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OUT OF THE ASHES CAME THE GREEN ROOF INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORK: “Green roofs’ intersectionality cuts through silos, which could help foster a united movement around water protection, the climate emergency, and the biodiversity crisis,” stated Dr. Christine Thuring, GRIN Executive Director and former faculty member with the Centre for Architectural Ecology at the BC Institute of Technology

Note to Reader:

Published by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia, Waterbucket eNews celebrates the leadership of individuals and organizations who are guided by the Living Water Smart vision. Stories are structured in three parts: One-Minute Takeaway, Editor’s Perspective, and the Story Behind the Story.

The edition published on April 7, 2026 featured Christine Thuring, green roof champion. She is the founding executive director and public face of GRIN, which is the acronym for Green Roof Infrastructure Network of British Columbia. The GRIN story is a great story in that it links the past to the present and future and where GRIN wants to take a re-energized green roof movement.

 

ONE MINUTE TAKEAWAY for the extremely busy reader

“Twenty years after inception, BCIT suspended green roof courses until further notice in 2022. Because green roofs no longer had a voice in BC, a group of us decided to do something about that. We created GRIN,” states Dr. Christine Thuring. Her claim to fame is that she is the first person in North  America to obtain a green roof-focused master’s degree!

Christine Thuring  is the Executive Director of the Green Roof Infrastructure Network (GRIN), a newly created society. Recruited by Dr. Maureen Connelly in 2006, she taught at BCIT’s Centre for Architectural Ecology and remembers the profile it once had.

 

Christine Thuring has embraced the “green roof baton” passed on to her from Maureen Connelly. In 2023, Christine engaged colleagues and co-established GRIN as a means of continuing delivery of the first credited green roof course in Canada.

Out of the ashes came GRIN, the Green Roof Infrastructure Network

“Part of the vision for GRIN is the N for network. There are so many silos out there. Everyone is saying different things and yet we are in a climate emergency and biodiversity crisis. Even the term Green Infrastructure is not all encompassing anymore.”

 

EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE / CONTEXT FOR BUSY READER – by Kim Stephens

“The Partnership celebrates the work of the group of green infrastructure champions who are the driving force behind GRIN. Their story behind the story as told by Christine Thuring is a great story. It links past to present and future and where GRIN wants to take a re-energized green roof movement,” stated Kim Stephens, Waterbucket eNews Editor and Partnership Executive Director.

 

Fast forward to the present day

“With my mid-2000s memories as my context, it came as a surprise to learn from Christine that the BCIT Green Roof Research Facility was no more. How could this have happened, I asked? Not that long ago, I recalled, the green roof movement was a hot topic in this region. It offered such promise.”

 

 

“The story behind the story is that Christine Thuring and her GRIN colleagues are committed to putting green roofs back on municipal radar screens. They have a vision, they have a plan, and they are doing outreach. It takes passion, hard work, and perseverance to have mission impact.”

 

A vision with a task is the hope of the world

“The Partnership sees volunteers and groups such as GRIN stepping up in response to a need. They are helping to bridge a knowledge gap. That certainly is the essence of the Partnership’s story. Policy frameworks have not changed. It is effective and consistent execution and implementation that are lacking.”

“In the world of local government, we observe deep knowledge being ignored or dismissed at an alarming rate. This is playing out as an ebbing political tide. Storytelling is needed more than ever. Solutions to the issues of our time lie in WHAT stories we tell and HOW we tell those stories.”

“The Partnership is showcasing GRIN because that helps to advance the vision for network collaboration within a constellation of networks. In these busy times, there is tremendous value in networks that help solve problems together,” concluded Kim Stephens.

 

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: BCIT’s green roof programming was an early victim of an ebbing tide – synthesis of a conversational interview with Dr. Christine Thuring

The complete transcript of the interview with Christine Thuring is included in the downloadable document version of this story behind the story. The storyline that follows is an edited narrative of the highlights from two of three theme areas.

 

BCIT green roof history under the leadership of Maureen Connelly is the context for GRIN

“I came to British Columbia in 2006 at the invitation of Maureen Connelly to join the staff of the BCIT Centre for Advancement of Green Roof Technology as it was then known, When Maureen took early retirement (in 2022), I was still there on faculty and thought surely they won’t cancel the centre.  And then it was the first thing to go (with budget cuts),” Christine Thuring explains.

Out of the ashes

“Many of my industry colleagues and I had organized tours and taught courses about green roofs. When BCIT suspended the program, we concluded that if BCIT is not giving a voice to green roofs anymore, then that means nobody is talking about green roofs in this province.”

“We decided that somebody has to do something and that is what led to GRIN. It was my pivot. GRIN is my passion project.”

 

GRIN embraces a top-down and bottom-up approach and strives to cultivate green roof champions

“Despite the Metro Vancouver region’s early promise, the green roofs movement has definitely not grown in the way anyone expected it to. Looking back, there were signs of trouble. Political will was waning compared to most parts of the world that had been part of the green roofs revolution.”

Ebbing political tide

“The high water mark for the region was in 2018 when Vancouver City Council passed a motion to create a policy requiring green roofs on new buildings and providing maximum opportunity to have them retrofitted in existing ones. The motion died quietly, reportedly because it was not a political priority.”

 

What matters is top-down and bottom-up 

“When we began our GRIN green roof tours in 2023, they involved much advocacy. We reached out to mayors and councillors, going to their offices, giving our presentations and saying:

 

 

“Is it top-down or bottom-up? Or do you need both? That is what we are playing around with. We started high up, meeting with mayors and councils and taking them on tours. But it is the turnover on councils that kills momentum. And with 2026 being an election year, it is a dead zone until the next cycle.”

Onwards and upwards

“We are in a lull with our municipal outreach. But it has been great to connect with citizens from lots of different interest groups. If we can at least grow the literacy of the population, who can then confidently demand certain things from their councils, that is bottom-up and very organic.”

“We are using the upcoming tour for World Green Roof Day as a way to test where Vancouver civic political parties stand on green roofs,” concludes Christine Thuring.

 

Living Water Smart in British Columbia Series

To download a copy of the foregoing resource as a PDF document for your records and/or sharing, click on Living Water Smart in British Columbia: BCIT green roof programming an early victim of an ebbing tide.

 

DOWNLOAD A COPY: https://waterbucket.ca/wcp/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2026/03/PWSBC_Living-Water-Smart_Christine-Thuring-and-green-roof-movement_2026.pdf