In late October, a group of Canadians gathered in Ottawa to reveal how climate change has reshaped their lives. Each climate survivor brought personal items salvaged from the wreckage of floods, fires, or storms that had devastated their communities. Doorknobs, teacups, pieces of fencing, these artifacts retrieved from the rubble became evidence of their vulnerability.
Conor Curtis, communications lead for Sierra Club Canada, which coordinated the exhibit to highlight the need for a federal oil and gas emissions cap, told The Energy Mix he was grateful the survivors came out to tell their stories, as some of them are still dealing with the fallout from the climate impacts they endured.
A week after the exhibit, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault announced that oil and gas producers in Canada will be required to cut emissions by about one-third—but not for another six to eight years.
As Canadians continue to face the intensifying effects of climate change, the Ottawa exhibit offered a stark reminder: homes, lives, and livelihoods are at risk, underscoring the urgent need for action.
One display case held a life preserver that had ornamented Mark Lomond’s fishing stage on the shoreline of his hometown, Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. The preserver had been washed away when the stage was destroyed by Hurricane Fiona in 2022. A year and a half later, Lomond bought it back for $50 from a clean-up crew as they auctioned off debris to fund their work.
Port aux Basques is still not back to what it was before Fiona hit, Lomond said. “It’s a very tight knit community, and all the homes that were lost were friends or family.”
Five of Lomond’s family members lost their homes, including his parents, and he too now lives in Codroy Valley outside Port aux Basques. Even more homes have been torn down in the aftermath, deemed unfit to live in or situated dangerously close to the water. Lomond’s uncle, whose home was damaged beyond repair, had to move into a nursing home “a few towns away” because there was nothing available nearby, Lomond said.
“And there are people that just don’t even have a home in the community anymore,” he added. “So yeah, it really split up the community.”
Meghan Fandrich travelled with her daughter from Lytton, British Columbia, to share her story. She had run a café there, a vibrant turquoise and green on the inside, with art from 75 local artists on its walls—and house-roasted coffee. The café burned down along with the rest of the town during wildfires in 2021.
She lost the café, but Fandrich’s house was among the few spared. While committed to staying, she wished at times that it had burned, too, so she could move away like others. Instead, she lives in an area that has been slow to rebuild. A small community store opened last winter to fill the gap for basic supplies, but most shopping for groceries demands a two-hour drive to Kamloops. Fandrich makes the trip every six weeks with her daughter, meaning that items like fresh vegetables are often not an option. “Everything has been so hard,” she said.
After the fire, Fandrich found knobs from a door and a cabinet among the rubble that was once her café. She was struck by how these small things took on new meaning. “I probably used to hate this doorknob, right? Like if it was one of those annoying push locking ones,” she said. “But now it’s like this precious object.”
Fandrich wrote a book of poems, working through her trauma from the fire. It’s titled Burning Sage: Poems from the Lytton fire.
Another Lytton artifact on display was a teacup from the town’s Chinese History Museum, fused with window glass that melted in the intense heat. Fandrich’s mother Lorna, executive director of the museum, leads one of the few businesses in town that have started to rebuild. Most people have been barred from going to their business properties as the province, insurance companies, and others work through their processes.
In the first two years after the fire, Meghan Fandrich was only allowed back to the site of her café four times—a place where she had once spent more time than at home.
Not every climate disaster makes headlines, but the smaller events are also reshaping lives across Canada. These events are a testament to what the future holds for Canadians—more frequent storms and heavy rain.
In August 2024, areas of Canada experienced high rainfall and floods caused by the remnants of Hurricane Debby. In Chelsea, Quebec, Alice Irene Whittaker’s home and permaculture garden—represented in a hand-drawn map—were destroyed as heavy rainfall became a flood. It happened so fast, “it went from being normal to out of control,” said Whittaker.
The land around her home was drastically changed. Roads and pathways were washed out, trees were gone, and creeks were rerouted. On the exhibit stage, Whittaker showed a salvaged piece of a cedar trellis, crafted by her husband. It had been found stuck up in a tree far away from home.
Around the same time, the basement in Raissa Marks’ home in Montreal was flooding, and she and her family worked the whole night moving items upstairs to minimize damage. A dollhouse made for her mom by her grandfather got soaked. Raissa, too, had played with it when she was younger, and so had her own children.
Their insurance company responded within 10 days of the flood and Marks’ family is now renovating. They’re talking to contractors to see how to rebuild, “so if water comes in again, there is less damage next time.”
Marks has also been trying to raise greater awareness of the risks of climate change, especially for people who may have greater difficulty navigating insurance claims and affording renovations.
Curtis and the Sierra Club held the exhibit to raise awareness and call on lawmakers to expedite the emissions cap. Now announced, it faces continued pushback, with some provinces and companies arguing it represents a production cut that will harm the economy.
But the costs of not capping emissions are also considerable, the exhibit aimed to show. Unmitigated emissions will have a real impact on Canadians as they intensify climate change. Severe weather, fires, and floods will become more frequent and intense, continuing to destroy homes and businesses.
The artifacts contributed by Fandrich, Lamond, Marks, and Whittaker were displayed alongside others, putting a human perspective on the climate crisis. The survivors met with Members of Parliament and the Senate, but their exhibit, once planned for Parliament Hill, was relocated to a nearby food court after their room booking was cancelled on the eve of the event.
“Since the fire, I’ve been trying to say yes to every opportunity, just to share my story as a way of advocating for Lytton and for climate disaster survivors in general,” Fandrich said from the recesses of the food court. “That’s the one thing I can do, right? I can’t single-handedly rewrite policies, but I can share my story.”
