BC Studies Scholarly Podcasts

By Susan Frohlick and Nassim Zand Dizari

Transcript and Show Notes – Okanagan Summer Tourism Sounds
PDF - article in OJS

This podcast raises the broad question of why sound matters in tourism, understood as episodic or transitory relations of co-existence and as territories, worlds, and spaces co-inhabited yet often frictious. Created as an experimental audio documentary, it offers an in-depth story and analysis of a particular time—the summer months of 2022 and 2023—and place—BC’s Central Okanagan, a popular summer tourism destination for regional and local tourists and recreationalists. Using feminist ethnographic research methodologies, which included interviews with residents and tourists and audio recordings in/of tourism spaces oriented around Okanagan Lake, the voices of two racialized women are featured as an intervention against the dominant whiteness in tourism studies and to show the importance of listening positionalities for understanding how sound matters. Interspersed with the interlocutors’ words are montages of summer tourism sounds meant for listeners to engage with through reflexive listening. Summer Tourism Sounds is ultimately a multi-layered sonic story about racialized and gendered geographies in the Okanagan that disrupts the imagined whiteness of the region. It also provokes listeners to attune to the seasonal sounds of summer tourism to “hear” the social, cultural, and political-economic inequities of these intensified times of co-habitation and encounter.

Published in BC Studies no. 230 (Summer 2026) - see the full issue here:
https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183261

A Hot Topic Podcast: Addressing Heat Vulnerability in the Capital Regional District (CRD)

By Erica Dolman, Kirsten Mah, and Sarah Wiebe

This episode follows Glenys Verhulst, a Sustainability Specialist with the District of Saanich, and Kirsten Mah, a community member and Healthy Communities Planner with the Capital Regional District who share they’re professional experiences of working in climate action, including sustainability and community engagement and programming. They share about the work that is already being done to support local communities to adapt and respond to extreme climate events, and they give instructional support to decisionmakers on how to engage in effective “policy listening.” 

Read: "PODCAST AS POLICY COMMUNICATOR: How Lived Experiences of Extreme Heat Events Can Inform Local Policy Conversations"

BC Studies no. 230 (Summer 2026)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183261

A Hot Topic Podcast: Addressing Heat Vulnerability in the Capital Regional District (CRD)

By Erica Dolman, Kirsten Mah, and Sarah Wiebe

This episode tells the story of Ruth Waldick, the Lead Scientist of the Climate Adaptation Research Lab (CARL) with Transition Salt Spring, a not-for-profit organization based on Salt Spring Island that is dedicated to climate action across Salt Spring Island and the Southern Gulf Islands through diverse initiatives. Ruth shares her experience of the 2021 heat dome, and other extreme heat events, as an ecologist and resident of a rural island in the Capital Regional District (CRD). She shares insight into the existing systems, such as the Emergency Pod Program, that the community has created due to their rural nature, and a perspective as an ecologist of what the impact of extreme heat events are on the unique environment of Salt Spring Island. 

Read: "PODCAST AS POLICY COMMUNICATOR: How Lived Experiences of Extreme Heat Events Can Inform Local Policy Conversations"

BC Studies no. 230 (Summer 2026)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183261

A Hot Topic Podcast: Addressing Heat Vulnerability in the Capital Regional District (CRD)

By Erica Dolman, Kirsten Mah, and Sarah Wiebe

This episode tells the story of John Lamont, peer support worker with Mental Health Recovery Partners South Island (MHRP SI) and his experience with the 2021 heat dome, and other extreme heat events that have happened since. John shares his tools and ideas for coping with extreme heat, and the vulnerabilities inherent to those living in mental health subsidized housing.  

Read: "PODCAST AS POLICY COMMUNICATOR: How Lived Experiences of Extreme Heat Events Can Inform Local Policy Conversations"

BC Studies no. 230 (Summer 2026)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183261

A Hot Topic Podcast: Addressing Heat Vulnerability in the Capital Regional District (CRD)

By Erica Dolman, Kirsten Mah, and Sarah Wiebe

This episode tells the story of Eva Shaffer, member and Marine Liaison of T’Souke Nation, and her and her community’s experience with the 2021 heat dome, and extreme heat events that have happened since. Eva speaks from the perspective of a scientist and member of T’Souke Nation, and how these two identities are aligned with regard to land stewardship.This episode is hosted by Erica Dolman with the mentorship and guidance of Nicola Watts and produced by Dr. Sarah Marie Wiebe and Kirsten Mah. Funding for this project was provided by the Michael Smith Health Research BC Reach Award.

Read: "PODCAST AS POLICY COMMUNICATOR: How Lived Experiences of Extreme Heat Events Can Inform Local Policy Conversations"

BC Studies no. 230 (Summer 2026)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183261

A Hot Topic Podcast: Addressing Heat Vulnerability in the Capital Regional District (CRD)

By Erica Dolman, Kirsten Mah, and Sarah Wiebe

This episode provides the context and background of the A Hot Topic: Addressing Heat Vulnerability in the Capital Regional District (CRD) research project, and how this podcast series came to be. Kirsten Mah, community organizer, and Dr. Sarah Marie Wiebe, assistant professor at the University of Victoria, tell the stories of their personal experiences of the 2021 heat dome, and why they as community organizers were moved to create this research project, and this podcast series. The intention of creating and making a publicly available podcast is to communicate through policy listening with local policy- and decision-makers to create more equitable policy outcomes. This episode is hosted by Erica Dolman with the mentorship and guidance of Nicola Watts and produced by Dr. Sarah Marie Wiebe and Kirsten Mah. Funding for this project was provided by the Michael Smith Health Research BC Reach Award. 

Read: "PODCAST AS POLICY COMMUNICATOR: How Lived Experiences of Extreme Heat Events Can Inform Local Policy Conversations"

BC Studies no. 230 (Summer 2026)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183261

Campus Cooperatives: Reimagining Campus Cooperatives in British Columbia for a World in Crises

By Michelle Stack

Episode 3: Michelle Stack interviews Elvy Del Bianco, BC Cooperative Association, Director of Co-operative Development and Government Relations

Along with faculty and the larger community, students are demanding accountability by university leaders in challenging racism, sexual violence and ableism on campuses and in the education of future professionals. In addition, many students, staff and faculty are housing (Weissman et al., 2019) and food insecure (Laban et al., 2020), leading to significant contrasts between the image of a university as a place of thriving amidst diversity and the reality of it being a place where the stratification and disparities of the wider world are reflected. Cooperatives have an impressive record for providing more affordable democratically governed communities. Could a cooperative model facilitate post-secondary institutions enacting their stated commitments to equitable universities that are committed to climate justice?

Read Text and Bibliography on OJS: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/197372/192895

BC Studies no. 218 (Summer 2023)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183143

Campus Cooperatives: Reimagining Campus Cooperatives in British Columbia for a World in Crises

By Michelle Stack

Episode 2: Michelle Stack interviews Bill Engleson about the early days of a Simon Fraser University Cooperative

Along with faculty and the larger community, students are demanding accountability by university leaders in challenging racism, sexual violence and ableism on campuses and in the education of future professionals. In addition, many students, staff and faculty are housing (Weissman et al., 2019) and food insecure (Laban et al., 2020), leading to significant contrasts between the image of a university as a place of thriving amidst diversity and the reality of it being a place where the stratification and disparities of the wider world are reflected. Cooperatives have an impressive record for providing more affordable democratically governed communities. Could a cooperative model facilitate post-secondary institutions enacting their stated commitments to equitable universities that are committed to climate justice?

Read Text and Bibliography on OJS: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/197372/192895

BC Studies no. 218 (Summer 2023)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183143

Campus Cooperatives: Reimagining Campus Cooperatives in British Columbia for a World in Crises

By Michelle Stack

Episode 1: Michelle Stack interviews Michelle Cooper Iverson, Chief Operating Officer for for Cooperative Housing Federation BC

Along with faculty and the larger community, students are demanding accountability by university leaders in challenging racism, sexual violence and ableism on campuses and in the education of future professionals. In addition, many students, staff and faculty are housing (Weissman et al., 2019) and food insecure (Laban et al., 2020), leading to significant contrasts between the image of a university as a place of thriving amidst diversity and the reality of it being a place where the stratification and disparities of the wider world are reflected. Cooperatives have an impressive record for providing more affordable democratically governed communities. Could a cooperative model facilitate post-secondary institutions enacting their stated commitments to equitable universities that are committed to climate justice?

Read Text and Bibliography on OJS: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/197372/192895

BC Studies no. 218 (Summer 2023)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183143

Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley

By Judith Burr, with Mathieu Bourbonnais, Amy Cardinal Christiansen, John Davies, Jeff Eustache, Don Gayton, Joe Gilchrist, Dave Gill, Sonja Leverkus, David Lind, Wendy Pope, Gord Pratt, Karis Shearer, Daryl Spencer, Sharon Thesen, Nancy Turner, and Kelsey Winter

The Okanagan Valley of the southern interior of British Columbia has been shaped by fire for millennia: by cultural burning by First Nations communities, by lightning fires, and by patterns of settler-colonial burning and fire suppression. In the wake of large and severe wildfire seasons and predictions of worsening wildfires fueled by climate change, there are calls for both interdisciplinary problem-solving among fire experts and for more public engagement to transform how we live with fire in British Columbia. Understanding the history of fire in this place can contribute to better fire use, management, and response that accounts for human and more-than-human ecological health and recognizes multiple forms of important fire expertise. This podcast series explores the ways that fire history informs present and future ways of living with and understanding fire in and around this Valley. It is a contribution to interdisciplinary and public conversations about life with fire. It centers on fourteen oral history and expert interviews and two field recordings. Each interviewee holds specific and often plural forms of expertise and understandings of life with fire in and around the Okanagan. The recorded conversations situate the researcher in this project and allow her to share fire research in a dialogic, relational, listenable format contextualized by archival and secondary source fire history research. This podcast was created on the unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation.

Read: "Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley"

BC Studies no. 220 (Winter 2023/24)
Read the full issue here: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/issue/view/183160