Stories of Resilience: Voices from across British Columbia’s Interior

Initiative Overview

Location:

Interior of British Columbia

Duration:

2022 - 2024

Major Supporters:

Canadian Red Cross

The Stories of Resilience – Voices from across British Columbia’s Interior initiative is a multi-year program created by the Resilience Institute in partnership with the Canadian Red Cross. It builds on the Resilience Institute’s signature program, Stories of Resilience, which brings people together in dialogue and creativity to explore diverse notions of resilience in the context of climate change impacts and adaptation. A foundational concept behind Stories of Resilience is that by identifying the attributes and values that make us personally and collectively resilient, communities will be better able to adapt to climate change and reduce the risk of future disasters.

In the summer of 2017, over 100 interface wildfires broke out across the interior of British Columbia (BC), triggering several evacuation alerts and orders, impacting numerous communities in the BC Interior and North, and ultimately burning a total of 12,161 square kilometres and 444 homes. Multiple evacuation orders, often involving the same people multiple times, were issued throughout the season, effectively displacing 39,000 people for varying lengths of time.

The communities selected for this project were negatively impacted by the wildfires of 2017. Some individuals lost their homes or businesses, others evacuated at least once, all living through the season with the uncertainty of whether they would lose their home, community, or livelihood.

The Stories of Resilience – Voices from across British Columbia’s Interior initiative models how active engagement in thematic learning can inspire community members to become more involved in collaborating with each other in positive ways on disaster risk reduction and resilience building. Thematic learning is based on the concept that knowledge acquisition is most efficient when individuals are able to learn in a holistic context where they can associate whatever they learn with their surroundings or with real-life examples. This project engages citizens in a learning journey, but is framed around narratives that depict personal, organizational, and community resilience. With this initiative, we are gleaning Stories of Resilience to highlight the individual and community attributes that make people and communities resilient when disaster strikes.

This initiative engages people from diverse walks of life and communities across the Interior of British Columbia to tell their stories of resilience in the context of the 2017 wildfire season in British Columbia. Residents were invited to join online or in person. They could spend a few minutes or several months. The TRI team is honoured that so many shared their insights, including residents from 100 Mile House, Kamloops, Cottonwood, Vanderhoof, Williams Lake, Anahim Lake, and many more. The insights these storytellers shared about their lived experiences contribute to our collective wisdom and knowledge of resilience.

Public displays, artwork, and publications will be presented at the close of this initiative in June 2024.

For an in-depth look at the project, view the Stories of Resilience – Voices from Across British Columbia’s Interior storymap.

Meet TRI’s Artist in Residence and partner on the Stories of Resilience initiative:

This artwork was co-created by Bala Nikku and artist Liz Toohey-Wiese. Fom Bala’s Story of Resilience:  

Like the Turtle, I continue to visit and nurture my ties with family, friends, and communities in India and Nepal. I travel back to my village and the communities I continue to work with in Nepal in person to keep our shared vision alive. Then, I returned to Kamloops like a Salmon to continue working with students and communities in BC. I navigate these two worlds and protect hatching grounds of mine that make me feel secure, safe, and, at times, resilient.