Mountain Culture

John Vaillant

Wednesday November 5, 7:30pm – Eric Harvie Theatre

Northern Giant (with Wayne Sawchuk & Michael Christopher Brown)

Author John Vaillant, conservationist Wayne Sawchuk, and photographer Michael Christopher Brown set out recently on a four-week journey across British Columbia’s Muskwa-Kechika wilderness area – an area that Sawchuk fought long and hard to preserve. Covering 6.4 million hectares and home to the continent's greatest diversity of large mammals, the area’s revolutionary conservation strategy aims to balance resource extraction and tourism with protecting its environmental and wilderness values.

John Vaillant has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic – Adventure, Outside and Men’s Journal, and is also a pioneer at heart. He is the author of The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed which won the Governor General’s award for non-fiction and the Pearson Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize in 2005.

Born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was drawn to the wilderness at a young age. After hitchhiking to Alaska and traveling to the remote fishing village of Egegik along the western coast, he spent three years building boats and salmon fishing. Vaillant now lives in Vancouver, B.C. with his wife, an anthropologist and a potter, and their two children.