Family Environmental History
June 13, 2025 By: Bryce Feltrin
My environmental history begins on two coasts of Canada. On my father’s side, my grandparents arrived in the 1950s from Italy, settling in Port Alberni, a small town in the middle of Vancouver Island and on the way to Tofino. On my mother’s side, my grandfather was born in the Prairies, the son of settlers from England. My grandmother, of Scottish descent, was born and raised in East Vancouver. Each side of my family shows a different ecological story. The coastal rainforests of British Columbia, the dry grasslands of the Prairie provinces, and the urban ecosystems of the Lower Mainland.
In Port Alberni, my Italian grandfather found work in the logging industry. My grandfather felled trees for a pulp mill, while my grandmother stayed at home and raised my father and aunt. The environment around them was heavily shaped by resource extraction. Old-growth forests were converted into timber and jobs. This environment wasn’t natural in the sense of untouched wilderness; it was deeply human-made, transformed by industrial demand and settler colonial development. The Alberni Valley had already been reshaped by colonial land claims that displaced the Tseshaht and Hupacasath First Nations, and by non-native species introduced for farming and forestry. My grandparents saw the forest as both a source of livelihood and danger. Logging was hard, dangerous work. I don’t think they thought of themselves as part of nature in the way environmentalists today might speak about it. Nature was something to be conquered, controlled, or extracted. My mother’s father grew up near regina. They grew what they could, relied on the land. For them, nature was a sort of practical necessity. When he moved west to Vancouver, he brought with him a kind of stewardship: waste nothing, repair everything, and respect what the land gives you because it might not give it again.
My parents’ relationship with the environment is much more recreational. Camping, biking and visiting botanical gardens, these were moments of reconnection. They weren’t trying to live off the land; they were trying to escape the pressures of city life by retreating to what nature remained. For me My connection to the land is filtered through city infrastructure parks, bike lanes, transit systems. I didn’t chop wood or grow vegetables to survive. But I compost. I shop at the farmer’s market. I try not to drive too much, though I rely on a car for trips to the island and for camping. My relationship with the environment has always felt split between guilt and gratitude. I’m grateful for the beauty of B.C. the ocean, the mountains, the forests but I know I live in a city built on unceded territory, on land reshaped for settlers like my family. I can hike the Grouse Grind and then go downtown, but I also know those mountains are part of a history of displacement, of environmental and cultural loss for Indigenous people. Moreover, Gender and class shape this history too. My grandmothers’ relationships to the environment were mostly domestic: tending gardens, preparing food, recycling before it had a name. Their labor was unrecognized as environmental, but it was essential. My grandfather worked in forests, and the environmental impact was visible and destructive, but economically celebrated.
Looking ahead, I want something different. I want to live in a way that recognizes the limits of the environment, not just its utility. I want to be closer to the land, not just for recreation but in relationship. That might mean growing more of my own food or living in a smaller home. I’m interested in Indigenous stewardship models, especially those that understand humans as part of the ecosystem rather than its managers. I think my generation has the potential to shift not just our behavior, but our worldview from one of extraction to one of reciprocity.