A Climate Disaster Project feature series
The stories in this series were shared as part of the Climate Disaster Project (CDP), an international collaboration of post-secondary and media partners coordinated through UVic’s writing department. Students in CDP classes learn trauma-informed techniques for interviewing and working with survivors of disasters from wildfires to floods to extreme heat. Before they take that work into the community, these students interview each other, sharing their own experiences with climate change and what they think they can be done about it. These are some of their stories.
Laine Taylor, photo by Philip McLachlan.
Port Moody, Canada, Western North America Heat Wave, 2021
Laine is a 21-year-old student at the University of Victoria taking a double major in writing and environmental studies. She grew up in Port Moody. Laine now lives in Victoria, B.C., and spends time at home with family on the mainland. She worked at White Pine Beach, a popular swimming beach at Sasamat Lake ten minutes away from Port Moody, during the Western North America heat wave in 2021.
I worked at a concession stand at the beach in a little hut. I think there was just one big fan in the whole little hut for us to be cooled down by. Fryers were just going off and we were just fighting against the flames. It was pretty tough, especially on those hot days. That’s when we would get an uptick in our workload. It was really prime time, because more people would be like “Let me get a drink” or “Can I have some ice?” “Can I have some ice cream?”
During those days, when I would go to get things out of the freezer, I would keep putting my whole body in the freezer. When I was stocking the fridge, I’d stick my head in halfway just to give myself some relief. I remember how sweaty my boss looked. The man was Jamaican, or he seemed Jamaican. I didn’t ask but that’s how he talked. So if he’s breaking a sweat, if he’s having a rough time, that’s when we’re all fucked.
I would go outside and I would just be like, “I can’t stand out here.” You don’t want to travel in cars. It didn’t matter how much you crank the AC, if you’re in a car, you felt like you were in a shoe box, like you could die. So cramped. You didn’t want to go anywhere.
I needed to go back inside, it was unbearably hot just to be in the outdoors. And then you’d sit on the couch and it’d be unbearable all of the sudden because it would just be uncomfortable at all times just to exist. And then you peel yourself off the leather couch, make a full on sound of sweat. It was just a lot of grossness. When that happens, my family will usually go to sleep in our basement just to utilize their coolest space in their house. I can picture my dad just being a potato on the couch with a wet cloth on his head. We were just condemned to staying inside and the only thing we all had in mind for those few days was keeping cool. Finding the nearest fan, eating as much cold stuff and staying hydrated, checking in on our loved ones, and making sure everyone’s doing okay.
We started seeing on the news, ‘Oh, there’s a hundred old people dead.’ Just because of heat exhaustion, heat stroke, whatever. That was when it felt very real and very dangerous, because you’re seeing people being picked off at the same age as our family members and there’s nothing you can do. Luckily for my mom, she has five sisters so they kind of worked in shifts, asking if their mom was ok, telling her to close the window. All of her sisters were calling her, making sure her blinds are closed, asking ‘You got a fan going? Just making sure you’re drinking water.’ It was like a relay of daughters and one son just making sure grandma stays alive. We can’t have the elderly passing away on us. We got air conditioning in our house after the heatwave. Our family decided to add it in for safety and I think we really were thinking of our dog at the time, because we can do whatever, but he’s trapped in this black, fluffy body.
This is life and death. This is our future, this is our ability to have children. This is all those things. It’s time to take things seriously. Clearly what we are doing isn’t enough. Us, as individual voters, we only have the responsibility to elect leaders that seem to care about these issues and that will actually take action and make our voices heard and if they’re not, we take it to the streets, take it to the Parliament Building. I’m ready to throw eggs. I’m down for a French Revolution in Canada. Let’s flip stuff on its head because we need full renovation to the way we’re doing things. We’re in the middle of something that’s disastrous, and this is the time when you gotta be more about community than about ourselves and being greedy. We need to take care of our fellow man and I think that’s something important for the future.
