One wave at a time, coastal communities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Rising sea levels, intensifying storms, and shifting fisheries threaten ecosystems, infrastructure, and commerce. These challenges were at the heart of this year’s Annual Grand Challenge on Sustainability, organized by Desautel’s Faculty of Management’s Sustainable Growth Initiative (SGI).
The event kicked off on March 24 at Cinema du Parc, drawing a full house with a documentary storytelling evening. It opened with remarks from Adam Turcotte, associate director of the SGI.
“The SGI was created mainly to address the interdisciplinary issues in solving the global sustainability challenges that the world faces,” Turcotte said. “[…] The objective of [SGI’s Annual Grand Challenge] is to present students across the country with a specific challenge related to sustainability and let them find a solution.”
This year’s challenge centred on exploring strategies that strengthen coastal communities’ resilience against climate change.
Two short documentaries were featured, followed by a Q&A session with their creators: Leila Beaudoin, a journalist who specializes in fisheries and climate stories, and Maxime Corneau, a Radio-Canada journalist who covers environmental issues.
Beaudoin’s film, All Eyes On the Water, explores the growing threats to coastal communities posed by rising sea levels and increasing storm intensity. When introducing her work, she reflected on sustainability and the challenge of maintaining communities and ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.
“Fishermen in my film can tell you the exact speed [by which] the wind has changed since they were children,” Beaudoin said. “When I started filming on my iPhone, I did not know what I was gathering […], just that I had to gather it and that it was important [.…] Last year, I purchased a [Sony camera] […], but one thing I realized when making this documentary is that climate stories do not wait. They do not care about theatrics or lighting or programs or funding, even.”
Filmed near her hometown in northern Newfoundland during the COVID-19 pandemic, the documentary highlights how storm activity is accelerating coastal erosion and damaging infrastructure, such as homes and fishing facilities.
“The message for me was really how [people] already know, they have solutions,” Beaudoin said.
By giving people space to express their thoughts, ideas, and concerns in her film, she demonstrates that communities are already adapting—proposing solutions such as relocating buildings inland or reinforcing shorelines with rock barriers—but are lacking the funding and political support needed to implement them.
During the Q&A, Beaudoin further explained how climate change impacts fisheries: While warming waters have benefited the lobster industry in Newfoundland, stocks are declining further south in the United States.
Maxime Corneau’s documentary, Tuktoyaktuk: où aller quand l’océan nous engloutit?, presented on Découverte, tells the story of Tuktoyaktuk, an Inuvialuit hamlet in the Northwest Territories, facing severe coastal erosion, worsened by permafrost thaw, rising sea levels, and amplified wave action.
“We wanted to share the story of people who were thinking about leaving [….] But when we got there, we quickly realized that […] they wanted to stay there, and it realigned the story,” Corneau said.
The film blends voices from scientists, local residents, and former mayor Erwin Elias, portraying a community deeply attached to its land; cultural, cemetery and economic activities are all connected to this place.
“As a Southerner, I […] thought [climate change] must be terrible [for Indigenous communities in the north],” Corneau said. “And when you are there, you speak with people, and it is all about adaptation, and how they move with the environment.”
Following the screening, Corneau shared that the community has since secured $54 million CAD in federal funding to help protect the town from erosion. He highlighted Tuktoyaktuk’s geopolitical importance as a factor in securing funding and expressed hope that the film will inform broader adaptation strategies, including in southern regions like Montreal.
Overall, audience members responded positively to both films, praising their striking visuals that captured the beauty of Canadian coastal landscapes, the representativeness of people’s voices, and the human-centred storytelling.
As conversations continued beyond the screening room, the event marked yet another successful edition of the Annual Grand Challenge on Sustainability.