“It’s All Happening So Fast: A Counter-History of the Modern Canadian Environment”

After the history-making Apollo 8 mission, crew member Bill Anders commented on the view of Earth from space: “It’s tiny out there … it’s inconsequential. It’s ironic that we had come to study the Moon and it was really discovering the Earth.” Similarly, when we look at the environment, we now discoverless about “nature” and much more about humans, now considered the most significant geomorphic agents on Earth. The Apollo 8 mission gave us the iconic Earthrise image of the distant Earth, appearing small and solitary in an expanse of black, contrasted by the rough, pale surface of the moon. This photograph is widely considered to be the visual instigator of the environmental movement and was at the time of its release in 1968 surrounded by a dominant narrative of universalism. Such successful pairing of image and information hints at the generative power of the photograph, which would become increasingly realized in the 21st century; accompanied by rhetoric, a photograph can create a moment, as much as represent it.

Similar to the persuasive universalist framing of Earthrise and its salience in the contemporary visual imaginary, the representative image of Canada is equally iconographic and enduring (and, perhaps, deceiving). Depicted in the Romantic tradition of high peaks, meandering coastlines and vast plains, Canada is imagined as dominated by swaths of wild and untouched territory, with which its citizens share a respectful bond. As iconic as Earthrise, the photograph of Banff National Park’s Moraine Lake with its distinctive blue-green hue is the veritable “poster child” of Canada, epitomizing everything the country is touted to be—clean, beautiful and wild. Curated by Mirko Zardini, “It’s All Happening So Fast: A Counter- History of the Modern Canadian Environment” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture reveals that on the back of the pervasive postcard rendition of Canada exist spoiled and scarred backcountry and a deplorable history of abuse of our natural resources and Indigenous peoples. Walking away from this exhibition, one cannot help but see the country in a different and darker way.

Organized into seven thematic galleries, depending on the natural disaster they house, the exhibition creates a metaphorical descending staircase of ugly truths that emphasize the dangerous levels of confidence humans place in our own ingenuity. The panorama of disasters includes, for example, the rushed construction and equally hasty abandonment of the DEW Line in the Canadian North, the 1952 Chalk River nuclear reactor meltdown and the “crisis of overconfidence” that led to overfishing in the North Atlantic. From air-bombing icebergs to concocted (yet happily never deployed) plans to atom-bomb oil sands to harvest their bitumen, one can’t help but marvel at the ridiculousness of our “logic” and the disposition towards violent force to render wilderness into a resource, which imitates a style of warfare. One case study to the next reinforces the contradictory relationship we have with nature and our formidable ability to distract from or disguise an ugly underbelly of truth, reinforcing how easily duped we are by the idyllic and how readily we accept this deception. Contrary to its dominant pristine pictorial representation, Canada has one of the poorest environmental records among nations of similar wealth. In fact, it ranks 14th out of 16 peer countries.

A great deal of the show speaks to the concept of infrastructure, an important and, as we discover, often invisible and vulnerable framework in the modern project. Entering the exhibition, you are confronted by Douglas Coupland’s The Ice Storm, 2014, a large-scale sculpture of a hydro tower bent in “downward-facing dog” pose, as though in prostration to the natural forces that reduced it to its submission. The sculpture is adept at recalling an historical narrative that has, in a short period since the great eastern ice storm of 1998, assumed a quality verging on mythical. For those living in Montreal and other affected areas, that event has become a timeline marker yet to be bookended by the next “big one,” suggesting that natural disasters, which we imagine (and even accept) to be increasingly regular, will become a new temporal unit of measurement. Another example, more didactic than artistic, illustrating the precariousness of infrastructure is a large map effectively labelled 8,090 + 876 = 8,966 Accidents/Incidents, 2010–2015, which reveals a shocking expanse of pipeline networks and the equally frightening number of accidents or “incidents.” This graphic, paired with the knowledge of the ongoing discussions around the Keystone XL and TransCanada Energy East projects (the latter a 4,500-kilometre, $15.7 billion pipeline), begs the question as to whether we are capable of learning from our mistakes, or how the ratio of loss versus gain is measured.

Particularly intriguing because of the dichotomy it illustrates is the room entitled “Almost the Perfect Place to Live.” Made up of a variety of documents ranging from photographic prints, technical reports and newspaper clippings to architectural ground plans, the gallery describes the delicate balance between technological advancement and the human habitat. Designed in 1945 to house the employees and families of the Chalk River Laboratories, the year before it was opened, Deep River was, to the naked eye, the model town of modern family life. And, paired with another narrative, one supporting the fantasy, we would believe it to be so. Large black and white photographic prints by Sam Tata from his “Deep River Daily Life” series, 1958, showcase a place of eerie cardboard cut-out perfection, placed at dangerous range to nuclear risk. One photograph, showing teens in bobby socks and leather jackets languishing in a shoreline park bordered by coniferous trees, epitomizes the consensual ignorance in which the populace of Canada agrees to participate at one level or another—the contract of comfort requires a certain degree of environmental ignorance or ambivalence.

Indeed, as you circumnavigate the exhibition’s dismal array of case studies, a strange sense of estrangement settles between the self and a place known as home for many who will visit the show. Desperation, anxiety and anger (and perhaps even embarrassment) compete for reigning sentiment as we sense the temporal threads that are coming undone in the poisoned shadows of past legacies and looking to a precarious present and to what largely appears an apocalyptic future. “It’s All Happening So Fast” recognizes the need for a new discourse, both pictorial and graphic, to reconcile nature as we imagine it to a world as it is, fragile and exhaustible, and in that discourse we may open our eyes to new and pressing possibilities. ❚

“It’s All Happening So Fast: A Counter- History of the Modern Canadian Environment” was exhibited at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, from November 16, 2016, to April 9, 2017. The exhibition was accompanied by a book of the same title, edited by Lev Bratishenko and Mirko Zardini.

Tracy Valcourt lives and writes in Montreal, where she is pursuing her PhD at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University.