Board of Directors

Richard Louv’s most recent book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” (Algonquin), translated into 9 languages and published in 13 countries, has stimulated a global conversation about the future relationship between children and nature. Louv is the chairman and co-founder of the Children & Nature Network (www.childrenandnature.org), an organization helping build the international movement to connect children with nature. In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Past recipients have included Rachel Carson and E.O. Wilson. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, and other newspapers and magazines. He has appeared on many national TV shows in the U.S., including NBC’s Today Show, CBS Evening News, and Good Morning America. Between 1984 and 2007, he was a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune. He was also a columnist and member of the editorial advisory board for Parents magazine. He speaks frequently nationally and internationally, and has spoken frequently in Canada. He is married to Kathy Frederick Louv and the father of two young men, Jason, 27 and Matthew, 22. He is working on his eighth book. He would rather fish than write!

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“I can’t conceive of anything being more varied, rich and handsome than planet earth; its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to soak it up, to understand it … then put it together and express it in my painting. This is the way I want to dedicate my life.”

Robert Bateman’s realistic painting style, featuring wildlife in its habitat, encourages the viewer to examine the natural world. His art reflects his commitment to ecology. Besides being one of Canada’s best know artists, he is a spokesman for many environmental and preservation issues, using his art to raise millions of dollars for these causes. He has been the subject of numerous books and films; his honours and awards are numerous including 11 honorary doctorates, 3 schools named after him and Officer of the Order of Canada.

Born in Toronto, with a degree in geography from the University of Toronto, Bateman taught high school for 20 years, including two years in Nigeria. He travelled around the world in a Land Rover in 1957/58, increasing his appreciation of cultural and natural heritage. Since leaving teaching in 1976 to paint full-time, he has travelled widely with his artist/conservationist wife Birgit to many remote natural areas.

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Nick currently shares his time between deep outdoor play and high-tech online multimedia projects. This paradoxical interest has helped form his understanding and embodiment of the human-digital-nature conundrum we currently face in our westernized social fabric. The main focus of his research is on the learning that occurs within childhood special places, and their lasting efffects on our lives. With his background in natural resources, tree-canopy research, Masters in environmental education and communications, and significant work in conservation, indigenous education, and technical web-based learning systems, his PhD represents an interactive online video journey designed to combine his skills, expertise, and interests. He has been nominated by UVic for a Vanier Canada Graduate Research Scholarship. He currently lives with his wife in a a little yellow energy efficient 1906 house in Victoria, BC where they grow food, collect water, and live a fulfilling and meaningful life.

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I have been playing outside ever since I was a kid. I can still hear my mother: “Now Bobby go outside and play”. Did she want me outside playing or did she want me out of her hair? I was 11 years old when I decided to be a biologist, and I am certain that my love for nature stems from my hours outside as a young child. I still play outside as often as I can, in particular I enjoy backpacking, kayaking and birdwatching.

Currently self-employed, I am a registered professional biologist, with a masters in education. I have worked for over 35 years in parks management and land use planning as well as public conservation education for a variety of agencies, including Parks Canada, the Canadian Wildlife Service, and the BC Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs. I have been an Executive Director twice, with the BC Outdoor Recreation Council and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society-BC Chapter, and have volunteered for so many conservation organizations over the past 35 years that I can’t keep track.

Currently I am President of The Kesho Trust, a Director with the Fraser Basin Council and Trustee Emeritus with the BC Grasslands Conservation Council, The Land Conservancy and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. I am pleased to have been appointed by Richard Louv as a senior associate to his Children & Nature Network. And to my great pleasure was recently awarded Canada’s highest conservation award The J.B.Harkin Medal, for my lifelong achievement and dedication to nature.

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Nancy Wilkin has worked for the Province of British Columbia since the early 1980s in a variety of capacities in the Ministry of Environment. With a background in resource management, Nancy has 30 years of experience in the public sector and has worked since the early 1970s for all levels of government - local, provincial and federal. As Assistant Deputy Minister for the Ministry of Environment Nancy had responsibility for fish, wildlife, ecosystems and BC Parks. Nancy’s public sector experience has resulted in wide and deep roots in the fabric of British Columbia - with resource industries, First Nations, local government, and recreation and conservation communities. In the private sector, Nancy has worked as a consultant for organizational management, facilitation and conference organization. While at home raising a family, Nancy was also actively involved in local community planning.

Nancy has a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Victoria in resource management (geography and biology), with distinction, and has completed further graduate work in resource management also at the University of Victoria. Nancy was born in Dartmouth Nova Scotia and has also lived in Montreal and Victoria. Nancy is married and has two children, aged 31 and 18, both of whom have been raised in Victoria, BC. She also has a new grandson, aged 1. Nancy retired from the BC Public Service in October 2008 and began working at Royal Roads University as their Executive in Residence. Her responsibilities include a partnership agreement between Royal Roads and the BC Public Service and leading the newly established Royal Roads University Office of Sustainability.

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I am a lucky guy. I grew up knowing the names of the Group of Seven without knowing that they were painters. Theirs were the names of the lakes through northern Ontario, where my parents had the good sense to send me on long canoe trips with my brother and a guide. I was a difficult child so my time away paddling was probably more about their mental well-being than mine…

I have been in the landscape industry since 1982 and my company is full of my favourite, inspirational young people who shut us down each year with their canoe trips. Over the last decade, my team has focused on the research, design and construction of safer, more engaging natural playgrounds. My boys, Sam and Leo, serve as our quality controllers and in reality, I live to serve them. The opportunity to work with the Child Nature Alliance is something I feel lucky to do on their behalf.

I received an MBA from Queens, a Horticulture Diploma from Vancouver B.C., design training from John Brookes in England, and playground training from Robin Moore at the Natural Learning Initiative, at NCSU. Before launching Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds (www.naturalplaygrounds.ca), I served as a national program manager for the Canadian environmental charity, Evergreen.

Our clients include the municipalities of Jasper, Collingwood, Batawa, Belleville, Midland, Toronto as well as the YMCA, YWCA, school boards, childcare facilities, hospitals, zoos and museums across Canada. Natural playgrounds have been endorsed by David Suzuki and The Rick Hansen Foundation and our work has been supported privately by Sonja Bata and Robert Schad with corporate sponsorship from ING Direct and Toyota.

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Marlene Power-Johnston is an avid outdoors-person, social activist, environmentalist, and advocate for children’s access to the nature. Growing up in a small fishing community in Newfoundland, she was allowed great freedoms to roam nearby fields, forest, ponds, rivers and even wharfs that hovered over the rough ocean below. She attributes her resilience, creativity, love of nature, and environmental values to this freedom to roam and all the lessons inherent in growing up in the natural world.

After studying social work at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Marlene practiced social work in a variety of settings, including community development, environmental education, early childhood education, and child protection on both the east coast and in Ontario. In 2006, she embarked on the adventure of parenting, bringing Hazel into the world, and is now expecting the second babe to arrive in January, 2010. Having children was the ignition needed to start up Carp Ridge Forest Preschool, which is Canada’s first outdoor, environmental, and holistic preschool based on a Scandinavian model of Early Childhood Education. In starting up this preschool just outside of Ottawa, ON, she hopes to offer her own children, as well as others’, the opportunity to grow and learn in environments that were more common for earlier generations.

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Raised as a rambunctious young girl in the outback of Australia (actually the capital city of Western Australia, Perth), Temily came to appreciate nature at a very tender age. Home schooling for a term of every school year, Tem and her family would travel over to Canada and boat all over the West Coast. Filling up her days with fishing, kayaking, swimming, exploring, spelunking and hiking she sure got her fair share of adventure! Back at home, Temily jumped at the chance to swim on the sunny days and go sliding down muddy hills on the rainy ones. At the age of 12, her family packed up and decided to move to British Columbia… but not before traveling around North America for a year in a RV to get a sense of their new home. After a year of seeing the sites, settling down and hanging out with kids her own age was a high priority! The McCutcheon’s settled in Victoria, where Temily started her new Canadian life and schooling at Glenlyon Norfolk School. Finding her niche with the Child and Nature Alliance was a perfect fit, and she looks forward to spending her time doing something she loves while inspiring others to love it just the same!

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Katherine Walker grew up in California and spent much of her childhood outdoors exploring the forest behind her house, playing on rope swings and tree forts, swimming in lakes and the ocean and skiing in the Sierras. Every summer the family spent a month on Vancouver Island at her Granny’s hotel in Parksville (The Island Hall Hotel) where she roamed freely with her siblings and cousins. These summer adventures nurtured her love and appreciation for BC’s natural beauty.

With a BA in Business Administration, a minor in psychology and living in the Bay Area in the mid-80’s, Katherine entered into a 20-year career in the high tech industry, first in the San Francisco Bay Area, then on to Microsoft in Redmond, Washington and finally landing in Victoria. During this time she’s held many volunteer positions with a wide range of non-profit organizations for at-risk and homeless youth, girls/women’s organizations supporting self-esteem/parity, arts for children and recreation pursuits for those with disabilities.

During a climbing trip to Yosemite in the late 90’s Katherine met ‘a nice Canadian man’…and the rest is history. She lives in Victoria with her husband and two step-sons. Katherine’s role as Director of Program Development for WildPlay Element Parks, an adventure recreation company, includes developing new locations and working with municipalities to serve the local community through youth and family programs.

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Dr. Trevor Hancock is a public health physician and health promotion consultant and is currently a Professor and Senior Scholar at the new School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria. Over the past 30 years he has worked for local communities, municipal, provincial and national governments, health care organizations, NGOs and the World Health Organization. His main areas of interest are population health promotion, healthy cities and communities, public health, healthy public policy, environment and health, healthy and ‘green’ hospitals, health policy and planning, and health futurism. He has a long standing interest in the relationship between human health and the environment and is a co-founder of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. Currently he is also a member of the Stewardship Council of the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care (which he co-founded) and the Advisory Council of the Arts and Health Network Canada

Outside of his work life, Trevor is an enthusiastic Morris dancer – a traditional English folk dance, think ‘non-violent rugby’! - and a semi-professional outdoor photographer. He loves to travel somewhat adventurously and has sailed as voyage crew on a tallship in the South Pacific several times, enjoys diving - but only in warm water these days! – and has tried his hand at caving and blackwater rafting. He lives in Victoria BC with his wife Fran and their two dogs, where they have a small jewel of a garden – thanks to Fran, who does horticulture, while Trevor does infrastructure. They share a love of the arts, classical music, reading and, of course, their dogs – they are English, after all, as Fran is wont to remark!

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Inspired by her most critical role as the mother of 3 young children, Shawna
incorporates outdoor play as much as possible into each day, both personally and professionally. Raised in fairly high density urban areas around the world, access to beautiful natural spaces has and continues to be a necessity.
As a mother, educator and supporter of every child’s right to play and learn in safe, inspiring and accessible outdoor spaces, work is validated on a daily basis by Samaya, Luc and Calla.  In a professional capacity as the founding and Executive Director of the charitable organization, KidActive - Healthy Children, Communities & Environment, Shawna is committed to the vision of healthy, active kids who play outside, walk and bike to school and explore accessible, nearby green spaces.

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a) beavers are cool

b) singing, dancing pine trees are funny

c) everyone belongs outside

Don has worked in Alberta Provincial Parks since he was 16 years old as an environmental educator, park interpreter, and outreach coordinator. Now, as the Inclusion and Collaboration Team Leader, his mandate is to ensure the relevance and sustainability of parks through inclusion and collaboration. Don is also the Chair of the Canadian Parks Council Youth Engagement Working Group. Believing nothing teaches better than experience, Don uses developmental research and pilot initiatives to help parks reach beyond boundaries and beyond traditional audiences. Every time he spends time in nature among persons with disabilities, new Canadians, First Nations, community leaders, families or children, Don is treated to new ways of experiencing the world, and a new sense of belonging among diverse people in even more diverse landscapes.

Don holds an MA in Education on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in parks and wilderness areas, for which he received a Premiers Council Award of Excellence for Public Awareness. He just started an Interdisciplinary PhD in Environmental Design, Education, Social Work, and Medicine (Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies). This will be much harder than singing and dancing in a tree costume, and nearly as cool as beavers. Don lives in Bow Valley Provincial Park and has endless gardening and wandering adventures with his amazing wife and their 4-year old plant waterer, dirt photographer, stick swinger, pond dipper, snow digger, toboggan driver, hole finder, and mud mucker...

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Sharina currently lives and works in the tiny Arctic community of Coral Harbour, in Nunavut. As Manager of Communications and Education Programs for the Government of Nunavut's Department of Environment, she has been involved in many challenging and exciting initiatives. Sharina is enjoying learning about the Inuit way of life, which remains strongly connected to wildlife and the natural environment. Her work has ranged from involvement wildlife co-management initiatives, to climate change education projects, and outdoor camp programs designed to promote the transfer of vital land-skills and traditional Inuit knowledge from Elders to youth.

Sharina's ongoing Masters research has led her to explore the development of culturally appropriate outdoor-based curriculum. This research investigates ways to bring together environmental science and traditional Inuit knowledge in order to help empower Nunavut youth, and to help them better understand and appreciate the unique natural world in which they live. A guiding principle for this work has been M'ikmaq Elder Albert Marshall's concept of "Two-Eyed Seeing", which involves "Learning to see with one eye open to the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and using both these eyes together for the benefit of all". In her spare time, Sharina enjoys playing on the tundra... doing everything from seeking out caribou and other arctic species to cross country skiing, snowshoeing and fishing. 

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Roland has an extensive background in environmental education and conservation. He enjoys cross country skiing, snowshoeing, kayaking and wilderness hiking. He holds a Bachelor of Education degree and a Masters degree in Environmental Science with specialization in biological conservation and environmental education. Roland is directly involved in sustainable development projects in his home community. Presently he is developing and delivering environmental education programs for the Cape Jourimain Nature Centre. He has also worked as a conservation biologist for Nature NB for over 16 years implementing a conservation education program for Piping Plover in New Brunswick. Occasionally he does professional bird surveys for environmental impact projects. A devoted naturalist, Roland is a long-time volunteer for New Brunswick’s provincial naturalists group, Nature NB.

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