Schedule

Chairs: Sophia Jewell, University of Alberta; Nadine Schuurman, Simon Fraser University Panelists: Theresa Dearden, University of British Columbia; Sophia Jewell, University of Alberta; Ayla De Grandpre, University of British Columbia; Nadine Schuurman, Simon Fraser University; Gregory Akall. Over the past two decades, qualitative GIS has emerged as a critical challenge to traditional Cartesian knowledge systems which dominated many Eurocentric geographies of the past. Recognized by many researchers as a decolonial and participatory approach to mapping which centres the voices of community members (Dadpour et al., 2023; Saxinger et al., 2021; Musiol, 2020; Couling et al., 2019), qualitative GIS offers new avenues for rethinking geographies of resistance and resilience. The purpose of this session is to further explore the potential of qualitative GIS as a critical and participatory approach to community research. How can new methods in qualitative GIS contribute to critical geographies of resistance and resilience, particularly in the context of marginalized communities? How can participatory geographies inform our understanding of inclusion, decolonization, and sustainable development? Through a panel discussion, this session brings together interdisciplinary scholars working at the intersections of migration, sustainability, feminist geography, climate action, and health geography. Focusing on topics such as community mapping in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake (Theresa Dearden), urban resilience within informal settlements in the Global South, (Dr. Carolina Monteiro De Carvalho), experiences of political refugees in Canada (Sophia Jewell), as well as more-than-human relationships and environmental change along Mission Creek, BC (Ayla De Grandpre), each paper acts as a case study in community resilience and resistance across times and space. In applying qualitative GIS through a range of methodological techniques, such as narrative cartography, sketch maps, deep mapping, VGI, and participatory GIS-these papers showcase emerging trends in the field and directions for further research. In putting these papers in dialogue, this panel opens up a critical conversation on innovative methods for applying qualitative GIS to empower communities and map ongoing processes of resistance and resilience.

Chair: Brent Doberstein, University of Waterloo Panelists: Brent Doberstein, University of Waterloo; Melissa Le Geyt, Government of British Columbia; Ben Cross, University of Waterloo; Sheridan Hill, University of Waterloo. Managed retreat is emerging as a viable strategy for reducing disaster risks and adapting to the realities of climate change in many Canadian communities. The proposed panel, “Managed retreat: decisions and visions for climate resilient Canadian communities” will convene academics, researchers, and practitioners to explore the complex decisions involved in designing proactive and equitable retreat projects. Panelists will discuss the multifaceted challenges of making decisions about managed retreat, from deciding what triggers retreat, to decisions about types of community engagement, to decisions about the most effective use of ‘retreat lands’. Special emphasis will be placed on exploring how proactive community visioning can guide retreat initiatives, ensuring that projects not only reduce current hazards but also address future climate risks in ways that promote social equity and strengthen community resilience. The discussion will highlight existing cases from around the world that showcase promising and innovative approaches that centre the needs of diverse community stakeholders, fostering equitable outcomes and minimizing unintended harms. The panel will conclude with an overview of the capacity-building and training resources being developed by the NFRF-I-funded Retreating From Risk (RFR) project, which aims to empower communities, practitioners, and decision-makers with the tools and knowledge required for effective managed retreat. Attendees will leave with insights and connections to resources that support the use of managed retreat for climate-resilient communities across Canada.

Chairs: Teresa Dawson, CindyAnn Rose-Redwood and Reuben Rose-Redwood, University of Victoria Panelists: Jeff Corntassel, Ryan L. Hilperts and Teresa Dawson Description: Many of our students currently bring a range of overwhelming emotions with them to their Geography classes. From climate grief to despair caused by the reversal of hard-won social justice gains, we are teaching in unprecedented and troubling times. In such a context, how can we design our classes to allow students (and ourselves) to engage with the pressing issues that motivate them, whilst not being shut down in their learning by the weight of challenges that appear beyond their control? Panelists will be invited to discuss how they have designed (or redesigned) their courses, assignments and assessments for hopeful outcomes. In particular, how can we create the conditions in which students can continue to engage in timely, impactful activism that makes a difference, whilst also supporting them in doing so safely. Panelists will provide specific examples from across the discipline whilst inviting conversation about shared practices and opportunities for collaboration.

Chair: Reuben Rose-Redwood, University of Victoria Presenter: Sarah Hunt / Tłaliłila’og wa, University of Victoria Panelists: Michael Fabris, University of British Columbia; Deborah McGregor, York University. This panel session is a Dialogues in Human Geography Forum on the theme of Indigenous Legal Geographies. It will consist of a presentation by Indigenous geographer Sarah Hunt / Tłaliłila’og wa, followed by commentaries from panelists, an author response, and open discussion.

Chair: Alison Mountz, University of Toronto Scarborough Discussant: Leah Montange Panelists: Andrew Burridge, Jennifer Bagelman, Patricia Lopez, Kate Motluk, Renzo Szkwarok Description: Across the globe, states continue to invent and implement myriad mechanisms through which to intercept, detain, and deport vulnerable migrants. Policies across wealthy, migrant-receiving countries continue to retreat from the provision of asylum, shrinking available pathways to safety. Political figures routinely name migration as one of the major challenges of our time, and frame refugees, asylum-seekers, and other vulnerable migrants as invading threats that contribute to all social ills. This framing is then used as justification for the extreme policies of externalization, protracted detention, and the violent process of deportation. While modern immigration detention and other forms of migrant containment have proliferated and increased across the globe at alarming rates, these practices are far from new. Rather, these practices are the latest manifestation of familiar, racialized efforts to contain particular populations. Colonial histories not only inform these contemporary efforts, but violently erupt in the present, haunting people, places, and communities. Critical scholarship has already successfully begun to interrogate current detention and containment practices. The political moment and the stakes for migrants ensnared in its web makes sustained attention necessary and urgent. This panel session will begin to make sense of the politics of detention and the impact these policies have had on the lives of migrants in specific places. Our exploration of detention will range from considering histories and colonial antecedents, the political economy of detention, and innovative carceral forms.

Chair: Natalie Oswin, University of Toronto This session focuses on precarity in a time of polycrisis, exploring how geographers study and understand modalities and experiences of precariousness in and beyond paid work. Building on the Understanding Precarity in BC (UP-BC) SSHRC Partnership (www.understandingprecarity.ca) and our approach to multi-disciplinary, community-academic collaborations, we welcome papers that invite conversations among and across different communities, approaches and sub disciplines to think with how precariousness is produced, reproduced and contested. Topics may include (but are not limited to) gig and platform work, migration and precarious legal status, queer and trans precarities, crises of care and social reproduction, and extractive and infrastructural geographies. While our Partnership focus is so-called "BC", we welcome contributions that explore different space-times and places, and from scholars and researchers at all stages.

Chair: Satveer Dhillon, University of Waterloo This session explores the usage of innovative methods within health geography. Innovative methods offer unique ways for researchers to engage with knowledge users and people with lived and/or living experience in order to co-produce research, particularly in contexts where conventional quantitative or qualitative approaches may fall short. Examples of innovative methods include but are not limited to visual arts, solicited diaries, body mapping, photovoice, and gaming. Although innovative methods offer considerable benefits to the research process, discussions surrounding their application within health geography have been fragmented and inconsistent. This session aims to create a dedicated forum to explore how these methods are being used in health geography, identify the factors influencing their adoption, and examine their broader implications for the future development of the sub-discipline.

Chairs: Anwen Rees, Sean Markey and Andreanne Doyon, Simon Fraser University; Sarah-Patricia Breen, Selkirk College Nature-based Solutions (NbS) use protection, restoration, enhancement, or engineering of ecosystems to provide multiple benefits (UNEP, 2022). While there are many examples of NbS, their approach and implementation are far from universal. There is a particular gap in how NbS is approached in rural and remote places. NbS is predominantly implemented using a project-based infrastructure planning approach, often resulting in a limited focus and fragmented result, rather than a holistic and integrated one. Values, worldview, and justice are increasingly recognized as equally important NbS considerations. The literature has evolved to consider dimensions of NbS as related to justice (Cousins, 2021; Haase, et al., 2017), more-than-human (Pineda-Pinto et al., 2021), and Indigenous Peoples (Artelle et al., 2019; Indigenous Climate Action, 2021; Reed et al., 2022). These frameworks and techniques can improve equitable outcomes in NbS initiatives by adding justice, equity, and cultural inclusion at the very start of planning and investment processes. This session will bring together researchers and students studying Nature-based Solutions with the goal of advancing the Canadian dialogue surrounding NbS. Rather than presentations or a panel, this special session will be participation and dialogue based. Facilitated by the Nature-based Solutions project led by Simon Fraser University, the dialogue will start with sharing the experiences from multiple rural and First Nations case studies across British Columbia.

Chair: Jason Goetz, Wilfrid Laurier University; Eva Kwoll and Katie Hughes, University of Victoria; Marten Geertsema, BC Ministry of Forests; Jon Goetz, BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship Canada faces a diverse range of natural hazards, from floods, landslides, and wildfires to extreme heat and storms. These events have both physical and societal dimensions, impacting landscapes, communities, infrastructure, and the environment. Understanding and responding to these hazards requires interdisciplinary perspectives that bridge physical geography, environmental science, social science, and policy studies. This session aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and students to explore natural hazards in Canada and abroad from multiple angles. Contributions (oral presentations) are welcome on topics including the physical processes driving hazards, human vulnerability and resilience, risk perception and communication, policy and governance responses, monitoring and modeling innovations, and applied case studies. By encouraging dialogue across disciplines, the session seeks to highlight scientific advances, practical strategies for hazard management, and emerging challenges facing communities and ecosystems. Ultimately, the session provides a space for sharing interdisciplinary research, fostering collaboration, and connecting physical and social perspectives to inform both research agendas and practical approaches to hazard mitigation, preparedness, and policy development.

Chair: John Acharibasam, University of the Fraser Valley

Moderator: Claire Hay, University of the Fraser Valley Panelists: Shannon Fargey, University of Victoria; Zoe Meletis, University of Northern British Columbia; Tara Holland, Simon Fraser University The higher education landscape in Canada is changing. To remain resilient in the face of gen AI and technologies yet to emerge, global challenges, and meet our disciplinary responsibilities to reconciliation, geographers in Canadian higher education need to consider the ways in which we engage learners. Indigenous teaching and learning pedagogy, collaborative learning spaces, land-based learning, alternative grading, and other approaches provide us with opportunities to teach for the future. This panel discussion will bring together experienced geographers to share their approaches as we discuss ways to teach geography for the future. We will share strategies, explore challenges, and engage in conversation about the future of geography education. At the end of this session, participants will be able to: 1) Reflect on their current teaching approaches; 2) Articulate current challenges in geographic education today; 3) Consider alternative teaching approaches to support future students, global challenges, and reconciliation.

Organizers: Rachel Silvey, Alison Mountz Chair: Rachel Silvey, University of Toronto Panelists: Trevor Barnes, University of British Columbia; Matt Farish, University of Toronto; Alison Mountz, University of Toronto; Patricia/ Tish Lopez, University of Washington; Kira Williams, University of Toronto; Roberta Hawkins, University of Guelph; Andrew Burridge, Macquarie University The story of geographical research and education at Harvard University has a mythological status in the discipline. Closing under mysterious circumstances in the late-1940s, the loss of geography at Harvard holds wider reverberations for the fate of other programs across the United States of America. Drawing on their book, Let Geography Die, Alison Mountz and Kira Williams conduct an investigation into this loss, unearthing personal and institutional secrets that drove the sudden closure of the program at the precise moment it reached its apex. Inextricably bound to and at the heart of this narrative are the hidden personal lives of the queer men recruited to build geography at Harvard - the same ones later blamed for its demise.Mountz’s and Williams’s investigation weaves together several histories: the enactment of homophobic policies under McCarthyism designed to purge queer people from university campuses and government offices; a university president with little regard for the social sciences on a personal mission to dissolve education; fierce, if failed, university politicking to rescue and then resuscitate the program; personal queer lives hidden in the plain sight of campus; and two contemporary political geographers on a mission to memorialise the queer people blamed for society’s ills.This panel explores critical themes related to Let Geography Die, such as homophobia, gender, the politics of science, persecution of suspected socialists and academic freedom. Further, connected to all of these themes, is the spectre of haunting itself - how the trauma of the past continues to erupt into the present. Through this discussion, we aim to review and advance some issues affecting geography as a discipline today across distinct national settings, including Canada, the US, and Australia.

Chair: Kendra Strauss, Simon Fraser University This session focuses on precarity in a time of polycrisis, exploring how geographers study and understand modalities and experiences of precariousness in and beyond paid work. Building on the Understanding Precarity in BC (UP-BC) SSHRC Partnership (www.understandingprecarity.ca) and our approach to multi-disciplinary, community-academic collaborations, we welcome papers that invite conversations among and across different communities, approaches and sub disciplines to think with how precariousness is produced, reproduced and contested.

Chairs: Tyler Blackman, Jesse Meeson and Minji Gwon, University of Waterloo The “future of work” remains a contested concept across academic research, corporate communications, and journalism. While work continues to evolve, its future is uncertain and shaped by competing visions, some of which gain prominence over others. Understanding the future of work requires addressing social reproduction as a co-constitutive element, encompassing the everyday and intergenerational reproduction of workers, families, communities, and class relations. Feminist economic geographers and aligned perspectives offer critical insights into the intersections of social reproduction, working life, and imaginaries of alternative futures. In so doing, researchers engaging with these perspectives seek to understand the full nature and interrelations of economic activity, questioning whose and what futures (should) come to matter. This is increasingly important as the future of work and social reproduction are marked by persistent and evolving insecurities and precarity. This session foregrounds emerging and in-progress research in feminist economic geography that examines work and social reproduction. This session will bring together contributions that look beyond narrow definitions of 'the economic' and engage with diverse forms of work (paid or unpaid, formal or informal, waged or salaried), workplaces, and imaginaries of the future(s). Topics may include, but are not limited to: artificial intelligence at work or in domestic spaces, automation, digital platforms, changing workplace arrangements, domestic and care work, precarization, workplace surveillance and control, worker organizing, the end of the standard employment relationship, and migrant labour and mobilities. Following Cindi Katz (2004), papers in this session will speak across work-life contexts, exploring how people, communities, and places navigate resilience, resistance, reworking, and other new or emergent frames of making life viable within socio-economic systems that remain deeply contradictory in terms of resources and possibilities available for getting by in uncertain times.

Chair: Jason Goetz, Wilfrid Laurier University; Eva Kwoll and Katie Hughes, University of Victoria; Marten Geertsema, BC Ministry of Forests; Jon Goetz, BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship Canada faces a diverse range of natural hazards, from floods, landslides, and wildfires to extreme heat and storms. These events have both physical and societal dimensions, impacting landscapes, communities, infrastructure, and the environment. Understanding and responding to these hazards requires interdisciplinary perspectives that bridge physical geography, environmental science, social science, and policy studies. This session aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and students to explore natural hazards in Canada and abroad from multiple angles. Contributions (oral presentations) are welcome on topics including the physical processes driving hazards, human vulnerability and resilience, risk perception and communication, policy and governance responses, monitoring and modeling innovations, and applied case studies. By encouraging dialogue across disciplines, the session seeks to highlight scientific advances, practical strategies for hazard management, and emerging challenges facing communities and ecosystems. Ultimately, the session provides a space for sharing interdisciplinary research, fostering collaboration, and connecting physical and social perspectives to inform both research agendas and practical approaches to hazard mitigation, preparedness, and policy development.

Chair: Doug Ramsey, Brandon University Small and medium-sized towns in rural and peripheral regions are facing rapid and uneven transitions. Changing commodity markets, infrastructure investments, climate and environmental shocks, and shifting migration patterns all shape the resilience—or fragility—of local economies and communities. This session explores how different economic bases (e.g. livestock and agriculture, mining and resource extraction, public services, tourism, diversified enterprise) interact with demographic change and spatial connectivity to produce varied trajectories of resilience in small towns.Empirical, conceptual, and policy-oriented papers that examine rural and small-town futures in Canada and globally. Contributions may draw on quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods, and we especially welcome work that uses spatial data, comparative approaches, or community-engaged research.

Chairs: Zachary Gan, Daphnée Venneman and Gabrielle Wong, University of Toronto Responses to climate change at varying scales are deeply influenced by extractivism and its uneven impacts. Some forms of climate action, such as the push to accelerate critical mineral mining, continue long histories of extractivism and carry harms that fall disproportionately on poorer, racialised, and/or Indigenous communities. Other forms of climate action must contend with extractivist legacies that manifest in ideological, cultural, and institutional forms. Political ecology provides a framework to understand the power relations involved in these processes. This session seeks to foster discussion on responses to climate change, including responses that paradoxically exacerbate it, through a political ecological lens.

Chairs: Dagen Perrott, Georgia Hawkins-Seagram and Kayleigh Russell, Concordia University This themed session explores the covert expansion of urban carceral geographies through topics including civil asset forfeiture, state intervention within education, and public transit. These points of inquiry offer insights into an increasingly pervasive network of punitive state control.

Members of the Health and Health Care Study Group (and others doing health research) are invited to participate in an informal gathering where we plan to: - Get to know each other better, learn from each others' research and discuss opportunities for collaboration. - Discuss potential activities for the study group in the coming year (e.g., joint publications, research training, reading groups). - Plan future applications for funding for the specialty group.

Chairs: Neil Nunn, Allard School of Law Panelists: Zannah Matson, Environmental Design, University of Colorado Boulder and Wayne Jackaman, Jordan River Watershed Awareness Description: The Jordan River was once among the most salmon-producing watersheds on South Vancouver Island. However, due to both historic and ongoing unsustainable energy production and mining, this heavily industrialized landscape now supports very little aquatic life. This panel session presents research and visual communication emerging from the South Island-based Jordan River Watershed Awareness (JRWA) initiative. It brings together three researchers who have collaborated to document and convey the story of ecological degradation, industrial development, and the continuing colonial impacts in Diitiida, the Jordan River watershed. The panel will open with two short films produced by JRWA. The first, "Fragile Flow", is a 12-minute, image-driven and sound-driven work co-written, co-directed, and co-produced by JRWA and Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones. The second is a 7-minute instructional infographic film that outlines the devastating history of the watershed and highlights the social and ecological dynamics that continue to constrain the watershed. Together, these films and presentations explore how visual storytelling, community-engaged research, and critical anti-colonial geographies work towards broader public awareness and can act as the spark for meaningful restoration in the Jordan River watershed.

Chair: Onyx Sloan Morgan, UBC Okanagan Session organizers: ACME Collective Panelists: Reuben Rose-Redwood, University of Victoria; Sarah Hunt/Tłaliłila’ogwa’, University of Victoria; May Farrales, Simon Fraser University; Emily Eaton, University of Regina; Darius Scott, McGill University; Araby Smyth, Mount Allison University. What are critical geographies? What can, and should, critical geographies be? Over the last year, the ACME Collective has organized panels at geography conferences in the UK and the United States on what are critical geographies, sites of possibility, and sites of contention. These panels have been uniquely place-based, seeking to hear from geographers across the discipline on pressing topics and potentialities from the places in which panelists work, live, and organize. At the 2026 CAG gathering, we intend to hear from critical geographers located across Canada on what they perceive critical geographies to be, its contradictions and possibilities as a field. Panelists will be invited to share their perspectives in this ACME-organized session.

Chair: Kendra Strauss, Simon Fraser University This session focuses on precarity in a time of polycrisis, exploring how geographers study and understand modalities and experiences of precariousness in and beyond paid work. Building on the Understanding Precarity in BC (UP-BC) SSHRC Partnership (www.understandingprecarity.ca) and our approach to multi-disciplinary, community-academic collaborations, we welcome papers that invite conversations among and across different communities, approaches and sub disciplines to think with how precariousness is produced, reproduced and contested.

Chair: Thomas Waldichuk, Thompson Rivers University The Geographies of Asia Study Group is organizing one or more panels on Asian topics and is particularly keen on soliciting papers and posters related to the conference theme “Resilience.” We request all submissions that deal with Asian countries. In particular, we encourage students to present and participate in the Geographies of Asia Student Presentation Competition. The best presentation will receive a cash prize.

Chairs: Maycira Costa & Alejandra Mora-Soto, University of Victoria Climate change, sea-level rise, extreme weather events, and human pressures increasingly threaten coastal ecosystems. Understanding their resilience, i.e., the capacity to withstand, adapt to, and recover from disturbance, is essential for effective management and conservation. This conference section explores how emerging remote sensing technologies offer powerful tools for monitoring ecological change, assessing vulnerability, and informing adaptive management strategies. Topics include satellite- and drone-based observations, multi-sensor data integration, long-term ecosystem trend analysis, coastal habitat mapping, and the development of predictive resilience indicators. Contributions that demonstrate innovative methodologies, interdisciplinary approaches, or applications supporting coastal monitoring are especially encouraged.

Chairs: Raphaelle Frechon, Jana Joanna Schluenss, Caroline Thivierge and Faby Anne Gagné-Mimeault, Université du Québec en Outaouais Ecosystem services governance refers to the rules, institutions, and practices that shape how the benefits people obtain from nature are managed, valued, and protected. Management is often operated locally, while governance and associated decision-making are structured through higher-level mechanisms. This bilingual session examines how multi-scale dynamics shape ecosystem services governance, recognizing that achieving ecosystem and community resilience requires decisions that operate effectively across scales.

Facilitators: Lily Charette, Crystal Tremblay, Bianca Gunther, Pamela Spalding, David Castle, Bethany Woodbridge, Walter Lepore, Albert Ugochukwu, Eva Shaffer and Brennah Agnew, University of Victoria BIOSCAN is an international biodiversity genomics initiative to build reference libraries of biological diversity. To foster this work, biodiversity scientists work with communities around the world to sample and sequence biodiversity. Integrated into this project is the recognition of diverse knowledge systems and cultural perspectives, an approach that recognizes that multiple forms of value are associated with nature - cultural, spiritual, social, and ecological - beyond just monetary considerations. Understanding these diverse values is essential for stewardship practices that honour place-based relationships and Indigenous self-determination and rights. Our UVic team specifically focuses on partnerships with Indigenous peoples using tools like participatory community mapping to support Indigenous-led biodiversity stewardship and monitoring. This interactive session will blend case study presentations with hands-on learning. Drawing on First Nations partnership experiences, we will facilitate a lively discussion exploring community mapping applications, the evolving role of researchers working in community contexts, and the benefits of community-centred research approaches. Following the presentation, participants will engage in a community mapping activity that introduces various mapping methods supporting land stewardship and biodiversity protection. Through this experiential learning, participants will gain insights into how participatory mapping can advance both research outcomes and community priorities.

Indigenous leadership is at the heart of the transformative and systemic change that the current climate crisis demands. Indigenous peoples in Canada have experience, knowledge, and perspectives to inform pathways to a transformed Canada that is just and sustainable. Indigenous knowledges, languages, legal traditions, and values can and should inform this broader process of transformation and can make contributions to broader science, policy, and governance innovations. Indigenous planetary well being paradigms requires imaging a different relationship with the natural world that can contribute to well being with the Earth. I will speak to principles of living well based on Anishinaabe storytelling traditions and speak to how we, s humans can learn to live well with the Earth.