On June 30th, ECHOFORM partnered with the Global Shapers Edmonton Hub to host Ocean Futures Lab, a free community paint night at Edmonton Public Library’s Stanley Milner, held as part of Ocean Week Canada. Edmonton is about as far from an ocean as a Canadian city can get, close to a thousand kilometres from the nearest coastline in any direction, so the first question the event had to answer for people walking in the door was a fair one:
Why does an inland city need an ocean event at all?
The city, it turns out, had an answer ready.
The event reached capacity before the evening began: 68 registrations for a 65-person venue, with five additional people placed on a waitlist due to space limitations. Around 50 community members joined us in person, ready to learn, reflect, create and rethink their relationship with water.
Before we got anywhere near that question, though, we opened, as ECHOFORM tries to do with everything, by naming the land.
Global Shapers Edmonton acknowledged that the hub operates in Treaty 6 territory, home to the Nêhiyaw, Dené, Anishinaabe, Nakota Isga, and Niitsitapi peoples, the Métis, and one of the largest Inuit communities south of the 60th parallel.
ECHOFORM’s own acknowledgment sits alongside that, a reminder that even our digital spaces rest on land with a history we are accountable to, not just the room we happened to be standing in that night.
With that grounding in place, the panel took on the actual question of the evening.
Titled “Water, Climate & Connection,” the conversation explored how Edmonton’s waters connect us to much larger systems.
Jenet Dooley, a wetland ecologist with more than 15 years of experience and seven of those years at the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, talked about the quiet complexity of Alberta’s wetlands and how much of ocean health actually starts inland, in the biotic and abiotic relationships most people never think to look for, the kind of ecosystem drama that unfolds in total silence a few feet under a marsh.
Amy Charles, Métis Indigenous Knowledge and Relations Specialist at Ocean Wise, brought a relational lens grounded in reciprocity and story, work she also carries through her nonprofit leadership with the Calgary Queer Arts Society and the Canadian Network for Ocean Education.
Nicholas Menon, Supervisor of Cost Estimating at Enbridge and a P.Eng. with over a decade in infrastructure and energy transition work, connected the dots between large-scale industrial decisions and ecological risk, drawing on his volunteer work installing solar grids in Peru and his current role helping guide the Homestead Investment Co-operative’s purchase of the Alberta Block downtown.
Three very different careers, all circling the same truth:
Water connects us.
Oceans absorb the majority of excess heat from climate change, and Edmonton’s river valley and watersheds connect this landlocked city to larger water systems whether we notice it or not.
The conversation moved beyond expertise. Panelists reflected on the bodies of water that shaped them personally, what water injustice looks like in communities, how ocean-driven climate patterns affect inland regions, and what gives them hope for the future.
The final invitation to the room was simple:
Carry those thoughts to your canvas.
Before the creative session began, participants co-created a community learning agreement:
Passing or listening only was always fine.
Speak from your own experience, not assumptions about someone else’s.
Leave room for different relationships to water.
Step forward when you have something to contribute, step back so someone else can.
Respond to other people’s creative work with curiosity, not critique.
Keep personal stories in the room unless you have permission to carry them further, and
Ask before photographing anyone’s art.
With that agreement in place, we moved into the part people actually came for: paint, write, or reflect, whichever medium felt right, following your own relationship to water.
We called it Love Letters to Water, and the room genuinely did turn quiet in that focused, brush-in-hand way, punctuated only by the occasional laugh at someone’s very confident, very abstract lake.
Participants created paintings, poems, and reflections that explored water as memory, connection, identity, and responsibility.
The feedback afterwards showed the impact of creating space for both learning and reflection:
“They got me to think more about local wetlands that I was not aware of.”
“Each story is like the water, every environment is needed to survive.”
“As we go about our routine on a daily basis, we don’t realize how much water impacts all aspects of our life.”
Another participant shared that they learned about “salt water bodies and peat in Alberta,” a reminder that water stories exist everywhere, including far from the ocean. Everyone who participated left with a virtual certificate that night too.
Selected pieces will continue through the Love Letters to Water digital zine, with additional work being shared through ECHOFORM’s Fall showcase.
This event was made possible because of community.
Thank you to our project leads, volunteers, speakers, partners, and every participant who showed up with curiosity and care.
Thank you to Global Shapers Edmonton for co-hosting this experience with us, and to Edmonton Public Library for providing the space where these conversations could happen.
Photo credits @thekingsfame: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UHXzZw7_jQIZ8zxRLk1QucEJaAETwQG-?usp=drive_link.
Food provided by UNIQ Pizza and Dil E Punjab Sweets and Restaurant.
This whole event was made possible through the generous support of ECOP Canada, the UN Ocean Decade and the SOI Foundation, with support from the Howl Experience, Righting Relations, Women and Gender Equality Canada and Ocean Week Canada.
A landlocked city may not have an ocean at its doorstep.
But every community has a relationship with water.
And every story helps us remember that.