Every morning, Julien Canadien wakes up and walks over to his local community garden to water the plants. He has been in charge of maintenance for the past four years, a job he takes great pride in.
Previously, Canadien was a firefighter for two decades, often spending long stretches of time away from his home in Kakisa, Northwest Territories. He missed important moments with his children, including his daughter's school events.
"She wanted me there, but I was always working," he says.
Kakisa's agriculture operation - a collaboration with Wilfrid Laurier University to grow food for the local community - offers Canadien consistent, meaningful work close to his family.
"Now I never miss my little girl's talent shows and stuff at school, so she's happy."
His daughter sometimes helps him in the garden.
Canadien and his family eat mostly traditional foods from the land, such as moose, caribou and fish. They like to "mix it up" with vegetables from Kakisa's garden and greenhouses.
"Growing your own food makes you feel good," says Canadien. Plus, "it's free. And you don't have to drive all the way to the grocery store in Hay River - which is an hour and a half away - just to get your vegetables."
Access to fresh, affordable food is a pervasive challenge in Kakisa, considered the Northwest Territories' "tiniest town." Two hours north of the Alberta border, Kakisa is a Dene community of fewer than 40 people set along the edge of Kakisa Lake. The Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation represents residents, whose traditional territory span the surrounding lakes, rivers and forest.
Ruby Simba, band manager for Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation, buys her groceries in Hay River or will make summertime trips "down south" to High Level, Alberta and bring back a cooler full of food.
"We don't have any stores, but we're not trapped - we have an all-season road," says Simba, which is not a given in remote parts of northern Canada. Food prices have become "ridiculously high," she says, along with the cost of gas to drive back and forth.
"Living here, you have to learn how to ration your food, your money, your gas, your water. We get water delivered from Hay River twice a week."
With resources in short supply, community support is essential. Kakisa residents look out for one another.
"We have Chris who fishes, my brother who hunts moose," says Simba. "They're always sharing their food with us. When my brother shoots a moose, he gives a piece of meat to everyone so everybody has enough to eat."
Living off the land is the foundation of the community's food system but has become increasingly difficult as the effects of climate change rapidly alter ecosystems. Northern Canada is warming approximately three times faster than the global average. Wildfires and low water levels are making hunting and fishing more challenging in Kakisa.
"We only have two Elders in our community now and they are both in their 80s," says Simba. "They say that in all the years they have been here, they have never seen anything like this. No water flowing, all the fires that are going on - it's way different, they say."
Kakisa was evacuated in August 2023 during the Northwest Territories' most destructive wildfire season on record. But it was during the 2014 fire season - second only to 2023 in its destruction - when residents first felt the urgency of climate change.
"We just about lost the community," says Chief Lloyd Chicot.
After such a close call, Chicot and his neighbours knew it was time to act. They contacted a then PhD student at Laurier, Andrew Spring, and invited him to come and strategize how Kakisa could be resilient and self-sufficient amid a changing climate.
Spring, now an assistant professor of Geography and Environmental Studies and the Canada Research Chair in Northern Sustainable Food Systems, remembers his first trip to Kakisa in 2014 as an "eye-opening experience."
"I was a plucky, young student thinking that I could come and tell them about climate change," he says. "I discovered that the people were passionate and already knew what they wanted to do. They just needed someone to help them."
Spring helped organize a workshop, interviews and community meetings. He asked people how climate change was affecting them and what they wanted to do about it. They were "more than willing to share."
