An apple box label from the early years of fruit-growing in the Vernon area is the cover art for the 12th volume of the Journal of Ecological Anthropology. Now available to the public online, the edition featured the label of the Penoka Brand of Canadian apples.
The label was used with permission from the Kelowna Museum and Archives to illustrate a paper published by John Wagner, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UBC Okanagan, looking at water and how it has shaped the Okanagan’s development.
In Landscape Aesthetics, Water, and Settler Colonialism in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Wagner notes, “The images of the Okanagan that were used to attract settlers to the valley a century ago emphasized the lush, oasis-like qualities of orchards and lakes set among a dramatic, arid and mountainous backdrop.”
Today, as land prices escalate and orchards become less economically viable, orchardists themselves are being displaced by a new generation of settlers who come here to retire or make their livings in the wine tourism industry, he says.
“As the environmental costs of these changes accumulate, Okanagan residents are challenged to articulate a more sustainable landscape aesthetic rooted in local ecology.”
The paper is available to the public from the Journal of Ecological Anthropology’s website at http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~jea.
