Family Environmental History
April 25, 2026 By: Autumn Rehbein
My family’s environmental history reflects the changing relationship between people and land across three generations, shaped by shifting economies, technologies, and lifestyles. Looking at my grandparents, my parents, and then my own generation, I can see how each has experienced the environment differently, moving from more direct dependence on natural systems toward increasingly urbanized and industrialized surroundings.
My grandparents’ generation lived much closer to the land than I do today. They grew up in smaller communities in Alberta where daily life was more connected to seasonal cycles, weather, and local resources. Heating homes often depended on wood or fuel oil, food was more likely to come from gardens, hunting, fishing, or local stores supplied by nearby producers, and transportation was limited compared to today. Their environment was shaped by forests, rivers, and agricultural land, and survival depended on understanding those natural systems. Winters in northern Alberta especially demanded practical knowledge of snow, freezing temperatures, and changing seasons. For them, nature was not abstract or recreational, it was something that directly influenced everyday life.
My parents’ generation experienced a transition between rural resource dependence and industrial modernity. By the time they were adults, Alberta’s oil economy had become deeply tied to community identity and employment, especially in places like Fort McMurray. Natural resources no longer simply sustained life through farming or hunting; instead, oil and gas extraction became the economic foundation for families and entire towns. My parents’ lives were shaped by roads, suburban housing developments, and industrial infrastructure built into what had once been forest and muskeg. They still had a close awareness of nature, long winters, wildlife encounters, and seasonal fires remained part of life, but their interaction with the environment was increasingly mediated through technology, vehicles, and wage labor rather than direct harvesting from the land.
My own generation has grown up in a much more human-made environment. Living in Fort McMurray, I am surrounded by a landscape where urban development and industrial extraction dominate. Roads, shopping centers, subdivisions, and oil sands infrastructure shape daily life far more than untouched natural spaces do. At the same time, I have become more aware than previous generations of environmental degradation and climate concerns. Events like the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire made it impossible to ignore how environmental change affects communities directly. Unlike my grandparents, who may have viewed forests primarily as resources or wilderness to live alongside, I tend to see the environment through the lens of sustainability, conservation, and ecological responsibility.
Natural resources have sustained all three generations of my family, but in very different ways. For my grandparents, forests, water, wildlife, and farmland provided direct necessities. For my parents, oil became the primary resource supporting jobs, housing, and economic stability. For me, those same industries remain economically important, but I also recognize their environmental costs: habitat destruction, carbon emissions, and pollution. This creates a tension that earlier generations may not have experienced as strongly. My generation inherits both the benefits of industrial prosperity and the responsibility of addressing its ecological consequences.
The environments my family has lived in have also become progressively less “natural” over time. My grandparents lived in places where local ecosystems were altered but still closely tied to native landscapes. My parents saw rapid transformation as roads, pipelines, and industrial projects reshaped boreal forests and wetlands. My own environment is heavily engineered, stormwater systems, paved roads, reclaimed industrial land, and planned neighborhoods dominate the spaces I inhabit. Even the plants and animals around us are influenced by human intervention, including invasive species introduced through transport and development.
Class and regional identity also shape how my family relates to the environment. In Alberta, resource extraction is not only economic but cultural. Oil has provided livelihoods and opportunities, and that affects how environmental issues are discussed. For many families, including mine, there is pride in hard work connected to resource industries, even while acknowledging environmental damage. This creates a complicated relationship: dependence on industries that alter landscapes, paired with growing concern for sustainability.
What differs most across generations is the degree of separation from nature. My grandparents interacted with the land as something immediate and necessary. My parents experienced it as both home and workplace within an industrial economy. I experience it more as something threatened, something to protect, restore, and rethink. In the future, I hope for a relationship with the environment that combines the respect and practical awareness my grandparents had with the environmental consciousness my generation is developing. Rather than seeing economic growth and ecological care as opposites, I hope my generation can create ways of living that balance both.
My family’s environmental history is ultimately a story of transition: from land-based living, to industrial dependence, to ecological reflection. Each generation has inherited a changed landscape, and each has left its mark on it. Understanding that history makes me more aware of my own responsibility in shaping what comes next.