Ground-Truthing

Candid, poetic and forensic, Derrick Stacey Denholm''s book walks the reader slowly and nimbly through the tangle of social, ecological and economic slash piles that dominate BC''s North Coast. Having lived and worked for twenty-five years as both a forestry field worker and a multidisciplinary artist, Denholm brings a rare perspective to how we can work productively and participate ethically in a life that maintains respect for the wild. The book explores a diverse terrain of communities that are as deeply wild as they are highly civilized. Carefully negotiating the conflicting value systems of industrial forestry, the culture of resource towns, the diversity of First Nations history and tradition, the stagnancy of government policy and the "Real Work" of the rainforest, Denholm gathers the perspectives of more than 150 academics, poets, scientists, journalists, loggers, activists, local citizens and mushroom hunters. He brings together the breadth of the local opinion, personal emotion and technical work that serves to influence the ongoing industrialisation of the wild and human world -- which are one and the same. Local in focus, international in scope and interdisciplinary by necessity, the book provides a dynamic alternate voice to the mainstream cycle of North Coast writing -- which generally serves to memorialise the Euro-Canadian, colonial-settler narrative. Denholm argues that First Nations'' experience and wisdom, taken with the long-standing lessons provided by the wild itself, can provide us all with the models, principles and philosophies needed to live our lives -- and not just in the rainforests of the North Coast of British Columbia, but anywhere.