Assignment #1 Exercise # 2

January 24, 2022 By: Aaron Wagner

Norman Fennema, PhD

Hist 3991 Environmental History

Aaron Wagner

January 18, 2022

 

Family Environmental History

 

My family’s history is kind of a weird one, to be honest, I only really know the history of my Dad’s side of the family as we don’t really associate with my mom’s side of the family other than her two brothers and even then it’s very limited. My great grandfather on my Dad’s side was a logger that ended up getting drafted into the second world war when he was young and he married my great-grandmother in his early 20s and in 1918. They both lived and grew up on Vancouver Island in the town of Campbell River a place they would return to and call home and raise a family until the end of their days.

My great grandfather was a logger so in his time as a logger, there were not near as many clear-cut forests as there are now, and honestly, in his day, they were doing less damage to the forests than what we are doing now. The reason for this is because there were fewer people living in Campbell River and the surrounding areas so there was less of a need for lumber than there is today Because back in the day we did not need to send lumber from one part of Canada to the other and we also did not need to ship it down to the states ether. It also helped that during his time as a logger Canada also put large tariffs on US-made goods such as tools, Farming equipment such as plows, and even the first couple of tractors, was because our Prime Minister at the time was Mackenzie King wanted to put Canada made goods first and wanted more Canadians to spend their money on Canadian made products instead of the American made goods. However, this did not work as the products that were made in Canada at the time were more often than not made with cheaper materials than their American counterparts and they would often beak more easily. An example of this would be the cheaply made Canadian plows that would often break and become unusable much faster than the ones made in the USA especially anything made by John Deer as any farming equipment they made was at the time vastly superior to whatever Canada could produce so for this reason and others the tariffs on US goods was lifted as Canada was actually losing money not trading with the USA. However, for people like my great grandfather, this meant more work which was good for him but it was bad for the environment as now he needed to log double the amount of trees he used to which also meant more clear cuts and the slow deforestation of Vancouver Island and its surrounding areas began which is still going on today almost 100 years later. His two sons would go on to somewhat follow in his footsteps with his eldest son also going on to become a logger that would be my grand Uncle and my grandfather would go on to work in a nearby pulp mill for most of his adult life.

My grandfather and his brother would go on to work these jobs for most of their adult lives each getting married and raising a family of their own however both of them never really left Vancouver Island and both would stay in Campbell River for a large majority of their lives. That would be until my Grand Uncle got a job offer to move to Kamloops in his mid to late thirties he would be one of the only family members on my dad’s side of the family to move off of Vancouver island he would also raise his son my now Uncle in Kamloops as well. My grandfather chose to stay on the island and to continue to work at the pulp mill until he would become to foramen and later the main manager of the mill then eventually retire from the mill in his early to mid-50s however my grandfather and grandmother would not have a child of their own and instead they would go to choose to adopt my father from a younger couple that could not afford to raise him at the time so this would also mean that my father, older brother and myself are not biologically related to anyone on my dad’s side of the family however this has never changed anything in the family that we are not related through blood we are still family. Now Both my grandfather and his brother choose careers that are super harmful to the planet and to the environment and also at the time when they were both still working there were very little to no precautions given about ways their jobs could protect or try to limit their damage on the environment. My uncle’s father would head out early in the morning and go and clear cut an entire section of forest and try to take as many trees as he could in a single day giving no thought to how his actions my damage to the ecosystem of the forests that he was cutting down. My Grandfathers mill also did not care that they duped all their super harmful waste straight into the ocean waste that was filled with super-toxic chemicals that would go on to kill and permanently damage the ocean’s ecosystem that surrounded that part of the island and around the mill and the worst part is that same mill is still up and running today and they are still pouring waste and toxic chemicals into the ocean today.

My dad would go on to not follow in my grandfather’s footsteps and not only would my dad leave Vancouver island when he was in his mid-20s with my mom, brother, and myself he would also go on to become a carpenterprivet contractor for other construction companies. My parents left Vancouver island when I was very young so I don’t remember very much of my time on the island however I do remember our time living in Calgary quite well Calgary being where my parents moved to after leaving the Island. We lived in a small town on the outskirts of the city which in the early 2000s was quite empty and small for example we lived in a small neighborhood with only four or so houses on our block and right on the front of the house was wide open parry which is now gone as it was built upon and turned into more real-estate and housing projects and things like that. However, out of all of my family members on my dad’s side, my dad had a career that was the least harmful to the environment out of everybody.