Episode #20 

 An Officer of the Order of Canada, Lorna Crozier has been acknowledged for her contributions to Canadian literature, her teaching and her mentoring with five honorary doctorates, most recently from McGill and Simon Fraser Universities. Her books have received numerous national awards, including the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry. The Globe and Mail declared The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things one of its Top 100 Books of the Year, and Amazon chose her memoir as one of the 100 books you should read in your lifetime. A Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria, she has performed for Queen Elizabeth II and has read her poetry, which has been translated into several languages, on every continent except Antarctica. Her book, What the Soul Doesn't Want, was nominated for the 2017 Governor General's Award for Poetry. In 2018, Lorna Crozier received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. Steven Price called Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats), her latest nonfiction book, “one of the great love stories of our time.” Lorna Crozier lives on Vancouver Island. 

1) Please tell us your story and reasons why nature runs through all your work.  

 I think one of the mistakes we make is as a human species, is that we talk about going for a walk “in” nature or we are going outside “to” nature.  We separate ourselves from it. We are part of nature like every other species like robins, earthworms, fish, and hawks. It is interesting that we have put this glass bell around ourselves and pretend that we are separate, and I think at our own peril. 

So ever since I was a kid, I have been outdoors. And it may be because I was part of that lucky generation whose mothers said, “get out and play and don’t come back until suppertime.” And we’d run outside.  

I lived in small city, not in a forest or in a meadow, but we lived in the alleys. We’d build trenches for the water to come down the alley. And we collected sticks to come down in them. We caught frogs and bumble bees in mason jars and let them go.  We examined ants as they made their way across our sidewalks. We were 100% involved and I think that instilled in me that idea my skin should not separate me from other creatures.

When I feel happiest and when I feel most spiritual, is when I can shuck off the boundaries of what it means to be human and enter into the world of wind and sunlight and an animal with its eyes on me, as  I want to put my eyes on it.

In your first memoir

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space