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Wordfest welcomes the world’s leading forest ecologist, Suzanne Simard, as we celebrate her new book, When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World. The in-depth conversation, hosted by acclaimed poet and avid gardener Rosemary Griebel, includes an audience Q&A and book signing, fuelled by Owls Nest Books.
“Simard is a personal hero who has revolutionized our understanding of trees as complex, sentient beings,” Griebel says. “Her sequel to the ground-breaking Finding the Mother Tree draws on decades of research and braids memoir and wisdom to deepen our appreciation and wonder of trees that are quietly sustaining life on Earth.”
“You know we used to believe that trees competed with each other for light. Suzanne Simard’s field work challenged that perception, and we now realize that the forest is a socialist community. Trees work in harmony to share the sunlight.”
–Coach Beard, Ted Lasso
Rosemary Griebel
Meaningful Conversation
Libations Bar, with non-alcoholic options
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission
Dr. Suzanne Simard is a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, where she currently leads the Mother Tree Project and co-directs the Belowground Ecosystem Group. Her work has been published widely, with more than 170 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her research has been communicated broadly through three TED Talks, TED Experiences, and articles and interviews in The New Yorker, National Geographic, NPR, CNN, and many more. She lives with her family in the mountains around Nelson, BC.
The trailblazing scientist who pioneered the once-radical—and now broadly accepted—concept of sophisticated communication between trees returns with a book that blends rigorous science and neglected Indigenous wisdom in service of a powerful vision for the future of our forests.
With her bestselling book Finding the Mother Tree, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard advanced a revelatory new paradigm for the profound intelligence of trees and their relationships with each other. Now, with When the Forest Breathes, she examines the forces that threaten forest ecosystems and, with years of research at her back, offers a pragmatic and hopeful vision for a responsible relationship with the forests that sustain us.
Raised in a family of loggers committed to sensible forest stewardship, Simard has watched timber companies ignore the complexity of nature’s self-regulation and Indigenous communities’ finely honed knowledge of the natural world. Plundering the forests for profit, they leave in their wake heightened risk of wildfire, drought, water crises, and endangerment of plant and animal life.
But Simard’s research, which recognizes forests as complex, adaptive systems, has the potential to reverse this pattern. Here, in accessible and impassioned prose, she shares the findings of one of the most ambitious climate research projects ever conceived. In her native British Columbia, Simard and her colleagues study innovative logging patterns that reflect an array of attempts at conservation, plant a mixture of tree species to identify the combinations most resilient to the stresses wrought by climate change, and introduce trees from other climates to increase the adaptivity of the forest. Simard also opens our eyes to the sophisticated knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples, who have stewarded the forests and waters for centuries. Their wisdom offers a valuable bridge from the past, a set of principles grounded in respect for the land.
Powered by rigorous science but infused with authenticity and warmth, When the Forest Breathes is an emboldening declaration that when we take responsible steps, reversing the effects of climate change is within reach. In elegant prose teeming with reverence for the natural world and all it offers us, Simard shares with all of us the gift of her ingenuity, commitment, and optimism.
Rosemary Griebel
Meaningful Conversation
Libations Bar, with non-alcoholic options
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission
Rosemary Griebel is a writer, master gardener, and librarian who grew up in Treaty Six territory, where she developed a deep respect for the language of the land. In addition to her collection of poetry, Yes, her award-winning poems have appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, as well as on CBC Radio, literary magazines, chapbooks, and anthologies. In 2019, one of her poems was chosen for Alberta’s first literary landmark, as part of Project Bookmark Canada’s CanLit Trail.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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