When the 2023 Downton Lake wildfire forced Gillian Der (謝美華) and her family to evacuate their longtime summer home in the Bridge River Valley (BRV), she didn’t expect the fire to spark a master’s thesis.
“Since I was quite a little kid, I had this understanding that this is a place that burns. And so I was kind of waiting for this wildfire,” she said. “But living through was disturbing to me and quite disturbing to a lot of other people, and I realized that community cohesion in a really small town was something I wanted to actually look into a bit more carefully.”
Now pursuing a human geography degree at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Der has turned her personal experience of displacement and community disruption into a research project that blends social science with art to tackle issues around grief, gender and community cohesion.
Her thesis project, which focuses on wildfire recovery in small, remote communities, wraps this July with an exhibit and community arts festival in the Bridge River Valley.
Der’s research takes a different tack than many wildfire studies, which often focus on property damage and emergency response; instead, she delved into the emotional and cultural aftermath—the feelings of grief, loss, pride and place attachment that persist after the fire trucks leave.
“Of course, homes matter,” Der said. “But so does the feeling of what it means to live in a place like this—off the grid, proud, resourceful. I wanted to understand how people make sense of these events when they don’t just lose a house. They lose a landscape, a way of life, a sense of belonging.”
To capture those complexities, Der employed a range of methods, including 12 expert interviews and “walking interviews,” in which participants chose familiar places, from scenic trails to their own kitchens, to share stories relating to the fires.
But in a departure from how this type of research is usually carried out, she also led three “maker workshops,” inviting residents to needle felt together while talking through their experiences. The craft’s repetitive handwork, she noted, helped ease participants into deeper conversation.
“Needle felting is a really repetitive movement and really easy craft to learn, and so that repetition with your hands can often result in a little bit of lowering of inhibition and your answers can be a little more candid,” said Der.
Identity and fire
Living in a remote, rural community demands a self-reliance that quickly becomes a key part of residents’ identities. But events like wildfires can shake that identity to its core.
“Living in a remote community, there’s a tacit understanding that nobody’s going to come and help you,” said Der. “But when you’re confronted with evacuation orders and fire, there’s a real threat to that self-sufficient identity. Some people might just refuse to leave, but everyone is forced to reckon with knowing you might not be able to go back.
She noted evacuation orders can be particularly distressing events, especially for small towns that may not have a lot of trust in the government.
“The question becomes, how do we keep people safe in those situations, and how do we keep the social fabric of those communities safe after that happens?” she said.
Der also observed a gender divide in participation: more men took part in formal expert interviews, while mostly women joined the craft-based focus groups. Those patterns, she suggests, reflect broader social norms about how grief and authority are expressed.
“Fibre arts are historically feminized, and that showed up in who felt comfortable coming to the workshops,” she said. “At the same time, expert interviews skewed male and many of the people in positions of power during the fire were men.”
Yet expressions of grief cut across gender. Both men and women shed tears during interviews, she said, and both expressed frustration, fear and pride.
“It’s complex,” she said. “The emotions don’t split cleanly along gender lines—but the roles and expectations often do.”
Der is also attuned to the layered colonial context of wildfire in B.C. Her study area—the Bridge River Valley—is remote, mostly white and built on unceded St’át’imc territory. The region’s history as a colonial outpost and current proximity to mining operations adds tension to any discussion of land and fire.
“We have to understand that wildfire as it is today is a completely not natural phenomenon and is due to the fact that Indigenous peoples were removed from their lands and their fire cultures taken,” said Der. “They were not allowed to practice cultural fire. And so we have this load up from hundreds of years of colonial colonization that is impacting our forest structure and making them so burnable and so hot.”
While Der’s project did not include direct engagement with St’át’imc communities, she said that omission reflects the limitations of a single thesis—and her recognition that decolonizing work takes time and trust.
A festival of fire
Der’s research will culminate in an arts festival in the BRV in July, where she will showcase works co-created with residents and invite attendees to respond to the themes of fire, resilience and remoteness.
In April, she held a preview exhibit, Hold Over Fires, in Vancouver in partnership with artist Stephanie Koenig. Two needle-felted pieces from that show will travel back up the BRV for the festival, keeping the assembled knowledge relevant and accessible to the community.
“This isn’t just about presenting data,” she said. “It’s about giving something back to the community that shared their stories with me.”
One letter of support for the festival, penned by Koenig, framed it as a chance for the community to reclaim its story so it can remember the fire as something that happened, but not something that defines us only through loss.
Though focused on a single valley, Der said her findings hold lessons for other rural communities grappling with the immediate aftermath and lingering pain of wildfire. As fire seasons grow longer and more destructive in a changing climate, she said emotional resilience and trust in institutions may be just as important as physical preparedness.
“Evacuation orders are so hard,” she said. “Staying behind comes from pride, mistrust and a deep love of your home. We need to understand all of that so we can help communities recover."
