Nine months after her hometown in British Columbia burned to the ground, Meghan Fandrich walked through the charred remnants of her small business, which was obliterated by fire.
As she sifted through the ashes and rubble of Klowa Art Café, a supportive friend at her side, Fandrich felt only a numb, vague interest.
“Every bit of that coffee shop was something that I put my life into,” Fandrich recalled. The empty plant pots used to be filled with baby plants nurtured from her own home. A pair of knitting needles looked intact at first glance but disintegrated at her touch.
“Everything had my history in it,” Fandrich said. She ran the art cafe for 10 years before fire destroyed Lytton, B.C., in 2021.
She only saved two items: a metal doorknob and a tiny handle from a kitchen cabinet. They are a bit rusted from months exposed to the elements, yet the very fact they survived the inferno makes them seem particularly beautiful.
They were on display at Queen St. Fare in Ottawa on Wednesday alongside other items — books, ornaments, a teacup and more — all salvaged from climate disasters across Canada.
There, climate survivors who contributed to the exhibit and advocates called on the federal government to release its long-awaited regulations to cap planet-warming greenhouse emissions from oil and gas production. The exhibit, called Protect What We Love, was organized by the Sierra Club and features artifacts from survivors across the country who lost homes, businesses and communities to climate disasters from fires to floods and hurricanes. The survivors are acutely aware of the effects of climate change, having lived it themselves, and want to use their experiences to inject some humanity into conversations too rooted in numbers and data.
“One thought that I keep having at this exhibit is just the way that these really mundane objects, — like a door knob, a cupboard knob, right? — just how precious they become through disaster,” Fandrich said.
Her house was spared from the blaze; she still lives there with her eight-year-old daughter, Helen. The loss of her history and her community — including her best friend from childhood who lost her home and had to move away — hurts more than the loss of her coffee shop.
“My feet knew every crack in the sidewalk … I ran on the sidewalks as a kid. That's where I learned to ride my bike. I knew the way that the grocery store door would scrape against the ground whenever you opened it. It's those things that we lost, all of these tiny, little, insignificant things that make up your sense of home and belonging, and then all of a sudden, they're gone.”
The following year, on the other side of the country, Mark Lomond experienced a similar loss.
A lone, battered life preserver was all that was left of his fishing stand in Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, after Hurricane Fiona devastated the region in 2022.
Lomond’s fishing stand, decked out with running water, bedding and woodfire stove for treasured weekends of hunting and fishing in Port aux Basques, was completely washed away in the storm. His family members lost five homes.
“Everyone was split up and tossed all over the place because there weren't a lot of spare houses in the community and we lost, like, 120 houses,” Lomond told Canada’s National Observer at the exhibit.
His uncle had to go hundreds of kilometres away to a nursing home in another town after losing his house in the hurricane, Lomond explained.
“He's elderly and blind, and he had to move away from his community, his family and all his support. And there's lots of cases like it. My parents lived in a hotel for nine months, and still they're renting an apartment. Now they'll probably never own a home again.”
Lomond lives about 30 minutes away in Codroy, Newfoundland, and “watched everything get washed away on Facebook.”
Pictures and footage showing the aftermath of houses demolished and lumber and rubble strewn all over the shoreline couldn’t begin to convey the devastation caused by Hurricane Fiona, he said.
“Our poor neighbour, God love her, she lost her life and got swept out to sea,” Lomond said.
The Lytton wildfire, Hurricane Fiona and other disasters featured at the Ottawa exhibit were all made more likely and more extreme by climate change. Human activity, primarily burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal, is driving global temperature rise.
Fandrich has been trying to seize every opportunity to share her story and advocate for the Lytton community and all survivors of climate disasters.
“This is my little voice. But I hope that people know that we have collective power in our voices,” Fandrich said.
“Even if three more people hear my story and raise their voice, demand from their MPs or from the policymakers that we need change. I hope that I can make this little ripple of difference.”
Natasha Bulowski / local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
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