Of writer, naturalist , and Nobel Prize contender Robert Macfarlane, John Vaillant, author of Fire Water exclaims, “Macfarlane is a once-in-a-generation virtuoso, and I don’t know when his kaleidoscopic language and world-expanding scholarship have been used to more potent effect than in this impassioned, resounding affirmative to the title’s urgent question.”
The title of Macfarlane’s book is, Is A River Alive? and we’re thrilled to present Macfarlane in conversation with environmentalist and author Keven Van Tighem at Bella Concert Hall on June 17th. Added bonus: Canadian Alt-Country icon Corb Lund will open and close the show. There will be a book signing fueled by Shelf Life books; you can also pre-order your copy of Is a River Alive? as well as Macfarlane’s extensive back list, here.
Macfarlane took 3 1/2 years to write Is a River Alive? “I’ve poured all I have into it. My notebooks were always thirsty; I filled over 20 of them while on fieldwork. It’s become the most political, personal & (possibly) poetic book I’ve written.”
You won’t want to miss this incredible evening, and we are grateful to Penguin Random House Canada for making it possible to present Robert Macfarlane.
Kevin Van Tighem
Conversation
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission.
Penguin Random House Canada
Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts
From the celebrated writer, observer and naturalist Robert Macfarlane comes a brilliant, perspective-shifting new book, which answers a resounding “yes” to the question of its title.
At the heart of Is a River Alive? is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings, who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Macfarlane takes the reader on a mind-expanding global journey into the history, futures, people and places of the ancient, urgent concept.
Around the world, rivers are dying from pollution, drought and damming. But a powerful movement is also underway to recognize the lives and the rights of rivers, and to re-animate our relationships with these vast, mysterious presences whose landscapes we share. The young “rights of nature” movement has lit up activists, artists, law-makers and politicians across six continents—and become the focus for revolutionary thinking about rivers in particular.
The book flows like water, from the mountains to the sea, over three major journeys. The first is to northern Ecuador, where a miraculous cloud-forest and its rivers are threatened with destruction by Canadian goldmining. The second is to the wounded rivers, creeks and lagoons of southern India, where a desperate battle to save the lives of these waterbodies is underway. The third is to northeastern Quebec, where a spectacular wild river—the Mutehekau or Magpie—is being defended from death by damming in a river-rights campaign led by an extraordinary Innu poet and leader called Rita Mestokosho.
Is A River Alive? is at once a literary work of art, a rallying cry and a catalyst for change. It is a book that will open hearts, spark debates and challenge perspectives. A clarion call to re-centre rivers in our stories, law and politics, it invites us to radically re-imagine not only rivers but life itself. At the heart of this vital, beautiful book is the recognition that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.
Kevin Van Tighem
Conversation
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission.
Penguin Random House Canada
Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts
Kevin Van Tighem has worked in landscape ecology and conservation for four decades. Since retiring from a decades-long career in Canada’s national parks that culminated in his service as Superintendent of Banff National Park, he has served on the boards of the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and the Livingstone Landowners Group, and been active in support of numerous conservation causes. Van Tighem is the award-winning author of fifteen books on wildlife and nature; his next book, Understory, will be released in fall 2025. In 2021 Van Tighem received the Wildlife Federation’s Robert Bateman Award for advancing wildlife conservation through the arts, He has also been honoured by the Kainai Environmental Protection Society with a Blackfoot name, Ihtssakwi k’a’taa, that translates to Rough Rapid Water.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
