Northern Wild: Best Contemporary Canadian Nature Writing

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

This impressive collection by contemporary nature writing explores
Canada from British Columbia to New Brunswick and the North.
Contributors include Sharon Butala, Wade Davis, Sid Marty, Heather
Menzies, and David Adams Richards. In a brief foreword, David Suzuki
pinpoints wilderness as one of Canada’s defining features: “What
would Canada be without bears, loons, salmon, cedar trees, or fall
colours?” Our vast wilderness areas are paradoxically partnered with
one of the most urbanized societies in the world, and our current
problem is to find a way of maintaining the human and economic needs of
our growing population while preserving Canada’s remaining wilderness
areas.

The editor’s introductory essay notes that Canadian nature writing
has a venerable tradition over two centuries: witness Catharine Parr
Traill, Ernest Thompson Seton, Robert Service, Emily Carr, and Roderick
Haig-Brown. Contemporary anthologies of such writings are conspicuously
absent, so this anthology fills an important gap and should alert
readers to the fact that nature writing in Canada continues to flourish.


The essays here have all been published since 1990 in magazines such as
Canadian Geographic, Equinox, Atlantic Books Today, and Saturday Night.
Some of the best-known writers in this anthology have won national
awards and international recognition. Northern Wild is a significant
collection of nature essays that should interest a wide audience. It
also makes excellent bedside reading.