I have talented friends! The ever-gracious and enthusiastic Erin Kinsella interviews me in this video on her YouTube channel about my book, Through the Storm: Canada’s Bison Conservation Story. Learn some nifty anecdotes from my research and the publication process with the federal government, why my book has two different titles (or four, if you consider the French versions), and some photoshop secrets about the cover!
History Research Shenanigans 
I’d read a history of Elk Island Park though the lens of the animals, for sure. But instead of starting with the Elk, please start with the woolly mammoth or woolly rhino or something. Or is that too “pre-history”? I don’t think environmental history discriminates as much between pre-written and written sources, right?
Anyway, I’d really like to know what kind of “voice” you would give to a beaver: how would it use that voice to comment on the activities of us humans? Would it chastise us for over-harvesting during the fur trade, or even denounce us as murderers and genocidaires? And how would an elk feel about the arrival of homesteaders in the area?
Or are you talking more about a book that picks up the story from when a conservation ethic has already come into existence? That would be a more hopeful tone, I suppose.
I’m intrigued either way. I’ll look forward to seeing it in the shop at the Wahkotowin Visitor Centre in the near future.
Thanks for your interest! I wouldn’t write it from the perspective of the animals but using the story of the conservation of that animal to highlight the themes of that period of the park’s history. :)