12 books for the outdoor enthusiast on your holiday shopping list

Finding the Mother Tree was the grand prize winner for the 2021 Banff Mountain Book Competition and a category winner for the mountain environment and natural history award.

Simard is a B.C.-based author and academic who grew up in Canadian forests as a descendant of loggers. She is a professor in the department of forest and conservation sciences at the University of British Columbia. 

Why ‘mother trees’ are crucial in fighting climate change

UBC scientist Suzanne Simard researches how the oldest trees in forests nurture, communicate and protect younger seedlings. 2:28

Two Trees Make a Forest is a nonfiction book that explores how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories. A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she traces his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Throughout her adventures, Lee uncovers surprising parallels between nature and human stories that shaped her family and their beloved island. In the memoir, she also turns a critical eye on colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, and both relied on and often erased the labour and knowledge of local communities.

Two Trees Make a Forest won the 2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the adventure travel category for the 2021 Banff Mountain Book Competition. It was also a finalist for Canada Reads 2021, when it was championed by singer-songwriter Scott Helman.

Lee is a British Canadian Taiwanese author, environmental historian and winner of the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Author Award. She also wrote the memoir Turning.

Watermelon snow is the name given to snow that goes pink or red from a species of ice loving algae. Watermelon Snow is also the name of Canadian scientist Lynne Quarmby’s latest book. It’s about a recent adventure trip she took on a schooner full of artists in the high Arctic. Her years of climate change activism hadn’t achieved what she had imagined, and she was deeply concerned about the future of the planet.

Quarmby is a Canadian scientist, activist and politician. She is a professor and chair of the department of molecular biology and biochemistry at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.

Land-Water-Sky / Ndè–Tı–Yat’a is a fictional composite novel with six parts. The experimental work imagines what it would be like if Indigenous legends were part of contemporary life, making mischief and reminding us of the importance and power of Indigenous history, culture and sharing stories.

Katłįà is a Dene writer and activist from the Northwest Territories. Land-Water-Sky / Ndè–Tı–Yat’a is her first novel. 

Bruce Kirkby’s life had become one of distraction — he realized he was looking mindlessly at his phone and social media for hours. It was a cycle that he was determined to overcome and break. With an eye on refocusing his life, in 2014 Kirkby embarked on a six-month journey with his family, travelling to and living in the Himalayas. Their destination: an ancient Buddhist monastery in the remote Zanskar valley, one of the last places where Tibetan Buddhism is still practised freely in its original setting. He wrote about the experience of avoiding modern distraction in Blue Sky Kingdom.

Kirkby is an adventurer, photographer and author from British Columbia.

This One Wild Life is the story of a mother and daughter bonding over hiking. When Angie Abdou sees her daughter becoming more introverted, she decides to give them a challenge one summer: to hike a different peak near their Fernie, B.C., home each week. 

Abdou is a teacher, writer and frequent columnist for The Next Chapter. Her first novel, The Bone Cage, was a finalist on Canada Reads 2011. Her other books include In Case I Go and Home Ice.

In Ice Walker, explorer and adventurer James Raffan asks readers to look at the Arctic through the eyes of a polar bear named Nanu and her family. As climate change changes the Arctic, the bear must figure out how to find food and shelter for her family. The landscape that is warming up, and precious ice is melting rapidly and everything is changing.

Raffan is a writer, teacher, geographer and adventurer. He has written more than 20 books, including Circling the Midnight Sun, Emperor of the North and Summer North of Sixty. His work has appeared in several Canadian media outlets, including the Globe and Mail, Canadian Geographic and CBC.

Taking place in a “near-present,” Bewilderment is a portrait of the love between a bereaved father and his sensitive son Robin — who was partly inspired by climate activist Greta Thunberg. The novel combines the immediacy of a recognizable dystopian reality, including the climate crisis and the threat of species extinction, with imagined life on other planets.  

Bewilderment was a finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize. 

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Overstory in 2019.

Weeding is a graphic novel and satirical portrayal of feminine archetypes in the social landscape of the 1960s. Martha hosts a group of middle-aged women at her suburban home on an autumn afternoon. The day takes a sudden turn when Elisabeth, an estranged friend, turns up unexpectedly — and she isn’t the only unwanted guest at the tea party. 

Geneviève Lebleu is a multidisciplinary artist from Québec City and is currently based in Montreal. Her work was featured in various events, exhibitions and festivals.

A Short History of the Blockade was a lecture given by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, as part of the CLC Kreisel Lecture Series. In A Short History of the Blockade, Simpson uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg storytelling techniques to look at Indigenous blockades through the lens of the beaver, an animal known for building dams, which are natural blockades. A Short History of the Blockade looks at the intersection between culture, politics and nature and posits that dams, and blockades, are world-building and life-giving practices that have the potential to shape, or reshape, life as we know it.

Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, activist, musician, artist, author and member of Alderville First Nation. Her work often centres on the experiences of Indigenous Canadians. Her other books include Islands of Decolonial Love, This Accident of Being Lost, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back and As We Have Always Done. 

Alexandra Morton is a biologist and activist with a mission: to save British Columbia’s wild salmon. She’s been dedicated to this cause for 30 years. Not on My Watch chronicles this long fight, but also provides a roadmap for those who want to take up the cause and protect other natural habitats themselves.

Morton is a biologist and activist known for her research on ocean-based salmon farming. She has authored more than 20 scientific papers on the impact of salmon farming. Not on My Watch is her first book.

A memoir by Cree activist Clayton Thomas-Muller, Life in the City of Dirty Water covers his entire life: from playing with toy planes as a way to escape from domestic and sexual abuse and enduring the intergenerational trauma of Canada’s residential school system; to becoming a young man who fought against racism and violence, but also spent time in juvenile prison; to becoming a committed activist. Along the way, Thomas-Muller tries to remain tied to his Cree heritage and spirituality.

Thomas-Muller is a member of the Treaty #6 based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation located in Northern Manitoba. He’s campaigned on behalf of Indigenous peoples around the world for more than 20 years, working with numerous organizations.