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.
Angela Danyluk, a biologist and senior sustainability officer with the City of Vancouver, says the project hopes to change the language around sea level rise. (City of Vancouver)
“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 Coastand Radio West on CBC Radio One and on CBC Vancouver News with features on cbc.ca/bc.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
