I’m an ecologist; I study environmental relationships. Something you’d think is easy to learn and very accessible; we’re surrounded by it, after all. We live, work and play in it. While I learned about environmental relationships with my eco-minded parents, I didn’t learn it or experience it in my school growing up. With the exception of some indigenous schools (which teach respect for the spirit of wildness), most of us certainly didn’t learn about environmental relationships in our schools.
Earthstar sits on moss-covered rotting cedar log as new cedar roots take hold, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Most Canadians live in a city; we don’t really understand what the natural environment is. Many of us have learned to ignore it, stop recognizing it, pocket it away as we go about our busy lives in the city. A park is a bit of greenery. A tree is a decoration that provides shade. Shrubs border a mall.
Walk through urban forest along the Credit River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
But if we can’t even recognize the natural environment, how can we understand its functional role in the intricate well-being of this entire precious planet and ultimately ourselves?
It is no wonder then that most Canadians—though we may intellectually accept climate change and its effects on this planet (because we’re smarter than some)—likely do not viscerally understand or appreciate why and how it will drastically change our lives. For most of us, climate change—as with Nature—is something that is happening to someone else, somewhere else. From those far away calamities to the quiet struggles no one talks about. We hear and lament over the flooding in Bangladesh or the Maldives. Or the wildfires in northern British Columbia. Or the bomb cyclones of the eastern seaboard.
Meanwhile, the polar bear struggles quietly with disappearing sea ice in the Canadian arctic. The koala copes quietly with the disappearing eucalyptus. Coral reefs quietly disappear in an acidifying ocean. Antarctic penguins silently starve with disappearing krill due to ice retreat. And while jellyfish invade the Mediterranean, UK seas and northeast Atlantic, the humble Bramble Cay melomys slips quietly into extinction—the first mammal casualty of climate change.
Yellow Creek flows through an urban forest in the heart of Toronto, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
So, those of us who are enlightened speak of climate resilience and adaptation. We talk of arming our cities with words like green infrastructure, stormwater management, urban runoff control, flood mitigation. Ecological literacy. But what are these things to us? They are tools, yes. Good tools to combat and adapt to the effects of climate change. But will they create resilience? I think not.
I’m a limnologist and I’ve consulted for years as a scientist and an environmental consultant. I played a role in educating industry, in the use of mitigating tools, in changing the narrative even.
Trail through urban forest on a foggy winter day in Peterborough, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
But I’ve come to realize that resilience comes only from within and through a genuine connection with our environment. Tools, no matter how proficient, are only as good as how they are used based on intention from a deep understanding. It isn’t enough to achieve the HOW of things; we must embrace the WHY of things. And that comes from the heart. We must feel it in our hearts. Or it won’t work. And we quite simply won’t survive.
Various flowers and trees of Ontario (photos by Nina Munteanu)
Canadians celebrate our multi-cultural heritage. We pride ourselves in our tolerance and welcoming nature. Our national anthem speaks of our land. Our national symbols embrace nature with the maple, beaver, caribou and loon. Yet who of us knows the habitat of the loon—now at risk, by the way (climate change will impact much of its breeding grounds). Who knows what the boreal forest—which makes up over half of our country—is? How it functions to keep this entire planet healthy, and what that ecosystem needs, in turn, to keep doing it? How to help it from literally burning up?
Ecology isn’t rocket science. Ecology is mostly common sense. Ecology is about relationship and discovery. Ecology is a lifestyle choice, based on respect for all things on this planet and a willingness to understand how all things work together.
Various mushrooms in Ontario forests (photos by Nina Munteanu)
Here’s what I’ve learned to keep me caring and remain positive and not become apathetic or fall into despair:
I’ve learned to open myself to discovery. To find Nature, even if it is in the city. To connect with something natural and wild and to find and savour the wonder of it. All that matters will naturally come from that.
Become curious and find something to love.
When you do, you will find yourself. And that is where you will find resilience. What colour is it? It doesn’t need to be green…
Throughout this article I’ve shown you some of my colours…
Red fox skull emerges on a leaf-strewn icy bank of Jackson Creek, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Here are the steps I taught myself toward healthy resilience (the first two steps are both the hardest and the easiest):
Step 1:Slow down, pay attention. Give yourself the time to relax and look around your local surroundings. Until you slow down to actually look, you will not really take in your surroundings. You need to be in the moment. Only then can you take the time to use all your senses to take in your environment. Try to look at it from a different perspective. Notice the light, the smells and sounds. What is different? What is the same?
Step 2:Lower your guard, open yourself to curiosity. Rely on as many senses as you can (sight, hearing, smell, texture, taste) to sample your environment and show some humility to ask questions. Whenever I go out, particularly in Nature, I make a point of coming home with three gifts, discoveries that make me smile or think and wonder. I’m hardly ever disappointed.
Step 3: Process what you’ve seen and discovered. Do some follow-up research to questions that may arise. Look at consequences. Share with others, discuss. From there it will be easy to ‘take responsibility’ for some section of nature that you really like; perhaps a particular tree in a park or a short path through an urban forest or stretch of urban stream. This can easily lead to good stewardship.
Step 4: Take responsibility for your chosen part of Nature. Get to know it well, how it works, what it needs, what’s right and what’s wrong. Do something about it and share with others.
Step 5: You’re there. You are resilient.
Barred owl hiding in plain sight in an urban forest near Peterborough, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
My short story Robin’s Last Song was selected by the NYC Climate Writers Collective as part of an exhibition in the Climate Imaginarium on Governors Island in New York. The exhibition, starting May 18, will run throughout the summer of 2024.
Robin’s Last Song
Robin’s Last Song first appeared in the #128 Issue of Apex Magazine in 2021. It tells the story of Robin, a blind elder whose digital app failed to warn the world of the sudden global loss of birds with disastrous ecological consequences. After years of living in self-exile and getting around poorly on sight-enhancing technology, a discovery gives her new hope in rekindling her talents in the field of Soundscape Ecology.
In a recent interview with writer Simon Rose, I described my thoughts in writing Robin’s Last Song:
I wanted to make “Robin’s Last Song” a realizable work of fiction in which science and technology play both instigator of disaster and purveyor of salvation. Our biogenetic technology comes to us as a double-edged sword in the form of gene-editing, proteomics, DNA origami, and CRISPR—just to name a few. These biotechnological innovations promise a cornucopia of enhancements: from increased longevity and health in humans to giant disease-resistant crops. But, for every ‘magic’ in technology, there is often unintended consequence. Unforeseen—or even ignored—casualties and risks. I suppose my ultimate question with this story is: will synthetic biology redesign Nature to suit hubris or serve evolution? Science doesn’t make those decisions. We do.
Anyone living in or visiting the NYC area is welcome to the Climate Imaginarium launch on May 18 on Governor’s Island. Check this Eventbrite link for details. The exhibition will continue throughout the summer of 2024 and will include: climate storytelling and poetry by Climate Café, the Sixth Festival, and the Climate Writers Collective; opening exhibition of “What is Environmental Art?” by Forest for Trees; artwork from the Climate Imaginarium community and Climate Writers exhibition; “Eye of Flora” virtual reality exhibition by Synphisica Collective; and more.
Here’s what they say:
Come to Governors Island for the grand opening of our Climate Imaginarium house! The Climate Imaginarium will serve as a community center for climate and culture, with galleries and spaces for exhibitions, performances, film screenings, and events that respond to the climate crisis with solutions and visions for hope and justice. Join us at Building 406A on Colonels Row for a lively celebration of climate art, storytelling, and community.
Exhibitions will be open to the public at noon, and the party will officially start at 2pm. All donations will support programming in our community space.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
A trickster wind stirs up clouds of drifting snow, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Not long ago, I was driving through a short tunnel that I typically take to go to work and, glancing back through the rearview mirror, I didn’t see what I expected to see. For some reason—perhaps it was the light or my wandering mind—the familiar scene looked unfamiliar; it was as though I’d entered a new dimension.
It felt ‘Otherly’ and I briefly experienced a titillating excitement akin to a protagonist journeying into a new world in some novel.
Indeed, the rhetoric of ‘Otherness’ in most fiction is typically portrayed through the singular point of view (POV) and discourse of a protagonist on a journey. The very nature of the term ‘Other’ used in any narrative suggests exclusion. According to Patricia Kerslake of Central Queensland University, the postcolonial notion of the Other arises through a mutual process of exclusion that inspires the very idea of ‘alien’ by imposing expectation on perception. Kerslake argues that: “When one culture imposes its perceptions on another, in that it begins to see the Other not as they are but as, in [Edward W.] Said’s words, ‘they ought to be’, then the process of representation becomes inevitable: a choice is made to see a ‘preferred’ real”.
In most forms of literature The POV ‘voice’ represents the Self, the inclusive ‘us’ (worldview) in its encounter with the Other, which in turn is the ‘not us.’ In his book Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient Edward W. Said contended that for there to even be an ‘us’, there has to be a ‘not-us’. The resulting power dynamic of “them and us,” of Other and Self, is created and controlled by perceptions of the singular POV voice that usually represents ‘us.
Tree branches overlook river during snowfall, ON(photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
‘The Other’ in Various Genres of Literature
In most genres of literature, the Other is often relegated to this dichotomous portrayal. In post-apocalyptic and metaphoric journey stories the Other may be the harsh environment or a calamity through which the protagonist must find their own strength to survive; in military stories it is clearly the enemy, seldom portrayed with compassion or understanding but there to test our hero; in coming-of-age stories it may be the oppressive rule or established world the hero must overcome; in science fiction it may be the hostile or unknowable aliens who must be defeated. According to Ursula K. Le Guin, science fiction displays a legacy of silencing the Other and rendering it impotent to establish and confirm humanity’s superior position in the world. Given that science fiction (SF) literature is rooted in culture, and often helps construct national identity, SF often confirms worldview, and in so doing creates internal Others (Brioni and Comberiati). According to Hermann, by failing to escape our boundary conflicts, SF simply constructs “new situations of restriction and otherness.” Kerslake argues that “silencing the Other provides SF with an indirect ability to define the potential of humankind”.1
Country road in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
‘The Other’ in Eco-Literature
While eco-literature overlaps with many genres, it appears to differ from SF and other genres portrayal of Other through its unique intention to give voice to otherwise voiceless characters, and it often does this through masterful use of character-coupling. Mary Woodbury defines eco-literature or eco-fiction as literature “made up of fictional tales that reflect important connections, dependencies, and interactions between people and their natural environments.” The environment—or an aspect of the environment—plays a major role in eco-literature, either as premise or as itself a character on a journey.
Eco-Literature is preeminently the literature of bringing awareness to the plight of the environment as both character and as Other and explores humanity’s role in that plight.
Eco-literature may go beyond raising awareness to link environmental abuse with concepts of jingoistic hubris; it may raise issues of human intersectionality, misogyny, marginalization, oppression of class, privilege, sexuality and race, and misuse of power. Violent acts perpetrated on environment—when environment is personified as ‘character’ and/or coupled directly to a character—elicit powerful emotion and clearly demonstrate how social/human injustice reflects environmental injustice.
At the heart of much eco-literature lie strong relationships forged between a major character (often main protagonist) and a minor character (as avatar for the environment such as place or ecosystem, a being, animal or plant) or an aspect of their environment—itself a character and archetype. The strong connection between protagonist and environment—whether antagonistic or sympathetic—fosters unique communication that provides ‘voice’ to the environment as Other and as Othered. The environment may serve as a symbolic connection to theme and can illuminate through the sub-text of metaphor a core aspect of a main or minor character and their journey: the over-exploited white pine forests for the lost Mi’kmaq in Annie Proulx’s Barkskins; the mystical life-giving sandworms for the beleaguered Fremen of Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s Dune.
Old shed overlooks the Otonabee river on a snowy-foggy day, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Giving Voice to the Other Through Character-Coupling
The coupling of protagonist with avatar—character-coupling—creates powerful drama and visceral connection to environmental issues and needs. Character-coupling characterizes environment, the Other, and effectively provides it with a voice, often through relationship. It elicits reader engagement, sparking new understandings and motivations toward a better caring of this world. The Other’s voice may be understandable (e.g. in many fables such as The Bear), arcane, tumultuous or fearsome (Memory of Water), or enduring and silently profound (The Breathing Hole).
Eco-literature is particularly poised to make meaningful character-couplings between mostly human protagonist and environmental characters or representatives. This is because the protagonist provides relatable qualities for easy reader empathy, while the Othered character is often less relatable—often an arcane aspect of the environment, such as water (Memory of Water) or a forest (The Overstory). Character-couplings illuminate a core aspect of the main character’s journey and/or the reader’s journey. From direct and intimate (The Breathing Hole, The Bear) to associated and inferred (The Windup Girl, Barkskins), different forms of character couplings often provide a new understanding of the plight and viewpoint of the Other. The protagonist’s link to the Other provides a readable map for the reader to follow and make their own connection.2
Dogwood shrubs and trees line a marsh in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Women Coupled with Nature as Other
Since before the industrial revolution, and very much to this day, the prevailing western worldview toward the wildness of nature has been to dominate it and constrain it. The conviction that humans are separate from and superior to nature was established by Judeo-Christian beliefs and the Cartesian hegemony that laid the foundations of modern anthropocentrism (White). Ecofeminist Ynestra King argues that “we live in a culture that is founded on the repudiation, [exploitation], and domination of nature … the Other that has no voice”. King further argues that, “Women, who are identified with nature, have been similarly objectified and subordinated in patriarchal society”.
The modern ecofeminist movement contends that a long historical precedent of associating women with nature has led to the oppression of both. Ecofeminists note that “women and nature were often depicted as chaotic, irrational, and in need of control, while men were frequently characterized as rational, ordered, and thus capable of directing the use and development of women and nature” (Miles).
French philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir elegantly explores this connection:
Man seeks in woman the Other as Nature and as his fellow being. But we know what ambivalent feelings Nature inspires in man. He exploits her, but she crushes him, he is born of her and dies in her; she is the source of his being and the realm that he subjugates to his will; Nature is a vein of gross material in which the soul is imprisoned, and she is the supreme reality…Woman sums up Nature as Mother. Wife, and Idea; these forms now mingle and now conflict, and each of them wears a double visage.
Simone de Beauvoir
Because of this association and history, some of the most powerful character-couplings in eco-literature are of women protagonists coupled with natural avatar: the Inuk widow with polar bear cub in the clifi allegory The Breathing Hole; the girl and bear in the allegory-fable The Bear; the windup girl Emiko and the Cheshire cats in the cautionary tale The Windup Girl; the tea master Noria and water in the post-ecosystem collapse novel Memory of Water; the ecologist, Patricia Westerford, with the giant trees in The Overstory.3
Heavy snow on the river, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Footnotes:
The Other has often been metaphorically portrayed in SF by aliens that lack a distinct voice or viewpoint; some portrayal has reflected a fearful imperialistic colonialism by representing Other as adversary such as an invading monster with no regard for humans (e.g. Robert Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast; H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds). Kerslake argues that the traits of the Other “fall characteristically—and conveniently—into those spaces we choose not to recognize in ourselves, the ‘half-imagined, half-known: monsters, devils, heroes, terrors, pleasures, desires’ of Said’s ‘Orient’”. The Martians of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles—who also have no voice—reflect our indigenous peoples under the yoke of settler colonialism and an exploitive resource-extraction mindset. The monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—also with no voice—exemplifies the disabled/deformed unsavory departure from our ‘perfect’ self-image; to be chased, destroyed and nullified.
In some stories the protagonist is Othered in some way, providing a more direct link to the experience of being the Other or being Othered. For instance, in Mishell Baker’s Borderline, disabled protagonist Millie provides the connection to the greater theme of Othering “lesser beings.” In Costi Gurgu’s Recipearium, the protagonists are not human; they are alien creatures that dwell inside the dead carcass of a monster, representing Other as main character.
Excellent examples that overtly deal with some of these injustices include The Fifth Season trilogy by N.K. Jemisin and The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline.
Snow-covered houses line the river during a snowstorm, ON (photos and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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In Part 2 of this series, I discuss seven examples of literature that use meaningful and impactful character coupling to achieve a voice for the marginalized, neglected and abused.
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References:
Agamben, Giorgo. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. 1998. 228pp.
Bacigalupi, Paolo. The Windup Girl. Night Shade Books, New York. 2015. 466pp.
de Beauvoir, Simone. “The Second Sex.” Modern Library, Random House, New York. 1968. p.144 In:
Dwyer, Jim. Where the Wild Books are: A Field Guide to Ecofiction. University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada. 2010. 264pp.
Ganz, Marshall and Emily S. Lin. “Learning to Lead: a Pedagogy of Practice.” The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being, edited byIn Scott A. Sook, Nitin Nohria, and Rakesh Khurana. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2012. 354p.
Herbert, Frank. Dune. Ace, New York. 1965. 884pp.
Itäranta, Emmi. Memory of Water. Harper Voyager. New York. 2014. 266pp.
Kerslake, Patricia. “The Self and Representations of the Other in Science Fiction.” Chapter 1. Science Fiction and Empire, Liverpool University Press, 2007, pp. 8-24.
King, Ynestra. “The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology.” Chapter 2. Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, edited by Judith Plant. New Society Pub, 1989, pp. 18-28.
Krivak, Andrew. The Bear. Bellevue Literary Press, New York, NY. 2020. 221pp.
Miles, Kathryn. “Ecofeminism: sociology and environmentalism.” Britannica, britannica.com/topic/ecofeminism.
The rotary trail on a heavy-snow day, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Cedar-pine forest covered in new snow of winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I’m Canadian, and I love the snow. When I grew up in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, we enjoyed a brisk cold winter with deep snow for a good six months of the year. I’ve since lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, which experiences a milder regional climate; I now live in the Kawarthas of Ontario, which has a similar regional climate to what I experienced growing up in Quebec. Living in the Kawarthas reminds me of my childhood days with winter snow.
Heavy snowfall in Trent Nature Sanctuary, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I love how the first snow of the season often comes from the sky in a thick passion. Huge flakes of unique beauty would settle on my coat sleeves and within minutes I’d be covered in snow. I would stand enraptured, arms out to catch snowflakes, and study each individual with admiration.
Farm and road in winter in Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Young locust trees covered in new snow, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Snow wraps everything in a blanket of soft acceptance. It creates a dazzling face on a dark earth. It refuses to distinguish between artificial and natural. It covers everything—decorated house, shabby old car, willowy trees, manicured lawn—beneath its white mantle. It quiets the Earth.
Trees and shrubs covered in new soft snowduring snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I often walk a trail through the forest after a fresh snow has fallen and the sun reveals itself on a crisp day. Like a balancing tightrope walker, the snow piles itself on everything, from fat fir branch to thin black locust twig. The snow then gives itself to the vagaries of a playful wind. Occasionally, a gust would send a shower of glitter snow dust raining down on me.
Snow-covered branches overlook path in show, ON(photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Twigs piled with snow on a calm morning, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I particularly enjoy walking a trail in the evening light after a fresh snow. Boots crunch on the fresh crisp snow that glistens in the moonlight. Each step is its own symphony of textured sound. A kind of collaboration with the deep of the night and Nature’s own whisperings.
Jackson Creek after a snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Since moving to the Kawarthas, close to the Otonabee River, I walk daily along the river and its riparian forest. Winters here have graced us with a variety of typical winter morphology: thick and copious snowfall, enduring fog, imaginative ice formations on the river, and glittering hoarfrost and rime everywhere else. The first snowfall can come in November, large flakes falling on still fully-clothed shrubs and trees, creating a painter’s landscape of reds, yellows, and greens dusted in a white blanket. This is when, some mornings, mist will rise like a cold breath from the river or flow and pool in depressions of the rolling Kawartha drumlins.
Thick first snowfall on Thompson Creek marsh in early winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
On cold nights in December, hoarfrost will form filigreed ‘leaves’ over everything—ground, sticks, ice and even snow. For a brief magical moment, this miniature crystal forest glitters like a field of jewels in the morning sun before vanishing by coffee break time. The river ices up in December, first with frazil that froths and fizzes as it coagulates into grease ice then shuga and finally to ice pancakes that crowd the shore, nudging each other like suburban women at a sale, then stitching themselves together into solid ice sheets attached to shore. By January and February, all is in place and the deep winter is upon us until ice break up and snow melt in late April into May. The river ice extends out from the bays in vast thick sheets where people can skate. The snow forms deep banks and drifts everywhere through which only snowshoes or skis can penetrate.
Mist off the river rises like steam on a cold day in winter,ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Old shed by the Otonabee River during a snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Lately (in the past few years) I’ve noticed that this pattern has become interrupted by extremely mild weather throughout the winter season. January can look like November, with the exception of the absence of leaves on trees and shrubs; the greens and browns of other vegetation such as grasses, forbs and forest litter can still be revealed. The fogs of early winter may also return. The river ice sheets may fragment and flow downstream, only to reform as waters refreeze. The formerly uninterrupted reign of winter is waning and this saddens me with feelings of solastalgia. The Kawarthas still get good dumps of snow and magical frost. But for each champagne powder snow day, and hoarfrost glitter, there is a melt day, when snow melts and it rains, turning the parking lot into a skating rink as temperatures plummet with nightfall.
Snow melt on the side of a country road, ON (photo andrendition by Nina Munteanu)
I grew up in a part of Canada that experienced four distinct seasons. While spring and fall exemplify transition into and out of the two stable seasons of summer and winter, this is no longer the case in many parts of Canada, where formerly well-defined and uninterrupted winters and summers could be predicted. Now all the seasons experience transition and unpredictable phenomena. Winter temperatures in the Kawarthas were often stable at just below zero Centigrade to minus 20°; they now fluctuate more highly from minus 20° to +10.
Author’s car parks on a country road after a snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
A report by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies released in 2022 confirmed that global temperatures in 2022 were 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the average baseline period of 1951 to 1980 and 2 degrees warmer than the late 19th century average. They reported that the past nine years have been the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880.
Teenagers walk the Rotary Trail after a snowfall, ON (photo and rendition byNina Munteanu)
The winter that I grew up with is changing into something else. It, like the changing world, is in transition. There is no denying that global warming is upon us and each region is uniquely experiencing its effects. Climate is changing and the environment is adapting to that change.
Thompson Creek after a snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
While solastalgia creeps into my psyche at times, I am assiduously learning to pace myself with my changing environment. As the regional weather adapts to the warming climate, I am learning to adapt too. One way is through the equipment I use: I still use my snowshoes (a recent gift from my son) in winter; but, more often, I use snow/rain boots with crampons for terrain that includes wet snow, slush, and ice. Being prepared for change allows me to accept it with grace. I have learned to cherish those moments when fresh snow falls from the heavens like confetti. I charge outside in my snow gear and enjoy it while it’s there. I have learned to live in discovery and to thrill in the unpredictable. Each day is a gift of unknown and thrilling surprise.
First snow in early winter at Thompson Creek, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I have learned to live in the moment and to cherish that moment as a gift.
Because, even change is a gift.
Partially iced over Otonabee River, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Article originally published January 2023 in Rewilding Our Stories (edited by Mary Woodbury) then January 2, 2024 on Dragon.eco.
Trees and dogwood shrubs in winter by the Thompson Marsh, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Woman and her dog walk among giant cedars after a snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
I rock on the cedar swing on my veranda and hear the wind rustling through the gaunt forest. An abandoned nest, the forest sighs in low ponderous notes. It sighs of a gentler time. A time when birds filled it with song. A time when large and small creatures — unconcerned with the distant thrum and roar of diggers and logging trucks — roamed the thick second-growth forest. The discord was still too far away to bother the wildlife. But their killer lurked far closer in deadly silence. And it caught the birds in the bliss of ignorance. The human-made scourge came like a thief in the night and quietly strangled all the birds in the name of progress.
excerpt from “Robin’s Last Song” by Nina Munteanu
My short story Robin’s Last Song was republished recently in the superlative online magazine Metastellar. The story was first published in 2021 in Issue 128 of Apex Magazine and an earlier version of the story called Out of the Silence appeared in the literary magazine subTerrain Magazine Issue 85 in 2020.
Left, “subTerrain” Issue 85 carries “Out of the Silence”; right, “Apex Magazine” issue 128 carries “Robin’s Last Song”
I raced up the stairs to the auditorium then quieted my breath and listened at the door, heart thumping like a bird trying to escape. Professor Gopnik was ten minutes into his lecture; I could hear his commanding voice: “… estimates that the entire number of birds have been reduced by a third in five decades—I mean common birds like the robins, sparrows, warblers, and even starlings…”
He was talking about Rosenberg’s paper in Science. The study shocked the scientific community; but I had already observed the decline of the house sparrow around my aunt and uncle’s house near the Old Mill. And the robin—my namesake, whose song heralded spring for me—had grown quiet.
I imagined Gopnik waving the journal at the class in his typical showman style. He had a habit of wandering the stage like an evangelist, fixing each student with intense blue eyes as if challenging them to believe. I thought him an over-confident condescending prig. But for someone who looked as young as the students he was teaching, Gopnik was brilliant. And what he was doing was so important. I wanted so badly to work under him as a grad student. But he terrified me.
Excerpt from “Robin’s Last Song” by Nina Munteanu
The Story Behind the Story
It all began with my discovery of an emerging bioacoustic tool, soundscape ecology, that measures biodiversity and ecosystem functionality. I’d just read the disturbing 2019 Science article by Rosenberg and team who determined that our slow violence of habitat degradation and toxic pollution has reduced the world’s bird population by a third in just five decades. I was devastated; I could not imagine a world without the comforting sound of birds. What would it be like if all the birds disappeared?
Map and chart of bird decline since 1970
Already primed with research into genetic engineering for the sequel to my 2020 eco-novel,A Diary in the Age of Water, my muse (often delightfully unruly) played with notions of the potential implication of gene hacking in ecological calamity and how this might touch on our precious birds: when nature “is forced out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded;” her secrets “reveal themselves more readily under the vexations of art than when they go their own way.”
Robin’s Last Song is a realizable work of fiction in which science and technology are both instigators of disaster and purveyors of salvation. Today, gene-editing, proteomics, and DNA origami—to name just a few—promise many things from increased longevity in humans to giant disease-resistant crops. Will synthetic biology control and redesign Nature to suit hubris or serve evolution? What is our moral imperative and who are the casualties? As Francis Bacon expressed in Novum Organum, science does not make that decision. We do.
I also recently sat down with Rebecca E. Treasure of Apex Magazine for a conversation about story, ecology, and the future. Here’s how it begins:
Apex Magazine: The Way of Water in Little Blue Marble is such a powerful piece touching on water scarcity and friendship, a dry future and the potential for technology to overtake natural ecology. Robin’s Last Song explores extinction, human fallibility, friendship, and again, that conflict between technology and nature. Do you think we’re heading toward the kind of dystopia shown in these stories?…
“Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds. The early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Discarded robin’s egg in the forest in spring, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
p.s. May9: I just learned that Robin’s Last Song was selected by the NYC Climate Writers Collective as part of an exhibition in the Climate Imaginarium on Governors island. The exhibition, starting May 18, will run throughout the summer of 2024.
Fledgling robin rests on a patio chair in spring, ON (photo by Merridy Cox)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Rocky trail through ancient eastern hemlock forest, Catchacoma Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I look forward to my daily walks. I find that walking helps me centre myself. Depending on the time I have, some walks last half an hour to an hour. Others walks will stretch from three hours to a day long. These aren’t city-walks.
Stream swells in a spring rain in Trent Nature Sanctuary, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
My favourite place to walk is in the forest, by a river.
Perhaps it is the solitude… or the negative ions, the fresh pungent scents of damp loam, moss and trees. The humbling magnificence of these stately trees. The fishy bog smell of algae. Or the unknown treasures hiding in plain sight for me to discover… Whatever the combination, I find it most pleasing. And freeing.
It is also here, wandering in the forest, that my creativity flourishes as I find expression through the joy of discovery.
Old-growth forest surrounding Pierce Lake, BC (photo by Kevin Klassen)
The first step is to lose myself…
That’s the fun part: not knowing what’s beyond that hillside or down that ravine on the shores of the creek I barely see or around that bend in the root-gnarled trail among the swamp cedars. Like a moth to light, I’m drawn to the unknown. Ever the explorer.
Old-growth cedar forest in Jackson Creek forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Gnarly cedar roots cross a path through morning fog in a swamp cedar forest, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
It is often here, as I walk along uneven trails or maneuver through undergrowth, up hills or down stream banks to explore and record with my camera, that I do my best thinking… Well, best in that it does not feel like thinking; more like simply ‘being.’ As my body responds to Nature’s sensual treasures, my ingenuous mind ‘walks away’ from restrictions of consciousness and roams in a kind of euphoric state of simple joy. Freed from thinking to feel and sense.
No need for a destination. The journey is my destination…
Gnarly roots of an old yellow birch snake across the old-growth cedar forest, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Moss-covered boulder erratic (Nina’s Boulder) in old-growth cedar forest of Jackson Creek park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Walking in a forest unclutters my mind. The forest is simple in its natural complexity. Its beauty combs out the tangles of human encumbrance and grounds me in the simplicity of natural life.
Cookout in old-growth rainforest at Mamquam River near Squamish, BC (photo by Kevin Klassen)
I go prepared. Depending on the kind of walk, I’ll bring my clementine to snack on or a hearty lunch and fruit snacks that I carry in my backpack, along with a notebook and first aid kit. And, of course, I bring my camera. When I stop for lunch or snack, I choose my location thoughtfully, sometimes a place to sit, but mostly with a view of something worth studying. Lunch or snack stops are particularly alluring with unexpected experience.
Moss-covered rocks scatter along the banks of Jackson Creek, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
It is then, when I’ve stopped walking and have become quiet, when nature closes around me like a soft blanket and often gifts me with a precious sight or sound. A nearby red squirrel eating a nut. A bird flitting from berry to berry in a viburnum shrub. Oft times, I will be rewarded with the sight of a mushroom right at my feet or next to where I sit. That is often followed by the sight of many more.
As though the one had to be first seen to reveal the many.
Various mushrooms in Ontario forests (photos by Nina Munteanu)
Now lost, I open myself to possibility…
Like the propagules of Virginia creeper, my senses reach out to find the unexpected. I’m looking to be surprised. To discover something new that will draw me outside myself.
Various flowers and trees in southern Ontario (photos by Nina Munteanu)
The river trickles in the background as I step through dappled light and inhale the organic scents of the forest. The forest and the river help me re-align and focus—without trying. That’s the magic of it. It’s in the not trying.
Marcescent beech leaves drape over old road through swamp forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I take my camera (and tripod) with me on most walks for those moments that I can never anticipate: like the time a deer stepped gracefully out from behind a tree not three metres from me in a moss-covered red pine forest. I was in the process of setting up my camera on its tripod to capture the trail through the pines when the deer moved gracefully into my sight. Startled, we both froze and stared at one another for a moment made eternity. The deer then sprang away and loped through the trees, disappearing within seconds. I stood, hands fixed on my camera shutter button, and smiled. I had not taken a picture. But I now basked in that frozen moment of fascination between two curious animals, a deer and a human.
I didn’t need a picture; I already had my prize, the enduring memory of that moment.
Pine trees loom tall at the location where I met the deer in Petroglyph National Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In the April 2014 issue of the Journal of Experimental Pshychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, Stanford researchers Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz demonstrated that walking boosts creative inspiration. Using the Guildford’s Alternative Uses Test they showed that the act of walking significantly increased creativity for 81% of the participants. Oppezzo and Schwartz were able to demonstrate that the creative ideas generated while walking were not irrelevant or far-fetched, but innovative and practical.
Moss-covered ancient hemlock in the Catchacoma old-growth forest, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
It begins with changes to our chemistry. In the September 3 2014 issue of TheNew Yorker, journalist Ferris Jabr describes why walking opens the mind to creativity:
“When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus [a brain region crucial to relational memory and contextual learning], and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.”
Beech tree with marcescent leaves in a mixed forest, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
So, I walk and I create in my mind and my heart as I prepare to write my next novel…
Payne Line road in the mists of an early morning rain, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Beech trees stand with bronzed leaves as the snow falls in the mixed forest of South Drumlin park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Yesterday, it started snowing near the end of my work shift, and I kept glancing out the window as it turned into a heavy thick snow, the kind I just adore. Whenever this happens, I long for werifesteria…
A pair of beech trees stand pale among hemlocks and poplar trees, South Drumlin park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Beech-hemlock forest after a light snow in South Drumlin park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
As soon as the shift was over, I snatched my gear and rushed off with my camera and tripod and a pack of blueberries to the beech-maple-hemlock forest nearby. The place is called South Drumlin Park, because the forest runs up and down a hogsback with wonderful trails throughout.
Marcescent beech trees greet me along a trail in South Drumlin park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I was the only person there. I walked and crunched through snow and frost-hardened leaf litter and I let myself get lost in the labyrinth of trails through the open winter forest. The pale beech trees, because they keep their now copper-coloured marcescent leaves, stood out amid the bare maples, oaks, poplars and birch trees.
Pale bronze beech leaves light up the dark hemlock forest, South Drumlin park (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I wandered there for hours, inhaling the peaceful freshness and the quiet hush of gentle snowing in the forest.
There were just a few rowdy red squirrels and one persistent bluejay, but all else lay quiet in the deep of the forest. I had found my magic and mystery … It felt sublime and my heart sang…
Trail through poplars, cedars and hemlocks toward the river, South Drumlin park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
McGill University, view from main gate on Rue Sherbrooke (photo by Nina Munteanu)
I’ve just returned from Montreal, where I was invited to participate in a two-day conference hosted by McGill University’s Bieler School of Environment at Esplanade Tranquil. Named after Kim Stanley Robinson’s eco-fiction novel New York 2140, the conference brought together a diverse assemblage of scientists, academic researchers, urban planners, speculative fiction writers, artists, and students in a small setting dedicated to encourage cross-pollination of ideas and visions through panels and workshops. I sat on a panel and a roundtable with other writers, urban planners, engineers, scientists and activists to discuss futures through science and story. Much of the event focused on the literary genre called Hopepunk—a sub-genre of Speculative Fiction devoted to optimistic themes of scientific transformation, discovery and empathy. Resulting dialogue explored forms of communication, expression, and ways not just to deal with growing solastalgia, eco-grief, and environmental anxiety but to move forward through action and hope.
Breakout groups in Seeds of Good Anthropocenes Workshop (photo by Nina Munteanu)
McGill faculty in Panel on ‘Turning Research into Hopeful Stories’ (photo by Nina Munteanu)
In the Thursday morning writer’s panel, in which we explored the role of science knowledge and hope in story, I shared the writing process I underwent with my latest published novel A Diary in the Age of Water, which I categorize as a hopeful dystopia (‘Hopeful dystopias’ are much more than an apparent oxymoron; they are in some fundamental way, the spearhead of the future—and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster):
The main character in A Diary in the Age of Water was a limnologist like me who kept a journal (the diary referenced in the title of the book). This part of the story took place in the near-future when the water crisis and associated climate change phenomena had become calamitous. Being a scientist with so much intimate knowledge of the crisis, the diarist became cynical and lost her faith in humanity. I recall my own journey into despair as I did the research needed to convey the character’s knowledge and situation. I found myself creating a new character (the diarist’s daughter) much in the way a drowning swimmer takes hold of a life-saver, to pull me out of the darkness I’d tumbled into. The daughter’s hopeful nature and faith in humanity pulled both me and the reader out of the darkness. The cynical nature of the diarist came from a sense of being overwhelmed by the largeness of the crisis and froze her with feelings of powerlessness. The diarist’s daughter rose like an underground spring from the darkness by focusing on a single light: her friend and lover who pointed to a way forward. As Greta so aptly said once, “action leads to hope” and hope leads to action. Despite the dire circumstances in the novel, I think of A Diary in the Age of Water as a story of resilience. And ultimately of hope.
I came to the conference as a writer, scientist, mother, and environmental activist. What I discovered was an incredible solidarity with a group so diverse in culture, disciplines, expression and language—and yet so singularly united. It was heartwarming. Hopeful. And necessary. This conference ultimately felt like a lifeline to a world of possibilities.
Organizers brought in a wide variety of talent, skill, and interest and challenged everyone through well-run workshops to think, feel, discover, discuss, collaborate and express. Workshops, panels, and multimedia art incited co-participation with all attendees in imaginative and fun ways. On-site lunches and drinks helped keep everyone together and provided further space for interaction and discussion.
Student-led break out group discussing ways to transform eco-emotions into hope (photo by Nina Munteanu)
At every turn, I made contacts across disciplines and interests and had stimulating and meaningful conversations. I discovered many hopeful ‘stories’ of Montreal and elsewhere on hopeful visions and endeavors. These included “Seeds of good Anthropocenes” (small ground-rooted projects and initiatives aimed at shaping a future that is just, prosperous, and sustainable); turning scientific research into hopeful stories; and world building as resistance. I talked with artistic creators, students doing masters in Hopepunk literature and co-panelists on all manner of subjects from urban encampments, greening and rewilding Montreal, to how Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring informed a main character in Liu Cixin’s novel The Three Body Problem.
Creating visual art via MAPP (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Marc-Olivier Lamothe stands next to a MAPP projection (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Conversations often led to an acknowledgement of art as an effective means of expression and creative therapy in the context of the climate crisis. I met creatives such as Marc-Olivier Lamothe and his colleagues at MAPP and had the chance to experiment first hand with his creative tools. I had wonderful discussions with storytelling visual artist Alina Gutierrez Mejia of Visual Versa, whose evolving mural of each day’s events was truly mesmerizing to watch—and rather revealing.
Alina Gutierrez Mejia creates a visual representation of the day’s conference (photo by Nina Munteanu)
In future, I’ll post more on these and other creatives I encountered at the conference.
Program for Montreal 2140
THURSDAY morning began with an introduction by BDE Director Frédéric Fabry.
This was followed by a panel entitled Hopeful Stories Across Science and Fiction, in which I participated, along with fellow writers Su J. Sokol (author of Zee), Alyx Dellamonica (author of Gamechanger), Rich Larson (author of Annex and Ymir), Genevieve Blouin (author of Le mouroir des anges) and Andrea Renaud Simard (author of Les Tisseurs). The panel was moderated by McGill geographer Renee Sieber and McGill urban planner Lisa Bornstein.
After lunch, a panel entitled Faculty Workshop: Turning Research into Hopeful Stories was moderated by McGill researcher Kevin Manaugh and Annalee Newitz (journalist and author of Four Lost Cities). McGill researchers included: Caroline Wagner (bioengineering), Hillary Kaell (anthropology and religious studies); Jim Nicell (civil engineering); Sébastien Jodoin (law); and Michael Hendricks (biology).
McGill students who lead the workshop on Hope and the Future stand with one of the conference organizers Daniel Lukes (photo by Nina Munteanu)
The faculty panel was followed by the Student Workshop, Hope and the Future, led by McGill students Tom Nakasako, Rachel Barker, Tatum Hillier, and Lydia Lepki.
Annalee Newitz gives her keynote (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Annalee Newitz closed the day with their keynote presentation Worldbuilding Is Resistance that explored the dystopia binary of environmental science fiction. A theme to which the next keynote by Kim Stanley Robinson would touch on as well.
Elson Galang presenting Seeds workshop (photo by Nina Munteanu)
FRIDAY morning started with Elson Galang and Elena Bennett (McGill University), who led the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes Workshop, which introduced the concept of seeds programs then further explored through breakout discussion groups they moderated.
This was followed by faculty-led Teaching and Learning for Hopeful Futures Workshop, in which McGill instructors from varied disciplines (including education, political science, environment, urban planning and planetary sciences) discussed translating science into hopeful narratives.
pre-meet on Zoom of participants of the Roundtable
I then participated in a roundtable of authors, scholars, researchers and planners entitled Telling the Story of the Future, moderated by Chris Barrington-Leigh (McGill BSE/Health and Social Policy). The roundtable included fellow authors Alyx Dellamonica and Su J. Sokol. Other participants of the roundtable included Stephanie Posthumus (languages, literatures, cultures at McGill), Jayne Engle (public policy at McGill) Richard Sheamur (urban planning at McGill), and limnologist Irene Gregory-Eaves (biology at McGill).
BDE Director Frédéric Fabry introduces the conference (photo by Nina Munteanu)
The final keynote was given by Kim Stanley Robinson (author of New York 2140 and The Ministry of the Future).
Storyboard of the first day of the conference by Visual Versa (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Maude Barlow, author of Boiling Point, Chairman of the Council of Canadians
Like a car, every novel has its point of ignition: a spark that sets it in motion. This occurs when a premise or idea comes together with an incendiary moment of clarity or a thematic question. Mine—though I didn’t know it at the time—happened in a church on the Summer of 2016.
I was in a United Church on Bloor Street, in Toronto’s Annex, watching a talk given by Maude Barlow on water justice. The radical talk was based on her recent book Boiling Point, a comprehensive exploration of Canada’s water crisis—a crisis that most Canadians weren’t—and still aren’t—aware. Canada is steward to a fifth of the world’s fresh water, after all. It is a water-rich country. Of the dozen largest inland lakes in the world, Canada holds eight of them. So, why water crisis? Barlow explains. And you should read Boiling Point, particularly if you’re Canadian. It will open your eyes to the politics of water and how multinational corporations—like Nestlé—are already grabbing and funneling water away from Canadians and into the global profit machine.
I sat close to the front of the Church sanctuary to best see her. But I soon noticed that many people had elected to sit in the gallery above. I found myself focusing on a young mother and her little girl. The girl had some paper and crayons and was busy with that as the enthusiastic mother listened to Maude deliver dire facts about corporate water high-jacking and government complicity.
I saw a story there.
What mother would take her pre-school child to a socio-political talk on water? I would later reflect that memory of the mother and her little girl through my characters Una and her little daughter Lynna, the diarist in my novel A Diary in the Age of Water (eventually published in 2020 with Inanna Publications).
Fresh water flows down the barrel of a hand-operated water pump.
My novel really began with a short story I was invited to write in 2015 by editors of Future Fiction and Mincione Edizioni about water and politics in Canada; the premise of this story would later find it’s way into the larger novel. I had long been thinking of potential ironies in Canada’s water-rich heritage. The premise I wanted to explore was the irony of people in a water-rich nation experiencing water scarcity: living under a government-imposed daily water quota of 5 litres as water bottling and utility companies took it all. I named the story “The Way of Water.” It was about a young woman (Hilda) in near-future Toronto who has run out of water credits for the public wTap; by this time houses no longer have potable water and their water taps have been cemented shut; the only way to get water is through the public wTaps—at great cost. She is in a line of people; she’s two metres from water—and dying of thirst.
“The Way of Water” captures a vision that explores the nuances of corporate and government corruption and deceit together with global resource warfare. In this near-future, Canada is mined of all its water by thirsty Chinese and US multinationals—leaving nothing for the Canadians. Rain has not fallen on Canadian soil in years due to advances in geoengineering and weather manipulation that prevent rain clouds from going anywhere north of the Canada-US border. If you’re wondering if this is possible, it’s already happening in China and surrounding countries.
The story first appeared in 2015 in Future Fiction, edited by Francesco Verso, and in 2016 as a bilingual (English and Italian) book and essay published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. The story has so far been reprinted seven times in magazines and anthologies, including “Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change Anthology” (Exile Editions, Bruce Meyer, ed), in 2017, “Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction” (Francesco Verso & Bill Campbell, eds; Future Fiction / Rosarium Publishing, Rome and Greenbelt, MD) in 2018; and in Little Blue Marble Magazine (Katrina Archer, ed) in January, 2019 and in their ‘Best of’ anthology. It was then published in 2022 in Metastellar Magazine and later in their ‘Best of’ anthology. “The Way of Water” received generous praise from review sites and the press worldwide.
After the success of this short story, I realized that I needed to tell the larger story—how did the world—Canada—get to where Hilda was? Her mysterious mother, the limnologist Lynna who was taken away by the RCMP in 2063, clamored for more attention. I remembered that four-year old girl and her mother in the gallery at Maude Barlow’s talk on water politics. And I thought of my characters: young Lynna and her mother Una. How does a daughter of an activist mother behave and think? How best to express her voice? I had earlier written a short story that was a mix of correspondence (emails) and third person narrative (“The Arc of Time” in Natural Selection, later reprinted in Metastellar Magazine), which I felt captured the voices of the characters well. I realized that a diary by Lynna would be an ideal way for her to express her unique worldview and cynicism—yet allow her vulnerable humanity to reveal itself through this unique relationship with her diary. The remaining characters and their narratives emerged easily from there: Una, her activist mother; Daniel, her conspiracy theorist colleague (and her conscience); Orvil, the water baron (and lover she betrayed); and Hilda, her “wayward” supposedly mind-challenged daughter—who appears in the short story that takes place later.
I had a lot of material; I had already been researching water issues and climate change in my activism as a science writer and reporter. In 2016, Pixl Press had published “Water Is… The Meaning of Water”,essentially a biography of water, written from the perspective of mother, environmentalist and scientist. I had practiced as a limnologist for over twenty-five years and could mine my various personal experiences in the field, lab and office with genuine realism. I chose Wetzel’s Limnology (the classic text book I used in my introductory limnology course) for quotes to each of Lynna’s entries; this added an opportunity to provide additional metaphor and irony through Lynna’s scientific voice. I placed the child Lynna (who was born in 2012) into actual events in Toronto, where I currently live. This pushed the story further into the area of documentary and blurred the lines between fiction and non-fiction to achieve a gritty and textured reality. Lynna also taught limnology at the University of Toronto, where I currently teach.
Just as Water Is… served as a watershed for all my relevant experiences as mother, environmentalist and scientist, A Diary in the Age of Water would galvanize many of my personal experiences, doubts, challenges and victories into compelling story. Although parts of the story wrote themselves, the entire book was not easy to write. There were times when I had to walk away from the book to gain some perspective—and optimism—before continuing. When I found myself drowning in Lynna’s voice, I invoked Hilda to guide me to shore. I found a balance that worked and compelled. Ultimately this opened to some of the best internal conflict and tension I have experienced in my writing.
Like water itself, A Diary in the Age of Water expresses through many vessels and in many perspectives, spanning hundreds of years—and four generations of women—with a context wider than human life. Through its characters, A Diary in the Age of Waterexplores the big question of humanity’s deadlock with planetary wellness and whether one is worth saving at the expense of the other. One of the characters asks Lynna the hard question: “If you had the chance to save the planet [stop the mass extinctions, deforestation and pollution ravaging the planet], but it was at the expense of humanity, would you do it?”
Water is, in fact, a character in the book—sometimes subtle and revealed in subtext, other times horrific and roaring with a clamorous voice. Water plays both metaphoric and literal roles in this allegorical tale of humanity’s final journey from home. The story explores identity and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing—and in which each of us plays a vital role simply by doing or not doing.
A Diary in the Age of Water promises to leave you adjusting your frame of reference to see the world, yourself—and water—in a different way.
Illustration on Liisbeth article (photo collage by PK Mutch and Dreamstime
This is what PK Mutch of Liisbeth and Ariel Kroon (PhD graduate of English Literature at the University of Alberta and co-editor at Solarpunk Magazine) say about A Diary in the Age of Water, published by Inanna Publications in 2020:
The novel has received wonderful praise and prizes, including the Literary Titan Award, the Foreword Indies Award and finalist in the International Book Awards. I wonder if Maude Barlow has read it?… Maybe I (or someone) should get her a copy, huh?…
Maude Barlow with ‘Save our River’ sign
Maude Barlow is a Canadian activist and author of Blue Gold, Boiling Point and several other books on water justice. She chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and Ottawa-based Blue Planet Project. Maude co-founded the Council of Canadians and chaired its board for over three decades.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Fall colours of maple trees in the Mark S. Burnham Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
For the past few days, I’ve been wandering, entranced, in the various forests, swamps and marshes of the Kawarthas. I found myself inspired by the autumnal light and organic scent in the air.
They pulled me into the verge…
Poplar trees in the fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
It’s the time of “the verge,” when the seasons collide in the wake of the equinox and anticipate the unruly winds of change. A moment of stillness before the Earth shifts, relinquishes, and embraces.
In the hush of a great threshold, Nature holds its breath and a leaf settles in the arms of a cedar root…
Largetooth aspen sits on a cedar root in the pine forest of Warsaw Cave Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Ancient pine, cedar and hemlocks in Jackson Creek forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
There I was, eyes and ears–all senses–wide, taking in Nature’s gifts of the verge. The rustling leaves in a cool wind. The musky smell of swamp water and the sweet rot of vegetation. The lazy gurgle of shallow creeks around smooth rocks. The halting shrill of a Blue Jay.
Jackson Creek in October, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
On one walk, a giant toad—the biggest I’d ever seen!—waddled across my path. I think it was an American toad, mottled and rough with warts. He looked rather grumpy and took his time, somehow confident—or not caring—that I could step on him and squish him easily. He was rather jiggly as he lumbered on. I did not take his picture; I don’t think he wanted me to, so I didn’t.
Fallen hemlock tree in Mark S. Burnham Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Soon after, a small garter snake slithered across my path, less confident of my steps. It froze once it was safely out of my way. Good snake…
The forest was alive with the domestic chaos of wildlife busy with itself. Chipmunks chugged and squirrels scolded from the tree tops. Surely not at me! I climbed out of the lowland of old-growth hemlock-beech swamp forest to the top of a drumlin of maple-hop hornbeam-ash forest and then descended again into the dark hemlocks and pines.
Maple tree showing deep colour in the fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Red and sugar maples and aspens flame in the fall by the Otonabee River near Trent University, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
The colours of sugar and red maple blazed in the canopy above, frothy clouds of bright orange, red, yellow and everything in-between under a deep blue sky. I wandered, camera in hand, and found treasures everywhere—from blue fungi to tiny bright red maple leaves freshly fallen.
Various mushrooms in the forests of Ontario (photos by Nina Munteanu)
I have a silly habit of picking up leaves and pressing them when I get home; my books are repositories of colourful prizes from years past.
Small red maple leaf sits beside a hemlock sapling amid white fungi and moss on a nurse log in Mark S. Burnham forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Marsh in Ontario in the fall (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In the marsh, I encountered a green frog, sitting in the mud. It decided to pose for my camera. And I obligingly took its picture. My new best friend.
No, I did not take him home. I left him there, lollying in the mud, looking very content.
Green frog poses for the author’s camera
For all I know he’s still there, presiding over the autumn verge…
Jackson Creek reflects the gold hue of largetooth aspen in October, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach 