Family Environmental History

March 5, 2023 By: Jason Senna

I am a Caucasian middle-class male whose immediate family does not relate to their environment much, if at all. We value our environment as we live on a mountain and have a forest in our backyard. I showcase how much I appreciate my environment by teaching the children I supervise how impactful our actions are to our environment and how privileged we are to live in said environment. My elders’ relationships with their environments differ from those I wish to have in the future by not sustainably preserving their resources or the vigour of their domains. Measures I take to maintain the ecological health of my locality are getting rid of invasive species and planting native ones.

My grandma on my mother’s side was born and resided in Montreal, Quebec, in 1930 but moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada, when she was 25. She joined an environmental advocacy club while attending UBC, which sought ways to support agricultural development and conservation. My mother’s mom had her vegetable and berry garden and grew various plants such as carrots, lettuce, potatoes, radishes, raspberries, huckleberries, and green beans. Additionally, she rode a bike instead of driving a car that distributes pollutants into the air. In the late 1950s, Vancouver commenced an urban renewal project that flattened some underprivileged residences and superseded them with public housing developments.[1] Vancouver’s ambitions to participate in the global trade market transformed it into a major city[1], making it less native as there were more investments in human-made constructions.

My mother was born in Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 1964, while my father was born in Sri Lanka in the same year and moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 1979. Both my parents recycle but do not compost their food scraps and drive gas-fueled cars. However, they want to convert to owning electric vehicles, and my father has entirely switched to electrical yard work tools. My parents have also converted to energy-efficient home appliances. My mother and father were concerned about the sustenance of their environments at a younger age than their parents because they could observe the environmental degradation caused by their parent’s generation. My father oversaw construction sites where he cringed at the sight of wasted lumber and materials, so he instructed the tradespeople under his command to conserve the excess lumber and materials and reuse them as much as possible on current or future jobs. In 1960, “the Vancouver Province newspaper” stated that when viewing the sun in the city of Vancouver, it “was lost behind a blanket of black smoke” due to “industrial stacks of sawmills and coal steam locomotives shunting cars.” [2] This unnatural air quality can be attributed to automobiles evident on Greater Vancouver roads, more than tripling between 1950 and 1964, causing “roads, bridges, and freeways” to be jammed, considerably increasing travel times.[2] In Vancouver during the 1960s, ecologically minded buildings and neighbourhoods began to be erected, which acknowledged the importance of maintaining the environment’s health within and surrounding our communities.[3]

My grandpa on my mother’s side was born and raised in Hillcrest, Alberta, Canada, in 1930 before he moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 1950. My mother’s father worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) while attending the University of British Columbia as a full-time student (UBC). My mother’s dad was a heavy cigarette smoker and had wood-burning fireplaces, combining to pollute the air with toxic particles from the smoke. However, my mother’s father used paper bags instead of plastic bags which has become a widespread environmental movement in recent years and has contributed to the city I live in banning retailers from distributing plastic bags to consumers. Thus, you could say he was ahead of his time with the choice in the material of his bag usage, but that he did not necessarily value his environment and negatively transformed it with his pollutant habits. Southern Alberta was mainly farming land and plains, a blend of natural and human-made environments. In Alberta, Canada, in the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of people departed from the Great Plains due to persistent “insufficient soil moisture availability,” which the region’s crops necessitate to mature successfully.[4] These drought circumstances corresponded with the unemployment and financial struggle from the Great Depression and were natural but also caused by European expansion.[4] Thus, my mother’s father endured economic and ecological adversity early on.

My grandparents on my father’s side were both born in Sri Lanka and resided there until 1976, when they moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada. My grandparents’ houses in Sri Lanka were constructed of clay, and they consumed rice, roti, and curries for nutrition. When my father’s parents moved to Vancouver, my dad was twelve years old and unaware of the Canadian lifestyle. My father’s dad smoked cigarettes and drove a gas-fueled car, worsening his locality’s air quality. My father’s mom took public transit and reused plastic grocery bags so that she would use fewer natural materials when purchasing items. Their environment could be considered exotic in comparison to the climate of Vancouver, Canada and has undoubtedly been influenced and transformed by past British expansion. My grandparents on my father’s side utilized their environment and its resources more than anyone else in my family. They appreciated and valued their native but heavily European-influenced Sri Lankan environment by performing rituals, dances, and prayers.

 

(1) https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver

(2) Thiessen, Lee. “Protesting Smoke: A Social and Political History of Vancouver Air Pollution in the 1950s and 1960s.” Urban history review 46, no. 1 (2017): 57–70.

(3) Hardwick, Walter G. “Responding to the 1960s: Designing Adaptable Communities in Vancouver.” Environment and behavior 26, no. 3 (1994): 338–362.

(4) Gilbert, Genevieve, and Robert McLeman. “Household Access to Capital and Its Effects on Drought Adaptation and Migration: A Case Study of Rural Alberta in the 1930s.” Population and environment 32, no. 1 (2010): 3–26.