Video: A new exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver will give people an interactive glimpse at what the city was like long before people arrived. Linda Aylesworth reports.
The first major exhibition in Canada to explore our relationship with nature through the lens of historical ecology is set to open at the Museum of Vancouver.
The Rewilding Vancouver exhibit brings a new way of exploring the past to the forefront by using Vancouver as a subject.
The exhibit will be showing off taxidermy specimens, 3D models, soundscapes, videos and photo interventions that challenge people’s perceptions of what is natural to Vancouver. It’s a demonstration of a ‘changing-of-the-guard’ as it comes to the region’s wildlife, with ravens, wovles and elk fading as crows, coyotes and black-tailed deer settled in.
Rewilding Vancouver also allows visitors to envision new streetscapes that feature unearthed fish-bearing streams hidden below city streets. One of the exhibits many highlights features a life-sized creation of the now extinct Steller’s Sea Cow.
J.B. MacKinnon, who is co-author of 100-Mile Diet and The Once and Future World, which served as inspiration for the exhibition, was the guest curator of Rewilding Vancouver.
“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.”
Along with getting people to discover what nature was like in Vancouver’s past, the Rewilding Vancouver exhibit also hopes to have visitors reconnect with nature, and engage in efforts to make the city a wilder place.
The exhibit runs from Feb. 27 to Sept. 1 at the Museum of Vancouver.
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