Documenting makeshift tributes to what was lost to the Fort McMurray wildfire
One photographer is documenting these tributes homeowners have left behind
Peter Fortna and his camera wander through Abasand, one of the communities the wildfire didn't spare. He focuses his lens on a coil of keys hanging on the security fence that belongs to his neighbour.
"It epitomizes what our community here in Abasand is trying to do. Figuring out our own ways to say goodbye to the community," Fortna said.
Fortna also lost his home in the fire.
He says his neighbours placed their keys on the fence as a small tribute to the home they lost. Fortna has been documenting and sharing photos of the makeshift tributes and messages his neighbours are leaving behind on social media.
To get closure for me it was important to come back and to take these pictures.- Peter Fortna
Taking pictures is Fortna's way of paying tribute to what his community has lost and his own way of coping. He hopes to compile the hundreds of pictures he's taken into a photo essay that he might display for the public.
"To get closure for me it was important to come back and to take these pictures," Fortna said who has begun the process of rebuilding his own home.
"I guess it was my fear that it would somehow disappear and our community story would somehow not be remembered."
At another house, a corner brick wall is all that remains in an apocalyptic scene. On it Krista Menchenton spray painted a heart and the names of her husband and kids.
It's not graffiti to her, but a way of leaving her mark on a landscape she no longer recognizes.
"The fire took the human element away. All the distinguishing features from house to house were erased," Menchenton said.
I think we want to remind ourselves the houses may be gone but it's still our neighbourhood.- Krista Menchenton
"I think we want to remind ourselves the houses may be gone but it's still our neighbourhood."
She also didn't want her last photo of the home to be one of utter destruction. That's not how she wants her two younger boys to remember their former home.
"We thought what a better way than to spay paint our names. Yes they would see the destruction but they wouldn't be left with a negative vision of it," Menchenton said.
