Photo by sakarin14 via Adobe Stock

Arctic Canada is filling with puddles.

Springtime in the Yukon looks astonishingly similar to June in Ontario. The days are long. Deer bite the heads off flowers deep in the forest. Icy mountains still loom in the distance, but here in the city of Whitehorse, wet mud squishes with every step. People wear shorts and t-shirts. Trucks are parked in nearly every driveway, dried clay caked onto their tires. Spring in Whitehorse is beautiful, if you forget that it comes at the cost of a forever-changed climate.

Annual mean temperatures in northern Canada have increased by 2.3 C from 1948 to 2016, with temperatures rising most rapidly in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. By 2019, a new report from Environment and Climate Change Canada revealed that northern Canada, specifically the Yukon, is warming three times faster than anywhere else because of Arctic amplification.

Arctic amplification is like a magnifying glass reflecting off a mirror: heat from the sun bounces off the bright landscape, which then mixes with warm water vapour in the atmosphere. This heat isn’t being absorbed in the ground because of the ice, so it has nowhere to go: heat rises, but it becomes trapped in the atmosphere. As more ice melts, more vapour is created, which then causes the ice to melt even further. Essentially, Arctic amplification means that the region is caught in an intense greenhouse gas effect leading to biodiversity loss, habitat degradation, and mudslides.

For residents of northern Canada, the effects of the climate crisis are being felt faster and more aggressively than any policy can take effect. They’re threatening Indigenous ways of life that have been in place for thousands of years, making it increasingly difficult to pass down spiritual and cultural customs to young people. They’re also threatening the very ground the North is built on. But the climate crisis isn’t exclusive to the Yukon—if the oldest (and coldest) parts of the Earth are heating up, it signifies a dangerous warning to the rest of the world.

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Indigenous communities throughout the Yukon and Alaska regions have depended on Chinook salmon as a key food source for millennia, moving along the 3,190 kilometre-long Yukon River to fish. Brooke Woods, a Koyukon Dene woman, is a tribal citizen of Rampart Village and grew up on the Alaska side of the Yukon River. She spent six years as executive chair for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and currently works for the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Alaska, focusing on climate policy and fisheries management. She stresses that the salmon aren’t just food for her community; salmon fishing is also a livelihood with a deep spiritual connection. It’s important to people to use all parts of the fish, and it’s common to find salmon skeletons mounted above Dene doorways. “[Our] communities are along the Yukon River for a reason. We are salmon-dependant people,” she says.

But now, climate change is leading to the continued loss of the salmon: an essential part of the Yukon River’s ecosystem that was once abundant along its stretch. And Indigenous people in the area have largely resorted to buying salmon from other areas or trying to harvest other fish due to the decline. “So many parts of our life have changed because of the salmon declines…impacting us mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and culturally,” Woods says.

Chinook salmon differ from Atlantic salmon on the other side of the country because of one key factor: they die less than a month after spawning. They also take up to eight years to reach maturity and reproduce. Though salmon live most of their life in saltwater, their eggs need freshwater to hatch. Because of this, the adult salmon usually return to their own birthplace to release the next generation of spawn, with females laying between 2,000 to 10,000 eggs. However, climate change is altering these freshwater rivers quickly, and the salmon eggs are soft and highly sensitive to temperature and environment. When the water is too warm, too polluted, too salty, or just too different from what it used to be, the hatchlings can’t survive. Right now, only about one percent of chinook salmon eggs survive to adulthood. In other words, climate change is a factor in degrading the salmon’s habitat beyond survivability.

Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. believe warmer waters make it harder for Chinook salmon in the river to keep a healthy diet and stabilize their metabolism. According to the NOAA, salmon grow faster in warmer water but struggle to find prey—like other small fish or invertebrates—meaning they will lay fewer eggs and have a lower chance of survival. Warmer rivers are also causing salmon to die from heat stress, according to a study from the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also reports that as temperatures rise, it’s harder for water to retain its oxygen levels. Salmon—like all forms of aquatic life—need stable oxygen levels to survive. When the water gets too warm and the oxygen levels deplete too much, salmon suffocate and die.

In April 2024, the U.S. and Canadian federal governments teamed up to create a historic—yet controversial—agreement: ban all Chinook salmon fishing in the Yukon and Alaska for seven years in an effort to grow the population. According to the ban, both First Nation and Tribal subsistence fisheries—the method of harvesting fish specifically involving Indigenous knowledge and traditions—is prohibited “when there are fewer than 71,000 adult Chinook salmon.” Once this number is met, limited commercial, personal, and sport fishing could begin again. The salmon are counted by sonar at several sites in the region, and in 2023, only around 14,000 Chinook were counted at the Eagle sonar site near the Canadian border.

Detailed tracking of the Chinook salmon population began in the 1980s. According to the EPA, in 1984, around 1.2 million Chinook were tracked at the southernmost part of their migration—the Salish Sea region of the Pacific Ocean. With over 3,000 kilometres of migration from the Yukon River, through the Bering Sea, down to the Salish Sea before coming back up the Yukon River again, Chinook salmon have some of the largest migration patterns in the world. But fewer and fewer Chinook are surviving this migration for long enough to make it to their spawning grounds.

The 2024 Yukon River Chinook salmon run—the annual migration of salmon along the river to spawn—was the third-lowest in history, with fewer than 65,000 salmon making the voyage to the Pilot Station—the closest sonar site to the mouth of the river. Of those fish, an estimated 24,112 passed through the Eagle Sonar site near the Yukon border. The worst year on record was 2022, when an astonishing total of 12,025 Chinook salmon were counted for the season through the Eagle sonar site. This number is 80 percent lower than the historical average; some previous years have seen up to 500,000.

At the heart of the salmon run is Whitehorse. Whitehorse holds the world’s longest wooden fish ladder, a structure crucial for letting salmon pass through to their spawning grounds. It looks like a winding staircase filled with flowing water: salmon instinctively migrate and seek out changing currents. The water attracts the salmon, who swim upstream, jumping from step to step. Just like a staircase, these ladders have steps that allow the fish to “climb” upwards: this is especially helpful if parts of the river are blocked by dams or other predators waiting for their next meal. Conservation groups monitor the Whitehorse fish ladder yearly and use sonars to track how many fish pass through.

Jordan Blay has lived in the Yukon since 1985, and grew up fishing in Annie Lake 50 kilometres outside Whitehorse. He notes salmon, halibut and several types of trout among the fish he could catch around the Yukon and Alaska. “The record was 18 castes, 18 fish,” he says. However, in recent years, he says there are considerably fewer fish in large bodies of water, like the Yukon River.

Blay describes the spring of 2022 as “abysmal” for salmon. “If I remember right, it was something like six fish went through the ladder,” he says. Hardly any fish were seen on some days. Blay’s estimation isn’t far off: fish ladder supervisor Amy Jacobsen told the CBC that only 13 salmon passed through by August 10, 2023. More fish passed through after this, but August is the height of their travels.

When numbers are low, Fisheries and Oceans Canada prohibits sport fishing. Depending on the numbers and body of water, a prohibition can affect both personal fishing and Indigenous subsistence fishing. However, even if not explicitly stated by Canadian or Alaskan governments, First Nations leaders often voluntarily ask their citizens to refrain from fishing when the populations are in decline.

Historically, Indigenous-operated fisheries have had more robust fish populations than modern commercial fisheries due to longstanding practices of environmental reciprocity and continued traditions surrounding the Earth’s seasonal cycles. Woods explains that the salmon decline is a relatively new phenomenon. “We do have 10,000 years of relationship with salmon, and we have always maintained our cultural values when it comes to harvesting king [Chinook] salmon,” she says. “That has been successful, that has kept salmon runs alive and well.”

Woods says the low salmon population could have disastrous effects on future generations, noting that cultural traditions and education are passed down from older family members, and how she learned from her mother and grandmother when fishing. “Growing up, we had multi-generational family members coming together to harvest, process and share salmon,” she says. She’s concerned younger community members won’t be able to learn in the same way she did, which will pose serious challenges to their health and culture.

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Apart from warming the Yukon River, climate change means the physical landscape of the Yukon is shifting. Deep below the surface of the Earth in northern Canada is permafrost: permanently frozen soil and sediment held together by ice. The Yukon has some of the oldest pieces of permafrost in the world, with scientists estimating it’s been in place for three million years. In Whitehorse, permafrost accounts for up to 50 percent of the ground’s surface, according to Yukon University. Because of climate change, the permafrost is now melting.

“One of the biggest ways we see issues with permafrost in our human environment is probably through infrastructure and the highways,” says Alison Perrin, a senior research professional at Yukon University’s Research Centre. Perrin has been researching climate change and climate change policy in the North for the last 10 years. “It’s kind of like the supporting foundation of the North.”

In the same way a foundation provides stability for a house, permafrost creates stability on the ground in northern Canada. The crumbling permafrost threatens the livelihood of the communities—like the Kluane First Nation—that have existed in these remote areas for thousands of years before Canada was colonized.

Shirley Smith is an Indigenous Elder from the Kwanlin Dün First Nation. Their traditional land is located in what’s alsoknown as Whitehorse. One of her biggest worries is how the next generation will be able to learn about cultural traditions and living off the land sustainably. Warmer winters with increased precipitation meant that one winter, she had six feet of snow alongside her house, making it difficult to get to cultural and sacred sites.

Climate change presents a real threat to Indigenous communities’ abilities to pass their cultures and spiritual practices on to next generations. Smith says that the best place to teach younger generations about climate change is on the land, recalling that some of her traditional knowledge about hunting and fishing sustainably was passed down by her father on trips. But these lessons aren’t being taught as much anymore, she says. Still, any time at all learning from older people is deeply valuable for younger ones. “Even if they just go for two days, three days, teach them or show them how to live off the land,” she says.

Alongside threatening Indigenous ways of life and knowing, warming ice can also mean physical danger. Communities in northern Canada are remote and far between, leaving people with few options when it comes to emergency evacuations. Perrin uses Nunavut as an example of one place in the North where people’s ability to survive in the winter depends on stability below them in the forms of ice and permafrost. Communities in the North are mobile, moving to different locations to fish, trap, hunt. It’s about survival, tradition, spirituality, culture and lineage all at once. But this mobility isn’t possible when the ice cracks: suddenly, a longstanding tradition of walking across a frozen river doesn’t guarantee safety. And yet, “their lives depend on going out on the ice,” she says.

Only 30 kilometres outside of Whitehorse, reports have been made about tears in the Earth from the permafrost melting, causing trees to collapse as the dirt breaks open. These physical changes can mean less stability on the Alaska Highway, a 2,400-kilometre road that runs through B.C., the Yukon and Alaska. The highway is an essential method of transportation connecting remote First Nations communities and importing goods to northern areas. If parts of it become unusable, it could seriously threaten these communities’ health and wellbeing.

Further, melting permafrost can cause other issues: methane, carbon dioxide or potentially toxic microbes are often found within the sediment, furthering the overall problem of climate change, Perrin explains. “As permafrost thaws, it contributes to greenhouse gas effect,” she says.

Part of Perrin’s research investigates how climate change affects the Yukon over long periods. One report she coauthored, titled “Yukon climate change indicators and key findings,” published in 2022 by Yukon University’s Research Centre, looks at how the volume of Arctic sea ice has decreased since 1979. With a melting rate of about 300 cubic kilometres per year, the report estimates that most ice that was there in total has melted within the past decade.

Permafrost thaw, warmer temperatures and wildfires can cause extreme events like the landslides in Whitehorse, something that would have been unheard of until just a few years ago. For residents, the North is quickly becoming unrecognizable. Willow Brewster, a paramedic who’s lived in Whitehorse since she was a toddler in the 1990s, says she remembers long, frigid days too cold to hold a snowball. Now, she says, there’s sometimes slush in December and landslides by spring. In July 2024, a landslide caused by massive amounts of rain—another symptom of climate change—caused an 82-kilometre highway closure. While no one was hurt, it left people unable to travel between Carcross, Yukon and Fraser, B.C. Landslides are one result of climate-change related permafrost melting, according to a 2023 Simon Fraser University and Yukon Geological Survey report.

“I was driving through puddles in December because all of the snow was melting because it was plus five [degrees],” Brewster says. “It’s [an] eerie kind of feeling where it just feels kind of wrong.”

Brewster also sees injuries becoming more frequent. Her grandmother, who has lived in the Yukon for several decades, fell in the ice in 2016. In 2022, two people fell into icy water when crossing a seemingly frozen river near Pilot Station, Alaska, resulting in one death. Brewster describes freezing temperatures as “sporadic,” and says you can’t always expect the ice to be consistently frozen anymore. Routine ice trips are increasingly deadly in February, when the ice should be sturdiest.

In December 2023, the Yukon government’s official response to climate change noted 42 new actions to fight it, specifically noting green energy, wildfire protections, and smart electric heating systems. There is no mention of salmon specifically, but there is an action saying the government will “work with First Nations and communities to address a gap in lake-monitoring to capture changes in water in order to support fish habitat protection and community safety.” While permafrost is not mentioned either, there is a promise to undertake “flood risk hazard assessments for Yukon campgrounds and other key public infrastructure in territorial parks.”

When it comes to climate change, even a two-degree temperature increase can have significant overall effects. It can be the difference between freezing and melting; an animal living or dying. Canada is currently a part of the Paris Agreement—the international treaty created by the United Nations wherein countries pledge to limit their emissions to avoid a two-degree increase. Yet the Yukon’s average temperature is three degrees warmer than it’s ever been.

Both our shared physical environment and entire ways of being that have been in place since time immemorial are under threat. Bans on salmon fishing and government incentives on green tech will not solve this in and of themselves. Instead, there needs to be a priority on centring the skills passed down through generations from Indigenous knowledge-keepers, living in balance with the land, and a focus on sustainability as a continuous way of life. There is irrefutable evidence that global warming changes every part of the world: from the tiniest oxygen molecules in the water to the vast permafrost in the Earth. And what’s happening in the Yukon is foreshadowing for everywhere else: the climate can’t change so drastically while everything else stays the same.

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Indigenous communities have long been crucial to climate protection. According to the United Nations, Indigenous people have prioritized the environment for generations, meaning their contributions to the scientific community cannot be ignored. A pivot to two-eyed seeing is deeply necessary.

There are over a dozen First Nations in the Yukon, each with its own distinct cultural practices and communities. One initiative, called the Yukon First Nations Climate Action Fellowship, is trying to combine cultural traditions across the different nations with the fight against climate change by teaching young adults about biodiversity and living in harmony with the land. Dustin McKenzie-Hubbard, a member of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, loves being one of the 13 fellows because it inspires him to make the world better for his daughter.

McKenzie-Hubbard says the fellowship has focused on turning away from a colonialist and consumerist mindset and that a strong sense of community is essential in dealing with these problems. Addressing climate change means centring Indigenous people’s calls for climate protection and understanding. “Everything you do affects someone else and everything,” he says. “We have to be mindful of what our impacts will do for ourselves in the next seven generations.”

Woods stresses the importance of incorporating Indigenous knowledge into conservation efforts, something she says is “disregarded in so many management spaces.”

“We do have 10,000 years of stewardship that is not incorporated into the current Western science and governance structure,” she says, describing how important it is for knowledge to be passed down from Elders to the younger generations, especially when it comes to the salmon. “I want to be able to fish the same way my grandmother taught my mom, and the way that I’ll teach my children.”

Photo by North Island College

Seaweed, a traditional food for many coastal First Nations in B.C., is experiencing a renaissance, thanks to its untapped carbon sequestration potential. In recent years, multiple First Nations have partnered with private companies like Cascadia Seaweed to lead this growing industry. But unlike other coastal First Nations in B.C., the Kwiakah First Nation—a small band of 21 registered members located near Phillips Arm and Frederick Arm—has not signed production agreements with seaweed companies. That’s because conserving kelp forests, instead of making a profit from farming them, is the main factor driving the Kwiakah members’ work.

“I don’t think, if we don’t do the kelp thing right … that our coast can survive another industrial onslaught,” cautions the band’s administrator and economic development officer, Frank Voelker, describing decades of gold mining, logging, and fish farming.

The Kwiakah Nation is unique in that it does not receive as much federal funding as some other nations since it does not have a residential reservation, Voelker explains. “Over the decades, the band members just adjusted to that and became self-reliant,” he says, adding that the nation turned a “huge disadvantage” into a positive.

As a result, not only are the Kwiakah in a stronger position to say no to companies that promise jobs at the expense of the environment, but they can learn how to become better kelp farmers through smaller-scale initiatives, rather than jumping headfirst into uncertain new ventures under the pressure to generate jobs.

RESISTING PRESSURES TO SCALE UP

The Kwiakah are currently repurposing an old fish farm into a kelp farm—including establishing pre-processing facilities, where kelp would be dried before transport—and a research centre.

Despite having a good research relationship with industrial actor Cascadia Seaweed, the Kwiakah Nation has not rushed to sign any production agreements; its traditional territory in the Phillips and Frederick Arm region has long experienced serious, irreparable environmental damage from B.C.’s extraction industry.

As mentioned, one reason kelp farming has been of great interest in B.C. in recent years is due to the ability of kelp forests to sequester and store carbon. The carbon stored in coastal ecosystems is called “blue carbon” and is often touted as a way to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

But because of the Earth’s changing climate and rising ocean temperatures, carbon-sequestering species like kelp are dwindling in number without human intervention.

Given the potential of blue carbon, communities might be tempted to grow kelp in many B.C. inlets, but undertaking any such activity on a large scale has to be approached with caution, Voelker says.

This is why the Kwiakah are working closely with sister tribes within the Laich-Kwil-Tach First Nation and speaking with elders to understand traditional methods of cultivation, including learning how much kelp has historically grown in the region and working to match those quantities, not exceed them.

KELP CULTIVATION VS. KELP FARMING

Kelp farming isn’t the only way to reap the environmental benefits of kelp and generate income.

One promising solution is for the Kwiakah to participate in seaweed cultivation for its own sake, which will enrich the marine ecosystem and absorb carbon dioxide, and for which the community can be compensated through a carbon scheme.

“That would be my dream scenario,” Voelker muses, “purely carbon sequestration and [the community] getting paid for it.”

Illustration by Dale Nigel Goble

With around 269,000 deaths reported each year in Canada, the death biz is more invested in our mortality than ever. But this billion-dollar industry needs us more than we need it: big-ticket items and services, such as embalming, caskets and tombstones, are as superfluous as they are environmentally damaging. Green burials came to North America in the early 2000s, and Canada’s first urban green burial site opened in Saanich, B.C. in 2008. According to the Natural Burial Association, there are currently four certified natural burial sites in Canada, with several other cemeteries offering hybrid green burial services. Here’s what you need to know about going green to the grave.

THE ULTIMATE DETOX
Though numbers aren’t readily available in Canada, the Funeral Consumers Alliance estimates that over 20 million litres of toxic embalming fluid are used, and consequently deposited into the earth, every year in the U.S. Common embalming chemicals—such as formaldehyde, a known carcinogen—can leach into the ground, compromise the health of plants and animals, and contaminate our water supply. However, green burial practices prohibit the use of these concoctions in favour of natural decomposition. For open-casket viewings, the body can be preserved via refrigeration and the use of environmentally sensitive soaps, lotions and essential oils—a last spa treatment of sorts.

THINK OUTSIDE THE (VARNISHED) BOX
Caskets and casket liners containing metal, synthetic fabrics, varnish, and concrete take years to decompose and can leave a toxic residue behind. The greenest way to go down is enclosed in a shroud made of biodegradable fibres. Some people even have it dyed (with plant-based colours, of course) or embroidered with a favourite poem. Alternatively you can let mushies work their magic, by going six feet under in an Infinity Burial Suit. The head-to-toe garment is infused with fungi and bio-organisms that speed up your decomposition, allowing you to pass on your nutrients to the plants. A no-frills casket, made with locally sourced and sustainable wood, can be used as a supplement to a simple shroud. But forget the lustre finish and leave it untreated or oiled. Also, lose the swanky padded velvet lining, unless you’re Count Dracula or a very expensive guitar.

GRAVE MATTERS
Green burial sites discourage people from having individual tombstones to preserve the natural landscape of the grounds as much as possible. Unmarked graves and communal memorialization are standard. To mark the spot, instead of propping up a great slab of quarried marble, consider a discreet name plaque on a tree, a rock garden or smooth pebbles—or something sculptural, such as a sundial, a bird table or an art piece made from eco-friendly materials. If your last resting place is in a beautiful setting, your loved ones can just enjoy the ever-changing beauty of the seasons there—no concrete required.

PLANT LIFE AFTER DEATH
Green burials take their cues from nature and follow the principle that life and death are cyclical. As such, green burial sites are maintained with indigenous wildlife in mind. The grounds are managed organically, and cuttings of native plants and flowers are cultivated, to be reintegrated, each time the earth is disturbed. After all, just because you can’t make a comeback, doesn’t mean your burial plot doesn’t deserve the chance.

Photo courtesy of Dana Prieto.

Glazed in black, the beauty of Dana Prieto’s hand-crafted ceramic vessels forces the viewer’s attention—but what they wouldn’t be able to tell at first glance is that the artwork may contain traces of arsenic, cadmium, and mercury.

Prieto, an Argentine visual artist based in Toronto, describes the vessels as an “inhospitable gift,” made with soil from the contaminated territories of Belén and Hualfín, in the province of Catamarca. The vessels will be gifted to the CEOs and corporate social responsibility executives of Canadian mining companies operating in the South American region.

Contaminants to the land and water in Belén and Hualfín seep from Bajo de la Alumbrera, the country’s first open-pit gold and copper mine that has been in operation since 1997. Although the mine had been set to close in March, it will now remain open for another decade. Bajo de la Alumbrera is owned by Glencore, headquartered in Switzerland, and two Canadian companies: Goldcorp and Yamana Gold.

The vessels, titled 1:10000 (the scale of the vessel in relation to the mine), are 3D models of the mine, created to scale. A disclaimer at the bottom of each cup reads: “Handmade with soil affected by Bajo la Alumbrera mine.”

“They can fill out the rest of the narrative,” says Prieto.

The soil was provided by Silvia Delgado, a Buenos Aires-based ceramic artist and activist. Delgado has extracted clay from Belén for many years and mentored Prieto in the construction of the vessels. “I consider ceramics to be part of that ancestral time where domestic and ritual uses of objects had a strong social bond,” says Delgado. Unlike most ceramics, however, the luxury aesthetic of the vessels is intended to appeal to a CEO.

The act of sending these vessels is more important to Prieto than what actually happens to the gift itself. In the gallery space, the vessels are displayed on wooden boxes under a spotlight. The lights are dimmed, and the walls painted a dark grey. Inside each box is a quote engraved in gold leaf from the 2017 book Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: “Death may not, after all, be the end of life; after death comes the strange life of hauntings,” it reads.

To illustrate the immediacy of the gift, 150 boxes with Canadian postage surround the gallery, accounting for all potential recipients across the country. On the wall, a stencil made with ink made from the contaminated soil reads: “Handmade with soil affected by Canadian mining companies.”

“I hope that works like this can make a call to the heart, because such profound devastation has wounded our land, corrupting the human soul and our existence,” says Delgado.

Illustrations by Ian Phillips.

In October 2017, WWF-Canada released its “Living Planet Report,” assessing the country’s endangered and threatened species. Their findings paint a bleak picture of Canada’s wildlife: Between 1970 and 2014, half of the 903 monitored species had declined in population—a loss of approximately 83 percent on average. Habitat destruction, climate change, and human activity are the most common threats to these animals. We’ve selected a few species living across the country to illustrate just how widespread the problem is.

British Columbia

British Columbia is one of the last places that grizzly bears can be found in their natural habitat, but for decades the population has dwindled in some of the province’s most densely populated areas. We’re also killing them—sometimes deliberately. According to the auditor general of B.C., 389 were killed between 2006 and 2015 due to “human/bear conflict.” Though regulations have been put in place to stop trophy hunting and to better track grizzly bear numbers, they have been extirpated in places like Kamloops, Kelowna, and Vancouver. While there has been some population growth in areas of B.C.—in 2012, the Finlay-Ospika and Muskwa Grizzly Bear population units had the highest estimated number of grizzlies in the province, with 971 and 840 respectively—that growth is thought to be happening independently of the ministry’s efforts.

Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario

You can guess by its name where the Greater Prairie-Chicken formerly lived: in the large, lightly grazed grasslands of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. Because it needs between 5,000 to 6,000 hectares to maintain a thriving population, the urbanization and agribusiness of these prairie lands have all but extirpated the grouse from its Canadian homes. The Greater Prairie-Chicken can now only be found in parts of the United States.

Northern Alberta and southern Northwest Territories

The Whooping Crane nearly went extinct in the 1940s; as of 2016, they’re still listed as endangered. Wood Buffalo National Park—Canada’s largest—is the only place in the world where Whooping Cranes breed in the wild. The park has a history of helping re-establish animal populations; it was created in 1922 to protect the last herds of bison remaining in northern Canada. Still, the Whooping Cranes’ numbers remain fragile, with only 300 of them nesting in Wood Buffalo National Park.

Quebec

The copper redhorse is the only fish that lives exclusively in Quebec waters. It’s been listed as endangered on the Species at Risk (SARA) Public Registry since 2007. While there are no concrete numbers as to their current population, researchers have found that the remaining fish have problems reproducing naturally, due in part to the fact that they reproduce later in the spawning season than other fish.

Pesticide application happens around the time the copper redhorse lays its eggs, and the spike in pollutants in the rivers—along with lower water levels—adds to their vulnerability.

Quebec

Atlantic-Gaspésie woodland caribou are on the brink of extirpation. In 2006, the population’s numbers were pegged at approximately 200. Deforestation and industrial expansion have limited their natural habitats, with many of them now found on the border land of Parc national de la Gaspésie.

While there have been regulations put in place by the park to stop hunting, and to deter predators like black bears and coyotes, the population has continued to decline. In 2015, the SARA Public Registry followed up on that report, and found that the population had dwindled to about 120. They’ve forecasted that the Atlantic-Gaspésie populations will become extinct by the year 2056.

Nova Scotia

While a large portion of Blanding’s Turtles can be found in Quebec and Ontario, an isolated population in Nova Scotia was designated as threatened in 1973, and is now endangered. In total, there are only about 180 Blanding’s Turtles left in their central Nova Scotia home. These turtles don’t reach maturity until at least 15 years old and lay eggs once every year or two. Because of their relatively small numbers, even one female fatality can heavily impact the population. Their biggest threat, apart from increased road development and traffic, are what are called “subsidized predators”—animals, like raccoons, whose populations have grown thanks to human development and urbanization. These predators hunt and eat the Blanding’s Turtles’ eggs before they even have a chance to hatch, further decreasing the number of turtles that actually reach maturity.

Indigenous students lead an opening ceremony and land acknowledgement during the three-day camp-out at New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University. Photo by Lauren Latour.

On a February morning in 2017, Tina Oh and more than 50 students are waiting impatiently in Mawita’mkw, a small gathering space for Indigenous students and community members at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. Anxious chatter fills the room until suddenly, it’s silent. “It’s time,” Oh tells them, and the students, dressed entirely in black, follow her lead and file into the halls. As they make their way through the building, the group begins singing quietly to calm their nerves. “People going to rise like the water, going to calm this crisis down,” they chant. Their voices grow louder and more confident, echoing as they march through the doors to Tweedie Hall in the student centre. Within seconds of arriving in the room, they collapse suddenly on the hardwood floors.

Suit-clad policy makers stand in surprise, moving to the sides of the space, and watching on with with crossed arms as the students lay limp for nearly an hour. The group is staging a “die-in”—a protest representing the lives endangered by the devastating effects of climate change and the fossil fuel industry. The group has interrupted a board meeting with a set of demands: They call on the administration to cut Mount Allison’s financial ties with the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies within the next five years; they urge them to establish a sustainable and transparent investment policy.

After some muttering among board members, it becomes clear they will be agreeing to no such thing. Holding hands and chanting, the students stand their ground. They are not leaving the building until their demands are met. “We are demonstrating today against the inaction and the violent silence that this board has demonstrated to us,” Oh says. “Understood,” chair Ron W. Outerbridge tells her, and the board members shuffle out of the room, trying not to step on the bodies in their way.

“Being an advocate for climate justice has always been mandatory for me, especially as a woman of colour,” says Oh, a philosophy, political science, and economics student who was born in South Korea and grew up in Edmonton. Most of Oh’s relatives still live in South Korea, where many rely on agricultural work for their livelihood. In recent years, floods, typhoons, and droughts caused by climate change have had a severe impact on the country. That damage is echoed in the devastation caused by recent climate disasters around the world—hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, wildfires across North America, earthquakes in Mexico, and monsoon rains across South Asia.

The divestment campaign at Mount Allison, Divest MTA, began in 2013. It is one of more than 30 active divestment campaigns on campuses across Canada. The groups are calling on their schools to remove investments from the fossil fuels industry and buy into students’ futures by directing new funds in sustainable industries. As campaigns gain momentum, organizers are turning to public, often radical actions to spread their message and sway administrative bodies.

Students at Mount Allison participate in a die-in to protest divestment on campus. Photo by Lauren Latour.

On campuses from coast to coast to coast, divestment organizers are behind one of the most ambitious efforts to fight climate change in Canada. Universities hold a unique position as leaders in thought. Subsequently, organizers believe institutions’ commitment to divestment will tarnish the fossil fuel industry’s reputation in the public consciousness, rendering the industry untouchable.

The divestment movement speaks to a growing understanding that individual commitments to environmentalism no longer suffice in the efforts to tackle climate change. Organizers also know they cannot rely on performative promises of sustainability from governments and corporations. And for many leaders on campus, channelling people power through grassroots collective organizing—and figuratively dropping dead in front of authority figures—is the only way to hold major institutions accountable, effect change, and secure our rights.

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Fossil fuel divestment has roots in the student movement, beginning on campuses in the United States in 2011. More than 100 educational institutions, many based in the U.S. and U.K., have since committed to divestment. The campus movement has also grown into something much bigger, reaching a vast range of influential establishments, including governments, religious organizations, and philanthropic groups. To date, more than 800 institutions have divested $5.5 trillion from the fossil fuel industry globally.

Divestment is part of the intersectional climate justice movement, which recognizes climate change is an ethical and political issue that disproportionately affects Indigenous people, people of colour, women, poor nations, and LGBTQ folks. The divestment movement is also largely driven by young people, generations who will be disproportionately burdened by the effects of climate change. Members of Divest Dal emphasized this point in fall 2016, when 30 students occupied an administration building on Dalhousie campus to receive stick-and-poke “birthmark” tattoos. Each person was marked with a three-digit tattoo representing the amount of carbon in the air in the year they were born. Climate scientists agree that 350 parts per million (PPM) is the safe limit for a healthy climate. Laura Cutmore patiently waited her turn and tried not to flinch as the needle dug into the skin of her wrist, marking her with a small 356. Last year, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air passed 400 PPM.

To date, more than 800 institutions have divested $5.5 trillion from the fossil fuel industry globally

“Getting a tattoo doesn’t seem very radical compared to the damage that’s being inflicted on the earth,” says Cutmore, who has been organizing with Divest Dal for about two years. A handful of people got tattoos after learning about the severity of the issue, and there was so much demand, Divest Dal had to set up another session at a later date.

Back in New Brunswick, student activists have taken on less permanent methods of action—writing and presenting reports to board members, hosting a sit-in at a local MP’s office, and staging a vigil in protest of the Kinder Morgan pipeline. But after years of lobbying, Divest MTA’s actions left administration unmoved. The group opted for an even more in-your-face demonstration than a die-in. Last March, they organized a three-day camp-out, occupying the lawn of the school in protest. They stayed put amid -10 C temperatures and a massive blizzard; many tents collapsed in the middle of the night. When Robert Campbell, the school’s president, refused to acknowledge the group’s presence, more than 80 people took the protest to the steps of his office, demanding a meeting.

Hours later, after they refused to leave, Campbell agreed to meet with Oh and another student. He disagreed that it was his role to recommend divestment and left soon after. Crestfallen and exhausted with no idea what to do next, Oh burst into tears. Much of the group cried with her. As she was taking down the camp, Oh started feeling significant pain. She realized that sleeping on the ground had aggravated a severe prior internal injury from a car accident. Later, at the ER, a doctor told her she should have been bedridden with agony days earlier; only the adrenaline kept her going.

Out west, Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie, a Two-Spirit Anishinaabe land defender from Sagkeeng First Nation, is a member of the divestment movement as a former student at the University of Winnipeg. Lavoie grew up with a deep connection to the environment, fishing and hunting with their family since they were young. But that environment is under threat. Located at the mouth of the Winnipeg River, 120 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, Sagkeeng has been deeply affected by industry pollution and development projects, leading to the erosion of reserve lands and a decline of fisheries. Lavoie organized with Divest UW because they believe the school’s ongoing investment in fossil fuels is upholding colonizing behaviour. “It’s disrespecting Indigenous land rights, the right to denial of consent to pipelines, and Indigenous knowledge of what sustainability means,” they say. “It’s just a huge slap in the face for Indigenous students who want to come to a university where the school is respecting them and their connection to the environment.”

“I wanted to make it known that they didn’t break me. They weren’t going to silence me in any way”

The work done by divestment organizers is not restricted to the campus bubble. In October 2016, Lavoie, Oh, and Cutmore were three of 99 young people arrested on Parliament Hill as part of Climate 101, a youth-led mass civil disobedience in protest of rumours that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau planned to approve the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Two weeks later, Lavoie and Oh attended COP22, the United Nations Climate Change conference in Morocco, where they were part of a group of youth holding Canada accountable to its international environmental agreements. Lavoie also had a high-profile confrontation with the prime minister, standing behind him at a town hall in Winnipeg with a banner that read: “Water is Sacred / No Pipelines!” While there, Lavoie and a handful of other young people interrupted him to ask about the lack of Indigenous consent for government-approved resource extraction projects. Trudeau gave a short speech—in a tone Lavoie describes as condescending—about the importance of listening to each other respectfully and asked for permission to continue speaking. Gaining applause from people in the crowd, Trudeau told the young people that if they didn’t allow him to speak, he would have to ask them to leave. “I thought it was really ironic that he was asking for consent to speak but he was denying our right to consent to refuse these pipelines,” Lavoie says.

Lavoie graduated in October, but their work is far from over. When they crossed the stage to accept their diploma at graduation, Lavoie held up a banner that read, “Stop Funding Fossils.” “I wanted to make it known that they didn’t break me. They weren’t going to silence me in any way even though I was leaving the university,” they say. “I will never give up.”

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Despite mounting pressure from students and alumni, Canadian post-secondary institutions have been hesitant to jump on board. After five years of organizing across the country, one major post-secondary institution has committed to full divestment. In February 2017, after a brief four-month campaign, Quebec City’s Laval University agreed to redirect its endowment fund investments in fossil energy elsewhere, including into renewable energy.

Alice-Anne Simard, who founded ULaval sans fossiles, says their campaign was similar to others across the country: They reached out to students, wrote letters and petitions, compiled researchbased reports, and gained support from student associations. She credits the victory to student involvement and one powerful administrator’s genuine commitment to sustainability. Most of all, administration at Laval recognized the value of bragging rights: The school can say it is the first university in Canada to divest, a claim to sustainable leadership that boosts their image.

Now Simard is encouraging other campaigns to organize, noting how bad it will look for a school to be the last to do so. This could be the reality for schools that have refused to address or flat-out reject divestment. The University of Toronto, McGill, and Queen’s are among schools whose boards of governors have considered and voted down tabled motions to divest. When McGill turned down divestment for the second time in 2016, it stated that there is no proof it would have a real-world impact.

A sign from the Mount Allison camp-out, where dozens of students set up tents in freezing temperatures to protest. Photo by Catherine Dumas, Radio Canada Acadie.

Some post-secondary institutions have responded by creating alternative investment policies. In 2017, UBC reversed its prior refusal to consider divestment, investing up to $25 million in a fossil-free fund over the next two years. A year earlier, the University of Ottawa committed to “shifting” its fossil fuel investments to reduce its carbon footprint by 30 percent by 2030. And in 2015, Concordia University agreed to redirect half of its $10 million investment in fossil fuels elsewhere. But divestment organizers refuse to consider these steps victories, believing a rejection of full divestment undermines the idea of institutions distancing themselves from fossil fuel companies. Lavoie, for example, calls UWinnipeg’s plan to create a sustainable investment policy and optional fossil-free fund for donors a greenwashing measure taken to avoid concrete change.

When Canadian universities reject divestment, they frequently cite a fiduciary duty to students and shareholders, stating divestment would compromise the financial well-being of the school. Katie Perfitt, the Canadian divestment organizer with 350.org, an online organization that supports grassroots campaigns to oppose international oil, coal, and gas projects, says this financial argument has become the most prominent reason why universities refuse to reject divestment across the country. She hesitates to bring money into the divestment conversation—the purpose of the movement is to focus on and bring justice—but notes that some research shows divestment can be healthy for financial assets. A report by Genus Capital, a B.C. investment firm with a fossil-free investment division, shows that fossil-free funds performed just as well— sometimes better—than funds invested in the industry.

Perfitt also notes that the fossil fuel industry is on the decline. The Canadian oil industry currently relies on $3.3 billion in government subsidies a year. On a global scale, the expense of sustaining the fossil fuel industry is staggering—and on the rise. According to one report, subsidizing the global fossil fuel industry cost $4.9 trillion in 2013. By 2015, the cost rose to $5.3 trillion.

Those numbers account for government policies that lower the cost of fossil fuel production, raise the price received by producers, and lowers the price paid by consumers. But they also reflect broader costs, such as expenses related to global warming and deaths from air pollution. As the push for green energy grows, even the CEO of Shell has stated during a conference that public trust in the oil industry “has been eroded to the point that it is becoming a serious issue for [Shell’s] long-term future.”

The goal of the divestment movement, however, has never been to affect fossil fuel companies’ bottom line. “The idea isn’t that we’re trying to bankrupt them. We’re trying to stigmatize them in the public realm,” says Perfitt. “So many institutions in our world are complicit in the climate crisis by remaining tied to the fossil fuel industry. We want to expose those relationships, and bring an issue that otherwise would have not been in the public realm to light.”

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In some places, these relationships are more evident than others. When Emma Jackson walks to class at the University of Alberta, she is bombarded by reminders of the institution’s intimate ties to oil companies. Hallways in academic buildings are covered in gold plaques boasting the names of major donors: Imperial Oil, Encana, Enbridge, Suncor.

“Everywhere you turn, you’re surrounded by donor walls dominated by oil and gas companies, student organizations branded by Shell, and corporate representatives who have been invited into academic departments as guest professors,” says Jackson.

It isn’t just U of A. Most postsecondary institutions are entangled with the industry beyond their investment portfolios. Oil companies regularly donate to universities across the country, funding research, scholarships, and fellowships. At UWinnipeg, Enbridge Pipelines Inc. funds a scholarship specifically for Indigenous students. Last August, Dalhousie announced a $2.2-million donation from Irving Oil to revamp the school’s engineering and architecture campuses; the donation will also fund more than $700,000 in scholarships, including co-op opportunities with the New Brunswick-based company.

In Edmonton, climate organizers were met with violent criticism—even death threats—from pipeline supporters

Katie Perfitt says one intention of such sponsorship deals on campuses is to “train our minds to think about those companies as just a natural part of our life. The fossil fuel industry wants to maintain control of the way we think about climate change and its relationship to the industry.” These deals also come with a more explicit ability to influence campus life. Leading up to Dalhousie’s 2014 vote on divestment, the school’s Dean of Science told media a representative from Shell threatened to withdraw academic funding if the motion passed. A Shell spokesperson later downplayed the concerns.

In October 2017, an investigation of the University of Calgary’s establishment of the Enbridge Centre for Corporate Sustainability revealed a professor lost his position as director of the centre after he disclosed his opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline.

It also named a “troubling” conflict of interest involving the school’s president, who at the time held a highly paid position on Enbridge’s board. The sponsorship came with a commitment from the university that it would “enhance Enbridge’s reputation.” (Enbridge denied this in a statement, calling it a “no-strings-attached” pledge.) The investigation called for an overhaul of the board of governor’s approval process, transparency in its decision-making, and stricter regulations on corporate gifts and sponsorships.

Jackson moved to Edmonton to pursue a master’s at the University of Alberta after nearly four years of organizing with Divest MTA. She says doing climate justice work is hard no matter where you are, but she finds it particularly challenging in Alberta, where ties to oil companies are pervasive.

There is interest in divestment on campus, but it’s one of the most difficult places to sustain momentum in Canada. One of the main challenges in Edmonton, Jackson says, is not that people are ardently pro-oil, but that they have “resigned themselves to the degree of influence the industry holds in the province and feel powerless in the face of it all.”

Because of the environment in Alberta, Jackson and other climate justice organizers in Edmonton are focusing their energy in areas other than divestment—in particular supporting Indigenous land and water protectors. Because of its proximity to the oil sands, Jackson refers to Edmonton as “ground zero of extractivism” in Canada. “Every pipeline that is being fiercely contested across Turtle Island can be traced back here,” she says. “So I think it becomes a question of how we can use this geographic position to our advantage.”

After it was announced that Energy East was killed, Jackson and a small group of activists dropped a “No Kinder Morgan” banner from the High Level Bridge to dispel the myth that all Albertans support the project. It was praised as a “beautiful action” by climate organizers, but was also met with violent and condescending criticism—even death threats—from pipeline supporters online.

Jackson says backlash is common when organizing around climate justice, but she has never received such a hateful response as after the banner drop. She thinks the reaction speaks to many workers’ fears about the industry losing ground. “It’s hard to contend with fear when it manifests as such violent anger,” she says. “But if we can find ways to cut through that and have people believe us when we promise they won’t be left behind, then we’ll have won.”

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The anger and violence directed at those fighting the fossil fuel industry is far from confined to the west coast. Back at Mount Allison, Tina Oh can relate to Jackson’s experience. In 2016, she was followed home and videotaped by a member of the community in Sackville who is pro-oil and offended by Oh’s advocacy work. The person had confronted Oh before but never to such a physical extent. Terrified, she called the police. An officer told her that police get videotaped all the time, but they don’t complain about it.

“It was one of the last things you’d want to hear after being so scared and so removed from the positions of power that police are in,” says Oh.

Despite her fear and trauma, Oh can still make sense of the experience. “A lot of the attacks we get are from people who would be personally affected if we had a carbon-free future because the industry employs a lot of people and those people have mouths to feed,” she says. It’s personal for Oh too—she has family and friends who have been, and still are, employed by the Alberta oil industry.

She stresses that the climate justice movement is not forgetting about the workers of the industry, but making sure they’re being taken care of, too. Working to include industry labourers, she says, is just one way the divestment movement can improve.

Perfitt believes it could take a long time before we know the lasting impact of divestment campaigns in Canada. She knows campus organizers who have been working on this for many years are frustrated because they feel like they are not winning. “But as someone who has been in it for five years, I am constantly in awe of how powerful the movement has been and how transformative it’s been for hundreds of organizers,” she says. “One of the legacies of the campaign is that there are now hundreds of more people involved in the climate movement.”

Oh counts herself among that frustrated and exhausted group. But she says the Canadian campaigns’ collective tiredness has bonded them, and that connection has given them the momentum to go forward.

“The point of escalation is to escalate,” she says. “And after what we’ve been through, we have to keep going.”

Slated to open in the fall of 2018, the Indigenous art park named ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞, pronounced (EE-NU) River Lot 11, is a partnership between the City of Edmonton, Confederacy of Treaty No. 6 First Nations, Métis Nation of Alberta, Edmonton Arts Council, and six Indigenous artists whose works will be permanently exhibited there.

Located within Queen Elizabeth Park in Edmonton’s North Saskatchewan River Valley, the park will display six unique pieces of art created by Canadian Indigenous artists. Carrying the theme “the stories of This Place,” each piece will showcase different ways Indigenous people connect to the land. For the city, the park is an “opportunity to restore, reimagine, and reclaim a part of Edmonton’s history that is often under-recognized.”

While the original owner of the park’s lot was Métis landowner Joseph McDonald, the park is actually located on ancestral lands of the Indigenous peoples whose descendants entered into treaty with the British Crown, resulting in the territory opening for settlement. And the banks of the river where it’s situated were used by First Nations for travel, trade, ceremony, and sustenance for thousands of years.

“The profound legacy left by our Kôhkominawak (our grandmothers) and Kimosôminawak (our grandfathers) is one of the sacred areas used to cross Kisiskâcêwansîpî (Saskatchewan River), where many ceremonies and rituals took place before crossing this majestic sanctuary,” steering committee member Elder Jerry Saddleback told media.

“Our original peoples of this area held sacred knowledge that gave them a close spiritual relationship with our Mother Earth deity. She is called the sacred river, as with all water of the Earth, Her own breast milk, nurturing all of humanity.”

ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) is a Cree word meaning “I am of the Earth.”

“Indigenous Peoples, since time immemorial, have had a close relationship to the river valley,” said City of Edmonton Indigenous relations director Mike Chow. He says this is why ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ is the convergence of many narratives, and brings together the love of natural park spaces and public art with an opportunity to celebrate and amplify Indigenous cultures.

The chief of the Papaschase band whose traditional territory was once located in south Edmonton before it was pushed out via way of multiple annexations, says the park is a good way for locals to learn about Indigenous history.

“I’ve been saying for years that we need more Aboriginal art in this town,” said Papaschase Chief Calvin Bruneau. “It helps to beautify the local area. And in the process of collaboration, metro Edmonton can learn to work with Indigenous people better to create understanding and acceptance.”

Photos by Ryan Parker. From top to bottom: Untitled by Tiffany Shaw-Collinge; Mikikwan by Duane Linklater; Turtle by Jerry Whitehead; Iskotew by Amy Malbeuf; Preparing to Cross the Sacred River by Marianne Nicholson; and Reign by MaryAnne Barkhouse.

There was a time when close to 30 million bison roamed the plains of what is now Canada and the United States. In the mid-1800s, after the influx of European settlers, the animal—once the most abundant large mammal on the continent—was hunted to near extinction.

But the bison has returned to Canada’s oldest national park. On February 1, 2017, after a 148-year absence from Banff National Park, 16 bison were successfully reintroduced to the park’s Panther Valley. They were delivered from Elk Island National Park on Treaty 7 territory, where there’s a herd of about 450 bison.

The five-year pilot project by Parks Canada will monitor the bison for 16 months in an enclosed pasture. Eventually, the bison will be able to roam a 1,200-square-kilometre area and interact with the wildlife around them.

The importance of the bison to Indigenous culture around Banff stretches back thousands of years. The Stoney Nakoda, Blackfoot, and Plains Cree people used every part of the buffalo, the name used in Indigenous society. The buffalo was, and remains, an important source of food, clothing, and cultural ceremony. In 2014, First Nations from Canada and Indigenous tribes from the United States came together to sign the Buffalo Treaty, an alliance consisting of 22 communities that supports buffalo conservation.

The bison reintroduction project goes beyond Banff, with several national parks across Canada having reintroduced the animal. They include Elk Island National Park, Wood Buffalo National Park, Prince Albert National Park, Waterton Lakes National Park, Riding Mountain National Park, and Grasslands National Park.

The significance of bison to Indigenous groups was one of the factors in their extermination.

Sir John A. Macdonald viewed over-hunting as a way to starve the Indigenous population by forcing them onto reserves. With bison still around, Macdonald believed Indigenous people would not willingly move onto small plots of land. When Banff became a park in 1885, the Stoney Nakoda were excluded from their traditional lands.

Bringing back bison means returning a crucial aspect of the ecosystem. Bison are considered a “keystone species”: their presence, or lack thereof, in an ecosystem drastically affects other life. Their fur, considered one of the warmest among animals in North America, helps birds flourish by insulating their nests. Their heavy hoof prints become pockets for rainwater, feeding the likes of insects and other small animals.

All signs point to a successful adaptation—the Banff herd is picking its leaders in what is usually a matriarchal society. Between April and May 2017, the herd gave birth to 10 bison calves.

Photo courtesy of Miistakis Institute.

A woman in a coral windbreaker peeks through cattails on the periphery of a marsh, her rubber boots camouflaged by vegetation and mud as she strains, clipboard in hand, to detect signs of amphibian life. A frog hops into a beam of sunlight through the dense flora and she marks a tick on her clipboard. She takes a picture, records her observations, and continues strolling along the wetland.

The woman is one of 82 citizen scientists volunteering with Call of the Wetland, a Calgary-based project that measures amphibian activity in local wetlands to better understand urban ecosystems and, by extension, inform developers before they build on sensitive lands. The group will monitor 60 of Calgary’s 4,000 wetlands from April to August over the next three years.

The presence or absence of amphibians “can tell you a lot about the water quality and general health of the ecosystem,” says Lea Randall, a conservation research population ecologist with the Calgary Zoo.

“[They] are among the first species to disappear when ecosystems are unhealthy or fragmented and thus can be important first indicators that an ecosystem is losing biodiversity,” she says. Currently, there are six amphibian species in the Calgary area, three of which are labelled at-risk. The biggest threat to these species, and wetlands in general, is development.

Canada has a poor track-record of protecting or even documenting wetlands. Local governments long considered wetlands to be wastelands, and a number of them in southern Canada were drained or filled for agriculture or development. About 90 percent of pre-settlement wetlands have been lost in Calgary. Today, many wetlands, particularly small ones called ephemeral wetlands, are threatened by development simply because there’s no record of where they are.

“That’s a huge issue, because we have dry years where ephemeral wetlands don’t show up, and then if they’re not mapped, it’s awfully difficult when you’re making decisions about development,” says Tracy Lee, senior project manager at the Miistakis Institute, a natural resource and land management non-profit organization and a coordinator for Call of the Wetland.

The City of Calgary plans to use the citizen scientists’ database to inform where developments are permitted without destroying sensitive ecologies.

“I think Call of the Wetland will draw attention to [wetlands] as an important feature in the landscape, and will hopefully create a culture of caring about them,” says Lee. “If you have people that are knowledgeable and care about something, then it has a voice.”

Montreal’s Lachine Canal. Photo courtesy of MTLBlog.

The Lachine Canal is emblematic of Montreal’s revival. Tourists write about it. Modern condos sprout up next to it. A bike path running along the waterway is rated among the world’s best rides.

But alongside the canal’s booming recreational offerings are the remnants of its industrial history.

A review of a national database of federal industrial cleanup found that three notable contaminated areas in Canada sit within a kilometre of large population clusters (20,000 or more people), and all three of those sites are along the Lachine Canal.

“For more than a century, the Lachine Canal has been ground zero for Canadian debates over industrialization, urban poverty… and gentrification,” says Concordia University historian Steven High.

Now, as the area densifies at a steady clip, concerns over environmental contamination are bubbling to the surface. While Parks Canada assures the canal and surrounding area aren’t a public health concern, not everyone is convinced. In the summer of 2015 alone, the canal was closed to boaters more than a half-dozen times after sewage leaks posed health hazards. Even activist Erin Brockovich chimed in on the 2015 sewage issues, posting on Facebook that the leaks were “pure TNT (turds ‘n’ tampons).”

One of the three contaminated sites has been mostly cleaned up, but the two others have a long way to go. One site hosts more than 3,000 tons of petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), metal/metalloid/metallic contaminants, and “other organic” contaminants. A cleanup plan for the site was only completed after seven years of stagnation. The site’s cleanup, according to Parks Canada representative Audrey Godin-Champagne, “will be managed during the construction phase of the new bicycle path project in 2018-19.” The other contaminated area has just over 500 tons of the same toxins, and there’s no clear plan for cleaning it.

Meanwhile, some local politicians are angling to slow development in the area they say isn’t prepared for more population density. “As of today, the open bar for developers is over,” councillor Craig Sauvé told media last year. “From now on it will be we who decide, with the input of citizens, through the development of a good planning strategy.”

Read the author’s interviews from the story on GitHub.