Board & Staff

Hope Parnham is the principal of Dv8 Consulting.  She has provided landscape architecture, planning and climate change research services in Prince Edward Island for over a decade.  She grew up on the beaches of PEI and is passionate about her research on the Island’s vulnerable coastline.  She advocates for more responsible coastal development and erosion control techniques, coastal risk awareness and sustainable adaptation solutions. She is currently working as a senior climate change policy adviser for the Government of PEI.  She is the incoming president of the CSLA, a member of the CSLA’s Committee on Climate Adaptation and the IFLA’s Working Group on Climate Change. 

An ecosystem is a tapestry of species and relationships. Chop away a section, isolate that section, and there arises the problem of unraveling.  Quammen

Glenn’s impressive career – more than 30 years in landscape architecture – has brought him to the role of Forrec’s water park sector.  It’s a job he’s thrilled to have since he now gets to travel with water shoes and swim shorts instead of business suits.   At FORREC, Glenn is the senior director of water parks. He quarterbacks a team of landscape architects and other professionals on projects, from competition through entire schematic design and construction. His focus is on creating water parks where fun happens, and people want to stay longer and come back more often. 

After completing his landscape architecture degree at the University of Toronto (1981), Glenn learned his craft under the expert direction of Michael Hough, founder of the University of Toronto architecture program. Glenn opened his own firm in 1984 and spent 30 years honing his craft. He led large scale projects, studies, master plans, built works, institutional campus projects, recreation and community projects and healthcare projects.  Over his career, he has accomplished more than 1,300 planned and built projects, and won more than 21 awards. He became a CSLA Fellow in 2015. Glenn has a passion for the outdoors and is an avid skier and cyclist.

Carolyn joined the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) following 25 years of private practice with Hough Stansbury Woodland, later HWNDL, where she was a managing partner. In her current TRCA position as Senior Director, Planning & Development she has overseen the environmental planning, development review, policy and environmental assessment functions within 18 municipalities in the Toronto region. She has worked with Waterfront Toronto, the National Capital Commission, the former Crombie Commission on Toronto’s waterfront, and the City of Toronto on many landmark planning and design assignments. 

Carolyn’s significant work has helped to protect Ontario's future by defining plans to manage growth, protect and enhance greenspace, protect watersheds, and focus on climate change. Her 40-year career is founded on a passionate advocacy for integrating design and science for a vibrant public realm - embedded in her award recognized consulting, academic teaching (U of T) and public service.   

Cynthia is a full member with seal in the OALA who has worked in municipal practice for the City of Hamilton for 15 years, overseeing park, trail and open space design and construction.  She leads a team of 13 professional staff to ensure that the residents and visitors to Hamilton have access to high quality outdoor recreation spaces.  She graduated from the University of Guelph with an undergrad in Environmental Science, and again 3 years later with a Masters in Landscape Architecture.  Throughout her career, she has tried to marry both science and art to balance the needs of nature with the needs of humanity.  She is an elected councillor for the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA), and is the co-chair of the Municipal Outreach Committee, as well a member of the executive committee and board of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) as the chair of the Finance and Risk Management committee.  In recent years, she and her team in Hamilton have pushed for Low Impact Development features, including stormwater capture on park development projects.  In March of 2020 her article on shoreline protection work in Hamilton was published in Municipal World magazine as part of a larger professional advocacy initiative to further Ontario’s efforts towards a Practice Act.  In June 2020, she was awarded the David Erb memorial award for Exemplary Volunteer Service by the OALA. 

Tracey Hesse holds a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts (1994) from Concordia University and a master’s degree in Design (Landscape option) from the University of Montreal (2000). At HETA, she works on diverse mandates from planning and designing, to research studies and visual analyses, as well as writing reports and technical documents for tender submittals.

Tracey acquired practical experience in both design and execution early in her career, working as a landscape contractor in her own company for eight years. Today, she has over 18 years experience in landscape architecture in the public and private sectors. She has worked for EDAW, an international landscaping firm based in the United-States, in Atlanta, GA and several other landscape architecture firms in Montreal. Since 2015, she has been an associate at HETA (Hodgins & Associates).

In 2009 and 2010, she worked as an administrative assistant for the AAPQ. This opportunity allowed her to familiarize herself with the daily operations of the Association. Subsequently, she was part of the Admissions Committee until 2019.

Tracey is known for her excellent drawing skills and urban landscape designs. She is proficient in plant selection for residential and urban projects. In 2015, she was awarded 1st Ex-aequo Prize and the Prix Coup de cœur in the category of small garden spaces from the APPQ for Le filigree, a collaboration with Éric Fleury and Les aménagements paysagers l’Artisan. She is currently a member of the Jury for the Prix Habitat Design, an initiative to promote excellence and multidisciplinary collaboration in the marketing of residential projects in Quebec.

Ms. Margaret Ferguson obtained a diploma in Landscape Architectural Technology from Ryerson in 1980 and a diploma in Restoration of Natural Systems from the University of Victoria in 2011. She was accepted as a member of the NWTALA and the CSLA in 1991 and the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals (CAHP) in 1994.

Margaret was a founding member of the NWTALA and has served continuously on the board since its inception. She has taken an active role in many areas of the association including her participation in the drafting of key documents and promotion. She repesented the NWTALA on the CSLA Board of Directors, including representation on the President’s Council from 2012-present. Margaret was a board member and the CAHP National Membership Chair  from 2006-2009.

In 1984, Margaret moved to Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit) and became the first resident landscape architect in the eastern arctic. She travelled extensively throughout the region as a project officer with the Government of the NWT focusing on advancing responsible site development practices while managing construction projects.

In 1991, she moved to Yellowknife where she was engaged by the territorial government and then opened a consultancy that specialized in park master planning, interpretive and heritage resource design, and, community land use planning studies. Since 2004, Margaret has been a partner with Gaea Consulting Ltd. while continuing studies in ecological and restoration principles and techniques.

While there was no landscape architecture program at UBC during Dr. Dunster’s undergraduate degree, there was Dr. John Wesley Neill in the Horticulture Department. The last year in the Bachelor of Recreation Education program required an internship and having followed the CMHC-funded adventure playground work of Polly Hill, Cornelia Hahn-Oberlander, and Heinz Berger, Dr. Dunster wanted to learn more. She attended West Van Parks in 1976 and spent a year shadowing Heinz Berger. She was tasked with developing a plan for a new community. The site was a forest, with a stream and waterfall. Upon presenting her plan, which was “Do nothing, except fix up the informal paths and trails”, the faculty were appalled. Heinz Berger laughed and said, “you pass, and when you are ready, go to Guelph.”

In 1984 she enrolled at the University of Guelph and, as part of the rebellious class of 1987, was mentored by Victor Chanasyk, Jack Milliken, Jim Taylor, Cameron Man and Maurice Nelischer. Her master’s research was titled “Rethinking Regions: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Conservation”, building on several summers of field work with the Regional Municipality of Waterloo as they planned a network of environmentally sensitive areas as envisioned by Bob Dorney. 

In 1987, she enrolled at the University of Toronto’s Department of Geography where she shifted into the science of contemporary biogeography and plant ecology, joined the OALA and supplemented her teaching assistant’s salary and scholarships with contracts at Parks Canada. During that time, she built a portfolio of work that is still relevant today, including PhD field work on the dunes of Point Pelee National Park, Pelee Island, and in the Pinery/Grand Bend area of Lake Huron. Additionally, she had two public realm designs built that solidified her philosophy of design, such as the Gosling Wildlife Gardens at the University of Guelph Arboretum, a design competition she won in 1986 (https://www.uoguelph.ca/arboretum/collectionsandresearch/gwghistory) In 1992 she successfully defended her dissertation and became the second landscape architect (after Bob Brown) and first woman in Canada to receive a PhD with a double major in Biogeography and Plant Ecology from the University of Toronto.  

When Bob Dorney passed away, his family asked Dr. Dunster to design a small memorial garden for him outside the Environmental Studies Ecology Lab on the Waterloo campus. The garden was built in 1988 and recruited numbers of volunteers, evoking the true spirit of Bob by rescuing and borrowing plants to make it all happen on a zero budget (https://uwaterloo.ca/ecology-lab/naturalized-gardens/robert-s-dorney-ecology-garden). 

After those early-career designs, Dr. Dunster shifted practice from place-making to place-saving. Since 1992 and coming home to BC, she has worked for all levels of government and several ENGOs, both in-house and as a consultant mostly on ecological landscape planning and management projects ranging from species- and ecosystems-at-risk work to national parks planning studies and everything in between. Her focus has been to find ways to translate the science into plain language, and numerous reports, book chapters, articles, and publications were written along the way. As a member of the BCSLA, she has served as President, CSLA Board Director, chair of the BCSLA CE Committee and Chair of the CSLA Congress on Reconciliation in 2019.

In 2013, she joined Kwantlen Polytechnic University to lead a unique Bachelor of Horticulture Science (Urban Ecosystems) degree that embodies experiential education, with opportunities to de-school and open student minds to self-directed learning and free-range critical thinking. She puts theory into action every day as students design, plan, build, and manage a suite of interconnected blue-green infrastructure campus projects that have the goal of decolonizing and indigenizing a colonial settler agricultural landscape located on a problematic floodplain home to a salmon stream. 

Doris Chee is a landscape architect in Ontario with a wide variety of experiences in both the public and private sectors.  Her career has steered her to develop her skills in landscape architecture in various capacities. Starting as a park designer through to working for the largest utility company in Ontario and north America, developing and enhancing environmental mitigation and sustainability policies and programs, her work has challenged her to focus on impact and reducing the effects and fall out of human intervention while respecting the natural processes.  Her work has included working as a designer on competitions to representing the OALA at various meetings with politicians and allied professionals to working alongside engineers on the development of the province’s electrical transmission system. Managing teams, whether it is OALA Council or a project team consisting of engineers, environmentalist, public relations and asset managers, has provided her the opportunities to learn from others. It is this learning, that challenges her every day and it never ceases to amaze her the beauty in nature and what one can learn.

Matthew Mills, APALA, CSLA is a professional landscape architect based in beautiful St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Upon graduating from the University of Guelph’s MLA program, Matthew worked briefly in Ottawa before, as many Newfoundlanders do, deciding to return home. Since then, he has led his own award-winning firm with a partner, Mills & Wright Landscape Architecture, which specializes in working with municipal and private sector clients on a range of project scales including tourism plans, recreation amenities, trail systems, and municipal parks. 

Matthew is an advocate for the profession in Newfoundland and Labrador, having served as a member of the Built Heritage Advisory Committee for the City of St. John’s and as a juror for the Pearl Awards for the City of Mount Pearl. He has also been instrumental in growing the Public Lecture Series in St. John’s, an annual event co-hosted with the local architect’s association that aims to bring awareness to the value of design in the province. Over the past four years, Matthew has happily hosted accomplished landscape architects from across the country who travel to Newfoundland to speak at the event. Matthew is also currently serving as an APALA board member and Past-President.