I wanted to provide this podcast with an artistic challenge from the beginning. Ecopolitics is complex, and the mere idea of it led me down a rabbit hole that created these images.

All images used as part of this podcast are pre-1970 and sourced from the National Archives. This is partly due to those images now being available in the public domain, but they also represented a time when the environment was seen and understood from a very different perspective. The mainly white settlers of Canada, who controlled the political and economic structures (and still do), saw Canada for its bounty, vastness and resource potential. The imagery of the fisherman mastering nature, the farmer growing their bounty, the wood collected and, the consumerism dependent on Canada’s (let alone global) resources are all there to illustrate the bare reality of what the environment in Canada represents: something to “take”.

The first place I wanted to start was in the greater societal understanding of what the environment is. The movement, starting in the 1960s, of a collective shift towards a greater ecological understanding, was a turning point for everyone. As such, I wanted to illustrate three key points within this image:

• Most of the success that is Canada has been at the expense of the BIPOC community, but primarily indigenous people who continue to struggle against Canada’s resource-centric existence and who have, even through repression, represented a symbiotic relationship.
• Colonialism created the resource-centric country that is Canada. The Queen lording over her land is both the beginning, but also the continuation, of what Canada represents.
• We have progressed, but are far from where we need to be to ensure our collective survival.

You may not agree with my perspective, or the images used, but ecopolitics should be a moment of self-reflection and of understanding your own position in the balance of nature and humanity.