Exercise 2: Family Tree

June 30, 2022 By: Zoë

Since I was a child, I have always found my family history intriguing. Sitting at my grandparents’ feet with a keen ear to hear about their childhood adventures and challenges; driving around Vancouver with my mum and dad, making them take me to every spot that was special to them while they attended university there in the 80’s; the fact that I have come from so many unique, quirky human beings from different walks of life amazes me.

Although my family is made up of diverse personalities, a similarity that we all share is our passion and curiosity for the environment and spending time in the natural world. My father has spent his entire life travelling to different corners of the earth: climbing rock faces and scaling mountain peaks, riding his mountain bike on epic adventures with lifelong friends, pushing cattle through the grasslands on his favorite horse, forever learning to surf, or skiing some of British Columbia’s biggest terrain. He joined a long family line of professional foresters, which has given him the chance to experience the good and the bad in natural resource extraction. My mum, though equally as fond of mother nature, has approached Her in a much gentler way. Although she spent many years joining my dad on his big endeavors, my mum finds clarity and peace in her garden full of lavender and honeybees and spending time reading on our dock at Christina Lake while the sun hits her freckles, and the water is around to restore her after a long school year. Slow walks in the wind in the hayfields at Nicola Ranch bring her peace. I believe that I am a chip off the old block of both my parents. I need the adrenalin of the experiences that my dad seeks, but I also need the tranquility and familiarity that my mum needs.

My family comes from all around British Columbia: Vancouver, Rossland, Nanaimo, Kamloops. My father’s family lived in nine different small towns ranging from Golden to Nass Camp before settling in Kamloops because of my grandfather’s career in forestry. Most of my immediate family calls Kamloops and Merritt home nowadays. Forestry has been a resource-based industry that has sustained my family. My grandfather has managed diverse forests throughout much of British Columbia, including Kicking Horse and Sun Peaks Ski Resorts. Both my grandfather and my father have managed forests for Canada’s biggest cattle ranch, Douglas Lake for more than 35 years. They have also overseen logging for Gang, Mitchell and Guichon ranches and woodlots. My father is now the Indigenous liaison for the BC Ministry of Forests and my grandpa continues to oversee his own company, West Wood Fibre Ltd. at the age of 83. I just spent my fifth summer tree planting in British Columbia, one of my cousins is working in Williams Lake for an Indian Band as a forester, and my aunt was a biologist in the Yukon but now works as head of wildlife management in Kamloops. Although I do not see myself getting a job in forestry, I do know that whatever career I do choose will involve being in our natural world and that is reflective of how I was raised. Similarly, my mum has been an educator in a resource-based town for thirty years, so indirectly her career has been impacted greatly by families who depend on logging, mining, and ranching in the areas surrounding our small town.  Her work as school district leader increasingly focuses on getting kids out of classrooms and onto the land as a part of Truth and Reconciliation and the understanding of the benefits of mental health being connected to nature for all. I too feel that I will one day settle in a small-town area that has a similar reliance on natural resources.  My family has been involved in resource extraction in both forestry and ranch management in order to increase range lands available to cattle, while using sustainable forest management and harvesting and replanting, and has been involved in fire mitigation strategies for decades especially after the pine beetle infestation decimated forests in our area.  My family has had an impact in changing the environment around our community and the province, but I believe that they have tried to do it in a sustainable and respectful manner.  It is hard to walk a cut block and ever feel great but knowing that those blocks are a part of a larger timber management plan that includes a commitment to selective harvesting whenever possible, restoration, and sustainability helps a little.

Gender roles have never felt like a thing in my family. No matter what you identify as, whatever task is needed to be done can and is done by anyone. I recall growing up fishing with my male cousins at my cabin, followed by foraging for salmon berries with them afterward. My mum has always included her daughters in gardening, my father always included us in mountain biking, skiing and working with horses and cattle. I am grateful that gender did not put-up walls on our experiences and that to this day everyone in my family is included in all jobs and activities. My sister and I have been given great freedom when it comes to the environment, and while it is undeniable that we have benefitted economically from resources that are on unceded territories, I am grateful for the decades long relationships and partnerships that my grandfather has had with indigenous communities and leaderships around the province as well as my father’s current work in Truth and Reconciliation and forest management. No biases were put on us from any of our family members and we were always free to explore it however we wanted, despite our heritage, and that freedom absolutely represents privilege.

The older I get and through my Indigenous studies education, I have realized that I am most interested in exploring my environment by educating myself on Indigenous traditions and cultures and the way different nations engage with the natural world. I share this respect for Indigenous ways of being with my sister and parents and hope to explore it more with my family in the future. I feel very fortunate to have been raised in a family lead by a man who was seen as on outlier in the past but is now recognized as a leader in the area of sustainable forest management.  I recognize the work that has been done for many years by my family to build relationships and capacity through partnerships with indigenous communities, and I am always struck by how people speak so positively about my grandfather and father when I am in the community. I absolutely recognize the privilege that has allowed me to grow up enjoying the environment through so many recreational pursuits, to have grown up riding my horse through the grasslands, to have skied and climbed for endless days in the backcountry, to have spent summer swimming in the lake beside our family cabin, that is all because of my privilege.  I hope that I can raise my own children with the same opportunities as well as the recognition of how fortunate we are to be able to explore the land around us in a respectful, sustainable, and humble way.