Tapping the Power of Personal Journalism

By May 2019, journalism professor Sean Holman knew that something was missing from climate change reporting. The previous summer, British Columbia had endured its worst wildfire season on record — 2,115 fires had burned 1.35 million hectares (almost 3.5 million acres), choking cities with smoke and triggering frequent health advisories. Yet, despite the clear warning signs, the media rarely connected these local events to the larger climate crisis. “I was astonished that the news media wasn’t making the climate connection for people,” Holman recalls.

As these missed connections continued, the problem became more urgent. “If people aren’t given information, they can’t make rational and empathetic decisions,” he says. “But with the right information, we can make better choices about the world around us.”

Determined to push for change, Holman published an open letter in The Tyee, a BC-based online news magazine, titled Dear Journalists of Canada: Start Reporting Climate Change as an Emergency. He called out journalists, editors, and publishers for failing to cover the climate crisis with the urgency it deserved. Even when news outlets did report on climate change, he argued, they often focused on distant disasters rather than showing how local emergencies were already affecting Canadians.

The letter sparked widespread discussion, but Holman soon realized that simply increasing the volume of climate disaster coverage wasn’t going to be enough to spark people into action. “Climate change communication is often packed with data and framed as a future large-scale disaster,” he explains. “And it isn’t working. The evidence-equals-action equation is broken.”

He began envisioning a different approach — one that moved beyond sensationalized headlines and fleeting news cycles. Instead of just reporting on broad climate disasters, he wanted to document the lived experiences of those affected, providing context, support, and solutions. “Survivors are the knowledge bearers from the future,” he says. “They hold vital information on how we can survive climate change together.”

Today, as the Wayne Crookes Professor of Environmental and Climate Journalism at the University of Victoria (UVic), Holman has been working to develop this concept through the Climate Disaster Project (CDP), which he founded with seed funding from Vancouver businessman Wayne Crookes. Based in UVic’s writing department, the CDP collaborates with more than a dozen post-secondary institutions, training journalism students to work with climate disaster survivors to share their stories. The goal is to amplify survivor voices, uncover practical solutions for communities, and give students hands-on experience with intimate, story-driven reporting.

A key principle behind the CDP is that climate disaster survivors often feel isolated, while many people still view catastrophic climate events as something happening to “someone else, somewhere else.” By emphasizing personal narratives, Holman says the project seeks to humanize the crisis. “We know from social science that personal stories are more effective than other forms of coverage when it comes to cultivating social change.”  

The CDP approaches the reporting process differently from the outset. Recognizing that disaster survivors are often traumatized, it follows trauma recovery principles: re-establishing safety, retelling stories, reconnecting with community, and seeking justice. An essential part of the reporting process is also ensuring that survivors maintain control of their own testimony.

Holman points to the example of Seth Forward, a 24-year-old tree planter who developed lung damage after working in heavy wildfire smoke in Alberta’s Slave Lake region in 2021. Instead of framing the story as a simple cautionary tale about dangerous air quality during wildfires, the CDP process encouraged deeper investigation. Forward’s journalist partner, Nicholas Naylor, started with a pre-interview to understand Forward’s experiences beyond his identity as a survivor. Together, they reviewed about 30 potential questions designed to shape a fuller, more nuanced story.

Because he knew the questions in advance, Forward wasn’t caught off guard during the interview. He could choose whether he was comfortable discussing such topics as what his tree-planting community was like before the smoke hit, or how his lung damage changed his perception of climate change. He also had time to work through his entire narrative without being pressured to focus solely on the most traumatic parts or provide a perfect quote. In conventional journalism, these high-impact moments are often the focus and story finale, but Holman believes that true recovery involves following each narrative to its conclusion. “We leave space in the testimony for survivors to articulate what justice they want to see or how they’ve recovered. By moving beyond the trauma, we leave them in a place of empowerment.”

For Forward, that meant holding decision-makers accountable. He voiced frustration that tree planters like him weren’t given adequate protections, and CDP journalists took his concerns seriously. Their investigation revealed that Canada lacks strong regulations to protect tree planters — who, along with firefighters, are among the people most exposed to wildfire smoke. Their findings helped fuel advocacy efforts. A follow-up story in The Tyee, Wildfire Threat to Tree Planters, detailed how silviculture safety experts are now pushing for enforceable air-quality regulations to protect workers.

At its core, this trauma-informed approach ensures that disaster survivors are heard and empowered. But collectively, these stories also provide a roadmap for navigating an increasingly chaotic world. Holman saw the power of these combined narratives when they formed the basis of Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories, a theatrical production performed at UVic’s Phoenix Theatre in September 2024, with an upcoming run at Simon Fraser University in June 2025.

Each Eyes of the Beast performance documents real experiences of heatwaves, wildfires, and floods in Canada, incorporating audience surveys before and after the show. The results have been striking — Holman notes that many audience members came away with a clearer understanding of how climate disasters were already affecting their own communities. “People could better imagine and understand how climate change is impacting their daily lives.”

Despite challenges — limited funding, restricted publishing space — Holman sees the Climate Disaster Project as part of a larger solution. “We’re locked into climate change for the long haul, so the important thing is to create lasting change,” he says. “These testimonies help create common ground — and they give us a way to move forward together.”

The Frog Lake Fire

As part of the Climate Disaster Project, Rachel Willins shared her story of surviving a wildfire in 2020 near Portland: “It’s just a really deep sadness and longing for what used to be.”

By Rachel Willins as told to Hadley MacPherson

Rachel is an environmental studies and anthropology student at the University of Victoria. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, the youngest sister to two brothers. She enjoyed hiking, sea kayaking, and all things outdoors. Unique to Oregon but not so unique to her new home in Canada, Rachel grew up playing hockey. “It used to be my quirky little thing,” she says, adding, “Nobody plays hockey in Portland.” Rachel was influenced by her mom, who played ice hockey at a competitive level.  “I think in the way I wanted to be like my brothers I also wanted to be like my mom,” says Rachel, who describes her mom as being “very outdoorsy.” Rachel was enjoying time with family in nature when they were driven out of Frog Lake by a wildfire.

In Portland, it was deep pandemic times. I nannied for a family during the pandemic. I was taking care of this little girl. I was going to my online classes to finish high school. All I would do would be taking care of this baby and seeing my mom. I wasn’t seeing any of my friends. I was being really careful about it. I called it my teen mom era because it’s just me and this baby. I was doing a lot of hiking and camping.

For my birthday, my mom and I decided to go out and camp. It was my seventeenth birthday. I had a really bad 16, and so I was like, “17 will be my year.” The idea was to go on this camping trip because Frog Lake was my favorite place. 

My brother Anthony had discovered it the first time.  I was really into amphibians and squirmy little things. I loved the dirt as a child. I would go crawl in the dirt. That’s all I did as a kid. I’d gone earlier in August and there was a bunch of tadpoles. I was like, “Frog season’s going to be really good.” I was really excited to catch these little tiny frogs. Before the disaster, you couldn’t walk without stepping on these teeny tiny little baby frogs everywhere. You could just scoop them up. I was anticipating, this is a big year for the frogs, which sounds silly.  

I think the thing about this story is it all culminated into the worst combination of events. 

You have to drive out. You could do it as a day trip, but it was a significant trek. You were committing to being outside of the city. It was definitely a difference from where I was living at the time, and so it was a little treat to go visit the woods.

There’s a series of lakes. The more popular one is Trillium Lake. Frog Lake’s on the smaller side. You really can’t take a boat out there. It’s mostly for swimming and you can probably walk all the way around it in maybe less than an hour. It’s mostly known for being a little bit murky, a little bit swampy, the frogs, hence the name. It’s almost like a giant pond, but you can still swim in it. 

I had known there was a forest fire near Mount Hood, but far away. I’d also known there was a big windstorm in the forecast. It was going in the other direction. You knew if you were going anywhere in late August and September, it would probably be smoky. It had been that for the last, I don’t know, five to 10 years. But we had thought it would be fine.

We pulled up and I ran out of the car to go look for these frogs. It was really eerie. I remember it feeling like a horror movie because we were smoked in and the sun gets all red during a forest fire. The air just felt weird and there were no frogs anywhere, which was really strange. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought like, “Whoa, did we miss it? Did they all go?” Because later in the fall, they all go and hibernate, but they should have all been there.

I remember there being one singular tadpole. You would think with less disruption, there would have been even more. It was COVID, so there were less people going. If you go earlier in the year, the water is squirming with these little black tadpoles. They grow to be these little speckled frogs, not much bigger than a quarter. I think they get a little bit bigger eventually, but they’re just babies.

This guy seemed very much the last tadpole. In the other years, the tadpoles were gone and it was just the baby frogs. You couldn’t even walk around the bank. You’d get a few meters and there’d already be frogs everywhere. Every single adult frog was missing.  It was this weird breakdown. What happened? It was supposed to be their year. You couldn’t even hear them.

“My frogs are dead. All the frogs I loved.” I had been so excited and it was building up. Growing up, you put a lot of stake into turning 17. I was like, “It’s my teen movie year.” I had been holding on to going to see the frogs. It was my thing to make me happy. The cry I had about all the frogs being dead was not about all the frogs being dead. And the night got worse.

We had our campsite right alongside the lake in this wooded area. Big trees, a lot of cedar, and Douglas fir. Your classic Pacific Northwest forest. There was a park ranger coming around to check people’s campsites. We were talking and I was just like, “Where are they?” and he’s like, “We don’t know.” They had an intense ecological collapse. They weren’t sure if there was a new introduced predator. They were theorizing that maybe because of the horrible air quality, all of these tadpoles had died.  I remember asking him about the forest fire. With a forest fire, there’s a lot of concern about wind. At that point, they were like, “It’s still going the same way, but you’re expected to have this windy night.” 

We were disappointed about the frogs, but cutting our losses, I went and I found huckleberries. I was jazzed about that. I remember putting up my hammock. I was really into my hammock and I had gotten a little quilt for it. I was going to sleep in my hammock. That was the plan. Helping my mom set up our little two-person purple tent later, the wind began to pick up. It wasn’t really concerning yet. We had known there was supposed to be this windstorm, but it was like, “It’s fine. It’ll be fine.”

As the night wore on, I remember going to bed in my tent. It started to become clear that it wasn’t a normal night. It’s just humorous, the everything of it all. It was a tough time politically.  I was trying to read The Handmaid’s Tale in my tent while the United States was overturning Roe v. Wade and I was but a 17-year-old. 

The wind had gotten so strong that it was picking up dirt and flinging it inside against the walls of the tent. It was that thin, light brown, dusty dirt, and it was in your hair. Wind makes a lot of noise like rustling. It would whistle because it was whipping through every single tree. Then we were like, “Oh, should we call it? Should we not? I don’t know.” 

Then we had started to hear trees fall. You could just hear trees going bam, bam, bam. That’s a sound that really freaks you out. 

A tree fell really close to us. I remember that crack and you can feel as well.  I’ve had teeth removed while I’ve been awake and it sounds similar to that. It’s sickening. We were like, “Okay, we have to call it.” 

The whole campsite was empty. I think the park ranger had also left. We were like, “What’s going on?” We had missed an evacuation warning. Somehow they had missed telling us to get out of there because the wind had picked up so much. We were outside of range for the emergency evacuation notice somehow. The forest fire was now coming towards us. 

We just scooped up the whole tent and threw it in the car without disassembling it. I kept being like, “Everything is so bad, and then they tried to kill me on my birthday,” but then for a brief second, I was like, “It would be kind of funny if I died on my birthday because then I’d have an even open and close.” I’ve made a lot of jokes about it. I think that’s my ability to cope with anything I’ve ever been through. 

We start driving out of there and it was so windy that the street signs were bent backwards. It was like 2  or 3  in the morning. It took us four hours to drive back because of how much debris was on the road. I remember getting out of the car and realizing we had to push this tree out of the way because you can’t turn around in the other direction. There was just one way to cross the road and you can’t drive over it, you got to push it out. It was a very physical thing to do. There’s quite a distinctive smell to that much fire as well. It really does choke you. It was hard to breathe.

I remember being really scared we weren’t going to make it out because we should have evacuated hours earlier. I put my stupid little playlist on in the car to distract myself. There’s a lot of songs about turning 17 and I had a playlist of every single one I could think of and insisted on listening. Some of them are even good.

I remember finally getting back, and that next morning I had a text from everyone that was like, “Did you make it out of Frog Lake? The windstorm was crazy.” The windstorm had also hit the city. There were trees over in my neighborhood. Forget fall leaves. Just all the leaves were everywhere. There’s quite a lot of debris. In some neighborhoods, power lines had gone over. I had friends that lost power, which was pretty tough if you’re going to start online classes right after that. It impacted the start of school that year. 

I remember logging on for my first day of Zoom school and the sky was red. My teachers were very much like, “Oh, you can’t go outside because it’s smoke season.” I sat in a little room with an air filter too. I have pretty bad lungs. With a lot of extra dust and forest fire smoke, it was quite difficult to breathe. I remember going to the doctor afterwards and I had a different inhaler because it was so smoky outside. It was at that time where I  kept hearing the words unprecedented times and I was sick of it. I was like, “On top of this entire global pandemic, you’re also going to give us a generational windstorm.”

After that, those windstorms have increased in intensity and frequency.  Forest fires have become worse. It took away a place that was important to me. It probably won’t be the same as it was in my lifetime. It’s upsetting. I think there’s some fancy word for it in environmental studies, but I don’t remember it. It’s just a really deep sadness and longing for what used to be. You almost want to cry. 

I remember I was speaking with a counselor regularly at the time for a lot of things that were going on. I never, maybe until recently, conceptualized it as anything that would have ever been impactful on me. That whole anxious experience gets filed away. A lot worse things have happened to me. For a while, it was just this funny story I would tell. It wasn’t until I wrote it down that I was, “Oh, maybe someone should have been like, ‘Wow, you almost died. That’s crazy.’ There was not a lot of emotional support, but again, I think it was a time when a lot of things fell through the gaps.

I really remember when I could scoop up frogs in my hands. I feel sad. I work with kids every day, and I am like, “I wish they could have seen Frog Lake.” The kids where I am growing up aren’t going to get to have that same experience, not really. When you make eye contact with children every day, you think a lot about the experiences that formed you. It feels a great personal loss in a way that I do not think a lot of people are really ever going to conceptualize and notice. I’ve given being an academic a lot of chances and I’m like, ‘No, I’m going to go work in nature preschool’ because it’s all I can do without, I think, destroying myself.

I think a lot of people have probably been through something similar: that funny story you’ve always told your whole life. There’s value in unpacking it. I don’t think a lot of restoration has been done there. I think it’s something special to a very niche group of people. The frogs haven’t really recovered. That’s a huge loss. All I do now is environmental studies and anthropology so I imagine me now could have helped that community much more than I was then. I haven’t been able to find a lot of help for that ecosystem. I think it would’ve been healing for me to personally go or at least know about ecological restoration that was occurring there. I hope that maybe someone will care about those little frogs.

This testimony was co-created by the Climate Disaster Project, an international teaching newsroom that works with disaster-impacted communities to share their stories. For more information on the project, please visit www.climatedisasterproject.com.