Of Bees, Blackberries and My Old Buddy Dave
Poignant childhood memories can be mysterious and powerful things. They might sit dormant for years and then surface at random times, leaving us melancholy or…
Getting Kids Outside for Their Daily Mile
Here's a positive story out of Scotland, where a teacher at a small elementary school decided she had to do something about her students' lack…
On the Death of a Veery
Our windows may be killing a billion birds a year. This beautiful songbird, called a veery, struck our kitchen window the other day. I was…
Vancouver’s Record Cold (please don’t laugh at us, Calgary and Winnipeg)
Here in relatively balmy Vancouver, we have no right to complain about cold weather. Vancouver has the mildest climate of any city in Canada, except…
Salmon and Steelhead Get a Free Ride up the Seymour
Congrats and thumbs up to the Seymour Salmonid Society for their tireless work to help the Seymour River salmon and steelhead make it upstream to…
Four Days in August
When you get kids into nature, their faces remind us of what childhood was always meant to be. The smiles. The focused concentration without distraction.…
Letting Kids be Kids on the Vedder River
Last week I learned how easily we can forget the inherent value of simply getting kids into the wild, while letting go of the need…
The Seymour Salmonid Society: Working Miracles to Avert a Disaster
Before a massive rock slide in 2014 threatened to wipe out the salmon and steelhead of North Vancouver's gorgeous Seymour River, few people had ever…
The Red Rocks and Blue Waters of Princeton, BC
The historic town of Princeton, British Columbia straddles the Crowsnest Highway at the confluence of the Tulameen and Similkameen rivers east of Vancouver. Princeton was…
Rice Lake: an Urban Success Story for Kids and Fishing
In his landmark book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv wrote: “Time in nature is not leisure time; it's an essential…