Board & Staff

David Bodnarchuk is a professional landscape architect in Winnipeg, Manitoba. During his career he has played integral roles both as part of consulting firms and as a partner in a small private practice.  This has given him a broad range of project experience at a variety of scales ranging from residential to larger projects at the community scale. Through his work, David has developed an eclectic mix of specializations in northern remote projects, site security and urban impact.

David works closely with clients to develop a design vision and create playful, sustainable and engaging environments. David is one to balance practicality with creative excellence to deliver integrated and responsive landscape design. His educational background is well rounded and includes an architectural degree as well as landscape architectural. He is a LEED accredited professional and well versed in issues of sustainability, and a CPD with certification in CPTED design and implementation.

Over the last 8 years, David has worked to advocate for the profession of landscape architecture in Manitoba. He has played a number of team roles for the Manitoba Association of Landscape Architects beginning with treasurer, vice president, president, and finally past president. During this time, the Association made some very significant leaps forward to align itself with national and North American standards for the practice. He spent two years as chair of the Communications Committee helping to develop and grow MALA’s public and online presence. He also chaired the planning committee for the very successful 2016 CSLA congress, held in Winnipeg.

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.

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

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. 

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.   

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.

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.

Born and raised in Atlantic Canada, Cameron was introduced to the landscape industry at an early age by way of the landscape maintenance sector.  After completing a university degree in New Brunswick, he learned of the profession of landscape architecture from a friend and decided to pursue a BLA at the University of Guelph, graduating in 2005. He currently resides in Canada's far north in the City of Iqaluit.  There,he has held progressive roles in municipal and territorial government.  Cameron has been a NuALA board member and CSLA board director since 2011. He enjoys spending his time with family, travelling and being in the great outdoors.
 

Christopher Grosset is a partner and senior consultant with NVision Insight Group (formerly Aarluk Consulting), an Indigenous Consulting firm based in Ottawa and Iqaluit.  His practice is to document cultural landscapes and integrate Indigenous traditional knowledge with contemporary planning for protected areas and heritage sites. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in 1993 and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Guelph in 2000. 

Christopher is a founding member of the Nunavut Association of Landscape Architects (2002), the current NUALA President, and was accepted to the CSLA in 2003. From 2005 through 2011 he was a CSLA Director, working on various committees including Advocacy and Communications. Christopher was the Chair of the CSLA Awards of Recognition program in 2008 and 2009, and has served on the CSLA World Landscape Architecture committee from its founding in 2008 until 2013. 

Christopher was Chair of the CSLA 2011 Congress in Iqaluit, Nunavut, and received the CSLA Schwabenbauer Award that year. He was elected to the College of Fellows in 2014.  Since 2016 he has Chaired the CSLA Indigenous Task Force, mandated “to guide the CSLA in improving awareness and capacity for supporting Canada’s First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples”.  Christopher was awarded the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects Presidents Award in 2018 for his work to further the profession on Indigenous awareness.  NVision received a 2018 CSLA Award of Excellence in large scale planning and analysis for the Kinngaaluk Territorial Park Master Plan.  Christopher is a regular contributor to Landscapes/Paysages.

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. 

Jane Welsh, BLA University of Guelph 1984 and MSC in Planning University of Toronto 2000 has been Project Manager of the Environmental Planning unit of Toronto City Planning since 2005. Her education and experience as a Landscape Architect has been the foundation for her work in developing new innovative solutions to address environment/sustainability/ resilience issues and change the way we build and develop in Canada's largest city. 

This work has included the award winning Toronto Green Standard and Green Roof Bylaw; the Bird Friendly Guidelines; the Biodiversity booklet series and the Enduring Wilderness: Toronto Natural Parklands book. She has also been responsible for developing the first Ravine Protection Bylaw for the amalgamated city, and the first Ravine Strategy and the first Biodiversity Strategy.

She previously developed Waterfront Plans for Metro Toronto, City of Mississauga and Halton Region Conservation Authority and worked as a landscape architect in the private sector, and has always made time to mentor staff and students.

Jane has volunteered with the OALA for many years: as founding member of the Honours Awards and Protocol Committee (since 1988): as Co-Chair of the CSLA conference in 1991; and on OALA Council since 2014 - currently serving as Vice President. She is also a member of the CSLA Committee on Climate Adaptation.