2026 CRHNet Symposium

A single story has the power to change hearts and minds. Our collective stories, when shared, have the potential to shape our futures.

Climate-charged disasters are becoming more frequent across Canada, and communities like Jasper, Alberta are navigating the complex impacts of events such as the 2024 wildfire. Stories of Resilience – a signature program of The Resilience Institute – is a thematic learning program that brings people together to explore what it means to be resilient in a changing climate. Through workshops on local climate risks and a creative storytelling process, participants craft personal narratives paired with visual arts, including painting, photography, and sketches.

This session focuses on Stories of Resilience: Voices from Jasper, an edition co-developed with Jasper residents in the wake of the wildfire. It shares artwork, photographs, audio recordings, and written stories that reveal experiences of displacement, loss, grief, vulnerability, support, belonging, and reconnection to land and community. Together, these stories illustrate how creative, community-rooted methods can build climate risk awareness, strengthen social support networks, and inspire agency and local action.

Co-presenters Brooklyn Rushton and Paulette Dubé will reflect on how story-based approaches supported community recovery, mobilized residents to engage in resilience-building, and helped deepen understanding of shared risk and collective pathways forward in a rapidly changing climate after disaster.

To extend this learning, the session includes a guided reflection activity inviting attendees to respond to these stories, identify attributes that foster individual and community resilience, and consider how story-based methods can help mobilize climate action, preparedness, and agency in their own communities.

The objective is to bring together two lived perspectives during Indigenous humanitarian evacuations, Ernie, a First Nations resident and retired police officer, and Tiffany, the Planning Section Chief and Health Lead for Incident Command Teams. Using storytelling and case studies from past evacuations, the presenters illustrate how culturally safe and trauma-informed emergency management practices can create an effective advocacy platform by bringing cultural identities and systems into meaningful alignment. Participants will gain concrete insights into fostering respectful engagement, supporting Indigenous sovereignty during crises, and integrating community-driven resilience into practice.

This work is informed by two complementary perspectives:
1. Indigenous community experience, through a First Nations liaison deployed repeatedly since 2021, providing trust-building, cultural connection, safety navigation, and support for evacuees in unfamiliar municipal contexts.
2. Operational emergency management, through a Planning Section Chief and Health Lead responsible for establishing infrastructure, coordinating across three levels of government, integrating health and public health partners, and ensuring culturally safe and clinically appropriate services.