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Melissa Lim and Scott Murdoch

Murdoch de Greeff Landscape Architects

Urban green space is critical to the health and liveability of our communities. Scott and Melissa will talk about planning and designing landscapes for the future, and how green spaces and landscapes can be designed to help our communities better adapt to climate change while creating more livable and greener urban places for people.

Scott Murdoch is a principal at Murdoch de Greeff Landscape Architects in Victoria, B.C. He is both a Registered Landscape Architect and a Registered Professional Biologist with over 20 years of experience in integrated environmental planning and design, and urban design. Scott recently contributed to the Blue Economy Initiative report – Blue City: The Water Sustainable City of the Near Future and has spearheaded many of the innovative rainwater management projects in the capital region.

Melissa is a Registered Landscape Architect who works at Murdoch de Greeff Landscape Architects in Victoria, B.C. She has over 12 years of urban design experience in the Victoria area.  Melissa resides with her family in the Oaklands community and is also a member of the Oaklands Community Association Board of Directors.  Melissa’s career in the Victoria areas includes developing landscape design guidelines for the City of Victoria’s stormwater utility program, and landscape plans for Fisherman’s Wharf Park and the Atrium Building.

Dr. Trevor Hancock 

Physician

"Thinking about the future is only useful and interesting if it affects what we do and how we live today", wrote British futurist James Robertson. Now, 50 years is a long way into the future – how much of how we live today did we anticipate in 1969? But when we create streets, buildings and neighbourhoods, we are locking in that physical form for decades, perhaps centuries. 

So given the massive and rapid global ecological changes we are seeing, known collectively as the Anthropocene, and which we know will continue for many years, how can we be responsible ancestors, creating healthy and sustainable neighbourhoods for our children, grandchildren and more distant descendants? How can we reduce our ecological footprint to the equivalent of one planet – which is our fair share of the Earth’s resources – while ensuring everyone has a good life and good health? And what might that look like? 

Dr. Trevor Hancock 

Health futurist, healthy and sustainable communities expert

Profile: Trevor Hancock is a public health physician, and recently retired as a professor and senior scholar at the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria.[2] He has worked as a health futurist and healthy communities consultant with communities and local governments, health systems and organisations, provincial and national governments and the World Health Organisation. He is active locally developing and promoting the concept of a One Planet Region and writes a weekly column in the Times Colonist. He was the first leader of the Green Party of Canada in the 1980s.

Nicole Chaland

Simon Fraser University

Nicole's current focus is advocacy and organizing for housing that is affordable to local households within the City of Victoria. She brings 20 years of professional community economic development experience to this challenge. Her approach borrows from research, community organizing, feminism, whole-systems thinking and sustainable development. 

Topic: What can a neighbourhood do to increase housing affordability?

But first, before we delve into this question, we must clarify what we mean by housing affordability. The City of Victoria recently adopted a new definition of housing affordability which helps build transparency and accountability towards the goal of ensuring housing for all. Nicole's presentation will briefly touch on current housing programs and identify gaps that neighbourhood groups can help fill. s. In 2013, Nicole launched

LEAP! Local Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program. LEAP! moves

social entrepreneurs through the start-up process and is offered in

rural communities with local partners. Prior to that, Nicole co-founded

a co-op that purchases rental properties and converts them to green,

affordable housing in perpetuity.

Kerry Shular

General Manager - Redeveloped Hillside Centre

Kerry more than anyone knows retail is going to change in the next 50 years. What role does a "mall" have in an online oriented retail world? What might become of our local shopping centres, how will they develop? Will we use those large footprints for more housing, recreational opportunities, experiential products and services? How do we best deal with the shift in shopping, plastics and consumables in general. Kerry has won a platinum award for the significant positive contribution to environmental sensitivity the Hillside Centre is demonstrating.

Peter Elkins

Tri-Sector Consulting Specialist

Peter will shake your world with an idea whose time has come: Community investment to help working class families afford to live in the neighbourhood and bring up their families. An accomplished serial entrepreneur and community economic development thought leader, Peter Elkins brings his dynamic and insightful mind to today’s thorniest social issues. One of the emerging voices in the tri-sector leadership space, Elkins works with all levels of government, enterprise and the social sector to develop win-win solutions for every party. 

“Research shows that middle class incomes are ineligible for mortgages in BC’s urban centres,” Elkins says. “These are government workers, teachers, paramedics, firefighters, police officers, construction workers. These essential workers contribute a lot of volunteer time and energy to their communities. They’re the people you want as your neighbours —yet these folks are limited from living in their community of choice because they cannot get access to a mortgage.”

Serving on the Provincial Task Force for Emerging Economies, Elkins’ current project is a powerful, workable response to BC’s housing affordability crisis. The Essential Workforce Mortgage Fund improves access to mortgages so that these people can commit to establishing roots in our communities. In this session, Elkins explains how the mortgage investment corporation works — and how it’s going to change the homeownership game for the better.

Elkins’ other areas of interest include local living economies, Indigenomics and digital trust. A west coast native — he grew up on Hornby Island and in Vancouver — Elkins explores the convergence of community and entrepreneurialism. Before moving to Victoria in 2011, Elkins built his reputation as one of BC’s leading entrepreneurial minds as a global management consultant at Kaufman and as the founder and CEO of GUTZ EMS, a medical device company. He co-founded Victoria’s Capital Investment Network, a grassroots organization dedicated to building Vancouver Island’s entrepreneurial ecosystem

 Linda Geggie 

Capital Region Food and Agriculture Initiatives Roundtable

 Working for the past two decades in the growing field of sustainable and equitable food systems, the primary focus of my work has been taking a lead role in convening broadly across sectors to invite critical thinking, creative solutions based strategic "planning and doing" to solve challenges and engage in opportunities from a systems lens. My work is centered in the intersection of health and equity, economic, social and cultural as well as environmental considerations building conditions and ecosystems for change. In my opinion and practice the primary facilitators of change processes are relationships, knowledge sharing, aligning interests, demonstration and policy change/development. My approach when working with individuals and groups is open, curious, listening, with intent to connect dots and create pathways forward. The ability to communicate a vision, gather the right mix and generate necessary resources to move mountains is my specialty. Together we can do better, be better. Between hope and despair? Despair gives us realistic eyes to see what we face, but always hope, to find our feet and move forward. 

Eric Doherty

Ecopath Planning

Eric is going to move you. Plain and simple. 

Aa the principal consultant of Ecopath Planning, Eric finds effective solutions to transportation conundrums and is going to show us what potential Oaklands has for moving in the future.

Specialties: In his transportation and land use planning work, Eric focuses on practical approaches for reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, while improving the livability of communities. He integrates diverse experiences from community and regional planning initiatives, environmental consulting, and engineering.

 Eva Olcen and Vic High Youth Group 

Vic High students are preparing a video presentation!

James Driedger

Bell Canada

25 yrs in outside plant communications. James has worked for Rogers Cable, and several smaller startups. Currently with Bell Canada.  James helped to start a Lower Mainland Regional government group to share information about fiber cable and network government people together (CICBC), and I wrote a Fiber Guide for government groups which was adopted by the BC Ministry of Transportation.  

He will be speaking about Smart Infrastructure thoughts for Oaklands.