Cassandra Qiu and gallery visitor pinning locations to the map. Photo: Petra Hekkenberg.
Community recovery from wildfires
by Sean Arthur Joyce
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
For thousands of years of human history, fire has been a sign of destruction and renewal, both literal and spiritual. The ancient symbol of the phoenix, the mythical bird destroyed by and then reborn from fire, seemed most apt in the wake of the wildfires that swept through the Slocan Valley during the summer of 2024. The fires left their traumatic mark on people’s lives, with the entire communities of Red Mountain, Silverton, Enterprise Creek and Slocan evacuated, some residents for up to three weeks.
The aftermath of the crisis prompted writer Joanne Feenstra, artist Petra Hekkenberg and dramatist Val Campbell to harness the power of art as catharsis and healing. Catharsis comes from the ancient Greek, meaning “to cleanse or purge,” and each facilitator in her own way gave residents the opportunity to do so. Feenstra offered a Resiliency Writing workshop designed to help residents process their lingering emotions by teaching the principles of expressive writing. She drew on her MA in Writing and New Media to create two three-day workshops held in the affected communities of Slocan and Silverton. The two-hour sessions were casual and drop-in, “allowing for time to write, to read aloud what you wrote, if you wished, and to get and give feedback,” she says.
Feenstra asked participants to describe the emotions they felt and then wrote them on a large sheet of paper. Responses included “couldn’t think,” “frozen in high alert,” “scared,” “denial” and feeling “alone.” Studies specifically analyzing the impact of wildfires on mental health reveal “heightened anxiety, depression, isolation and a lack of motivation.”
New Denver’s main street with the burning Valhallas as a backdrop, July 24, 2024. Photo: Petra Hekkenberg.
“People cried and laughed and hugged,” she says. “One person who attended the sessions said they were ‘a great opportunity for healing a trauma event.’ Another said, ‘Being able to share my experience with others and listen to the variety of stories was powerful and healing.’ I was told more than once that the workshop ‘changed my life.’ People left the workshop with a sense of purpose, of moving ahead and also of acceptance.”
University of Calgary emerita drama professor Valerie Campbell was among those evacuated from Slocan. She felt strongly the need to provide a creative venue for Valley residents to come to terms with their trauma after attending the Resiliency Writing workshops. Campbell produces the popular Shakespeare by the Shore event in New Denver during the summer but postponed the production this year to produce Fire Stories: Readings of Resilience. Residents were invited to share their personal stories and artwork, based on the writing workshop theme “How do we find meaning in what we’ve lost?” Participants included residents from Nakusp to Winlaw.
The resulting 90-minute Fire Stories program was presented at the Slocan Lake Arts Centre in Silverton and at the Vallican Whole in March and April 2025 and featured a slideshow with piano compositions by Anna Reid. The Silverton event was sponsored by the Valhalla Fine Arts Society and featured an exhibition of artwork by Sabrina Curtis, Donna Hicks and Manna Garrick-Rice. Curtis, who was evacuated from her Red Mountain Road home, offered all proceeds of paintings sold toward future community wildfire resilience measures. The Vallican event was held to raise funds for firefighting equipment in the valley. The house was full at both venues, and as I wrote for the Valley Voice: “Seldom has there been a room more full of mixed emotions.”
“The event was very powerful,” says Campbell. “I worried that it was too long, but the audience was deeply engaged throughout the performance. We cried, laughed, nodded in recognition of having had similar experiences. So many people expressed to me how grateful they were to have been present. The readers also expressed how much it meant to them to be able to share their story publicly.”
Hekkenberg also took an interactive approach, launching her project “The Art of Safe Keeping” in July 2025 with funding from the Trust through the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance and multiple other funders that allowed her to rent a space on New Denver’s main street. In the gallery space she built a 6.7-square-metre map of the Slocan Lake region and invited people to use coloured pins and string to mark their homes and points of evacuation. Did they stay or did they go? Did they bring their animals, and if so, what animals? About 200 people left pins in the map, which also used data from the various emergency services that responded to the wildfires. “A list next to the map showed that, as far as we know, at least 1,300 emergency responders came out,” she says.
Luggage tags listing people’s precious belongings. Photo: Petra Hekkenberg.
Hekkenberg also designed a display wall that invited people to write on a luggage tag their most precious belongings, the things they most want to keep safe when threatened by fire or other natural disasters. Responses varied greatly, from 100-year-old stuffies to personal book collections and camper vans. From these roughly 300 tags, she will select 25 belongings, connect with the owners and create an artwork depicting these in black pen and wildfire charcoal. This collection, along with people’s stories and the map, will be exhibited in 2026 at the Hidden Garden Gallery in New Denver.
The Slocan Lake map exhibition also included photographs of the fires taken by Hekkenberg and other community members. Hekkenberg was assisted by UBC student Cassandra Qiu and a reliable group of volunteers who guided visitors through the interactive displays.
“The fabric of community lies in its stories,” wrote one visitor. “‘The Art of Safe Keeping,’ it occurs to me, is not only safekeeping possessions, people, memories, but in a broader sense the stories of a community.” “Not only did this project allow me to show the public the complexity of such an emergency,” Hekkenberg says, “it also helped build bridges. Bridges between cultural branches, forestry, industry and politics.”
Petra Hekkenberg. Photo: Whitney Taylor.
The map, as well as the luggage tags, will be on display in Nelson at MLA Brittny Anderson’s office. To view the project, contact the office at 250-354-5944, or info@theartofsafekeeping.ca. Find more at theartofsafekeeping.ca
