Reflection and Exercise Submission
August 17, 2026 By: Nicole Collette
Completing these exercises provided an opportunity to connect my family history and my immediate Vancouver surroundings with the broader themes of environmental history. Before starting this course, I viewed my daily environment around Heather Street and West 16th Avenue through a purely modern lens and saw my family’s timeline as a simple collection of personal memories. However, learning how environmental historians read the past transformed my perspective. I now see both my local neighbourhood and my family’s multi-generational journey as part of a larger narrative of human expansion and ecological modification.
If I were to expand the first two exercises today, I would bring a sharper focus to the ways human choices permanently altered the land. In my local history section, I noted the transition from an old-growth temperate rainforest managed by the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations into a clear-cut landscape targeted for colonial sawmills. Armed with a deeper understanding of environmental history, I would expand on how this colonial extraction was a deliberate commodification of nature. I would explicitly connect this local destruction to my family history section, drawing a direct line between my early French ancestors clearing the St. Lawrence River Valley, my grandparents moving to the rugged West Coast and the concrete grid system that ultimately forced the salmon streams of Heather Street into subterranean storm sewers.
These exercises bridged the gap between abstract historical concepts and the tangible places where I live and work. Reflecting on Douglas Park helped me realize what we often celebrate as nature in the city is actually a manufactured ecosystem designed for human recreation. Even my beloved Stanley Park gives the illusion of untouched wilderness, though it was originally home to thriving Indigenous communities. Watching my kids play on fields which were once a colonial logging camp highlights how deeply we have redefined these spaces. This insight tied directly into my later analysis of contemporary media, where I examined the modern crisis of losing tree canopies to housing density. It became clear the tension between utilitarian conservation and preservationism is not a settled historical event but still an ongoing reality shaping our urban environments in real-time. Recognizing these patterns allows me to see my daily urban footprint not just as a modern lifestyle choice, but instead the latest chapter in a long history of environmental adaptation.