Crusader of the Woodlands

Canadians live closer to wild nature than almost any people on Earth, and yet the way we think about the natural world remains largely unexplored terrain. In high school we learn that our country’s history amounts to survival in a rugged land, with “human against nature” as a kind of motto. Meanwhile, ask even the most avid outdoorsperson or environmentalist whose thoughts on nature inspire them, and you will hear names such as Henry Thoreau, John Muir, Annie Dillard or perhaps the Romantic poets: voices from America and Britain.

These authors’ works contain much that is universal, but they do not—cannot—“speak Canadian.” Ours is a particular natural history. The first humans to arrive in what is now the United States, for example, invaded a true wilderness south of the continent-spanning glaciers that still covered almost all of Canada; as those ice sheets retreated, humans and...