Rewilding Vancouver

via: the Pacific Salmon Foundation

The Vancouver we know is more culturally attuned to and integrated with nature than any city of a comparable size on earth. Despite this, our city has dramatically transformed the natural
environment. Opening February 27, 2014 at the Museum of Vancouver with presenting sponsor
Pacific Salmon Foundation, Rewilding Vancouver explores the city’s nature as it was, is, and
could be.
The first major exhibition in Canada to explore our relationship with nature through the lens of
historical ecology, Rewilding Vancouver brings this new way of exploring the past to the forefront
using Vancouver as the subject. The exhibition is comprised of taxidermy specimens, 3D models,
soundscapes, videos and photo interventions that challenge our perception of what is natural to
Vancouver. Visitors will discover a changing-of-the-guard when it comes to the region’s wildlife,
with ravens, wolves and elk fading as crows, coyotes and black-tailed deer settled in. Rewilding
Vancouver also challenges us to envision new streetscapes that feature unearthed fish-bearing
streams long hidden below city streets. A life-sized creation of the now extinct Steller’s Sea Cow
is one of many highlights of this exhibition.
Rewilding Vancouver’s core exhibition team includes MOV curator Viviane Gosselin, designer
Kevin McAllister and guest curator J.B. MacKinnon who is co-author of 100-Mile Diet and author
of the recently released The Once and Future World, which served as inspiration for the
exhibition.
“Almost everyone has experienced the loss of some treasured natural space — whether an entire
forest or a simple vacant lot,” says MacKinnon. “This exhibition is a way to connect with that
feeling, and also explore the unlimited possibilities of melding the urban and wild.”
In 2010, Vancouverites were mesmerized when a grey whale came for a swim in False Creek, and
in 2013 we were equally awe-struck by a beaver investigating the Olympic Village as a new
potential home. Rewilding Vancouver seeks to encourage people to discover what nature was like
in Vancouver’s past, reconnect with nature as meaningful to their lives, and engage with efforts to
make the city a wilder place.
“Rewilding Vancouver is an exhibition of remembering,” explains J.B. MacKinnon. “It allows the
public to reconnect with a forgotten history in order to look at the present and the possible future
with new eyes.”

Posted by Don Larson on Saturday, July 19th, 2014 @ 6:17PM
Categories: Uncategorized