About Us
Our Story
In the Spring of 2020 a group of like-minded community members decided to tackle the effects of COVID-19 by bringing people together with food. We realized that a crucial way to help with the alienation and food shortages we saw in our neighbourhood was to establish a collective garden and food forest.
We first came up with the idea though in 2018 when we observed there was a serious need for more community gardens in this neighbourhood of 34,000 people, but at the time our chosen park was not available. In time, our vision evolved from the allotment model of community gardening to a philosophy of sharing harvests, collective gardening and food forests, being guided by Indigenous ways of knowing, prioritizing marginalized voices and creating a hub for mutual aid. Our mission has continued to expand and deepen alongside our growing ties to this community.
In April 2020, we proposed this new community-based, intergenerational and cross-cultural knowledge sharing space to the Vancouver Park Board. It was very much aligned with their new Local Food System Action Plan so the Burrard View Park project was approved in concept in March 2021. On March 29th, 2022 the Southeast site of Burrard View Park was officially approved by Vancouver Park Board and development is likely to start in the fall of 2022 subject to an archeological investigation which was instigated by our group.
On June 21st, 2022 we planted our first Indigenous food forest, also located on Wall St. in Oxford Park called Chen Chen Stway which means “to lift each other up” in the Squamish language. This is a sister garden to the upcoming food forest in Burrard View Park.
While we waited for approval of these first sites, we spent time connecting with our neighbours in meaningful ways, conducting workshops with partnering organizations and spreading the word about food justice as a tool for systemic change. We created and facilitated an annual event called Neighbourhood Food Week which takes place at the end of September in Hastings-Sunrise!
Vancouver Urban Food Forest Foundation is a Canadian Registered Non-Profit.
Below are some of the folks involved in bringing this project to life:
Co-creators
Leona Brown
(she/her) A Gitxsan and Nisga’a mother of 3 children, of the Fireweed House and the Killerwhale Clan. I am an Indigenous Independent Cultural Facilitator. I gained 3 years of training in Land and Lives around Indigenous Culture with the Resurfacing History Program Coordinated by Jolene Andrew. This work has become my Healing Journey, the grassroots teachings and knowledge is shared with my children. This knowledge is important to know who we are and where we come from and how we live with the Lands and Waterways around us. As a Gitxsan Refugee in the unceded territories of Musquem, Squamish, and Tsleil-waututh, I have been taking on land based work here in the city and thrive as a great ambassador to the work Resurfacing History has taught me around Indigenous food and resources that we harvest in the city. I advocate at every opportunity with School Boards, City of Vancouver, and Vancouver Parks Board for all opportunities for Indigenous People to relearn our culture on the lands and waterways that we live on and actively talk of Reconciliation.
Lori Snyder
(she/her) is an Indigenous Metis herbalist and educator with a deep knowledge of wild, medicinal and edible plants that grow in everyday spaces. Through Lori’s eyes, our immediate surroundings take on a new life and offer a wealth of untapped nutritional and ecological resources. Through Indigenous ways of knowing and pedagogies, Lori leads people of diverse backgrounds in reconnecting to the Earth’s wisdom. Today, Lori stewards a medicine wheel garden at the Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre. She is currently working with the David Suzuki Foundation as a Butterfly Ranger and consulting with both the foundation and the YWCA at Evelyn Crabtree on native plants and their importance in our ecological relationship with other living beings. She is the Artist in Residence at Hastings Community Centre for 2020, offering the teachings of plant wisdom through various art mediums. Lori created Earth Awareness Realized Through Health and Company in 2013, to share First People’s perspectives on wild, edible and medicinal plants. Her practices include plant identification walks, illustration and plant medicine workshops, homemade products for the skin, consulting on garden design, as well as public speaking and team training. Lori walks gently and teaches primarily on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, as well as neighbouring Coast Salish nations. Lori is a descendant from the Powhatan, Dakota, T’suu tina, Nakota, Cree, Nipissing, Dene and Anishinaabe peoples, mixed with French and Celtic ancestry. She was born and raised on the lands of the Squamish people, near Vancouver, Canada, overlooking the Salish Sea on the Pacific Northwest Coast of Turtle Island.
Yoko Tomita
(she/her) creates educational, accessible and skill building visual art activities for a variety of age groups. She is an art instructor for visual art class, lantern, origami workshops in Vancouver. She has worked at Collingwood Neighbourhood House since 2004 as the Arts & Culture Coordinator. She has been working on unique lanterns for installations and instructing lantern workshops for the Still Creek Moon Festival and Winter Solstice Festival. She organizes visual art shows and annual artisan markets as well. She completed numerous community art projects in the east side of Vancouver, street banners, fountain mosaic project, community murals by engaging with multicultural community members creating beautiful public art in our neighbourhood. Her expression of arts shows in bright colours, local animals and flora and fauna in nature as the main themes which brings smiles and cheer to the public. Her work extends to Neighbourhood Cultural Network Developer for RCMAN (Renfrew Collingwood Multicultural Artists’ Network) and beyond for the community art movement She also loves growing food in community and guerilla gardening!
Omri Haiven
(he/him) is currently the Cook and Food Programmer at Kiwassa Neighbourhood House, a founding member of the VUFFF and sits on its Board of Directors. He is of Ashkenazi Jewish background and originally hails from Saskatoon (Cree, Metis, Blackfoot) and Halifax (Mi’Kmaq). Omri believes in the VUFFF project’s capacity to act as midwife to a new era of re-indigenization as well as social and environmental justice on these lands we call home in East Vancouver (Coast Salish). Omri’s passion for Food and the community around it has pulled him into many related fields (literally) including working as a cook, farmer, community organizer, elected representative, food cooperative founder, business owner, market vendor, local food distributor, journalist and board member. Omri is a continuing student of Permaculture, history, wisdom traditions and his surroundings.
Marie-Pierre Bilodeau
(she/her) originates from the territory of the Innu in Saguenay and is of French and Quebecois heritage. After twelve successful years co-managing and creating an “Organically Grown, Ethically Sewn” eco-clothing brand called Rabbit & Empee, Marie-Pierre realized that her efforts to find sustainability, regeneration and fulfillment fell short of the life she aspired to live. She studied permaculture at Seven Ravens Permaculture Academy on Salt Spring Island and her hands-on training was done in East Africa where she continues to work today. She is the founder of REFARMERS.org, a grassroots organization that creates and supports small-scale community-based food growing initiatives as well as provides land-based learning opportunities that enable people to be the drivers of their own change. She helped light the spark that is now Vancouver Urban Food Forest Foundation (VUFFF) and is passionate about immersing her local work and life in Indigenous ways of knowing and growing. She is currently the Operations Co-ordinator of VUFFF.
Dee Dee Nelson
(she/her) is from the Quesnel area, unceded Lhtako Dene Traditional Territory, and has Scottish and English ancestry. She is a passionate community advocate determined to plot out spaces for people, slow and thoughtful spaces in every neighbourhood, filled with plants, trees, benches and tables, flora, fauna and food for people and pollinators. DeeDee finds it very exciting to be part of the ‘local food movement’ and finds it equally compelling to help empower others so that everyone can grow that sense of food sovereignty and build a resilient, biodiverse community from the ground, (and beneath), up! She also feels a strong respect for Indigenous Peoples and their thoughtful ways of stewarding the land and waters, and believes that there are so many beautiful things to learn from Indigenous cultures that can help us to live in harmony with each other and the planet we all share. DeeDee has been hard at work with fellow co-creators and organizations to bring the Vancouver Urban Food Forest Foundation’s very first “Neighbourhood Food Week” to the Hastings-Sunrise community. DeeDee also organizes the Marpole Temporary Community Garden, hosts the “Gathering Gardeners” with the Marpole Neighbourhood House and is a Refarmer with Refarmers.org. When she isn’t creating burlap sack gardens in various neighbourhoods or staring at hummingbirds in awe, DeeDee can be found pedalling around the city trying to find the next place for people to grow food and flowers.
Laura Cisneros
(she/her) Mujer mestiza from Cuba, and of Yoruba, Taino and Spanish descent. Community builder, art historian and writer. Practitioner of conscious dreaming. Laura came to the unceded ancestral land of the Coast Salish people looking for freedom. Here, she felt foreign to everything except the plants and the sky. The plants taught her that we could speak their language; they also showed her that human languages reduce our relations with nature. The sky taught her that she could trust herself. Quickly, Laura understood that she was already free and that her true purpose was to know her own roots. "I like saying that I came to the North to learn about the South, to see myself as a reflection of Mother Earth and the Cosmos. Through my dreaming practice and plant medicines, the connection with the Cosmos became more relevant to my everyday life. I have also found a new love and inspiration to share my journey, and trust others can also accept and love themselves as they are, as written in our stars." Laura is the founder of Unfolding Senderos, a dreaming circle started in 2019. Since 2020, she has led monthly new and full moon circles with Lori Snyder. She has studied dreaming and plant medicine practices under various traditional healers, and medicine women and men from the Amazon, Andes, Mexico and Turtle Island.
Lisa Patterson
(she/her) Lisa is a lifelong learner of EVERYTHING, but is especially interested in zero-waste, food, gardening, and our natural world. She is grateful to be able to call the lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ people home. Lisa has maintained a small vegetable garden everywhere she's lived and is currently the coordinator of Hastings Community Centre Food & Garden Programs. You can learn more about the programs offered here: https://linktr.ee/seasonsoffood
Kathleen Heggie
(she/her) Kathleen is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent and grew up mainly on Syilx Okanagan Nation territory in Vernon. She’s lived on the Coast for over 10 years, mostly in Vancouver but splitting up city time with periods of living on Haida Gwaii and in northern Mexico. She is dedicated to working in the overlapping realms of community building, food security, climate resilience, and supporting Indigenous sovereignty, and has done so through policy and community planning for the last eight years. She is passionate about plants and is super grateful to get to grow food in her own backyard.
