Ian’s Truths

Today, as I write this, is Emily Carr’s 145th birthday.  I thought I’d recognize the day with this photo of my back yard, and my favourite Emily Quotation.  This quotation always reminds me of this little spot of west coast forest that I call home.  There have been many times over the years I’ve lived ...

If you take a walk through the woods in behind my house, before long you’ll come across a large concrete pipe winding its way among the trees.  It’s old, covered with a layer of moss in places, but still remarkably intact.  In some places, it lies directly on the forest floor, in others it’s raised ...

Newborn…   Sandra noticed a deer laying down in a corner of our garden yesterday.  Thinking she was just taking a nap, Sandra went about her business.  A short while later, she noticed that the deer was still there – but now she had a tiny fawn with her, still struggling to stand on its brand new, ...

To Everything There Is a Season…   Timing, they say, is everything.  A moment too late, a moment too soon, and you can completely miss out.  Doing the right thing, but at the wrong time, is often no different than doing the wrong thing. As a photographer, I’ve learned to focus on the details – not just the ...

Remembering Walden I’ve long been an admirer of Henry David Thoreau.  One of the keenest observers of the natural world ever to put pen to paper, Thoreau has a great deal to teach us about our relationships – with nature, with one another, and with ourselves. I first became immersed in Thoreau’s writings many moons ago when ...

This blog is written with unreserved apologies to all my family and friends in Ontario and Alberta and other places across the country eastward of the Fraser Valley – i.e. all those places that are beyond Hope (sorry, couldn’t resist – just a little wet coast humour). But it’s the middle of February, and here ...

    There are places I remember, all my life…     John Lennon   I heard Bob Dylan’s iconic song Mr. Tambourine Man playing on the radio the other day (thank you CBC!), and it triggered a memory, immediately transporting me back to a very special place and to a moment, long ago, that rests within me and that surfaces ...

  Stand still in the forest, and listen carefully. The trees are talking about you. Well, perhaps not in quite the way we’d understand that as humans – it’s unlikely they’re passing judgment on your dress code, for example – but they are communicating with one another. Through their roots and through massive interconnected networks of fungal strands, ...

    A Tree for Christmas…   Not exactly your typical household Christmas tree, I grant, but here’s a tree – for you – for Christmas.   Since long before the advent of Christianity, people – particularly those in Europe and other northern climes – celebrated the solstice and the turning of the year by adorning their homes with greenery.  This ...

Canada’s history is rife with tales of struggle and hardship, of brave souls enduring the elements, building lives and communities often against great odds. Our stories tend, often, toward the personal, the intimate, rather than grand spectacles and epic events, and our true heroes are as likely to be our neighbours – ordinary people of ...

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.   This inspirational quotation by Vivian Greene popped into my head recently as I was reading Naomi Klein’s extraordinary book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate”. If you haven’t yet read this book, then I recommend (no, I insist) ...

  I recently spent several hours poring through the “Reasons for Judgment” issued by Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick of the BC Supreme Court in considering whether or not The Land Conservancy would be permitted to sell one of its protected properties – B.C. Binning House in West Vancouver – in order to pay off some of its ...