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.
Location: Museum of Vancouver: 1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver, BC
Dates & Times: February 27 – September 1, 2014; Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm and Thursdays until 8pm.
Admission: $8-12 (free to members).
More info: Visit www.museumofvancouver.ca or call 604-736-4431
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.”
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About the Museum of Vancouver
The Museum of Vancouver (MOV) creates Vancouver-focused exhibitions and programs that encourage dynamic conversations about what was, is and can be Vancouver. History galleries tell the city’s stories from the early 1900s to the late 1970s and are complemented by contemporary feature exhibitions. MOV is an independent non-profit organization located 1100 Chestnut Street, in Vancouver (in Vanier Park).
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About Guest Curator J.B. MacKinnon
J.B. MacKinnon is the author or coauthor of four books of nonfiction. His latest, The Once and Future World, is the inspiration behind the Rewilding Vancouver exhibition; the book has been nominated for three of Canada’s top prizes for nonfiction. Previous works include The 100-Mile Diet (with Alisa Smith), a bestseller widely recognized as a catalyst of the local foods movement. MacKinnon also writes for interactive documentaries, including the internationally recognized National Film Board project Bear 71; his newest project is a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interactive book app about the Canadian wilderness, to be released in March. As a journalist, MacKinnon has won more than a dozen national and international awards in categories as varied as essays, science writing and travelogue. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.
