Glavin, Terry 1955-

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Glavin, Terry 1955-

PERSONAL:

Born 1955.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of British Columbia Creative Writing Program, Buchanan Rm. E462, 1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, journalist, columnist, editor, conservationist, and educator. Transmontanus Books, editor; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, adjunct professor in creative writing department. Also founding member of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council and marine conservation adviser to the Sierra Club of Canada, British Columbia chapter. Former reporter, editor, and columnist for the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Hubert Evans Prize, 2001, and Roderick Haig-Brown conservation award, both for The Last Great Sea; recipient of Western Magazine Awards and National Magazine Awards.

WRITINGS:

A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, New Star Books (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1991.

Nemiah: The Unconquered Country, photographs by Gary Fiegehen, Rick Blacklaws, and Vance Hanna, New Star Books (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1992.

A Ghost in the Water, New Star Books (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1994.

Dead Reckoning: Confronting the Crisis in Pacific Fisheries, David Suzuki Foundation/Greystone Books (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1996.

This Ragged Place: Travels across the Landscape, New Star Books (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1996.

A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, New Star Books (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1998.

(With Charles Lillard) A Voice Great within Us, New Star Books (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1998.

(With Dan Edwards) Set Adrift: The Plight of British Columbia's Fishing Communities: Pacific Salmon Forests Project, David Suzuki Foundation (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), 1999.

(With Ben Parfitt and Catherine Syewart) Now or Never: Endangered Salmon of the Great Bear Rainforest, Greenpeace (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1999.

The Last Great Sea: A Voyage through the Human and Natural History of the North Pacific Ocean, Greystone Books/David Suzuki (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2000.

Groundfish: A Case Study: The Conservation of Marine Biological Diversity and Species Abundance on Canada's West Coast: Institutional Impediments: A Report, Sierra Club of British Columbia (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2001.

(With former students of St. Mary's) Amongst God's Own: The Enduring Legacy of St. Mary's Mission, Longhouse Publishing (Mission, British Columbia, Canada), 2002.

(With Scott Wallace and Keith Symington) State of the Strait: The History and Future Outlook of the Strait of Georgia Marine Fisheries: An Interim Report, Sierra Club of Canada (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), 2002.

Waiting for Macaws: And Other Stories from the Age of Extinctions, Viking Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2006, published as The Sixth Extinction: Journeys among the Lost and Left Behind, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of the blog Transmontanus.blogspot.com. Contributor to periodicals, including Adbusters, Canadian Geographic, and Vancouver Review. Columnist for Georgia Straight and the Tyee.

SIDELIGHTS:

A writer and conservationist, Terry Glavin has written numerous nonfiction books focusing primarily on natural history and conservation. In his 1994 book, A Ghost in the Water, Glavin writes of the large sturgeon that inhabit North American waters. On a trip on the Fraser River in British Columbia with a fisheries biologist and a fish culturist, Glavin relates their investigation into what is killing the local sturgeon population. The author also delves into the depletion of sturgeon by the fishing industry. "A Ghost in the Water is like a miniature painting, dense with fine detail about how unknown—scientifically—the sturgeon is, about the commercial impulse that led to its decline, about the sustainable aboriginal sturgeon fishery and about man's unresolved feelings towards the sturgeon, and perhaps wildlife in general," wrote Rick Boychuk in the Canadian Geographic.

With his book Dead Reckoning: Confronting the Crisis in Pacific Fisheries, Glavin continues his investigations into the fishing industry and the depletion of fish. "It's difficult not to become depressed reading this cataloguing of an ecological disaster," noted Stephen Kimber in the Canadian Geographic. "Or to share Glavin's anger as he spreads a baited longline of blame that hauls in all the usual suspects— governments, fishery bureaucrats and scientists, fish companies, industrial developers, even fishers themselves."

The Last Great Sea: A Voyage through the Human and Natural History of the North Pacific Ocean focuses on the mysteries that abound in the great North Pacific despite the fact that it has been explored extensively and studied in depth by scientists. During the course of the book, the author takes the reader from the sea's ancient history and the myths surrounding it to modern scientific discoveries and knowledge. He also explores ecological issues such as the depletion of fish that is harming the local fishing industries. Stephen Hume, writing in the Canadian Geographic, noted that "book is a remarkable story told with incisive logic and an eloquence that inspires awe, wonder and hope." Audubon contributor Christopher Camuto called The Last Great Sea "extraordinarily perceptive."

Glavin strays from his normal topics concerning natural history as he collaborated with former students of St. Mary's Mission by using their interviews to write Amongst God's Own: The Enduring Legacy of St. Mary's Mission. Focusing on the St. Mary's Residential School near Mission, British Columbia, the book documents the school's Indian alumni and their feelings about the school, where several abuses are alleged to have occurred. "Immaculately designed, written and edited, it contains about sixty photos depicting the history of the Oblate order of priests in British Columbia and daily life at St. Mary's," wrote Colby Cosh in Report Newsmagazine. "It is an astonishing portrait of overlooked generations of Canadian Indians."

In his book The Sixth Extinction: Journeys among the Lost and Left Behind, first published in Canada as Waiting for Macaws: And Other Stories from the Age of Extinctions, Glavin redefines extinction to also encompass the human condition and vanishing cultures that have relied on the natural world. "Traveling from Ireland to Singapore to the Himalayas, the author relays alarming stories of loss, giving a vivid sense of how extinction affects our lives," noted a Kirkus Reviews contributor. For example, Glavin looks at the declining fishing culture of a Norwegian village and ruminates on what is lost in terms of architecture, languages, and other aspects of this society. Colleen Mondor, writing in Booklist, noted the author's "prose that tempts the reader to linger over each word." Library Journal contributor Maureen J. Delaney-Lehman called the book "well written and solidly researched."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Audubon, March, 2001, Christopher Camuto, review of The Last Great Sea: A Voyage through the Human and Natural History of the North Pacific Ocean, p. 126.

Beaver: Exploring Canada's History, February, 1996, review of A Ghost in the Water, p. 54.

Booklist, January 1, 2007, Colleen Mondor, review of The Sixth Extinction: Journey among the Lost and Left Behind, p. 34.

Books in Canada, March, 1991, review of A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, p. 42; March, 1991, review of A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, p. 42; May, 1993, review of Nemiah: The Unconquered Country, p. 35.

Canadian Book Review Annual, 1996, review of This Ragged Place: Travels across the Landscape, p. 325, and review of Dead Reckoning: Confronting the Crisis in Pacific Fisheries, p. 407; 1998, review of A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, p. 373; 2000, review of The Last Great Sea, p. 388.

Canadian Forum, May, 1991, Boyce Richardson, review of A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, p. 28; July-August, 1995, Robin Mathews, review of A Ghost in the Water, p. 47; May, 1997, Boyce Richardson, review of This Ragged Place, p. 36.

Canadian Geographic, December, 1990, Bruce Obee, review of A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, p. 97; July-August, 1993, Douglas Leighton, review of Nemiah, p. 79; July-August, 1995, Rick Boychuk, review of A Ghost in the Water, p. 70; September-November, 1996, Stephen Kimber, review of Dead Reckoning, p. 76; November-December, 1998, M.T. Kelly, review of A Voice Great within Us, p. 85; January-February, 2001, Stephen Hume, "Probing the Pacific's Black Box," p. 89; May-June, 2001, review of The Last Great Sea, p. 89; May-June, 2006, Tom Hawthorn, review of Waiting for the Macaws: And Other Stories from the Age of Extinctions, p. 106.

Canadian Historical Review, June, 1991, review of A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, p. 215.

Canadian Journal of Law and Society, annual, 1991, review of A Death Feast at Dimlahamid, p. 212.

Canadian Literature, autumn, 1996, William J. Scheick, review of A Death Feast in Dimlahamid, p. 190; spring, 1999, Joel Martineau, review of This Ragged Place.

City, fall, 1991, review of Death Feast in Dimlahamid.

CM Magazine, September, 1993, review of Nemiah, p. 157.

Explore, January, 2001, review of Last Great Sea, p. 63.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2006, review of The Sixth Extinction, p. 1205.

Library Journal, January 1, 2007, Maureen J. Delaney-Lehman, review of The Sixth Extinction, p. 140.

Publishers Weekly, January 15, 2007, review of The Sixth Extinction, p. 39.

Quill & Quire, February, 1993, review of Nemiah, p. 25; January, 1997, review of This Ragged Place, p. 32; August, 1998, review of A Voice Great within Us, p. 33; October, 2000, review of Last Great Sea, p. 37.

Report Newsmagazine, October 7, 2002, Colby Cosh, "Truth Is More Complex; a New Book Presents a Less Black-and-White Account of One Indian Residential School."

Times Literary Supplement, April 30, 1999, Jim Boothroyd, review of A Voice Great within Us, p. 36.