Like most of us, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson drinks water every day. 

It’s an ordinary act. But the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist says it’s also a deep expression of our connection to the natural world.

In recent years, Simpson has come to see her body as a node that “connects, through water, to every other living being and every other group of people on the planet,” she said during an interview with Métis artist Christi Belcourt at the Toronto Reference Library in April, adding that “our women have been walking around lakes and bringing attention to water for years and years and years.” 

The intuition that water is a connective force has grounded Simpson’s recent work, from her 2021 record Theory of Ice, which was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, to her latest book, Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead. In that book, Simpson listens to and learns from water as she imagines a world beyond the myriad social injustices of our time. She draws on her deep familiarity with Nishnaabe knowledge and lifeways — learned in part through a decades-long apprenticeship with Doug Williams, an Elder from Curve Lake First Nation near Peterborough, Ont. — and brings it to bear on our shared contemporary moment.

Simpson has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Manitoba, and adds her latest record, Live Like the Sky — released this Friday, Oct. 24 — to a long list of artistic accomplishments.

As Simpson awaited the album’s release, she took a moment to answer The Narwhal’s Moose Questionnaire. Here’s what she had to say about land-based learning, making awe a regular practice and the items in her “emotional support backpack.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. All opinions are the subject’s own.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

This is a dorky answer but the most awe-inspiring natural sight I’ve witnessed is mino bimaadiziwin — the continuous rebirth and reproduction of life on our shared planet. The ecological network that reproduces life. The water cycle. The moon. The spiritual and material strains that connect us. Our only responsibility is to live within that system and bring forth more life. Not just human life, but all life.

For me the trick is to find awe and inspiration in every piece of the natural world and in every Indigenous homeland and body of water, regardless of how much harm they carry from extraction, neglect and exploitation.

Also monarch butterflies. The whole “being soup in a tiny sleeping bag hanging on a milkweed plant to rebuild yourself into the most fragile weird flying saucer thing that travels en masse to Mexico, and knows how to wing your way across Lake Ontario as a warm-up.” Like come on, do that humans.

Also I was at the Mnoominkewin Festival at Curve Lake First Nation in September celebrating wild rice. I was down on the shore of Chemong Lake and a large group of participants were in canoes planting seeds in a growing rice bed. That was a tremendous thing to witness. The wild rice on that lake used to be so thick the lake looked like a prairie. That was all destroyed by the Trent Severn Waterway, cottage development and pesticides, so to see this resurgence of a cherished Nishnaabeg way of caring for our community was pretty wonderful.

The return of wild rice in Michi Saagiig territory is “a tremendous thing to witness,” Leanne Betasamosake Simpson says. Photo: Vanessa Tignanelli / The Narwhal

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed outside of Canada?

The Sakiya project is a land-based education project in the West Bank in Palestine, whose vision is: “Liberation through a society whose confidence is rooted in traditional and contemporary ecological practices, whose tolerance echoes nature’s diversity, whose generosity springs from collective labour, whose creativity is enriched by the intersections between art, science and agriculture and whose prosperity is shared beyond boundaries.” 

I visited the centre during the Palestine Festival of Literature in 2023 and really loved to see all the ways they were deepening their connection to their homeland, to cultural production and creative practice and to sharing that knowledge.

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill. 

I’d put tobacco down and ask a moose to give up its life for me, so that I could share the meat, bones, hide and nose with people in our communities. One moose can nourish a lot of people.

I’d live in sin with a beaver. Their orange chisel-like incisors! Their nictitating membrane! Nishnaabeg people have a story of someone who married a beaver and we gained a tremendous insight into how to live with beavers as a result. 

I’d kiss a lynx, entirely because I think the shyness and reluctance on both of our parts would make consent and the actual kiss next to impossible to pull off.

Outdoor cats: yes or no?

All the power to lynxes, bobcats, mountain lions and cougars.

Name one person who could significantly help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to.

All the fascists, elected officials, genocide deniers, billionaires and tech bros. 

And all of us. If each one of us found three people and organized to make something in our local communities better, we would be making a different future.

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

The Great Lakes made me.

Lake Ontario is a defining feature of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s territory. “The Great Lakes made me,” the scholar and artist says. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

This is another dorky answer. I turned off the robots and looked up the actual study, and read it because I highly recommend critical thought. This study is dated. It focused on men and women in the United States. It conforms to a colonial gender binary and erases queer and gender fluid identities. It seems to not account for other factors like race, education level and socio-economic factors. 

The study does clock a change in 2010. Apparently, prior to 2010, men and women had a similar knowledge of climate change and then it shifted, and the study suggests women in the U.S. are less likely than men to know certain scientific facts about climate change. This is another red flag to me because it’s conforming to the Barbie-is-bad-at-math kind of misogyny. We also know that in our present moment, climate deniers, genocide deniers, science deniers, MAGA people and the right target and recruit young white men and that they were successful in getting Trump elected. That’s the issue we should be studying and organizing against. 

In Indigenous communities all genders are concerned about climate change because our ancestors saw it was going to be a huge problem once settlers set foot on Turtle Island, disregarded our sovereignties, laws and ethical practices and imposed colonialism and capitalism on us. 

Sorry, I went all professor there.

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

I’m wishing for the empty Pacific.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (fifth from right) spends a lot of time in the North teaching Indigenous youth, including through hide-tanning courses such as this one. Photo: Sandy Gordon

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

I’m on the road a lot and so my backpack is actually an emotional support backpack, jammed with everything from portable chargers to nail clippers to tea bags to a portable espresso maker. One time my emotional support backpack broke in the Vancouver airport and the 4,000 items in it were spilling out as I was running for a connecting flight. I ended up having to buy a large tote bag which my kids call “the millennial mom bag,” even though it’s pretty obvious from this answer I’m generation X.

What’s the farthest north you’ve ever been and what did you do there?

I spent a lot of time in the North teaching in Denendeh, Kaska Dena territory and Inuvik, which is part of Gwichi’in and Inuvialuit homelands, for the Dechinta Centre of Research and Learning, which is based in Yellowknife. It’s an Indigenous-led, land-based post-secondary education program. We take Elders, students and their children out on the land to learn from and with the land in a multi-generational Indigenous context.

The students spend part of the day learning from Elders and part of the day learning from people like me, and they can earn Indigenous Studies credits from the University of British Columbia. We provide childcare, meals, accommodation and all kinds of academic and wellness support to ensure that we are channelling resources into northern Indigenous communities and to make sure our programming is meaningful to people of all genders and sexual orientations. 

I’ve also done writing workshops in Sapmi (northern Finland, Sweden and Norway). I think the farthest north I’ve been is Tuktoyaktuk in Inuvialuit territory but it might be Igloolik in Nunavut. This year I helped teach hide-tanning courses in Inuvik with Montana and Delaney Prynuk. It was pretty amazing tanning hides near the former sites of residential schools.

Finding myself in blood, flesh, veins and bug bites — life at a hide camp for Two-Spirit Indigenous youth

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

I drink water. Every day.

Yes, you have to choose: smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Maple smoked salmon.

Would you rather be invited to visit David and Victoria Beckham at their Muskoka, Ont., cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex at their B.C. oceanic escape?

No.

Camping: yes or no?

Yes.

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Basia Bulat is running on a busy schedule these days. The Montreal-based singer-songwriter’s back from touring her latest album, Basia’s Palace, which she performed across Canada all spring and summer, but her calendar is still full.

While juggling a successful music career is demanding, it’s a different duty that’s been occupying much of Bulat’s time lately: daycare drop-offs and pick-ups. The multi-Juno-nominated autoharpist and Canadian folk-pop darling says she made her seventh album “in all the small hours of the night, when I was going through this period of time that many call matrescence.”

The mother to two young daughters remembers singing some of the album’s first songs while her youngest was just an infant, rocking her to sleep in her arms. “You’re finding yourself and figuring out who you are, while at the same time letting [yourself] escape into a bit of a fantasy world when the reality is changing nappies and waking up every few hours,” she says. “It’s not very magical or mystical, but at the same time, it is actually quite psychedelic.”

This transformational period prompted Bulat to reflect on her own childhood, which informed the songs on the new record. Now, she’s finding renewed inspiration by playing the music she made so quietly “super loud, on all the big stages.”

Originally from Etobicoke, Ont., but based in Montreal for the last decade, Bulat finds joy in watching her backyard garden grow and her daughters explore the teeming life around them one insect and plant at a time.

Here’s what else she had to share about her relationship with the natural world — including her soft spot for a tiny four-legged crooner — when she took our Moose Questionnaire.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. All opinions are the subject’s own.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

That’s very hard, because I’ve been to almost every province and territory, with the exception of Nunavut. But the most breathtaking has probably been the view of the Klondike, and just getting to the Yukon. It’s somewhere I was obsessed with getting to since I was really young. When I finally made it, I made an entire record up there, inspired by that trip, called Heart Of My Own. A lot of the melodies came up there. The beauty, the quiet, the energy, the air — everything.

The Yukon holds a special place in Basia Bulat’s heart. It’s where she recorded her 2010 album Heart Of My Own. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd / The Narwhal

But I also have to say Prince Edward Island. I’m so in love with the south shore of P.E.I, when the tide goes out and the red sand goes on forever and ever. [The Yukon and P.E.I.] are almost tied now. They are completely different, but I feel like they’re equal loves.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed outside of Canada?

There’s so many. We live on this beautiful jewel of a planet. I was lucky to get to go to Australia on a tour in 2019, two times, and the second time I gave myself quite a bit of time to explore Queensland and go to the Great Barrier Reef. That was probably one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life.

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill

I don’t want to kill anything! But I’ll kiss a moose, because there’s that great Robert Munsch book about the moose kiss. I’ll marry a beaver, because I think they’d be really good at keeping things together and a great partner. And if I had to kill one, just symbolically, let’s say the black fly, because I’ve suffered a lot from them in my medium-long life.

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that everyone should know about.

This one I really love. It’s just a very special and not super-known cause. It’s a group of people working to protect the western chorus frog. I’m going to give you the name in French: l’équipe de rétablissement de la renaitte faux-grillon du Québec. It’s a very beautiful, super tiny frog, the western chorus frog. It’s got a beautiful song. They’re vulnerable in Quebec right now and there’s so much pressure on their habitat from development, agriculture — from all sides.

The western chorus frog is found in southwestern Quebec and southern Ontario, and is at risk of extinction in Quebec. The frogs are only a couple centimetres long and have a distinctive call. Photo: Scott Gillingwater

It’s easy for people to forget them because they’re really tiny, so not everybody has seen one. They’re our tiniest cohabitants. This group is working hard to educate people and to preserve the habitat we have for them and get out awareness about the chorus frog. They’ve even partnered with the biodome in Montreal, to help move populations that are endangered to a new section. 

I fell in love with the frog myself. I should have said kiss the frog, I guess! 

Outdoor cats: yes or no?

Oh yes. I have an outdoor cat and I found him that way — or he found me. I was staying in a cottage in Saguenay and my cat was a kitten at the time. He found me and basically held on with his tiny claws to the screen door until I took him home. I don’t know if someone left him, but I couldn’t change his nature. He was already quite wild.

Tell us about a time you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I change my mind all the time, and I have to, to keep being an artist, so I don’t get stuck in my ways. Every record I’ve ever made has been an exercise in changing my mind.

Tell us about a time you tried to change someone else’s mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I’ve learned the hard way that nobody wins an argument. This is what’s so hard about climate change, because people in many ways feel their identity is threatened, or they feel judgment. It feels like everybody goes from zero to 100 so quickly.

”I change my mind all the time. I have to, to keep being an artist,” says Basia Bulat. Photo: Supplied by Secret City Records

I usually try to live by “show, not tell,” and try to get a sense of where people are coming from. No one likes to be told. Once you start to see each other and meet people where they’re at, some kind of bridge starts to be built. But it’s challenging, so I just try to lead by example and hope that the people around me follow.

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Some of these questions are very unfair. But I’m going to say Great Lakes, just because I grew up going to the lakes — Georgian Bay, Lake Superior. I’m a Great Lakes girl.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

It’s heartbreaking that it’s gendered like that. I know the impacts of climate change on women in the Global South are stronger. Maybe I’m being too generalist when I say this — or maybe it’s my perspective as a mother now — but we call her Mother Earth. This is the mother that brought us all life. It could be that connection. I can’t really give an explanation, but it breaks my heart.

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

I love the Pacific and I love the Atlantic, but I haven’t been up far enough to dip my toe in the Arctic, so I would dip my toe there — if it would come out still, not in a block of ice.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

I’m going to say my Martin guitar. Because I’ve written so many songs on it. I think a lot of people would think it’s beautiful, and it just gives me a beautiful feeling.

What’s the farthest north you’ve ever been and what did you do there?

I think the farthest north is Dawson City, or just north of Dawson City. Some friends drove me a little bit farther north, and that’s where I took the album photographs for Heart Of My Own. It was a life-changing trip.

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

In my garden. I have a little garden, and I try to do something in there every day. Right now, it’s trampled a lot by tiny feet, but we’ve got grapes going, and I have a plum tree. Mostly the garden is feeding the animals, because I can’t get around to harvesting it myself. But the birds and the squirrels are very happy. I’m getting different birds right now, with the grapes I have. I have to figure out what they are — they’re much bigger, and speckled. I haven’t seen them before, in five years of living at this place.

In addition to spending time with her daughters outdoors, Bulat says she grew up influenced by both her mother and grandmother’s green thumbs and affinity for nature. Now, the two women help her in her own garden — “I actually made a record about it,” the musician says of her 2022 album The Garden. Photo: Supplied by Secret City Records

Usually every morning I’m out there, sitting on the back porch with my kiddos and looking for birds. It’s really nice to have even a tiny place. It’s a little bit of heaven.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

Probably my mother and my grandmother. They’re both amazing gardeners. My mom, growing up, really tried to get us up into nature all the time. Camping, going up to an uncle’s cottage whenever she could sneak us in, and just making us go out into the forest. I have so many memories of just wandering around until she would blow this whistle and the dog we had would round up all us kids to come home for supper. 

And my grandmother, I don’t know how she did it, but she had the greenest thumb, so she could just take a branch off of anything and grow it into a tree. There’s a few trees in my mom’s yard now that are maybe 30 feet tall, that started from a stem my grandmother charmed. So I’m hoping some of that passed down to me.

Whose relationship with the natural world would you most like to have an impact on?

My daughters. I’m trying to do that now, all the time. We just spent the summer on Prince Edward Island, and right now we’re really into bugs — understanding that they’re not all scary and that we can learn about them. My daughter is very into snails right now, and hermit crabs and starfish. I’m getting amazing questions from my four-year-old about, like, groundwater, and where the water comes from. And why we don’t just throw things away, and why we have to do all these things like recycling and composting. With all the questions, it’s like, oh yeah, here’s my chance to let it set in early.

Prince Edward Island and its red-sand beaches are a favourite destination for Basia Bulat and her family. Photo: Giordano Campini / The Canadian Press

Yes, you have to choose: smoked salmon or maple syrup?

That’s easy. Maple syrup — on everything.

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

I want to visit Raffi on Salt Spring Island. He’s always posting his beautiful views and I would love to go visit him in B.C.

Camping: yes or no?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I’m not a great portage-multiday-trekking person, or someone who’s super skilled in terms of survival skills, but I love camping, and hopefully I’ve still got time to work my way up to that level.

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As a young boy growing up near the Bow River in Calgary, Kevin Van Tighem followed his father into the woods for hunting and fishing expeditions. Those trips — undertaken in all manner of weather — provided Van Tighem with “early and intimate connections” to the natural world, creating memories he treasures decades later.

It was the beginning of a life dedicated to learning from the landscapes of southern Alberta. A biologist by training, Van Tighem worked at several of Alberta’s national parks during his career, eventually becoming superintendent of Banff National Park before retiring in 2011.

Since then, Van Tighem has turned to writing as a way to share his love for the native prairies, Rocky Mountain foothills and other ecosystems that matter most to him. He’s penned hundreds of essays, articles and stories, some of which have been collected into books such as Wild Roses Are Worth It and Our Place: Changing the Nature of Alberta.

Van Tighem told us his writing is part of an effort to “re-story” our culture and help readers to feel their way back into a healthier relationship with nature. “Most of us have a very dysfunctional relationship with place,” he said. “We have built our culture around the othering of our relatives – reducing them to resources, reducing ourselves to consumers, reducing every relationship to a transaction.”

“We all need help with how we know and value our relations.”

As his latest book, Understory: An Ecologist’s Memoir of Loss and Hope, hits bookshelves across the country this fall, we asked Van Tighem to take The Narwhal’s Moose Questionnaire.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity — all opinions are the subject’s own.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

That is such a hard question, but I finally settled on a golden eagle I once saw in Banff. It was on the Panther River, a couple long days into the backcountry. It came in high, and I could see that it was carrying something, and then it dropped its load. Probably a marmot or something about that size. Whatever it was just dropped like a shot, and then the eagle tucked into a long, curving dive and, just when it should have crashed into the trees, swept up, grabbed its prey out of midair, and continued the same curve up to land on the side of its nest. 

I’ve never seen such a display of perfect athleticism and skill. And it seemed clear that the eagle had done it for the sheer pleasure of it. It certainly inspired awe in me.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed outside of Canada?

White-throated swifts skimming along the edge of the Grand Canyon. They’re one of the fastest birds in the world, with long pointed wings and a little chittering call. The sunset light turned them pink as they went skimming past, with those layers of ancient earth memory fading into shadow below. Turn around, and it’s just a quiet evening in the ponderosa pine forest; turn back and there is that aerial dance over an enormity of time and space too immense to possibly comprehend. It was magic.

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill.

Kiss: a cutthroat trout, underwater, in a mountain creek. No tongue involvement, though. There have to be boundaries.

Marry: a wolf. The places we would go together! And it would be nice to have a mate who’s also a hunting companion, and better at it than me. But then there’s those guns and snares, I suppose. Still: lovers in a dangerous time. It could be one of those tragic, doomed loves. A Boris Pasternak kind of thing.

Kill: horseflies. I know they have their place on this planet. But they’re such ruthless little thugs. Sometimes the death penalty just seems warranted.

Facing the choice of which Canadian animal to kiss, Kevin Van Tighem chooses the cutthroat trout. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Narwhal

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that everyone should know about.

At this stage of my life it’s almost impossible to name just one. I’ve been privileged to know and work with so many. 

But I think I’d name Nikki Jean and Patrick Tanner. They were inspired, after scrambling some peaks in Waterton Lakes National Park, to climb up and put smudge boxes on as many of those summits as they could in order to demonstrate the sacredness of those places to other visitors who were leaving less appropriate mementos behind. Given the importance of Ninaistako (Chief Mountain) in the Blackfoot way of being, they then went on to organize a series of hikes to its summits for other Kainai and Piikani people who had never been there. They didn’t do it as part of some grand initiative, but just because it was something they could do and it felt necessary and important. And I believe it was.

You don’t need to be some famous scientist or passionate political activist to do something meaningful for the environment; you just need to step up and step out.

Name one person who could significantly help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to.

The temptation is to say Elon Musk or King Charles or Pope Leo or even (heaven help us) Gina Rinehart. But I think the one person who is most critical at helping to mitigate the climate crisis is the one we see in the mirror each morning. Each of us chooses daily how to spend our money, how to transport ourselves around, who to talk with and what to talk about. Each of us votes, and each of us has the capacity to tell politicians what they need to do to earn our votes and retain our support. 

Right now, it’s hard to have any faith in democracy — certainly here in Alberta where we have a government that seems determined to open our mountain headwaters to coal mining regardless of the opposition, and even more so when we see the tragedy unfolding on the other side of the 49th parallel. But all power, ultimately, comes from people, and when people organize their lives around matters of principle, they become unstoppable. Ignore Trump; remember Ghandi.

Outdoor cats: yes or no?

No. For crying out loud. There are three billion fewer birds on this continent than when I was a kid. Why turn pampered, well-fed predators loose on those that remain when we can choose not to?

Tell us about a time you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I’ve mostly changed my mind about domestic cattle. 

The more I look around at the ecosystems that most matter to me: native prairie and the montane foothills of southern Alberta, the more I realize that my simplistic “beef yummy; cows bad” position was in conflict with what the land was telling me. The last, best surviving tracts of healthy prairie are those that are being managed for cattle production, by ranchers. The rest have been lost to crop monocultures, urban sprawl, gravel mining and a host of other insults. Native temperate grasslands are among the most threatened ecosystems on the planet and where they survive it’s almost always because ranchers have managed to keep everyone else’s economic ambitions at bay. 

Having said that, I have no love for the intensive livestock production systems that produce much of our beef. A lot of cows are raised wrong and treated horribly. But I’ve become a strong advocate for policies that perpetuate cattle grazing as an economic use of native grasslands. These habitats survive in no small part because of cattle ranching. It would be easier if things were more binary, more black and white, but they rarely are.

Meet the people saving Canada’s native grasslands

Tell us about a time you tried to change someone else’s mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

One time I remember trying, and failing, was when three of us got a meeting with the Alberta government’s environment minister, maybe fifteen years ago or so. We were asking for land use changes that would reduce the devastation being wrought by motorized recreation and industrial clear-cutting in the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains. She brought a deputy minister with her. The minister leaned forward, asked questions, tried to look really engaged, because of course she was a politician and that was her job. And maybe she even was interested. But the deputy minister leaned back, out of her line of sight, and sneered at us through the whole meeting. I left knowing that my fifteen minutes with her wasn’t going to carry as much weight as that deputy minister’s four hours with her on their drive back to Edmonton.

Yes, you have to choose: Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Rocky Mountains. I grew up with them on the western edge of my world. They inspired my imagination of the wild from before I can even remember and, later, became the places where I lived some of my best days. Nothing against the Great Lakes, but they’re outside my home range. Others, no doubt, have been inspired by them. And that’s good, too.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

I don’t know, but I do believe it’s true. Certainly in Alberta, where the oil industry has spent half a century doing all it can to divert young men into oil jobs where they become addicted to big paycheques. A lot of men — and it’s mostly men in those oil jobs, even today — become stubborn defenders of that industry. 

I think a lot of gender roles and gender perspectives are still hard-wired into our culture, so there may be a tendency for women to worry about family and community health and well-being more, and men to feel they have to be cool and just tough it out. Whatever the reason, it’s one reason why I think it’s a hopeful sign that more women are in decision-making roles and active in political life than in the past. 

But again, I’m from Alberta: we currently have some unfortunate exceptions here.

As a lover of native prairie ecosystems, Kevin Van Tighem has changed his mind about cattle ranching. “The last, best surviving tracts of healthy prairie are those that are being managed for cattle production, by ranchers,” he says. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

The Pacific. Those waters lap against the shores of Haida Gwaii, Kamchatka, the Philippines, all those places that are most unlike the places from which my ancestors came. There are five species of salmon in those waters, and in their annual spawning runs they marry the sea to the mountains behind me in ways that really fire the imagination.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

My senses. And my health.

What’s the farthest north you’ve ever been and what did you do there?

When I retired, my nephew Graham called me from Whitehorse and said that, after all the years that he had spent tagging along on hunting trips with me in southern Canada, he’d like to treat me to a caribou hunt. We ended up at a small lake near the head of the Pelly River. Only thing is, there were no caribou there. We ended up with a moose instead, and I drove almost non-stop back from Whitehorse, through unseasonably warm weather, to get my two quarters of that animal home so that we could get it into the freezer before it spoiled. We ate Yukon memories for a couple years, and they were all good.

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

Of late, I find myself either walking along the Highwood River floodplain through cottonwood forests or sitting beside the Oldman River listening to what it has to say. It has a great deal more to say than I can understand, but I believe it’s worth listening anyway.

If you could ask one person, alive or dead, about their thoughts on climate change, who would it be?

It might be interesting to get Mark Twain’s opinion. It might not be well-informed, but it would certainly be colourful.

Yes, you have to choose: smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Smoked salmon, if I really have to choose. Salmon are like bison or northern caribou – they are sacred beings that feed our souls and our relationship with the world as much as they feed our bodies. But fortunately, I don’t have to choose: we can get smoked, maple syrup-cured, wild sockeye salmon here. Canada, eh?

Kevin Van Tighem’s new book is described as a memoir that “journeys into the complexities of nature, grief and the search for meaning in the autumn of life.” Photo: Supplied by Rocky Mountain Books

Who, in your life, has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

I would have to say my father, Jack Van Tighem. Dad was an introvert, a man of rigid principles, who allowed himself and his family few indulgences. He worked hard, and he worked long hours, because of his value system. And on weekends, or during his vacation time in summer, he fished and hunted. In his view, that’s what Saturdays and holidays were for, regardless of the weather. I think a couple times I came close to serious hypothermia while fishing in sleet storms or hunting during prairie blizzards. 

But that regimen of getting out into nature, in all her moods, at all seasons, was what brought me into early and intimate connections with the places and fellow beings that now pretty much form my identity. I still find myself dwelling on memories from those brief childhood years tagging along behind Dad.

Whose relationship with the natural world would you most like to have an impact on?

Everyone’s, I guess. We are such a disconnected culture; most of us have a very dysfunctional relationship with place, with other beings, with the real world. We have built our culture around the othering of our relatives — reducing them to resources, reducing ourselves to consumers, reducing every relationship to a transaction. I overstate it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fundamentally true. My latest book, Understory, goes into this more deeply.

In my writing, I try to do my part in re-storying our culture, in hopes that some readers at least will start to rethink and re-feel the way we live. We are not in a good place these days, and we may be heading for some very dark times. I don’t have any particular demographic or target I would like to have an impact on; our problem is cultural and so it involves almost all of us. We all need help with how we know and value our relations. So I suppose the answer is: everyone’s. I’m still working on myself, frankly.

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

I think I’d choose the Beckhams’ Muskoka cottage, mostly out of curiosity. I don’t know Ontario’s landscapes very well. First thing I’d do is ditch both of them, and head off into the woods with my binoculars and a sandwich. There’d be some things worth meeting there, I’m sure. Trilliums, maybe. Prothonotary warblers, perhaps. Beckhams and Sussexes, though? Meh.

Camping: yes or no?

Yes. But at my age that comes with new issues. Like getting up and down off the ground: it’s not as straightforward as it was back in the day. And those dark night visits to the outhouse, of which aging increases the frequency. But the patter of rain on a tent fly, the sound of birdsong through canvas, the smell of morning coffee mixed with woodsmoke — of course it’s yes.

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If you’re a podcast listener with big feelings, then you’re a fan of Heavyweight. In which case, we have great news: it’s back! A new season debuts Sept. 18, after a near two-year break caused by Spotify’s silly cancellation of its smartest shows. Host Jonathan Goldstein will once again be diving into guests’ emotional lives, helping them gently pull apart painful incidents or relationships, then put themselves back together again. 

While the former host of CBC’s Wiretap has lived in Chicago, New York City and now Minneapolis, his parents and many close friends remain in his childhood home of Montreal. As he told us, he’s “such a city guy,” but he’s ready to change that — at least a little, now that he’s morphed from a childless Brooklynite into a Midwestern dad. 

Here’s what Goldstein had to say about his relationship with the natural world when we asked him to take our Moose Questionnaire. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. All opinions are the subjects’ own.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada? 

Niagara Falls. The Canadian side. The money side. The filet of the falls.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed outside of Canada? 

Our child being born. It happened in a Manhattan hospital. My wife was very brave.

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill. 

Kiss: Just a platonic kiss on the cheek? A beaver. With tongue? A salmon.

Marry: Being married to a salmon would be demanding — what with the spawning upstream. But at our wedding reception we’d have free salmon roe to eat.

Kill: Canadian salmon roe.

Jonathan Goldstein would like to kiss a salmon like this one, with tongue. Photo: Jennifer Gauthier / The Narwhal

Outdoor cats: yes or no?

I wouldn’t personally feel comfortable owning an outdoor cat. I’d always be worried about it.

Yes, you have to choose: Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes? 

To stare at, the Rocky Mountains. To swim in, the Great Lakes.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

This is a sad piece of news. Maybe it’s because little boys are raised to want to conquer the world, not nurture it. Also, in general, they seem to enjoy sci-fi more than women do, so maybe they think rocket ships will save us.

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

Either one as long as it’s near a boardwalk that serves pizza.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

It isn’t especially beautiful, but I always take my Sony mini-recorder with me whenever I make a reporting trip.

What’s the farthest north you’ve ever been and what did you do there?

The Boundary Waters between Ontario and Minnesota. While everyone went canoeing, I stayed in my room and read comics.

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

I walk my dog.

Yes, you have to choose: smoked salmon or maple syrup?

I think you know the answer to that one.

Would you rather be invited to visit David and Victoria Beckham at their Muskoka, Ont., cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex at their B.C. oceanic escape?

Either way, I’d politely decline. I like my own space.

Camping: yes or no?

I don’t come from camping stock and fear getting mauled by a bear and how stupid I’d look getting mauled by a bear, but I want my son to be a camper, so I’ll be tent shopping pretty soon.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Consider the beaver. Iconic Canadian rodent. National symbol of industriousness and resourcefulness. Sometimes a nuisance. Cute, furry and cutting a fine figure on our nickels since 1937. 

For author Glynnis Hood, beavers have occupied significant mental real estate for decades. In fact, the animals have become such an important part of her life’s work that they’ve made her something of a beaver expert. Earlier this week, the professor emerita of environmental sciences at the University of Alberta celebrated the second-edition release of her 2011 book The Beaver Manifesto.

Hood has studied how semi-aquatic mammals — mainly beavers — interact with and influence their environments for many years. The subtitle of her book alludes to what she’s discovered in doing so: “Conservation, Conflict and the Future of Wetlands.” 

Beavers may be a beloved national icon, but there are some who decry the animals’ destruction of natural environments — think, taking down beautiful trees — to build their homes. What Hood has learned in her research paints a more nuanced and favourable view: beavers can help mitigate climate change and drought in the wetlands and other habitats they occupy.

Born and raised in B.C.’s Creston Valley, where she spent her summers boating off the shores of Kootenay Lake, Hood now lives on Miquelon Lake in Alberta’s Camrose County, where her closest neighbours are a family of — you guessed it — beavers. 

Here’s what she had to share about her relationship to the natural world in our Moose Questionnaire.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity — all opinions are the subject’s own.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

Chown Creek in northern Jasper National Park. When I was a backcountry warden in Jasper through the 1990s, we would ride into side valleys and check seldom-used trails. Seeing flowers growing up to my horse’s belly and waterfalls flowing right out of the sides of the cliffs of the surrounding mountains stopped me in my tracks. It also helped that there was no rain or snow that day. There was so much beautiful country that the horses and I rode through to access the area, but something about that view stays with me even today.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed outside of Canada?

Watching a group of mountain gorillas at Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. Two of the trackers quietly indicated for me to follow them while other people in the group were photographing other gorillas. The trackers and I soon came into this patch of forest to see a family of gorillas complete with babies, parents and juveniles. It was among the best 30 minutes of my life.

Glynnis Hood grew up in B.C.’s Creston Valley and spent formative years working as a backcountry warden in Jasper National Park, pictured above. She would choose the Rocky Mountains over the Great Lakes any day. Photo: David Moskowitz

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill.

Kiss? I suppose the right answer is cod, although the screech owl might do me in. Marry a beaver, because it comes with a house, works hard and never fails to bring home food. And kill a mosquito. Enough said.

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that everyone should know about.

The people at the Beaver Hills Biosphere in east-central Alberta. The multi-agency group behind this UNESCO biosphere started from the ground up and have become a model of community engagement, environmental stewardship and integrating Indigenous perspectives and reconciliation into everything they do.

Name one person who could significantly help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to.

Each and every one of us.

Outdoor cats: yes or no?

Only wild ones — cougars, lynx, bobcats, etc.

Tell us about a time you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

When I first started working with Parks Canada in the late 1980s, I thought that national parks were untouched wilderness and were free from human development and exploitation. Very soon I saw the rapid development of infrastructure inside the park. It was then that I realized that everything is managed — either to protect it or exploit it (sometimes at the same time).

Tell us about a time you tried to change someone else’s mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

As a professor, I worked hard not to tell students what to think, but encouraged them to learn to see the world from multiple perspectives, so they could develop their own ideas. Some, however, became as engaged with beaver ecology as I was, once I put them on snowshoes for our annual winter beaver lodge occupancy surveys. Some are still coming back years later.

Hood lives on Miquelon Lake, in Alberta’s Camrose County, and wakes up every morning next to a family of her favourite animals. Photo: Manuel Valdes / Associated Press

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Rocky Mountains. I was born and raised in the mountains and they will always be home.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

Part of me wants to say that women are more aware of the influence of heat on their daily lives, but overall, I think women are used to listening and observing more than men. This added awareness reveals the obvious changes more readily.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

My mother gave me a Swiss Army watch when I was a backcountry warden in Jasper. My last watch was broken when I fell from one of my horses (I was not broken). She went to the local sports store in my hometown and asked the owner to sell her the best watch he had that wouldn’t let me down in any situation. I still wear it more than 30 years later. It has never failed me.

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

I live next to a beaver pond, which is part of a provincial park. Sometimes I eat breakfast while watching moose sleep on my lawn. At night the owls, coyotes and red-necked grebes sing me to sleep.

If you could ask one person, alive or dead, their thoughts on climate change, who would it be?

Jane Goodall. Her perspectives across various environments and accumulated insights over time would be invaluable.

Jane Goodall is another pioneering animal researcher whose favourite species became her life’s work. Hood would like to hear her thoughts on climate change. Photo: Colorado State University Archives / Everett Collection

Smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Maple syrup, sometimes on salmon.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

My mother. One of my earliest memories is of her pointing out robins on our front lawn and explaining how to distinguish between the male and female and how they fit into the natural world around us.

Whose relationship with the natural world would you most like to have an impact on?

People who never get the opportunity to interact with nature outside of urban centres. Sometimes that one experience can set off a new way of seeing the world.

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

Neither. I will always be partial to our family cabin on Kootenay Lake — you just can’t beat the view.

Camping: yes or no?

Yes, regardless of season.

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Talk about a Canadian celebrity lineup — no, not Will Arnett or Cobie Smulders, although they’re cool, too. But neither is as nationally beloved as the characters they voice for the goofy animated series Super Team Canada: a past-his-prime hockey player and an anthropomorphized Niagara Falls, two members of a gang of C-list superheroes tasked with saving humanity. 

The series, which has been renewed for a second season, was created by brothers Rob and Joel H. Cohen, who grew up in Calgary and moved to Los Angeles to pursue their television dreams. Having achieved a lineup of Emmy awards, the Cohens felt it was time to work together on a Canadian project. What they came up with was a team of highly mediocre heroes teaming up to fight low-ambition bad guys set on committing low-stakes crimes, like raiding a maple syrup reserve or unleashing evil Wayne Gretzky clones. 

The short episodes are highly unserious and full of inside jokes — in one episode, the problem at hand is Canadian bureaucracy — and star Arnett, Smulders and Kids in the Hall’s Kevin McDonald, along with some up-and-comers. It’s co-produced by Vancouver animation studio Atomic Cartoons and Bell’s Crave network, as well as Arnett’s Electric Avenue. 

The Narwhal caught up with the Cohens for the Moose Questionnaire, to learn about their enduring love of the Rocky Mountains and other ways they appreciate the natural world.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. All opinions are the subjects’ own.

What is the most awe-inspiring natural sight that you have seen in Canada?

Rob: I would say it’s a tie, quite honestly. Niagara Falls, I think, is incredible. And where we grew up in Banff. I just think the Canadian Rockies and the foothills going into the Rockies are one of the greatest things on the planet.

Joel: I’m sure many of your other interviewees have said the same thing — the northern lights. I used to work a lot at a summer camp that was a little remote and a little bit north, and I would see the northern lights almost every night and it was never disappointing. Five out of five stars on Yelp for the northern lights.

And what is the most awe-inspiring sight you’ve seen outside of Canada?

Joel: Only because it’s first to mind, I’ve been to Joshua Tree National Park, and it’s spectacular. I’ve never seen a Joshua tree anywhere but there.

Rob: When I was in Kenya, we went into this valley that was a crater, and [there were] animals naturally walking around. You could also see Lake Victoria and that, I remember, just made a huge impact because of what’s going on around you. But you also realize — this is the cradle of civilization. You’re standing right in the middle of it. So it was pretty impressive.

Rob and Joel Cohen grew up in the Rocky Mountains, which Rob calls “one of the greatest things on the planet.” Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

Choose three iconic Canadian animals and pick one each to kiss, marry and kill.

Rob: There’s no question that I want to marry a loon. I would love to wake up to that sound. I would kiss a grizzly, just because it’s always going to be exciting. And what was the third one? Kill? I have to say gophers, just because they tore up our neighborhood as children.

Joel: One time I was driving in Lethbridge — it’s as glamorous as it sounds — and I saw this incredibly fat porcupine waddling across the road. I am going to choose that same porcupine for all three of those: kiss, marry, kill. That defines our relationship over time. I pulled over, we got talking. One thing led to another. And then the killing [was] a gentle mercy kill at the end of its life. It was full of tears. We had a wonderful relationship.

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that everyone should know about.

Joel: There’s a group I really like in L.A. called Heal the Bay. The ocean here is so horribly, disgustingly polluted and these people, all volunteers, try not only to do what they can to help heal the bay, but also are really good about publishing grades for different parts of the ocean. So if you’re going to take your kids to the beach, you know which part of the coastline is healthy.

Rob: My answer is slightly weird, but I actually think Parks Canada as an entity does a really, really good job taking care of the Canadian environment. I’ve been impressed whenever I’ve spoken to anybody that works for Parks Canada, just the diverse terrain Canada has, and they’re all seemingly experts at it. So I was very impressed with them.

Canada just made national parks free this summer — can we love nature without hurting it?

Name a person or group that could help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to.

Rob: Well, obviously any world leaders, like the current occupant of the White House, the prime minister of Canada. Any of the legit world leaders are the ones that could absolutely do it. I would also say corporate leaders, but there’s too much disinterest or corruption, which is sad.

Joel: Mine’s the same. But I’ll just say, we have such a giant — particularly in the U.S. — billionaire class. There’s lots of horrible things they can address their attention to, but the environment is certainly one of them. If they really wanted to, people could.

Outdoor cats. Yes or no?

Joel: I don’t believe in cats. I’ve yet to see a cat, and if I did, I would consider it some sort of dog in disguise. I don’t think they exist, nor should they.

Tell us about a time that you changed your mind about something. It can be environmental, but it doesn’t have to.

Rob: I would say I changed my mind about wind farms, because I didn’t think that they were going to generate that much power or really be that functional. And now I’m a big fan, no pun intended. I think they’re great. Especially in countries like Canada, where you have these huge, craggy, windy areas, why not use them to maximize generating electricity?

Tell us about a time that you tried to change someone else’s mind about something.

Rob: I was writing on a show years ago, and had been there for months, and a guy found out I was Canadian, and had an actual meltdown and thought I was a spy because I seemed American. He thought that I had been infiltrating the United States and I had to convince him that we were basically like Americans, but not exactly, and that made things worse. So I just gave up, because he was clearly too stupid to talk to. But I tried.

Rob Cohen says he changed his mind about wind farms. He used to think they wouldn’t produce much electricity. Now, he’s ”a bag fan, no pun intended.“ Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

You have to choose. Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Rob: Easy, Rocky Mountains.

Joel: I agree, Rocky Mountains. But I do tip my hat to the guys in marketing for calling them the Great Lakes. I mean, they’re good lakes. But I just like the boldness of declaring them Great Lakes. Whoever made that choice, I respect the choice.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

Joel: I have two daughters that are young women. They’re very concerned, but then I just attribute it to their generation. Rob, your son seems to be pretty hip to the environment and conscious of recycling and the value of it. I hope it’s more generational than gender-based, but at least somebody’s concerned.

If you could dip a toe off of Canada’s coastline, what ocean would you pick?

Joel: Pacific. There’s no question.

Rob: I would say the Pacific. But I’m going to add that when I have done that in Nova Scotia, I just thought it was incredible. Thank God I have two toes, so I’ll say both. But if I have to pick one, it’s the Pacific.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing that you’ve owned for a long time?

Joel: Does it have to be a physical possession? I’ll say memory. How about that? That’s very esoteric. It’s nice to be able to remember things you’ve seen, places you’ve been. 

Rob: A very beat-up tape measure that our dad gave me as a kid that is incredibly, incredibly small, but it’s come in handy over the decades.

What is the farthest north that you’ve ever been, and what did you do there?

Joel: I was once in Fort McMurray. I was working at this summer camp, which I referred to earlier, and we had to go pick up our boats at a dealership there. So I drove up there to get the boats. I think that’s the furthest north I’ve ever been.

In the Rockies, more and more people are heading to the woods. Are we pushing animals deeper into the night?

What is one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

Joel: I’m a big hiker. We’ve had these horrible fires in L.A. that you might have heard of. [They] really changed the face of all these wonderful, amazing hiking areas. But, normally, I would hike four times a week in the Santa Monica Mountains. There are really amazing trails, even some waterfalls, little creeks. So that was something I used to do, and would love to do again once those come back.

Rob: Yeah, when I walk the dog, there’s some great hikes. They go deep, deep, deep into cactus fields and weird water reserves built in the 1920s. I try to do that a couple times a day. The dog is irritating, so I will take the dog out and try to burn her out.

If you could ask one person, alive or dead, their thoughts on climate change, who would it be?

Joel: I’d love to ask somebody like 100 years in the future to tell us how they solved it. Or they live in a hellscape of nothing because we didn’t solve it. But I’d love to know what the future is in that sense.

Rob: I think somebody like Einstein would be an interesting person to speak to, even though that was not their specialty, just sort of using their brain on a problem that is seemingly easily resolved. I think that would be a great conversation.

Another choice. Smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Rob: That’s a tough one. I would pick smoked salmon because I could eat more of it without feeling sleepy.

Joel: I feel like there’s giant smoked salmon lobbies and maple syrup mafias that are going to lead to bad results from this. But I’m going to go maple syrup. I feel like maple syrup has got more diversity to it, and you could pour it on everything. I think you could always use your maple syrup, whereas smoked salmon — there’s going to be some times you don’t want the smoked salmon.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

Rob: I would actually say our son, because living in L.A. it’s very challenging to find some nice, clean patches of nature. So, especially during COVID, we would just try to find anything we could to introduce him to it.

Joel: Shocking Rob, I might say our mother. She, for whatever reason, chose to live in all these weird small towns in B.C. [such as] Chemainus [and] Sooke. Her forcing us to go to those places to visit her, and then you consequently get to see places, Crofton or Salt Spring Island, which I didn’t really know and have since really come to love. She’s just opened up a lot of those worlds by chasing her wherever she’s living on the globe.

Whose relationship with the natural world would you most like to have an impact on?

Joel: I’d say my kids. One of my daughters is less willing to go for a hike, but my other daughter is very willing to go for a hike. But I would love to expand their viewpoint and just make them feel more comfortable. Not that they’re uncomfortable or scared, but I wish they just felt more adventurous sometimes to go explore the natural world. 

Rob: I don’t know if it counts as a person, but I would love to force the United Nations to go as an entity, some amazing place every six months that is a natural wonder that’s threatened, and then say, “Don’t blow it.” And then, “What are you guys going to do to fix it?” I think that is the only way to really help the global problem.

Would you rather be invited to visit David and Victoria Beckham at their Muskoka, Ont., cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex at their B.C. oceanic escape?

Joel: I think they’d both be fine. I just think the company might be a little bit better with the Beckhams, for my tastes, than Harry and Megan. And luckily enough, we’ve been to both those areas, and actually are going to Muskoka again this summer. So we certainly know Muskoka, but I’m going to choose to hang out with David Beckham over Harry and Meghan.

Rob: I agree.

Camping. Yes or no?

Joel: As a concept, yes. Sure, I’m down. Let’s do it.

Rob: Yeah, camping is great. I haven’t done it in a long time, but I love it. And I don’t know if they still make it, but there’s nothing better than heating up one of those disgusting chickens in a can and then getting rid of it, because you know it’s poisonous. I just love the feeling.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

“Eh, we’re humble Canadians,” is how chef Michael Smith sums up the response from Prince Edward Island’s fishermen when he first began raving about their bluefin tuna catch. The American-born chef has been to Sweden, Tanzania and everywhere in between — and he genuinely believes Canada’s tiniest province has some of the world’s most delicious foods. 

But, he says, it took him a while to convince the farmers, fishers and others who harvested its bounty of how special it was. He first landed on the island 35 years ago, and since then has made it his life’s work to persuade them. 

“Sometimes we need an outside perspective to see our very best,” Smith says. “Changing people’s minds on the interesting value of what’s around me here on Prince Edward Island has instinctively been a part of my approach here for 35 years.” 

Today, Smith and his wife own The Inn at Bay Fortune, where he was a young cook all those years ago. Its menu is highly Island-centric, featuring local catch, food grown on the on-site farm and treats picked wild from the land around it. “We’re one of just a handful of restaurants in North America with a full-time forager,” Smith says. Both his latest TV show, Chef on Fire, and cookbook, Wood, Fire & Smoke, celebrate another passion he gets to practice at the inn: cooking over an open flame.

Here’s what Smith had to share about his relationship with the natural world when he sat down to take our Moose Questionnaire. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. 

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

I think just getting out on the land around me, on Prince Edward Island. I’ve had the opportunity to travel Canada. I’ve seen the mountains. I’ve seen the Prairies. I stood in the Prairies for the first time and felt like the weight of the continent was on my shoulders in this incredibly visceral way. But I come home, and time and time again, it’s Prince Edward Island. It’s those first glimpses as you dip below the flowers of the quilt — the patchwork quilt of the island. I know this island. I know it inside and out. So when I see it at a distance, I see all that time spent exploring every little corner around me. For me, awe-inspiring is not just this thing that you look at from a distance.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural site you’ve witnessed outside of Canada?

New Zealand, Tasmania and the Southern Ocean. That feeling of sailing out of Hobart, Tasmania, heading into the great unknown. It’s the only place on the planet where the wind blows unimpeded, completely around the globe. That was pretty awe-inspiring.

“I come home, and time and time again, it’s Prince Edward Island.” Though Smith has travelled the world, at the end of the day, P.E.I. and its food, people and landscapes will always have his heart. Photo: Mark Spowart / The Canadian Press

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill.

Golly. Well, I guess I would kiss a beaver, marry a fox and kill a bluefin tuna to celebrate.

Name a person or a group doing something meaningful for the environment that everyone should know about.

The good people at the Souris watershed group, the advocacy group for the watersheds in my community. Any of the small advocacy groups that exist around all of us in every community in Canada. They’re not always the big ones that are all well-funded and have a presence. They tend to be just good people that are genuinely concerned with a particular part of the environment around them. Here in eastern Prince Edward Island, the watershed folks are just so committed, and they’ve done such good work. They’ve restored so many of the streams around us and natural habitats. It’s just a joy to see that kind of understanding and connection with a shared environment.

Name one person who could significantly help mitigate the climate crisis if they wanted to.

Hmm, all of us? Our politicians. Everyone. I mean, that’s low-hanging fruit. We all need to do a better job. This idea that somebody else needs to do a better job is where we get stuck and nothing gets done. Every one of us needs to take personal responsibility. 

Outdoor cats, yes or no?

One of the four. Coco’s outdoor, but Nimbus and Delphine and Aurora stay inside. Coco’s nine years old and she always went out, so now it’s like, “Oh, go on.” She comes back, and she leaves us little treasures by the door. She seems to do just fine out there.

Tell us about a time you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I’ve changed my mind on organic. Once upon a time, [I saw it as] a shining light on the hill, and now I understand it as barely a starting line. It’s a word, a label. It’s regulated. I don’t trust it, and instead, advocate for what we do on our farm every single day. The culinary farm at The Inn on Bay Fortune is legendary for our sustainable, regenerative agriculture. We’re 10 years in and it’s just crazy how alive our soil is.

When have you tried to change someone else’s mind about something, environmental or otherwise?

I think helping artisan producers around me understand their role in a global economy. I’m not taking credit, but I was very much a part of helping, for instance, local fishermen understand the real value of a bluefin tuna and how they might change their practices to accentuate that value. And other fishery stories. All of them from this place of, “Eh, we’re humble Canadians”: sometimes we need an outside perspective to see our very best. Changing people’s minds on the interesting value of what’s around me here on Prince Edward Island I think has instinctively been a part of my approach here for 35 years.

Atlantic bluefin tuna can measure over three metres in length, and the largest one ever caught and recorded, off the coast of P.E.I., weighed 679 kilograms. The fish is highly prized for making sushi and sashimi in Japan. Photo: Robert F. Bukaty / The Associated Press

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

You know, I love looking at the Rocky Mountains, but I’m a sailor at heart, so I’d take 30 knots out of the north any day.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

Because women seem to be just more connected with Mother Earth, and more open to the idea that there’s this thing at our feet that’s alive, that’s with us, and that maybe it’s not just something we should be getting some benefit out of. I mean, obviously it’s a loaded question, and there’s a bunch of different ways I could answer it, but I do believe, through my own personal experience, that women in our society often have an easier time expressing their creativity and their empathy.

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

Well, I’ve swum in the Pacific, I’ve swum all over the Atlantic, but I’ve never swum in the Arctic. I guess I would go with a nice raging bonfire on the shore ready to rip and then a quick plunge in the Arctic.

What is the farthest north that you’ve ever been? And what did you do there?

I’ve been to Iqaluit, here in Canada, and I’ve been a little bit farther north in Sweden.

In Iqaluit, I spent some time with Indigenous communities, looking at food traditions and how they might use those in a tourism sense and develop authentic products to share with the world. Iqaluit’s a pretty fascinating place. For me it always feels a bit like just scratching the surface, coming in and out over a few days. A week or so here or there really isn’t living or feeling it, but it is certainly among the coolest places I’ve ever been on planet Earth.

Smith has spent time in the North, in Iqaluit, and would opt for a plunge in the Arctic Ocean given a choice of waters to dip in. Photo: Elaine Anselmi

What is a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

My Joy of Cooking, a cookbook that I’ve had for 40 years. It’s bound now with duct tape. It’s stuffed with notes and ideas and postcards and random bits and bobs from a long cooking career. It’s got every bit of the how, the why. It’s something special. It’s a book I think about a lot when I write my own books and try to emulate the storytelling of it.

What’s one way that you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

I’m blessed to interact with the natural world on a daily basis. I’m blessed to be surrounded by a team of people that interact daily through our culinary farm — how we connect it to our kitchen, how our cooks participate daily on the farm, the foraging that we do. I’ve already been down this morning to a stream nearby, to gather the day’s watercress for our salad bowl tonight. That connection to the land and to the environment grounds me, and I know it grounds the people around me and makes us the best versions of ourselves.

Who in your life has had the biggest impact on your connection to nature?

I think my mom really gave me the “get up and go, get outside.” All of that time spent running wild as a kid in the woods, making sailboats on the lake and stuff — every bit of that made me the man I am. [It was] her love of nature. My mom, for sure.

Smith is passionate about sustainability and regenerative agriculture, valuing daily practices over labels like “organic.” The farm at The Inn at Bay Fortune is teeming with life. Photo: Marty Clemens / The Narwhal

Whose relationship with nature would you like to have an impact on?

My kids. And all the young chefs I work with. [I’d like to help] them connect meaningfully to the environment here on Prince Edward Island and see the stories behind our ingredients, and go to sea for a day and fish some lobster, and get in a boat and go get oysters and meet every farmer in sight … That’s what I hope to do.

If you could ask one person, alive or dead, their thoughts on climate change, who would it be?

I think I would want to go back in time and ask somebody, like, “What the fuck, dude, why weren’t you paying attention and why didn’t you take action?” In the last 100 years all of this was known, all of this was seen, and it was just that sort of Victorian ethos of, “More and more and more for us, us, us — damn the engines, full speed ahead.” Here we are, all these years later, and look at us now.

Smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Oh, smoked salmon all the way! Just before we started chatting, I lit my smokehouse for the day. I chose applewood from our property. I’m smoking a salmon, I believe, from Nova Scotia. That is as sustainable as it could possibly be. [But I also] love my maple syrup. I often cure salmon with maple syrup.

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

Neither. I would go with, “Hey, come see my joint,” and whoever comes, there’s my pick.

Camping, yes or no?

Absolutely. Camp, camp, camp. Get outside. Stay.

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

One rainy September day in 2008, Bill Redelmeier found a large salmon on the driveway of the vineyard he had opened that summer. The property is just 10 kilometres from Lake Ontario in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., and the fish had likely ended up in a storm-water ditch as it swam up a creek to spawn.

“If a salmon can come up river, all of the pollutants can go down river,” Redelmeier remembers thinking. The travelling fish reinforced his vision: to transform his grape farm into a place that gave more to the land around it than it took.

Today, Southbrook Organic Vineyards is planted with not just vines, but milkweed to attract pollinators and native plants to prevent soil erosion. Those same wildflowers and grasses line the drainage ditch to make what’s called a bio-swale, filtering storm-water so that by the time it makes it back to the lake, it’s actually drinkable.

That’s just one way Redelmeier’s dream has become a reality. This year, the vineyard became Canada’s first “triple crown” winery, adding regenerative certification to its organic and biodynamic designations. The difference, Redelmeier says, starts with the soil.

“Because we’re pushing the price of agricultural products down, farming has become extractive, almost like mining.” A focus on big yields has caused a loss of organic matter in the soil, he says, which reduces fertility. Regenerative farming aims to reverse that.

Redelmeier grew up on a farm just an hour’s drive from downtown Toronto. He’s worried about food sovereignty for decades, as pavement increasingly covers places in southern Ontario that used to grow things we can eat. He’s also concerned with the bigger picture.

“It’s talking about people as well. We have to be able to certify that everybody who works for us makes more than a living wage,” he says.

Here’s what else he had to say about his relationship with the natural world in our Moose Questionnaire.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. All opinions are the subject’s own.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

We as Canadians tend to look down on Niagara Falls, and in most cases I do, but there is one spot on the boardwalk where you’re standing five feet away from the brink of Niagara Falls. You see the water rushing faster and faster towards you, and then it just disappears.

We assume that Niagara Falls is really loud — the crashing waters. But that’s when the water lands, not when it goes over the edge. It’s almost a silent video of this huge amount of water disappearing, and because you’re right next to the falls, you’re not seeing all the people, all the tackiness, all the tawdriness of Niagara Falls.

What is the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve seen outside of Canada?

My wife and I were lucky enough, back just before our kids were born 35 years ago, to go to Mount Everest on the Tibet side. Almost everybody goes to the Nepal side.

It’s dirty, it’s messy, it’s crowded, but at that point, they had just reopened it. We were with a group who had summited it a couple of years earlier, and were invited by the Chinese government to have a walking expedition. So we walked up to about 21,000 feet [6,400 metres], standing on the slopes of Mount Everest. I have a picture of me standing there, slightly woozy, but with Mount Everest behind me.

Canadians tend to look down on Niagara Falls, Redelmeier says. And he does, too — most of the time. But he’s found one special spot where he can enjoy them without ”all the tackiness.”

Think of three iconic Canadian animals and choose one each to kiss, marry and kill.

Even though our philosophy is that we don’t try and kill anything, but try and get them not to bother us as much, the kill is the mosquito. I’ve been married for 47 years, and I think I would like to remarry my wife — she’s an iconic Canadian. Kiss? I was going to say narwhal, but I’m not sure that’s really the right one.

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that you think everyone should know about.

Gavin Pitchford and the Clean 50, which awards leaders in sustainability across Canada. It’s a fairly large group of alumni, of which we are one. We got our award because we were turning winery waste pumice into a high-antioxidant food supplement called bioflavia.

It’s just inspiring to see all the different things. The most exciting part of it is they’re picking people under 30 as well. So future leaders, future entrepreneurs.

Who is a person or group you think could help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to?

Well, I mean the obvious one, Mr. Trump. But he doesn’t want to, so it’s a trite answer and not a very satisfying one.

I think anybody — everybody — can and should. It’s not one change that’s going to solve all of the problems. It’s 1,000, it’s 100, it’s one or two little changes that everybody needs to make. And that’s really the important thing.

As we’ve found, every time we think we’ve solved a huge number of problems, it creates extra problems. One hundred years ago, 75 years ago, the pesticide DDT was looked at as the magic bullet to kill all of the mosquitoes, not just the ones I want to kill. But there’s ramifications.

Everything is so related that it has to be 100 little things as opposed to one big thing. We as environmentalists keep hoping there is a single magic bullet that is going to fix all of the problems. And there isn’t. It’s a whole bunch of small things.

Bill Redelmeier believes everyone can contribute to making the environment more healthy. At Southbrook Organic Vineyards, he aims to grow grapes using a regenerative method that gives more back to the surrounding land than it takes. Photo: Supplied by Southbrook Organic Vineyards

Outdoor cats, yes or no?

Yes, but only if they’re neutered.

Tell us about a time that you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I’m not going to have anything specific, but travel. The more you travel, the more you see the way other people do things. If you’re at home and comfortable, you expect everybody else to change. But if you’re travelling, you’re discovering new people and you’re accepting. 

I mean, there are some people that travel and expect everything to stay the same as well. But especially when you’re young, if you’re travelling, you’re starting to learn about other people. You’re learning that you’re not correct on everything. That, to me, is the most important thing.

Tell us about a time you tried to change someone else’s mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I’m trying to do it all the time. When you come and visit the winery, we have a green map outside showing about 25 different small things. We’re talking about bat boxes. Things like our solar power, which we’re replacing 85 per cent of our total annual electrical use with. The bio-swales, which handle all the surface runoff [from the property] and clean it before it gets back to Lake Ontario. Wildflowers and pollinators, kestrel houses and a whole bunch of little things we’re doing. 

You don’t want everything to go so fast people get to the destination before they realize they’re on the road. So the green map is there as a speed bump to force people to stop before they come in. Ideally they look at some of the things we’re doing and will also copy some of those ideas. It gets people in the mindset of what is possible. We’re always trying to change everybody’s mind.

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Great Lakes, because the effect of the Great Lakes is larger for a larger number of people. I mean, we’re in a watershed of, what, 100 million-ish? Whereas the Rockies, they’re gorgeous, and I love the mountains, but it’s more of a solitary thing.

Redelmeier grew up in the Great Lakes region, still lives there today and wouldn’t trade them for the Rocky Mountains. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

I’m not sure how to clean this one up, but because they don’t think with their dicks.

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

Arctic.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

When I was about 10, my mother gave me her father’s dresser, and I still use it every day. I think of her and I think of my grandfather. He passed before I was born, but I love the heritage of it and the fact that it hasn’t gone into the landfill in the last 125 years. And I hope it will not go into the landfill. It’s useful, and it’s well made enough. It’s been repaired a few times, but it’s still beautiful.

What is the farthest north that you’ve ever been? What did you do there?

Tuktoyaktuk, and I regret not dipping my toe. I did put my hand in the water.

I was on a trip with my father when I was about 19. I drove him to Dawson City, and then ran into a friend of my brothers who was leading a group going up to Aklavik and Tuk. This would have been ‘72. During the Canada-Russia hockey series. 

We were talking to the principal of the local school, and he said, ‘Well, we do take days off when somebody sees a whale and everybody goes and tries to catch it.’ It was just such a different idea. We went into a pingo. They’re sort of frozen dimples on the earth. They’d made a curling rink, and it was being used as a communal freezer. It was just so different from what we had been seeing in southern Canada.

If you could ask one person alive or dead their thoughts on climate change, who would it be?

I would love to sit down and have a relaxed evening with David Suzuki. I’ve heard him speak — he’s incredibly moving and he’s a wonderful speaker. But I’d love to have that one-on-one conversation and just ask him where he’s coming from. I think we’re similar ages and similar generations, and I’d love to talk to him.

Southbrook Organic Vineyards became Canada’s first “triple crown” winery earlier this year after it added regenerative certification to its organic and biodynamic designations. Photo: Supplied by Southbrook Organic Vineyards

Smoked salmon, or maple syrup?

Maple syrup. Not only do I like maple syrup better, my first job off the farm as a 12-year-old was making maple syrup up in Thornhill. 

It comes back to food sovereignty. I’m not a huge fan of farming salmon and wild salmon is wonderful but threatened, and so has to be managed properly, but a properly managed sugar bush? The bush I was working in had been in the same family since 1804. This would have been in the ‘60s. So it had been managed by the same family on a long-term basis. 

That’s the way we have to manage farming, soil, that sort of thing. It has to be on a long-term basis, as opposed to a short-term basis. That’s what regenerative farming is all about. So actually maple syrup is a really good example of that.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

It was my mother. She was a botanist and a geographer, and both of those led to a love of nature. She had to identify everything, and usually in Latin. She was one of the founders of the Richmond Hill Naturalists Club, which gave us an opportunity to explore on a more directed basis. 

As kids, we were out in the forest and stuff like that. But it wasn’t just wandering around. It was identifying. I still find that one of my joys is driving through farmland and just thinking, ‘Why does everything look the way it does? Why do we have lilacs there?’ Well, that’s because chances are there used to be a farmhouse there. Yeah, so that was certainly my mother.

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

Muskoka. We grew up with a cottage in Muskoka. I love it, but I’m not sure I like it as much now as I used to. 

I was invited to one of my old high school classmates’ cottages a couple of weeks ago, on Lake Muskoka. It was interesting driving around in the boat, looking at the settlement patterns. In about 1970, cottages changed, so anything prior to 1970 was lots of small rooms, but the most important part was screened porches. And then around 1970, all of a sudden, everybody put central air conditioning in when they were building cottages. The windows are smaller, the rooms are larger, but there’s fewer rooms because you’re not inviting as many people and there’s no more screen porch. It just doesn’t appeal. 

The old joke was, if you owned a lawn mower, it was no longer a cottage. And now there’s more toys in Muskoka, and I don’t think people are outside.

Camping, yes or no?

Camping for those that want it, and certainly for kids. 

I remember at four or five years old, I would go up to a camp in Haliburton where we canoe-tripped. It was a wonderful upbringing. For a lot of people, it creates that relationship with the outside that will last forever. If you’re growing up and you never have the opportunity to go camping, then you don’t care if Ontario Premier Doug Ford wipes out a whole bunch of areas. But if you’ve been there, even if it’s years ago, you now are invested in that area. You’re more likely to jump up and down and say, ‘No, I don’t want that area destroyed.’

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Leah Gazan, member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre, is not one to back down without a fight. 

Since her election to the House of Commons in 2019, Gazan has called out the federal government’s failure to stop the ongoing genocide against Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit people and urged the federal government to implement a Red Dress Alert system that would send Amber Alert-style notifications to surrounding areas when an Indigenous woman, girl or Two-Spirit person is abducted. 

Last September, Gazan also tabled a bill that would criminalize residential school denialism. “If the government is serious about reconciliation, then they need to protect survivors and their families from hate,” Gazan, a member of Wood Mountain Lakota Nation and the descendant of Holocaust survivors, has said.

Gazan has hung onto her fearlessness — and her position — through three election cycles, and she’s only getting started. Her latest battle is against the federal government’s recently passed Bill C-5, one of several controversial environmental laws with a pentagonal moniker that has popped up since the April election.

So, how does a tough, tested MP connect with the natural world outside the House of Commons? Below, she shares the places (and plants) that keep her grounded, including the waterfalls at her favourite campsite.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity — all opinions are the subject’s own.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

I love road trips and I’ve travelled by car from coast to coast. The drive along the St. Lawrence is spectacular, but going west through the mountains is just such a miracle to see mountains like that, especially coming from the Prairies. 

But then the Prairies have their own kind of secret beauty that nobody talks about. Like my community of Wood Mountain Lakota Nation in Saskatchewan is actually a valley, and it’s really hilly. Everybody thinks Saskatchewan is totally flat, but if you go into the Cypress Hills, it’s almost desert-like in the fall, and there’s cacti that actually grow out of the mountain tops. It’s so quiet and it has this very rich history. That’s where, for example, Sitting Bull had his last sun dance before he was slaughtered by the American army at the time. You can feel that energy, but it’s also so beautiful. So I have to say my nation.

What is the most awe-inspiring natural site you’ve seen outside of Canada? 

Well, I’ve been all over the world, and I think I would say Greece. It was so long ago I think there were still dinosaurs and palm trees, but I drove around Greek islands like Santorini around that area on a dirt bike, and the water is so blue and all the buildings are white, and it was just breathtaking. I was lucky. I went before it was a touristy place. I stayed in a place right by the beach, and it was $8 a night. That’s how old I am.

Think of three iconic Canadian animals and choose one each to kiss, marry and kill.

Okay, so iconic is my dog — my little Yorkie, Miss Lily. And I kiss her every day, and she’s iconic. She travels with me everywhere and she’s never without me for more than a couple of hours. She’s 18 and she’s still in good shape. 

I’m not really a killer, but I do like fish. I would say a fish. How about a walleye? Because I killed a walleye once. That’s the only animal I’ve ever killed. I actually caught a walleye, and I had deep pain about killing the walleye. It was tough, but I did eat it. I killed it and I ate it. 

To marry — I think a horse, because there’s a companionship. You can travel together. But Miss Lily, that’s the one I would kiss, for sure. 

Manitoba MP Leah Gazan has an iconic 18-year-old Yorkie, Miss Lily. Photo: Supplied by the office of Leah Gazan.

Name a person or a group doing something meaningful for the environment that you think everyone should know about. 

Not necessarily a group, but frontline climate champions. There’s just so many organizations, but one that has been really good, in terms of having an intersectional lens with Indigenous Rights, is Manitoba’s Climate Action Team. 

Who is a person or group you think could help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to?

I don’t think it’s beholden on one person. I’m a long-time climate activist, I’m a member of Parliament, and I think it’s beholden on all of us that make decisions — that are making laws. We just saw Prime Minister Mark Carney pass Bill C-5 that weakens environmental assessment, and the Conservatives voted along with them. 

You know, I’m 53 and I’ve seen in my lifetime the impacts of the climate emergency, but it’s younger people that are really going to have to deal with the crisis, and their voices and Indigenous Peoples who are on the frontline of the climate emergency, often in these decisions, are excluded. So I think it is irresponsible at this point to pass any laws without centering the importance of protecting the environment.

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Outdoor cats. Yes or no?

Yes, because that’s who they are. How tragic it would be to be a cat and never go outside, right? They need to be their true selves, living their best lives.

Tell us about a time that you changed your mind about something environmental or otherwise.

I’ve never changed my mind — I’m always right. Just kidding.  

I was in the 80s generation — you’d get a lunch and you threw everything out, and that was the best lunch. We got rid of Tupperware. We just contaminated the Earth. I’ve changed my mind about a lot of my understanding around this kind of waste culture. Whether it’s food or things that we need, we need to be more conscious in everything we do. You know, making sure that we’re recycling all the time, not having any food waste. I’ve grown from the 80s to now. Thinking back when I was a kid, the best lunches were the juice boxes, right? And now I look at that and I just think it’s a dumpster fire for the Earth.

And what about a time you’ve tried to change someone else’s mind about something environmental or otherwise?

Now that I’m older, to be honest, it’s less about trying to change people’s minds as it is about trying to understand where people are at and try to bring them along. Like, I sit in the House of Commons where some elected officials are climate denialists, and some people you can’t convince for whatever reason. I try to understand where that belief comes from, particularly opposing beliefs that are based in science, and then ask questions that allow people to think and then come along. I think it’s about listening more attentively, actively figuring out where people are at and trying to bring them along.

Rocky Mountains, or Great Lakes?

Great Lakes. I love water. I love the sound of water, and I love the forest.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is? 

Well, if I look at our traditional teachings, as an Indigenous person, we refer to the Earth as our mother and our life-giver. For people who identify as a life-giver, I think there’s that natural connection, because Earth is life-giving, and you have to nurture that life for your own survival. And I think there’s that natural connection, yeah.

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

Pacific. I just haven’t been in that part of the Earth for a while.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

I have a plant obsession. I live in a condo, and I have more than 50 plants. I’ve had my mom’s plant for about over 20 years and it’s still living. In fact, I’m on my way to the store to get more soil, because I replanted it a little bit today. Can you believe that plant’s been alive for over 20 years?

It’s a pothos, one of those hanging plants. It almost died, and then I brought it back to life. I cut off stems, and I stuck them in water, and I let it grow tons of roots and then replanted it. Now it has a plant baby because I have a separate plant that I’ve grown with my mom’s plant. So new generations — a multi-generational pothos plant. 

What is the farthest north that you’ve ever been? And what did you do there? 

The Yukon and I visited my sister. I love the Yukon — it’s so beautiful. But I had to sleep in the basement because it was summertime and the sun was out all the time. I had to sleep with light covers on my window so I could sleep at night. It’s really disorienting. 

If you could ask one person alive or dead their thoughts on climate change, who would it be?

My mom. She was a really wise, thoughtful person.

What’s one way that you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

With my plants, I know when they’ve grown a leaf. I keep that kind of close eye on my plants as it connects me with the Earth, especially in an urban environment. I go for walks and stuff like that, but it’s not like life-giving. My plants are life-giving in an urban jungle.

I talk to my plants. I say, ‘Hello, little plant. I see you growing a leaf.’ I think they feel your energy because it’s a life form. I feel devastated when somebody cuts a tree down because it’s like, how long did it take for them to grow and then you cut it down? People don’t see it as life. 

Smoked salmon, or maple syrup?

Smoked salmon. No, I take it back — maple syrup because you can make sweet smoked salmon with maple syrup. I make the best chili with maple syrup and cakes — maple syrup is more versatile than smoked salmon.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

My partner Romeo, because he was born in the boreal forest.

And whose relationship to nature would you like to have an impact on?

My son, because he grew up in the city, and I feel like he needs to spend time on the land, in the bush — away from an urban environment.

Camping, yes or no?

Yes. My favourite camping spot close to my house is Rushing River or Sioux Lookout in northern Ontario. I like Sioux Lookout because it’s quiet. It’s not that touristy. It’s not that busy. And I like Rushing River because I like the falls there, and I have good memories from when I was young, like going down the falls and camping with friends. It was fun. I probably wouldn’t do it now, because I’d be worried that I would break my bones or something.

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

Neither. But if I had to, I would say David Beckham and Victoria. At least we could talk about soccer. I’m not a monarchist.

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Many people are interested in what Maryaam Lewis-Herbert has to say about the stars. Otherwise known as ShawtyAstrology, she’s built a serious following for her explanations of how the sky and its celestial bodies affect us all down here on Earth. 

Lewis-Herbert has done celebrity birth chart assessments that go viral and advised multi-platinum pianist Tony Ann on his astrologically influenced album, 360°. While her head is often above the clouds, she’s also a grounded nature lover, one who’s interested in the connection between our planet and others. 

Saturn and Mercury are the ones that matter most, she says. The ringed planet governs forests and agriculture, she says, while the little red one represents plants, including herbs. 

“Think of your herbal teas and all the things that we can utilize, cooking wise, to improve our health — Mercury is very connected with that,” she says. “Mercury is very connected with environmentalists as well.” It also affects our communication style, and Lewis-Herbert says one of her goals is to find ways to talk with those who don’t value environmental protection the way she does, in the hopes of bringing them alongside. 

Here’s what else the Toronto astrologer had to say when she sat down to take our Moose Questionnaire. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity — all opinions are the subject’s own.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

Haliburton in Ontario. When I go up there for cottage season, it’s so beautiful and peaceful up there. It’s so serene and the waters are so blue. I just love being out there. It’s exceptionally gorgeous.

What is the most awe-inspiring natural sight that you’ve seen outside of Canada? 

Probably the farmlands that I saw in Rotterdam when I went to the Netherlands back in 2019. Just being out there made me feel exceptionally free and liberated. It was really majestic to see all the farm animals and a different side to agriculture, in a different part of the world. 

Think of three iconic Canadian animals and choose one each to kiss, marry and kill.

I think maybe I’d kiss a mallard duck. I think ducks are very cute. 

I’d marry a deer. One time, I was at the park, and I was walking on a trail and I saw a deer hop right in front of me. I thought it was the most incredible thing ever.

If I had to pick anything to kill, maybe some kind of fish, like some kind of salmon. I’m only saying that because I’m allergic, so I guess that’s the part of me that wishes I could eat seafood. Not in real life, though, just kidding around.

A duck at Marie Curtis Park in Toronto. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Name a person or a group doing something meaningful for the environment that you think everyone should know about. 

The Toronto Green Community is a fantastic organization that helps a lot with maintaining biodiversity, reducing waste and helping the environment in the city to be more clean and safer for everyone.

Tell us about a time that you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I do change my mind on my hair colour. For my 26th birthday, I decided that I wanted to pay homage to nature and trees. So I went from wanting to dye my hair purple to a foresty green color. I went to the park wearing this very floral dress that had foliage on it. I felt very connected to the environment. It just felt really connected to who I am as a person. 

Tell us about a time you tried to change someone else’s mind about something, environmental or otherwise. 

No shade to any of these people, but people that litter. You can just take a little bit of time to recycle and put stuff where it belongs. Sometimes you’ll go to the park and you’ll see trash around and you’re just like, come on, guys, we can all do a little bit better. Enjoy the scenery, but pick up after yourself, right?

Definitely encouraging people to pick up their litter and recycle more and to be more mindful of their environmental decisions. I know that we can’t force people to do these things. I try to be encouraging in a mindful way.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?  

From an astrological perspective, it’s really interesting. The moon in astrology represents women or people with feminine energy, and it’s also very connected with the weather and the tide, the cycles and everything. So, I feel like women or people that just have feminine energy tend to be a little bit more empathetic towards things outside of themselves. 

Not saying that men aren’t. But from an astrological perspective, I can understand why women have this connection to Mother Earth. 

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

I would choose the Pacific Ocean, specifically when the sun is directly above where the Tropic of Cancer runs through the Pacific. That happens during the summer solstice, which is the first day of summer. The Tropic of Cancer is very connected with the zodiacal constellation of Cancer. 

Cancer energy is connected with emotional security, nurturing, feeling safe, feeling protected. So maybe there are sea creatures in that portion of the ocean that tend to be more gentle or more nurturing, or we as humans might have more of a connection to those creatures. 

What’s a beautiful or useful thing that you’ve owned for a really long time?

My Canon T5. I’m a really big advocate for photography, especially nature photography. 

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

Going for walks, especially in the summertime and in the spring, going for bike rides. There’s a pond close to where I live and I like to go there and look at the ducks and just be around that kind of energy. It’s very relaxing. I always leave feeling very refreshed and rejuvenated. 

Also having picnics too, especially in the summertime with my friends. We always make sure to clean up after we’re done.

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Great Lakes. I appreciate the mountains — I think they’re majestic and beautiful — but I am afraid of heights. 

David Suzuki, left, filming The Nature of Things in Tla-o-qui-aht territory in 2022. Photo: Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood / The Narwhal

If you could ask someone alive or dead their thoughts on climate change, who would it be? 

David Suzuki. He’s a Canadian icon. He’s built such an incredible legacy for himself and I feel like having a conversation about where he feels the environment is headed in the next 10 or 20 years would be insightful.

Smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Maple syrup, absolutely. I actually have a really big bottle of maple syrup right now in my kitchen. After this conversation, I might have some.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

Definitely my best friend, Christine. She lives up north and being able to go visit her feels like such a healthy form of escapism. She’s introduced me to so many amazing places. We went to the Wye Marsh, which is a conservation centre in Midland, Ont., and we were able to see so many different creatures. I got to see turtles and an owl and vast, vast amounts of land around us. We went in the winter and it was such a grounding experience. 

Whose relationship with nature would you like to have an impact on? 

I’d love to build a relationship with people that don’t believe in climate change. I think reiterating the importance of saving the environment, helping the world around us and giving them facts and information and proof that climate change is real would be a very impactful thing.

Would you rather be invited to visit David and Victoria Beckham at their Muskoka, Ont., cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex at their B.C. oceanic escape?

Definitely the Muskoka cottage. The energy around there is truly surreal. I saw pictures of their cottage and just how incredibly beautiful it is. No ifs, ands or buts — definitely the Muskoka cottage.

Camping, yes or no?

Yes. I am a bit scared of bears, so that’s the only thing holding me back from it. But I could definitely see the appeal. You can see the stars at night, you can have a bonfire and you can just be outdoors and get all that wonderful energy. 

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Alex Hutchinson likes to keep busy. He’s been a physicist and a competitive runner on Canada’s national team. Now, he’s a journalist considering the neuroscience of fitness, endurance sports and outdoor adventure, with a couple of bestsellers under his belt. He also plays saxophone for fun. 

In his latest book, The Explorer’s Gene, Hutchinson weaves his wide-ranging interests into a celebration of far-flung corners, whether on Earth or inside the human mind. It’s about our genetic drive to immerse our senses in the unknown, whether a new place or a new food. It’s also about protecting those untamed instincts and the wild places they take us to see. Exploration is foundational to life, but exploitation puts it at risk. 

One key is appreciating the riches all around us. The other side of the world is cool, but so are the plants and animals outside our front doors. Hutchinson told The Narwhal he learned that lesson from his Uncle Wolf, who lives in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. 

“All through childhood and even into my adulthood, he would take me on the most epic adventures, in forests and up mountains around where he lives,” Hutchinson told us. “It really opened my eyes to the fact that you don’t have to go to the North Pole to experience adventure and beauty and solitude and wilderness.” 

Here’s what else the bestselling Toronto author told us about his connection to the natural world. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity — all opinions are the subject’s own.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

What is the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, otherwise known as Canada?

The fjords of Newfoundland. When I went to Gros Morne National Park a couple years ago, they were definitely the most distinct and unique and surprising sight to me. 

And what’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve seen outside of Canada? 

See, my first instinct is to say Doubtful Sound in New Zealand. But that seems to suggest I have an obsession with fjords and I think those are the only two fjords I’ve ever seen. There’s something I love about steep cliffs hemmed in by water. They’re actually strikingly similar. The New Zealand fjords were a little more green and verdant, whereas the Newfoundland fjords had that sort of primitive, rocky feel. 

I’ve never been to Norway, so I guess that should be on my list now.

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry, kill.

No offense to the Canada goose, but if I was going to kill an animal, it would be the Canada goose. Specifically the ones who pester me when I’m running along the Humber River in Toronto.

I think I’d give a nice peck to the moose. I don’t know if I want to stay with a moose, but I just love their cute, clumpy way of stumbling through the woods. 

And to marry, I kind of like bears, black bears. It might be a tempestuous marriage, but let’s go with the black bear. 

Ontario has a black bear people problem

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that everyone should know about.

On a local level, Toronto Environmental Alliance. I really appreciate what they’re doing in my community. On a national level, the Nature Conservancy of Canada. I always feel when I donate to them that it’s actually selfish of me. I’m supporting their work to acquire lands, but it’s going to be to my huge benefit to have these lands protected.

Name a person who could significantly help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to. 

In terms of decisions having an impact that frustrates me, I’d say Ontario Premier Doug Ford. 

I actually live near a block of bike lanes that he’s going to tear out. The Greenbelt, clean energy decisions, electric vehicle incentives — it’s just the whole philosophical approach. I think he has actually been very successful at derailing important initiatives.

Broken trust and Bill 5: First Nations rally against Doug Ford’s controversial mining bill

Outdoor cats, yes or no?

I’m not a cat person. If we’re gonna have cats, I think I would lean towards letting them roam outside, even though I understand the impact they have on other animals.

Tell us about a time that you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I’ve actually changed my mind multiple times on nuclear energy, which reflects that it’s complex. And I don’t rule out changing my mind again tomorrow. But right now, I lean more towards thinking it should be an important part of the energy mix. It’s complicated, very complicated.

Tell us about a time you tried to change someone else’s mind about something.

I have a cousin in Alberta who works in the oil industry and what I appreciate about my relationship with him is that we are able to discuss things about which we disagree frankly and vigorously without it being a personal attack. I’ve tried to change his mind on many elements of energy policy, environmental policy, national politics.

I think he hears me and he considers my arguments. And I would say, conversely, that I hear him too. I wouldn’t say that either of us have actually succeeded in radically changing our minds, but we both have better perspectives on the points on which we disagree.

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Rocky Mountains. And I say that as someone who lives on a Great Lake. 

Despite living on Lake Ontario, bestselling science author Alex Hutchinson would choose the Rocky Mountains over the Great Lakes if he had to. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is? 

Everything that pops to mind plays into stereotypes that I’m not sure I want to endorse. But I think caring about the environment goes hand in hand with caring about family and community in a way that maybe sometimes codes female and or has been more associated with the way women think about their families and communities. Maybe there’s something to that.

Jobs that go out and tend to exploit the environment, often tend to be male-dominated jobs. So maybe there’s a lot more men who see going out and drilling for oil, or whatever the case may be, as something that they might do and that their friends might do. Those are a couple things that come to mind. 

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

The Arctic. 

What’s a beautiful or useful thing that you’ve owned for a really long time?

My MSR camp stove that I’ve been taking into the wilderness for, gosh, almost three decades. Stuff you buy now, it’s not going to last 20 years. In fact, I do have two stoves, both by MSR, and it’s the newer one that is broken. The older one is still functional, even though it’s pretty grimy.

What’s the farthest north you’ve ever been, and what did you do there?

Cambridge Bay, Nvt., on assignment for Canadian Geographic. The Canadian High Arctic Research Station was just under construction. And I went to report on that and it was a really amazing and memorable experience.

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

I live about a block from the Humber River. After Hurricane Hazel in 1954, they realized you can’t have houses down there. So it’s been a really beautiful natural area ever since, forests, deer, coyotes, beavers and running paths, which I’m on pretty much every day. 

If you could ask one person, alive or dead their thoughts on climate change, who would it be? 

I’d be interested to talk to the people who first developed oil and gas. Or actually, let’s say the guy who developed the steam engine, James Watt, or someone like that. Someone who saw the transformative power of fossil fuels — would you do anything differently if you knew what we know?

Smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Both at the same time is my obvious answer. This is, like, between the head and the heart. I feel like a traitor to my younger self, but I’ll say salmon. 

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

I would go to the Beckhams’ cottage in Muskoka. Watching that Beckham Netflix series last year revised my opinion of David Beckham, who I earlier would have thought was a complete idiot. And also, I like Muskoka.

I know your answer, but camping yes or no?

Yes, yes, yes. 

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.