Lyndsie Bourgon

Last updated
Lyndsie Bourgon
Born1986 (age 37–38)
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Alma mater University of King's College University of St Andrews
Occupation(s)Author, Oral Historian
Notable workTree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods

Lyndsie Rae Bourgon, FRCGS (born 1986) is a Canadian author and oral historian based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is a National Geographic explorer, a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and a Fellow International of The Explorers Club. [1] [2]

Contents

Life

Bourgon was born in Calgary, Alberta, and raised in the small border town of Milk River, Alberta. [3]

As an undergraduate at the University of King's College she was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper The Watch, and she held internships and fellowships with CBC News, the Canadian Press, the World University Service of Canada, and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. [4] [5]

She has written for Canadian publications including Maisonneuve , [6] Hazlitt, [7] and The Walrus , [8] and has been nominated for two Canadian National Magazine Awards. [9] In 2012 she lived in an off-the-grid cabin along the North Beach of Haida Gwaii, during which she wrote about Haida artifact repatriation, traditional carving, and the Northern Gateway Pipeline. [10] [11]

In 2017, she graduated from the University of St Andrews with a degree in environmental history and oral history. [12] Her oral history work focuses on traditional land use studies in rural and difficult-to-access regions, such as the Shetland islands in northern Scotland, the Peruvian Amazon, and communities in northern Canada. [13] [14] [15] Her interviews with the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc [16] influenced the community's response to the search for unmarked burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Her expertise has been drawn upon by the Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada agencies. She has presented her work to audiences at the University of Oxford and Yale University, as well as the Oral History Society and Forest History Society. [17] [18]

Books

In June 2022, Bourgon's first book, Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods, was published by Little, Brown Spark (US), Greystone Books (Canada), and Hodder & Stoughton (UK). [19] [20] [21] Tree Thieves examines the history of poaching and investigates timber theft in the Pacific Northwest and around the world. It received favorable reviews in The New York Times , [22] the San Francisco Chronicle , [23] Science , [24] TheLondon Telegraph, The Times Literary Supplement , [25] and on NPR's Science Friday. It was named a New York Times Editors' Choice. [26] In 2023, Bourgon wrote about the death of one of her sources for the Guardian. [27]

Tree Thieves was nominated for the PEN America/Kenneth R. Galbraith Non-Fiction Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Banff Mountain Film Festival Environmental Literature Award, the BC and Yukon Book Prizes Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, and received an honourable mention for the Society of Environmental Journalists Rachel Carson Environment Book Award. [19] [28] [29] [30] Since publication, it has been chosen by The Guardian as one of the five best books about trees. [31]

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References

  1. ↑ "Explorer: Lyndsie Bourgon". National Geographic. March 2018. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  2. ↑ "Canadian Chapter Executive & Other Explorers". The Explorers Club Canada. March 2023. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  3. ↑ "Lyndsie Bourgon: Just Keep Writing". JSource. March 17, 2015. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  4. ↑ "Alumni Profile: Lyndsie Bourgon". University of King's College. March 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  5. ↑ "Peacekeeping training simulations for PPC". PAXsims. October 2009. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  6. ↑ "Lyndsie Bourgon". Maisonneuve . Summer 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  7. ↑ "Hazlitt Author Archive". Hazlitt. 2017. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  8. ↑ "The Walrus Author Archive". The Walrus . 2022. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  9. ↑ "Maisonneuve nominated for 18 NMAs". Maisonneuve . May 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  10. ↑ Bourgon, Lyndsie (March 2013). "Grave Injustice". The Walrus . Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  11. ↑ "Southern Haida Gwaii will see the first carved pole raised in more than a century". The Globe and Mail . 2013-08-09. Retrieved 2024-10-07.
  12. ↑ "Alumni: University of St Andrews MLitt Environmental History". School of History. 2021. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  13. ↑ "The Last Whalers". Aeon. 2018. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  14. ↑ "Indigenous people battle squatters and poachers in Peruvian Amazon". NationalGeographic.com. 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  15. ↑ "Know History: Lyndsie Bourgon". Know History. 2023. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  16. ↑ "2019 Summer Lexey'em" (PDF). Tk'emlups te Secwepemc. Summer 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  17. ↑ "Forest History Society: Conversations in Forest History" (PDF). Know History. September 2022. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  18. ↑ "Conservation Geopolitics Forum" (PDF). University of Oxford. March 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  19. 1 2 Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods. Hachette. June 2022. ISBN   978-1-5491-5612-0 . Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  20. ↑ "Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods". Greystone Books. June 2022. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  21. ↑ Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in the Woods. Hodder & Stoughton. July 2022. ISBN   978-1-5293-3109-7 . Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  22. ↑ "When it comes to timber theft, there are no clearcut villains". The New York Times . June 21, 2022. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  23. ↑ Peter, Fish (2022-06-15). "Review: A sobering look from both sides at Northwest timber poaching". Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guide. San Francisco Chronicle . Retrieved 2024-10-07.
  24. ↑ Yoder, Jeremy B. (June 23, 2022). "Dispatches from the redwood rebellion". Science . 376 (6600): 1388. Bibcode:2022Sci...376.1388Y. doi:10.1126/science.abq6316.
  25. ↑ "Burl aficionados: Poaching redwoods in small town California". Times Literary Supplement. December 2, 2022. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  26. ↑ "9 New Books We Recommend This Week". The New York Times. July 29, 2022. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  27. ↑ Bourgon, Lyndsie (2023-09-12). "How the illegal harvesting of giant trees in California shines a light on rural poverty". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-10-07.
  28. ↑ "Banff Mountain Book Competition announces 2022 category award winners". The Banff Centre. June 2022. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  29. ↑ "On Tour presents Lyndsie Bourgon on oral history and creative nonfiction". BC and Yukon Book Prizes. June 2023. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  30. ↑ "Rachel Carson Environment Book Award: SEJ 22nd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment". Society for Environmental Journalists. September 2023. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  31. ↑ Robinson, Callum (2024-08-29). "Five of the best books about trees". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-10-07.
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