Upcoming in the anthology launch, Hills’ Almanach des Collines.
Note: due to illness the launch has been bumped a week until Feb 13th.
I’m one of a dozen writers/artists with a vision of the future in the anthology. The mandate was that, the specifics of time for this place up to each person. I picked the timeframe of what was going on in 2126, making a sort of Farmers’ Almanac with ads and tips, calendar and so on based on what shifts might be there.
I worked with a model of climate change of permafrost melt, a species shift with assisted migration. The climate change models of tree change of North America was helpful. Canada Climate change models. Other species will shift north as well, as they already are, with the first sightings of opossums in Quebec. Plans to reintroduce extirpated species will occur as we value collectively the other animals among us. I spent quite a number of weeks diving into climate change.
The peach trees blooms become ubiquitous as southern trees march steadily north to their ideal conditions, the opossum becomes the new raccoon. Shifts.
A study looked at 86 tree species over the past 30 years and found two distinct migration patterns: hardwoods are heading west and softwoods are moving north. Their study reports that over the last three decades, hardwoods — such as red maple, scarlet oak and sweetbay magnolia — ranged west at an average clip of one and a half kilometers each year, while softwoods — including red pine, short-leafed pine and bald cypress — shifted north an average of one kilometer per year.
Fei’s study shows that, over the last three decades in the eastern U.S., hemlock have moved 13 kilometers north while beeches have roved nearly 12 kilometers west. Red oak are incoming while aspen and hemlock will have disappeared locally, moving farther north
Pelicans are among the animals expected to be seen in more North American cities between now and 2100, a new study finds and more turtles, salamanders & ticks.
I also sought out information on solar flares and cycles that could cause satellite network destruction. Solar storms could increase relevance of interdependence, models of hyperlocal living, suggesting more collective of mutual aid, community kitchens, compound living with multiple generations. A little anarchist, a little survivalist but in the Quaker sense of community not weaponry.
There would be in my vision of a century from now, a further trend of leaving churches and separation of church and state, and further norming around ubiquity of non-marked gender and sexuality so that queer families and non-binary people are an unremarkable shape in society. If we have a finite amount of intolerance that just cycles around at random target, what would be the collective hate?
I looked at national debt, and jubilees. Just before the timeframe the church had enough weight to declare a debt forgiveness internationally and redshift the scales of balance.
If the ocean trade on dirty fuel was not an option what is it that we would need to import? What did we cease doing locally because it was cheaper to import. I looked at the history of mining in the area, Buckingham graphite and Bryson’s zircon and foundry Local clay is a resource and mica.
What implications would that have? Would we be manufacturing small scale metal tools again as trade suffers from stumbling over passing over in a timely fashion from petroleum economy to more sustainable renewable energies. How are we responding to Leda clay and flood basins? What would we be eating?
Our own weather being erratic, greenhouses become more common. Because of sea level rise and drought crisis, there would be more migration of Arabic and North African people to the region as Canada continues to absorb more people in crisis. People with farms and orchard would include names of that origins. We would lose some local species but have peach trees, and increasingly be home to vineyards.
I posit the rise of indigenous population and land back claims honoured, with more power in language-status and in politics. A Kitigan Zibi leader being the premier of Quebec. Anishnaabe and Cree are nationally recognized languages of Quebec with French and English. An indigenous language learning model gets exported to other countries. I found this Cree dictionary useful and Objibwe, this Algonquin one.
People in and out of Canada would have a working knowledge of Anishnaabe and Cree as a third language option the way Spanish, German and Mandarin are now.
Because of sea level rise and drought crisis, there would be more migration of Arabic and North African people to the region as Canada continues to absorb more people in crisis. People with farms and orchard would include names of that origins. We would lose some local species but have peach trees, and increasingly be home to vineyards.
Fast fashion would give way to reusing fibres and design pods where you program in your desire at the equivalent of a depanneur.
Lifelong learning is default. Priorities culturally are for curiosity, such as
Youth winter camps: core subjects include genetics, clothing design, mechanical engineering, probability, robotics, grafting plants, language immersion, budgeting, meditation and deescalation, cognitive bias and propaganda, weaving, foraging, weather mapping and entomology. Adult streams available
I’ll be curious to see the implementations of the future, the rest of the dozen envision.
