Fire, Climate, and Community
Date: March 6, 2024
Time: 1pm - 4pm
Location: The Melville Centre for Dialogue, KPU Richmond
With climate change comes a rise in the frequency and intensity of weather events. In BC, and around the world, this also means an increase in the scale and destructive power of fire. The KPU Climate+ Challenge March panel event brings together four esteemed experts to discuss fire, its links to the climate emergency, and its effect on our communities. The panelists bring unique perspectives derived from research, journalism, experiential, artistic, and advocacy backgrounds. From the levelling of First Nations communities, Fort St. John, and Lytton, to the increase in wildfire smoke and changing forests, topics covered in this important conversation will inspire action and plant seeds of hope.
Speaker Bios
Melina Laboucan-Massimo
Melina Laboucan-Massimo is Lubicon Cree from Northern Alberta. She has worked on social, environmental and climate justice issues for the past 20 years. Melina is the Founder and Executive Director of Sacred Earth Solar, the co-founder at Indigenous Climate Action, and the inaugural Fellow at the David Suzuki Foundation. She is also the Host of a new TV series called Power to the People which profiles renewable energy, food security and eco-housing projects in Indigenous communities across Canada
John Valliant
John Vaillant is an author and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and the Guardian, among others. His first book, The Golden Spruce (Knopf, 2005), was a bestseller and won several awards, including the Governor General's and Writers’ Trust awards for non-fiction. His second nonfiction book, The Tiger (Knopf, 2010), won the B.C. Achievement Award for Non-Fiction, was a bestseller selected for Canada Reads, and has been published in 16 languages. In 2014 Vaillant won the Windham-Campbell Prize, a global award for non-fiction.
In 2015, he published his first work of fiction, The Jaguar's Children (Knopf), which was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC and Kirkus Fiction Prizes, and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His latest book, Fire Weather (Knopf, 2023), is a #1 national bestseller; it has won the Baillie Gifford Prize (UK), the most prestigious nonfiction prize in the English-speaking world. Fire Weather was also a finalist for the National Book Award (US), and the Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize (Canada). It has been named one of the ten best books of 2023 by The New York Times, among many other prominent publications.
Liz Toohey-Wiese
Liz Toohey-Wiese is a settler artist residing on the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. She is a graduate from the MFA program at NSCAD University. She completed her undergraduate degree in painting at Emily Carr University, also undertaking coursework at the University of Victoria and the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Her most recent work explores the complicated topic of wildfires and their connections to tourism, economy, grief, and renewal.
Her most recent work explores the complicated topic of wildfires and their connections to tourism, economy, grief, and renewal.
Information from: https://liztoohey-wiese.com/contact
Eugene Kung
Eugene Kung (he/him/his) is a staff lawyer with West Coast, working on Tar Sands, Pipelines and Tankers, as well as with RELAW. He is committed to human rights, social justice and environmental justice and has been working to stop the Kinder Morgan TransMountain expansion project.
Information from: https://www.wcel.org/team/staff/eugene-kung;