Every Grain of Sand: Canadian Perspectives on Ecology and Environment

Alexander Craig is a freelance journalist in Lennoxville, Quebec.

J.A.Wainwright is a professor at Dalhousie who has written extensively
on Canadian literature. In this book, he brings together 13 challenging
yet accessible essays that articulate varying perspectives on the
environment. The articles range from personal memoirs of how, in
childhood experience, “nature” first fixed itself in contributors’
minds to more formal, philosophical studies. Onno Oerlemans, of Hamilton
College, New York, writes on “Romantic Origins of Environmentalism:
Wordsworth and Shelley.” Another Dalhousie professor, Trish
Glazebrook, contributes “Toward an Ecofeminist Phenomenology of
Nature.”

In general, the essays have “emerged from Canadian-based experience
and focus on recognizable Canadian places, even if the issues dealt with
are universal in scope.” Environmental activism in Cape Breton is
among the specific Canadian issues addressed in the book. Leanne
Simpson, who works with indigenous organizations on environmental and
political issues across Canada and internationally, contributes an essay
titled “Listening to Our Ancestors: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations in
the Face of Environmental Destruction.”

A salient theme throughout is the “ingrained human need and affinity
for nature” that exists alongside the “profound human capacity to
destroy the natural world.” Every Grain of Sand urges readers to
resist the construction of a “post-natural world.”