Family Environmental History
August 9, 2026 By: Nicole Collette
Introduction
Our relationship with the natural world is an inherited narrative passed down through generations. How our ancestors interacted with, extracted from and valued their physical surroundings directly shapes our own ecological worldview. By tracing my family’s migration, from the deep-rooted settlement of early New France, across the Atlantic from Spain and the United Kingdom, through Montreal, and eventually west to British Columbia, I can see how diverse cultural landscapes shape my family’s relationship with the Canadian environment.
Deep Colonial Roots and Transatlantic Crossings
On my maternal grandfather’s side, my family’s ecological footprint in Canada is exceptionally deep, stretching back to the earliest days of European colonization. Arriving on what family history records as the fourth ship from France, long before Canada even existed as a country, my ancestors were active participants in the radical transformation of the eastern woodland ecosystem. To these early French settlers, the vast forests of the St. Lawrence River Valley were a wild frontier to be tamed, cleared and commodified. They introduced European agricultural practices, cleared native broadleaf forests for crops and engaged in the early fur and timber trades, altering local biodiversity for centuries.
In stark contrast, my maternal grandmother immigrated to Canada from Spain in the mid-twentieth century, bringing a completely different environmental perspective born of a Mediterranean climate. Growing up in a landscape defined by dry summers, rocky terrains and generations of olive and wheat cultivation, her transition to the humid, heavily industrialized urban environment of mid-century Montreal was probably a profound shock. My paternal grandparents brought their own distinct relationship with nature from the United Kingdom, one rooted in the heavily manicured, historically deforested and class-stratified pastoral landscapes of England and Scotland, where “nature” was often an engineered estate or a misty moor long stripped of its ancient trees.
Transcontinental Shuffle: East to West
My maternal grandparents met in Montreal, Quebec, despite coming from vastly different backgrounds. My grandfather belonged to a deep-rooted lineage spanning back to the 1700s, while my grandmother’s family was a group of brand-new arrivals, just beginning to establish themselves in the city. By the mid-twentieth century, Montreal was a bustling, high-density industrial metropolis. The environment my mother was born into was heavily human-made, defined by brick triplexes along cobblestone and paved streets, with the constant hum of manufacturing heard along the Lachine Canal. In this urban landscape, nature was something mediated by city parks or weekend escapes away from the urban core.
A pivotal environmental shift occurred when my mother was eleven years old, and her family, consisting of her parents and little brother, relocated across the continent to British Columbia as my grandfather took on a cross-country role auditing various western branches of his paint and glass company. This migration exposed the family to a completely different scale of geography. Moving from the old, settled and industrialized landscapes of the East to the rugged, towering geography of the West Coast was transformative. They arrived in a province still defined by massive old-growth temperate rainforests, imposing mountain ranges and active, large-scale resource extraction like logging and mining. My grandmother was always in awe of the mountains here. This was an incredibly brave move on my grandparents’s part; to venture to the westernmost edge of the country’s mainland, where they had no friends or family here.
My Generation: The West Coast Timeline
After arriving in British Columbia, my grandparents settled in Port Moody, which became the backdrop where my mother and her brother grew up. At the time, Port Moody offered a quieter, suburban lifestyle, yet it sat right on the edge of the rapidly expanding industrial and urban core of Vancouver. The family continued to grow there with the arrival of my mother’s youngest brother, born nearby in New Westminster at Royal Columbian Hospital. Eventually, corporate demands shifted the landscape again, and my grandfather’s work shipped my grandparents back out east, this time to Toronto.
As time progressed, Port Moody began to feel too urban for my mother and stepdad with our growing blended family of five children. They moved us to Maple Ridge for my high school years, exposing me to a far more rural experience. There were expansive farmers’s fields with fresh corn, pumpkins and blueberries every fall, tidal, brackish Pitt Lake for canoeing camping adventures and ice cold glacier-fed rivers to jump in trailing down from Golden Ears Mountain provincial park. As long as you knew someone with a car, nature was abundantly accessible. Otherwise, urban sprawl was a significant barrier.
Growing up in the valley gave way to my own independent journey; starting at age sixteen, I took on a personal migration, moving one city closer to Vancouver every year. This steady trek westward inevitably brought me to the West End, where I spent seven years living in close proximity to the Seawall and the glory of Stanley Park.
Leaving my West End apartment was difficult because I loved the neighbourhood, however, getting accepted into co-operative housing was akin to winning the rental lottery and a huge windfall for the most expensive city in the country. I have grown to love my current neighbourhood, with its tree-lined streets, welcoming green spaces and quaint commercial spots. My kids and I can walk or bike to the stores, even to their school, which is so wonderful and very unlike my suburban car-centred experience. And my beloved Stanley Park is still accessible only a short Skytrain ride away for all my Seawalling needs.
Conclusion
Looking back, my family’s timeline feels like a miniature history of Canada itself, expanding from east to west. Our story spans from early French ancestors clearing the frontier, to my grandparents’s experience in industrial Montreal and their brave move to the massive coastal rainforests of mountainous British Columbia, before moving finally to my own life navigating modern suburban and ultimately urban settings. Living in a walkable neighbourhood surrounded by green spaces shapes my environmental values today. For three hundred years, my ancestors expanded their footprint outward by taming the wilderness, helping to build cities and spreading into the suburbs. Today, my family has flipped the script, trying instead to shrink our footprint to hopefully help sustain future generations.