Exercise #2: Family Environmental History
April 17, 2026 By: Alexander Charlton
My family’s environmental history up to my grandparents stretches across North America, South America, and Japan. Their history was shaped by necessity, and access to resources. When looking at the past generations of my family and myself, what stands out the most is how differently each generation interacted with the environment; my grandparents relied on the land for work, my parents trained and used animals, and I enjoy nature, but don’t rely on it in the same way as my past family generations.
My grandma, Maria, grew up in a Mennonite community in Paraguay. There, her relationship with the environment was immediate and physical. She was only educated until grade nine where she then moved to working on her parents’ farm. Hearing about her early life, it seems that it was shaped less by her formal schooling and more by her lived experience on the land. She used a sling to take down birds and other small wild animals. She tells of the weeding of her family’s garden patch. She remembers the excitement of her sharing a single orange with her sisters and parents. Many details she gives point to a lack of abundance, and the enjoyment of little gifts life gave her. Everything in the environment around her had value and she still doesn’t take a thing that she has now for granted.
My grandpa, Ernie, experienced the environment through the caretaking of our family’s property, industrial labour, and technical skills. He was also one that did not come from abundance, he grew up on his family farm in the Fraser Valley and eventually created wealth for himself and my grandmother through working in the coal mines. He was a prolific spender and loved knick knacks from a full-size working steam engine locomotive to the smallest aircraft parts and also farm equipment of every size. His work in the coal mine represents an intensive form of environmental exploitation, reshaping landscapes, breaking habitats, and extracting a resource from the earth that would later be burnt up for energy. This job contributed to the ongoing move from subsistence to industrial resource extraction. He later bought an aircraft hangar and started a small coffee shop and air mechanic business with my Grandma. He used a technical trade which enabled many people through their aircrafts to skydive and feel the thrill of being able to rise above their landscape. His excitement over different aircrafts and value of honest labour without deceit helped shape my dad into who he is today.
My other grandfather is my papa whose Japanese name is Kosuke and English name is Charlie. He had a hands-on relationship with the environment which was different from my Grandpa’s coal mining experiences. Growing up between Japan and Canada during the 1940s and 1950s, his early life was shaped by wartime scarcity and postwar rebuilding. He recalls times where the US delivered food aid to the town he grew up in post-war and the sweet things he had never before tasted. After coming to Canada he found work on a large commercial fishing boat and as a car mechanic in the off-season. His connection to the environment was tied to both industry and natural systems. His role as a fisherman tied him directly to ecosystems that he would commercially fish, to later sell the hauls. There were incentives for the fishermen on his boat where the more weight in fish they caught – the more resources they extracted – the bigger bonuses there would be. His relationship was environmentally dependent, but also relied on the new industrialized means of fishing where every individual needn’t be an expert in their trade.
My other grandmother, my mama, Janet, worked for Telus to track warehouse supplies. She grew up in a townhouse in the Fraser Valley. Her work was removed from direct environmental interaction. Instead of working with land, water, or raw materials, she worked logistically. This reflects a broader transformation of how her immediate community became more industrialized and relied less on the individual farmer, with many roles of management becoming necessary.
My parents both grew up in the Fraser Valley. My father, Ernie, grew up interacting with different types of aircraft, getting his pilot license through the local Air Cadet program. My mother started her career by working in a local political office, but her main horseriding hobby became her pursued passion. My dad started his work in Northern Ontario delivering supplies to small communities. The way he interacted with the environment was by enabling these small communities to hunt, fish, mine, and de-forest their local area. His father influenced him more than by giving him the name Ernie; my grandpa grew a great interest in all things flying within my dad. My father ended up flying for Conair, air firefighting for many years, and now flies private jets and helicopters out of our local area. My mom now owns 25 horses and runs a non-profit riding stable helping children with diverse needs grow and interact. She affects her environment through taking care of many animals and using them to help others.
In my own experience, I grew up in Chilliwack near the Fraser River on my family farm. Everything natural around me is highly visible in the salmon that swim through our creek, the horses that my mom cares for, the farmers’ fields, the livestock, and the natural valley I live in. My survival does not depend on this nature in the same way the jobs of my past family generations did. I love experiencing nature and believe that Creation came to be through a loving God which greatly affects how I see the world around me. I want to grow up caring for this creation not contributing to environmental decay and to learn using the local Indigenous knowledge of those who are around me. My wife and I navigate with awareness and understand that our actions will have great shaping implications to our future family environmental history.