dead stop in bumper-to-bumper traffic disappearing into the smoke. I thought of cinematic images of post-apocalyptic highways clogged with abandoned vehicles as I calculated how fast I could run to the Clearwater River if I had to ditch my car.
Four years later, I watched the Clearwater River crest its banks and flood our new home. Once again, Fort McMurray’s downtown evacuated, traffic inching towards hastily set-up victim centres. With jeopardy amped up by the global pandemic, it was like being in the second film in a Hollywood disaster franchise.
I learned that fire or flood, the recovery script is the same. Bureaucrats write reports about “lessons learned.” Emergency response is beefed up. Communication improved. Plans enhanced for protecting infrastructure like water and sewage plants. Support programs created for burnt-out staff. Volunteers lauded. The learning is reactive, based in past experience focusing on emergency response. It is already our past. As the list of evacuated cities grows – it is our present. It is also our terrifying future. Things will be worse for the next generations unless there is a radical rethinking.
My rethink started with a refusal to cast the wildfire as a villainous psycho. It had been dubbed “The Beast,” a nickname often quoted in the media, as if it was a supervillain deliberately attacking a city. That never sat well with me. The fire wasn’t alive, and it wasn’t intentional. Naming it bestowed a mantle of inevitability, as if it were created outside of human control, not started by a careless spark.
I came to feel the same about the phrase “natural disaster”. Disasters are not natural, as Dr. Kevin Blanchard, an international expert on disaster risk reduction said, is a sudden calamitous event that disrupts a community and exceeds its ability to cope using its own resources. It is caused by a natural hazard — earthquake, hurricane, flooding. While the hazard may be inevitable, the level of destruction it wreaks is not. “The decisions that we make as humans are what turn a hazard into a disaster,” Blanchard says.
Blanchard leads the #NoNaturalDisasters social media campaign that urges us to change the way we think about disasters and change our decisions before hazards arrive. That change in thinking impacts every action we take to help our poorest and most vulnerable citizens, to use our natural resources, to live our daily lives. It’s a simple call to action with rippling ramifications.
Monica Booth
Monica Booth is a freelance writer who has called Fort McMurray home since 2010. Originally from Ontario, Monica received her Bachelor of Arts from Wilfrid Laurier University and post-graduate certificate in Public Relations from Mohawk College before heading west to start her career. Since then, she has worked for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and now helps local non-profit organizations with their social media content. When she’s not writing, you can find Monica in her ever-expanding vegetable garden, studying herbal medicine or hiking the Birchwood Trails with her husband and two little boys.
What is resilience?
Is it just getting so used to calamity that your body and soul begins to recognize it and act accordingly? Is it knowing when to hold your breath and when to let it flow? Or does resilience come when we surrender to the rhythms of nature within and around us? After all, Mother Nature is the true example of resilience. When faced with adversity and even catastrophe, Mother Nature’s wisdom allows her to heal but never stay the same. Her rivers freeze, thaw, straighten, curl, dry up and overflow. Her forests grow, breathe, spark, burn, rest and grow again. The landscape we’ve come to know looks different now. It’s scarred, but it’s still hers. Still ours. And now we experience the renewal of a forest from the ground up. We witness firsthand as the spark of destruction becomes the spark of life.
The Jack pine and lodgepole share the next generation of their species when the heat of fire releases their cones. The fireweed is one of the first plants to spring up from the wreckage of a wildfire, beginning its work as a balm for land and human alike. The trees slowly rise up and will one day reach the height of the flame-scarred ghosts of the forest that once was. What is resilience? It comes not from forgetting the scars are there, but from allowing them to blend into our souls as we, too, rise up again.
In the crisp frozen air the river comes to a halt, slipping quietly to a months-long slumber, her creatures slowed and suspended on the thin line between sleep and death. Then as with a breath – in and out – she cracks and bursts forth in springtime surprise, joining a world emerging from its own winter’s rest. We look at melting snow and ice with anticipation, the hope of winter leading into spring, warmer days ahead. But living around and with rivers poses challenges and threats we keep believing we can conquer – the annual anxiety that accompanies the melt. Will the ice gradually liquify and give way to the gentle flowing water beneath? Or will it fold in and up on itself like mountains formed from the volatile shaping of our planet, pushing water back and over its banks and endangering all who come near it?
I can’t breathe. I count the days. Her silent watch. She appears peaceful until you remember she’s a wild animal about to give birth. I come to expect to hold my breath, heavy of thought and heart until she flows unencumbered once again. And when she does, shards of broken ice decorate her banks like beads of a necklace and my anxiety subsides only when each one has thawed and rejoined its brethren in the journey north.
I take the deepest breath in, filling my lungs with spring air, the scent of poplar buds, water and dirt, and only when she’s safely on her way do I exhale, my breath rushing forth as I rejoin the world.
Rasha Hassan
Rasha is the Events and Communications Supervisor at the Multicultural Association of Wood Buffalo. She oversees planning multicultural events, which she finds is a great opportunity for our diverse community to represent their origin cultures and showcase these cultures to everyone in the RMWB. Rasha is passionate about people and committed to helping them. She is a connector who loves to bring people together. In and out of her professional life, she is always finding herself in the middle of planning fun and memorable events for the people around her, which is why event planning is right up her alley. She has experience working with multicultural groups in a few different countries. Rasha always believes that working in an environment with people of different backgrounds, races and nationalities can be a rewarding and fulfilling professional experience. It always inspires innovation and productivity.
Fort McMurray has always been a community of great tranquility and strength. In times of despair, we have continuously come together as one and revealed our resilience as a whole. The Wildfire that struck our town in 2016 was a great example of our collective stability. To some the photo below may seem odd and unappealing, however; for our community, we look at every burnt tree as a blessing and exhibit of our durability and secureness.
Floods are a common danger in Canada, and they have wreaked havoc in many parts of Alberta. The river in the photo below may seem peaceful and pleasant, however; it has caused hardship among our community. The flood that we sustained was a traumatic experience among many. Nonetheless, we build our bond with the water as though its peace and quietness metaphorically represents our harmonious beings who come together with love and solidity when the time is needed.
The Resilience Institute – Our Story
The Resilience Institute was born from the passion of a number of social and natural scientists who felt there were huge disconnects between climate science, communication and action on climate change. That passion drove us to create a registered charity that today is focused on climate change and sustainability through community-based education and research. Our theory of change is that rapid transformation towards climate safe futures is best achieved by effectively weaving holistic knowledge systems with scientific and technological advances. Taking a transdisciplinary approach, our multi-year initiatives involve Indigenous Peoples, natural and social scientists, and industry/NGO partners collaborating on activities that foster innovative solutions and transformative change.
