For the 2015 Steveston Salmon Festival on Canada Day, the Garden City Conservation Society created a visual story called “Pollinating in the Lulu Island Bog.” An aspect is that acting with respect for the various pollinators Nature has provided is a better idea than just depending on honey bees for pollinating. That is especially true in the sphagnum bog, with its native plants that collaborated with the native pollinators long before honey bees came to North America.
Here’s a coloured example of the artwork.
And here’s the sheet for colouring:
Notes:
(a) To best enable educational value, we make the artwork as biologically correct as possible while still using cartoon style as part of the fun experience of these aids to learning.
(b) The above graphics are low-resolution images for on-screen viewing. At the bottom of this article you’ll find higher resolution files that you can download for printing out.
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The rest of the story:
This began a year earlier. The background is that the society and those who support its purposes—the Friends of Garden City—are friends of Nature. Our Lulu Island Bog eco-tours help people to get to know Nature there better. In 2014, to reach a wider audience, we decided to create an insightful illustration, “Friends in the Lulu Island Bog,” and the above images represent it being coloured at the 2014 Steveston Salmon Festival. Now that we’ve done this for two years, maybe it will become a tradition.
Thanks are due to the artist, Suzanna Wright, a Friend of Garden City who grew up in Richmond. Suzanna has a master’s degree in arts education, and she is a young teacher in the Surrey School District. Garden City Conservation director Michael Wolfe is a conservation biologist and Richmond teacher, and he provides input too. Together, Michael and Suzanna did a preview of the 2015 artwork at the June 2015 Annual Gathering of the society, with the two teachers providing comments and answers while the participants tried their hand at colouring.
You can download the 2014 “Friends of the Lulu Island Bog” sheet as line art here (for colouring) and as a coloured example here.
You can download the 2015 “Pollinating in the Lulu Island Bog” as line art here 2015 (for colouring) and as a coloured example here.
We’re thinking of preparing a simple instructor’s guide for teachers, parents and others. For now, we encourage you to do a little background study on your own as need be.
Natural legacies versus waste 
Thank you Suzanna for creating artwork that celebrates the natural world. Well done!