Hi Bear Friends,
FYI. This tells a little bit about Ian McAllister who has just started Pacific Wild Alliance(PWA) and was a co-founder of Raincoast Society. I am very excited about PWA plans and projects in the near future and so will you when more details can be released and fundraising efforts kick-in to high gear. Stay tuned as to how you can be a part of preserving grizzly and spirit bears, wolves, cougars and Rainforest!
Cheers,
Barb
Protecting the environment a family affair
West Coast couple and their children live what they speak
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/reallife/story.html?id=ef89162d-caf2-42e8-b1fe-c302ec0f0b8f
Kim Gray
Calgary Herald
Monday, April 21, 2008
Spotlight
To contact the McAllisters or learn more about the Great Bear Rainforest, go to: pacificwild.org
Karen McAllister's kids don't know McDonald's -- that global fast-food giant -- exists.
"But they do know that the salmon they had for dinner last night was the one we caught last summer," says the former Calgarian, who now lives on Denny Island off the northwest coast of Canada.
"And my son knows that the first salmonberry flower he sees is a sign of spring."
Karen, 38, a Western Canada High School graduate, moved from Calgary to Victoria in 1987 to study biology and environmental studies at university.
She met her husband, Ian, in Victoria and, for the past decade, has essentially lived in a temperate rainforest.
Talking to this woman makes me dream about living a more Earth-friendly lifestyle, a counterpoint to the inherently fast and consumer-driven pace of so many large Canadian cities.
In that spirit and because Tuesday is Earth Day, today's column is a departure from the norm.
The McAllisters' dedication to the environment is not just lip service. They live what they speak. The couple doesn't just live a back-to-the-land existence; they're environmental activists in every sense.
They live on a roadless island with a population of 80 people. Their home is accessible only by boat. They rarely drive. They recycle. And they hunt and fish for the majority of the food they eat and also feed to their children, Callum, 5, and Lucy, 2.
Ian, 38, earns money as a writer and a photographer to keep the family afloat.
"It doesn't cost much to live here," he says. "We eat a lot of salmon. Candied salmon. Dried salmon. Jarred salmon."
The kids are home-schooled, but they also attend the local native school in nearby Bella Bella where they're learning the language of the Heiltsuk First Nations.
The McAllisters are also big-picture people who were drawn to what has become known as the Great Bear Rainforest because, in their minds, it needs and deserves protection from trophy hunting, industrial forestry and pipeline developments.
Due to the family's lobby and public awareness efforts, local politicians have committed to protect 30 per cent of this 50,000-square-kilometre area, which is rich with untouched ecosystems that include unique fur-bearing animals such as the Kermode or "spirit" bear, a white subspecies of the black bear.
They have also drawn attention to a little-understood West Coast wolf pack -- an ochre-coloured, ocean-swimming pack of wolves who feed on the likes of shellfish, salmon and beached squid, seals and whales.
To raise awareness about the plight of these elusive animals, Ian recently photographed and wrote The Last Wild Wolves: Ghosts of the Great Bear Rainforest (Greystone, $45).
His book -- one of the loveliest and most important publications I've seen in a long time --deserves the attention it's getting nation-wide.
The book has just been nominated for several awards, including the Canadian Book Association Libris Award for Non-fiction and the Banff Mountain Book Award.
The McAllisters' efforts, coupled with their previous involvement with the preservation of Vancouver Island's Carmanah Valley and Clayquot Sound, won them recognition in Time magazine (the Canadian edition, September 1999 issue) as "Leaders for the 21st Century."
As a father, Ian insists that getting kids outside is paramount if they're ever going to see themselves as custodians of the planet.
"I know a huge part of why I feel so privileged to be working on behalf of the environment is because of how I was raised," says Ian, who grew up in Victoria.
His father worked for the B.C. chapter of the Sierra Club. Meanwhile, his mom writes letters to politicians about conservation issues, he says.
"What makes Canada such an amazing part of the world is that we still have intact, functioning ecosystems," says Ian, who spoke recently at the Calgary Zoo. He also gives lectures and slide shows at schools throughout North America about the ecological importance of the Great Bear Rainforest.
"Other parts of the planet are looking at reconstruction, trying to bring back species. It makes sense for us to protect as much as we can. It's also more affordable to do it this way," Ian says.
"In the meantime, we're destroying an unbelievable amount of wilderness at a rapid rate. It's sad."
For her part, Karen often considers the idea of combining environmental activism with motherhood, she says.
"Living in the middle of the Great Bear Rainforest makes it easier to nurture a love of the wild in your children than, say, if you lived in the middle of New York City," she says.
"My kids have spent more time with grizzly bears, spirit bears, whales and wolves than probably any other kids their age."
A few years back, Karen took her son Callum, not yet three years old at the time, to the beach just over a kilometre from her home. "Just as we were setting up our blanket, we saw a deer dart out of the woods, then a wolf. The wolf killed the deer right then and there." They watched the wolf drag the deer into the woods.
"He still talks about it."
More recently, when the McAllisters were touring Western Canada on a lecture circuit, Callum wanted to know when they were going home.
"He asked, 'When are we going back to the rainforest?'" recalls Karen.
"Home is rainforest. I love that."
Sometimes you stumble across people like the McAllisters and you're inspired. They're people who make a difference.
Are you one of them? As we mark Earth Day, it's a question we should all ask of ourselves.
Kim Gray is a journalist and mother of two. Contact her at modernfamily
@theherald.canwest.com.