Art
Design challenge brings together art and science to help change how Vancouverites think about sea-level rise – CBC.ca
Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of Our Changing Planet, a CBC News initiative to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.
During an event earlier this month, writers from four coastal cities — Vancouver, New York, Mumbai and Tokyo — typed out their thoughts about the prospect of rising sea levels.
Their words were projected on a large screen in Vancouver’s Olympic Village, and a youth choir sang them out to the public.
In addition, a photography project on display showed how residents imagine they may be impacted by rising sea levels in and around False Creek.
The choir and photography were part of an event marking the end of the first phase of the Sea2City Design Challenge, a City of Vancouver project that aims to look at how the city can adapt to rising sea levels — particularly in the False Creek floodplain — and address the social, economic and ecological impacts coastal flooding will have in the future.
LISTEN | CBC’s Johanna Wagstaffe on the Sea2City Design Challenge
9:37CLIMATE CHANGERS: A design challenge to help deal with sea level rise
Sea levels are rising in response to climate change. For coastal communities, that means preparing today for what tomorrow could bring. CBC’s Johanna Wagstaffe brings us the story of the Sea2City Design Challenge in Vancouver.
Angela Danyluk, a biologist and senior sustainability officer with the city, says art can be a great way to connect with the public on the issue of climate change.
“You don’t need to know all the stats behind climate change, but you do know how you feel about your relationship with the coast,” Danyluk said.
Danyluk described the Sea2City Design Challenge as a friendly competition between two design teams that began last September.
When it comes to adapting to sea-level rise, Danyluk says, designers often think in one of three ways: resist by keeping water away, accommodate by letting water in according to risk tolerance, and avoid by getting out of water’s way altogether.
But changing the language around sea-level rise can help people think differently about their relationship to the water, she says.
“‘Resist’ became ‘acknowledge’, ‘accommodate’ became ‘host’, ‘move’ and ‘avoid’ became ‘restore’ — restoring our relationship with the water, the land and with each other,” she said.
Chuck McDowell of Mithun+One, one of the groups participating in the challenge, says their designs were deeply influenced by conversations with Indigenous cultural advisers and knowledge keepers, who spoke of how the land was once akin to a “traditional grocery store” filled with plant life and sea life.
He says there are plenty of issues that need to be addressed to bring back that natural plethora, such as watershed issues and the need to implement green infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of work to do to make it happen, but bringing back that idea of natural abundance is really important to us,” McDowell said.
Danyluk says now that the first phase of the design project is complete, they hope to present two to three pilot projects that can be implemented in False Creek over the next four to 10 years.
She says the city can look across Burrard Inlet for inspiration.
“It’s funny, we all go to the North Shore on the weekend to be in the forest and it’s full of cedar trees,” she said. “Why can’t we have cedar trees here in the city?”
LISTEN | How ready is Vancouver’s False Creek for sea-level rise?
On The Coast7:39Sea2City Design Challenge
How ready is False Creek for sea level rise? We’ll hear from two people behind the “Sea2City” Design Challenge. It’s an international team tackling the issue of future flooding. Margaret Gallagher met up with two team members, Begonia Arellano with the Delterra…and Dutch firm that specializes in water management, and Derek Lee is principal at Vancouver’s PWL Landscape Architects and a “Sea2City” team lead.
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. In B.C. we’ve witnessed its impacts with deadly heat waves, destructive floods and rampant wildfires. But there are people who are committed to taking meaningful strides, both big and small, toward building a better future for our planet. Those people are featured in CBC’s series The Climate Changers, produced by CBC science reporter and meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe and associate producer Rohit Joseph, which airs Wednesdays on All Points West, On The Coast and Radio West on CBC Radio One and on CBC Vancouver News with features on cbc.ca/bc.
A trio plays a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy as a dozen people settle in for an intimate open mic night inside Derrick McCandless and Dawn Mills’s cozy spot off highways 6 and 68 in Manitoba’s Interlake.
Strings of antique-style light bulbs cast a soft glow over the mandolin, banjo and dobro guitar that hang on a wall behind the band. An array of pottery shaped in-house by Mills dots the shelves behind the audience.
The Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop is full of tchotchkes — like an Elvis Presley Boulevard street sign and vintage Orange Crush ad — that create the rustic country-living vibe the couple dreamt up before buying and transforming the vacant space over the past three years.
“I have met so many people in this community through them that I probably wouldn’t have … because of this hub,” says Mills’s cousin Dana-Jo Burdett.
Mills and McCandless are bringing people together in their rural community in more ways than one — though a return to Mills’s hometown wasn’t always in the cards.
The couple met in Winnipeg in 2011 while McCandless was playing a party at Mills’s cousin’s place. They had plans to settle in the Okanagan in McCandless’s home province of B.C. until he suffered a health scare. After that, they decided to head back to the Prairies.
WATCH | McCandless and Mills channel creative spirit into Eriksdale community:
Dawn Mills and Derrick McCandless host the RogerKimLee Music Festival in the Manitoba Interlake community of Eriksdale. They also turned a long-vacant space in town into a live music venue, instrument repair and sales store, and pottery and framing services shop.
It was the height of the pandemic in fall 2020 when the pair relocated to Eriksdale, about 130 km northwest of Winnipeg. They bought the old Big Al’s shop, once a local sharpening business that was sitting vacant.
“He was an icon in the community. He was a school teacher. He did a drama program here,” said Mills. “He brought a lot to the town.”
The building has become their own personal playground and live-in studio.
“It keeps evolving and we keep changing it and every room has to serve multi-function,” says Mills. “It’s a meeting place.”
While they love the quiet life of their community, they’re also a busy couple.
McCandless is a multi-instrumentalist with a former career in the Armed Forces that took him all over. Now, he’s a shop teacher in Ashern who sells and fixes instruments out of the music shop.
WATCH | McCandless plays an original song:
Derrick McCandless plays one of his original songs on acoustic guitar at the Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop in March 2024.
Mills helped found Stoneware Gallery in 1978 — the longest running pottery collective in Canada. She offers professional framing services and sells pottery creations that she throws in-studio.
They put on open mic nights and host a summer concert series on a stage next door they built together themselves. They’re trying to start up a musicians memorial park in Eriksdale too.
One of their bigger labours of love is in honour of McCandless’s good friends Roger Leonard Young, David Kim Russell and Tony “Leon” — or Lee — Oreniuk. All died within months of each other in 2020-2021.
“That was a heart-wrenching year,” McCandless says.
They channeled their grief into something good for the community and started the RogerKimLee Music Festival.
Friends from Winnipeg and the Interlake helped them put on a weekend of “lovely music, lovely food, lovely companionship” as a sort of heart-felt send off, said Mills.
That weekend it poured rain. Festival-goers ended up in soggy dog piles on the floor of the music shop to dry out while Mills and McCandless cooked them sausages and eggs to warm up.
“It was just a great weekend,” says McCandless. “At the end of that, that Sunday, we just said that’s it, we got to do this.”
Mills says the homey community spirit on display during that inaugural year is what the couple has been trying to “encourage in people getting together” ever since.
The festival has grown to include a makers’ market, car show, kids activities, workshops, camping, beer gardens, good food and live music.
This summer, Manitoba acts The Solutions, Sweet Alibi and The JD Edwards Band are on the lineup Aug. 16-18.
Burdett has been a part of the growth, helping with branding, social media and marketing. McCandless and Mills’s habit of bringing people together has also rubbed off on Burdett.
“There’s more of my people out here than I thought, and I am very grateful for that,” says Burdett.
Their efforts to breathe new artistic life into Eriksdale caught the attention of their local MLA.
“The response from family and friend and community has been outstanding,” Derek Johnston (Interlake-Gimli) said during question period at the Manitoba Legislature in March.
“The RogerKimLee Music Festival believes music to be a powerful force for positive social change.”
Dolly Lindell, who has lived in Eriksdale for about three decades, said the couple is adding something valuable that wasn’t quite there before.
“There’s a lot of people that we didn’t even know had musical talent and aspirations and this has definitely helped bring it out,” Lindell says from the audience as McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie wrap their rendition of Take it Easy.
McCandless, 61, said there was a time in his youth where he dreamed of a becoming a folk music star. Now his musical ambitions have changed. He’s focused on using that part of himself to bring people together.
“I think it’s that gift that I was given that that needs to be shared,” he says. “I don’t think I could live without sharing it.”
WATCH | Trio plays song at Eriksdale music shop:
Derrick McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie play a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy at McCandless and Dawn Mills’s music shop in Eriksdale in March 2024.
- 1 day ago
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- Duration 4:42
Joel Jamensky’s sunny disposition explains why the artist with Down syndrome uses the name ‘J-positive’ for his online art business, started with the help of his parents two years ago. “There’s a lot more going on in [Joel’s] art than may be at first glance – just like him,” said his dad, Mark.
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