J.B. MacKinnon's RBC Taylor Prize Shortlisted non-fiction book, The Once and Future World, is now the inspiration for a new exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver, curated by the author.
This is an exclusive look for Huffington Post readers into the new exhibition -- Rewilding Vancouver. The author / curator worked with photographer Flora Gordon to visually explain how the exhibition and the book co-exist. His exhibition opened February 27, 2014 at Museum of Vancouver.
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. Rewilding Vancouver explores the city's nature as it was, is, and could be.
Almost everyone has experienced the loss of some treasured natural space -- whether an entire forest or a simple vacant lot. This exhibition -- inspired by The Once and Future World -- 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. Through the book and the exhibition Rewilding Vancouver, we seek 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. It allows the public to reconnect with a forgotten history in order to look at the present and the possible future with new eyes.
