Monika.ie

Hi everyone, I’m offering 10% off any wedding photography packages booked before 14th of February 2018. Please visit my website : www.monika.ie or FB page: https://www.facebook.com/monika.ie/

Hi everyone, I’m offering 10% off any wedding photography packages booked before 31st of May 2017. Please visit my website : www.monika.ie or FB page: https://www.facebook.com/monika.ie/

View from Pearse’s Cottage 

One of the photos from series about climate change.

I lived in Vancouver, Canada for over a year from 2014. I made great friends and had a wonderful time but there was one aspect of the city that I did not like. From the waterfront in Kitislano, where I lived, one could see dozens of ugly container ships parked in the bay. They were a constant reminder that the authorities and the powerful industrialists could do what they want, and that the 'healthy', 'outdoorsy' reputation of Vancouver was a bit of a facade. This point was drilled home a few weeks before I left when oil escaped from one of the ships and the ordinary citizens were forced to clean the slick from the beach.

Whilst living in Vancouver I toured Canada's stunning national parks at Jasper and Banff. The spectacular landscapes of verdant forests, powerful rivers and amazing wildlife mesmerized me, and will be with me forever. A few months later I photographed a wedding in the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta. From the window of the plane, as we came into land, a terrible scene of dry, scraped and burned land came into view. The area around Fort McMurray, which I'd thought would be as beautiful as Jasper and Banff, are now industrial oil-producing waste-land. The lady whose wedding I was in Alberta to photograph was one of the Cree First Nations people, and I was later told of how the area that had been destroyed by the oil industry had once been the land of the Cree. They used to hunt and fish along the Athabaskan river and their society depended on the land. I've often thought about the oil companies' near-destruction of the Cree civilization since. I've thought about the melt-water that I once saw flow from the Athabaskan Glacier and how my own daughter, who is just a few weeks old, may herself see the end of our on way of life, and may never see natural beauty like I saw in Jasper and Banff.

 monika.ie