Growing up in Kamloops, B.C., James MacKinnon was fascinated by the grasslands near his home.
“As soon as I got home from school I was out digging in holes up in trees, looking for owl pellets,” MacKinnon said.
But it was on a family camping trip to Vancouver Island’s Carmanah Valley (prior to its being declared a provincial park in 1990), that his already strong interest in the natural world evolved into an environmental consciousness.
“We drove through skeletal clear cuts that went on forever,” MacKinnon said. “Then finally we reached an area of untouched forest. I was completely shocked at the difference between the skeletal clear cuts and the incredibly lush, bio-diverse rainforest.”
What really shocked him, however, was the scale of the destruction. The experience launched his writing career, where he focussed on environmental and First Nations issues. His 2005 book, Dead Man in Paradise, which investigated the 1965 assassination of his uncle, a radical priest in the Dominican Republic, earned him Canada’s highest award for literary non-fiction.
In 2007, The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, co-written with his partner, Alisa Smith, was a bestseller. Past senior editor of Explore magazine, MacKinnon’s essays, science writing and travelogues have earned him more than a dozen awards. He also wrote the unforgettable script for the National Film Board interactive documentary, Bear 71.
onight (Oct. 31), MacKinnon presents his latest book, The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be, at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival.
The idea for this book began on a return visit to his favourite childhood grasslands, which he discovered had been replaced by a suburb. The experience led him to wonder about how many landscapes, regionally and globally, have been changed by human activity. Even more shocking than the sheer number and variety of animal species, including elk, wolves and grizzlies that used to live in the Kamloops area, he learned, was how their presence had been so quickly forgotten.
“People don’t even talk about them; there is no collective memory that they were ever there,” he said. “I wanted to find out if that was the case everywhere.”
His ensuing research led him to appreciate the vulnerability of all creatures.
“If something only appears in one kind of environment, and then if you lose that stand of trees, or that piece of wetland, then the species that needs that particular environment to survive can’t survive in that place anymore.”
While Canada is in better shape than many countries, almost every landscape in Canada is missing a major species. The answer to the question of why people need to or should care about the natural environment, he said, is simple.
“We haven’t figured out how to live on a dead planet yet,” MacKinnon said. “The natural environment is the living world, nothing is more essential.”
Borrowing a quote from U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, he continued, “Ecology is not a subset of the economy, it’s the other way around. Ecological systems are what allows us to evolve, what allow us to survive. Nothing is more important.”
While working on the book initially led him to feel a sense of loss, that feeling grew and evolved.
“Very quickly it turned into a form of inspiration for what might be in the future,” he said.
As an example, he described how in 2010 a grey whale swam right up False Creek in the middle of his home town of Vancouver.
“If you aren’t aware that whales were present in the past, then their absence seems normal,” he explained. “If you are aware, then the absence of whales will seem abnormal, and you can ask questions like, ‘What happened to those whales?’ and ‘Could we bring them back?’ If we are aware of what nature was like in the past, then that changes the way we see nature in the present, and it sets a higher bar for what nature might be in the future.”
As an experiment, he spent an hour watching nature at a nearby urban pond, and was thrilled to witness a bald eagle hunting ducks, right in the middle of Vancouver.
“I was the only person who noticed, because I was paying attention,” he said. “Everyone else was throwing sticks for their dog or talking on their phones or walking around the lake. That’s how distracted we are – we can totally miss a bald eagle hunting ducks right in front of us.”
Even outdoor activities such as climbing and mountain biking – of which MacKinnon is a keen participant – don’t encourage interaction with nature.
“Lots of outdoor sports almost never involve really paying attention to nature, they happen at a pace that doesn’t allow it,” he said.
Over time, he added, it’s far too easy for people to simply forget the irreplaceable importance of nature.
“With every generation, we hit the reset button on what we consider to be the normal state of nature,” MacKinnon said, describing what is known as Shifting Baseline Syndrome. “We forget the accumulated degradation of centuries and millennia.
“But when you realize how important the abundance of the natural world is, you realize how important it is to protect that natural world.” J.B. MacKinnon presents The Once and Future World at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival tonight (Oct. 31), at 2 p.m. For tickets or more info, visit www.banffcentre.ca/mountainfestival/schedule.
