On "The Nature of Canada"

The Nature of Canada is an innovative collection of reflections on environmental issues old and new. Fifteen authors from across the country grapple with two deceptively simple but ultimately complicated questions: How have people engaged with Canadian nature and what do these engagements reveal about the nature of Canada (and Canadians)? Ranging across time, from before the Pleistocene to the melting of Arctic ice in the Anthropocene, and spanning the northern part of the continent in a series of finely-honed thematic essays, the book offers a wide, unusual, and thought-provoking view of the country. You are invited to join co-editor Graeme Wynn and speakers Wade Davis, Tzeporah Berman, and Ian Gill for a lively, in-depth, discussion about The Nature of Canada. Marsha Lederman, Western Arts Correspondent for The Globe and Mail the will moderate the discussion.

Wade Davis is a writer and photographer whose work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, Africa to Australia, Polynesia to the Arctic. Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society from 2000 to 2013, he is currently Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Author of 22 books, including One River, The Wayfinders and Into the Silence, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. In 2016, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2018 he became an Honorary Citizen of Colombia.

Tzeporah Berman, BA, MES, LLD (honoris causa) has a long record of creating, leading, and winning major environmental campaigns and negotiating significant government and corporate policy victories. Tzeporah was the coordinator of one of the largest civil disobedience protests in Canada’s history in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia and one of the creators and lead negotiators of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement where her work helped protect 6 million hectares of old growth forests. She co-founded Stand.earth (previously known as ForestEthics) where she has led many corporate campaigns and was the co-director Greenpeace International’s Global Climate and Energy program. She is also an Adjunct Professor of the York University Faculty of Environmental Studies, and was appointed to the BC Government Climate Leadership Team, and Co-chaired Alberta’s Oilsands Advisory Working Group. Her book, This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge, was published by Knopf Canada in 2011. Berman was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 2013 by the University of British Columbia. She is the mother of two boys and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Ian Gill, is the founding President of Ecotrust Canada (1994 to 2010), and subsequently Founding Executive Director of Ecotrust Australia, former Vancouver Sun and CBC Television journalist. Ian Gill has written several books on British Columbia, and currently is a co-creator of a new initiative on the West Coast of North America called Salmon Nation.

Moderator: Marsha Lederman is the Western Arts Correspondent for The Globe and Mail, where she writes about books and publishing, film, TV, visual art, theatre, dance and other cultural matters. Marsha moved to Vancouver from Toronto in 2007, when she joined The Globe. Before that, Marsha worked for CBC Radio, where her positions included National Arts Reporter. Prior to that, she held a number of positions in commercial radio, including hosting her own talk show. In August 2019, she published a lengthy feature in The Globe and Mail about climate change and the arts.