The Enemy of the Good is the Perfect

Published on February 9, 2022April 17, 2023 by Rick Searle

So, after a weekend spent walking in local parks and natural areas and listening to my heart, as well as to what my friends were saying, I came to the decision to continue to leading tours.

I absolutely love leading educational natural and cultural history tours with people keen to learn about the places we visit. I firmly believe that I’m “called” to do this work. From a very young age, I’ve known that my mission in life is to save and restore wild species and areas. My way of doing this has been and continues to be as a naturalist,interpreter and educator.

As I acknowledged in my previous post, I’m fully aware of the extra greenhouse gases I’m contributing through my personal consumption of goods and services and that of my guests. I’m equally aware that everything that my wife and I do to live generates waste, of which one are greenhouse gases and in particular, carbon.

For years, we’ve been committed to reducing our carbon footprint. We’ve always been good at refusing to buy things we don’t need, buying used goods where possible, and recycling most everything we dispose. We live in a small suite.

According to BC’s Ministry of Environment, each resident of the province produced about 13 metric tonnes of carbon in 2018. Back in 2015, I used an on-line carbon calculator to determine that our joint footprint. Unfortunately I can’t recall nor can I find a record of it, but I believe our combined footprint was considerably less than this, around 6 – 8 metric tonnes. I could be wrong, so don’t quote me on this.

I started leading tours in 2016 which has increased our carbon footprint. By how much I don’t know yet. I haven’t been keeping track but it is something that I intend to do. I then will be offsetting the emissions through a not–for-profit that invests my money in the developing renewable energy sources and making them financially accessible for the masses.

The enemy of the good is the perfect some wise person once said. So true. I’ll never be perfect when it comes to not emitting any greenhouse gases (even for quite awhile after my death!). However, I’ve reminded myself that I am doing good to reduce them.

Meanwhile, as a tour guide, I have the opportunity to encourage others to do the same.

I think to some degree my ethical struggle over whether to continue guiding tours was influenced by a powerful and devious narrative that dominates our times. This narrative places the responsibility of fighting climate change on the shoulders of individuals, like myself. But the narrative as perpetuated by government and corporations is intended to deflect our attention for their responsibility and the lack of them taking it seriously.

It’s a narrative that we need to aware of and not be taken in by it.

Feeling Conflicted As A Tour Guide

Published on January 25, 2022January 25, 2022 by Rick Searle

Why am I feeling conflicted as a tour guide? On one hand, I absolutely love the work. Not every moment, for sure. But over all, well, I pinch myself that I kind of stumbled into it.

Take this year, I’ve committed to lead tours for every month, except August, from mid-May to end of Oct. Each and every trip I very excited to be leading. My calendar looks like this:

May: across Canada from Vancouver to Halifax by VIA Rail;
June: a tour of Alberta’s Badlands, including Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park/ Áísínai’pi, pictured above;
July: another coach tour, this time in Saskatchewan, taking in both Prince Albert National Park and Batoche National Historic Site;
August: My wife and driving back to Manitoba, camping along the way in some of our favourite parks;
Sept: this is a busy month as I’ll be leading two trips: one to Haida Gwaii via the Inside Passage and the other to the Western Arctic via Whitehorse, Dawson City and Inuvik; and
Oct.: Another busy month with me leading two trips to places and experiences that have been on my bucket list for decades: to the Seal River to witness and photograph the Northern Lights and to Churchill to observe and photograph Polar Bears. In case you’re not familiar with these places, they’re both in Manitoba’s high north.

Note: I’ll provide more details on each of these tours along with links on the calendar page soon.

Not only do I get to see and experience these fabulous places; but I get to travel in a style I could never afford and with interesting, fun-loving people eager to learn. And I’m paid very well for my services. Bonus!

But I’m also acutely aware of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with each of these trips and all the others offered within the travel industry. I suppose it’s the trip to see Polar Bears at Churchill that cause the strongest pangs of guilt. See them before they’re gone, right?

It’s not too late for me to change my mind and let the tour operator to find someone else. I know this would be terribly disappointing for them, particularly for their representative. She and I have formed a really nice working relationship even though we’ve never met. I’ve led other tours for them in the past, pre-COVID. I also know that this tour will go ahead whether I lead it or not. Another important consideration is whether my replacement would have as strong of an environmental perspective as I do.

And yes, I’ll admit I’d really like to see and experience polar bears in their natural habitat. I’ve only seen them in a large tank at the Winnipeg Zoo a number of years ago.

Sure, watching these two individuals roughhousing it under water over my head was a thrilling experience. But it has only fueled my desire to see them on the barren lands around Churchill. Where they are free to roam at will.

And so I arrive back on the horns of my dilemma. Should I go or should I stay?

One Map, Many Adventures!

Published on November 9, 2021November 9, 2021 by Rick Searle

Tomorrow night will be exciting! I’ll be attending the Ecostar Awards Gala as the coordinator of the Greater Victoria NatureHood. We’ve been nominated for an award for innovation. This award: ” Recognizes an organization that has demonstrated innovative sustainability practices, products, services, and/or technology in their industry.”

What got us nominated is our Greater Victoria NatureHood map and brochure.Therefore, it’s only fitting that I’ll be joined by my friend and colleague, Kathleen Burton. The map is almost entirely her creation.

We’re up against some serious competition in the two other nominees in this category. To tell the truth, I’ll be surprised if we win the award. But you never know, right. And that would be simply awesome!

The map has already attracted a lot of attention and accolades. In June we received a conservation partner award from Nature Canada for it, as well as for the tribute exhibit of Fenwick Lansdowne, an internationally acclaimed Canadian wildlife artiist. Because his subjects were almost always birds, his paintings were was often compared with those of John James Audubon.

The map was also finalist in this year’s Charity Village Awards. It will also be featured at this years International Cartographical Association’s conference next month in Florence, Italy.

On the ground, we’ve gone through print runs for a total of 15,000 copies in just a few months. The second run of 8000 copies was only made possible by the generosity of an anonymous donor.

Our focus now is to take the map from being a static downloadable PDF on our website to being something much more innovative and interactive. We certainly don’t have the expertise to pull this off ourselves, so we’re about to enter into a partnership with an organization that can provide state-of-the art technology in this kind of project along with a large cadre of highly trained people who know what to do with it.

The Greater Victoria NatureHood is also embarking on two other exciting projects. We’ll be producing three short (1 – 1.5 min) videos about each of the region’s migratory bird sanctuaries. We’re also reaching out to some local indigenous educators to bring in their nation’s knowledge and practices to the Migratory Bird Activity Booklet we produced and released last spring.

Honestly, it would be very easy for me to carry on about all the great things the partners of the Greater Victoria NatureHood have done over the past four years, while I’ve been their coordinator. It truly is a great honour to be working with these organizations and to be able to contribute to the realization of our shared vision: “a deep and long-standing connection with the natural world of Greater Victoria” among residents and visitors alike.