Scientist Suzanne Simard reflects on the healing power of Canada Reads memoir Life in the City of Dirty Water
Suzanne Simard is defending Life in the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller on Canada Reads 2022.
B.C.-based author and academic Suzanne Simard knows a thing or two about science and storytelling — a potent pairing that will come in handy as she gets ready to champion Cree writer and environmental activist Clayton Thomas-Müller's memoir, Life in the City of Dirty Water, on Canada Reads 2022.
Simard, a professor in the department of forest and conservation sciences at the University of British Columbia, is the author of her own acclaimed memoir, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, which chronicles her life and pioneering research into plant communication and intelligence.
Her research has inspired filmmakers like James Cameron (Avatar), and her memoir, one of the bestselling books of 2021, is set to be turned into a feature film starring Amy Adams.
Simard is defending Life in the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller on Canada Reads from March 28-31. The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBC Books.
Simard spoke about her early Canada Reads experience with host Robyn West on CBC Radio's All Points West.
You've just met all of your fellow Canada Reads panellists — virtually, I believe. What was that like for you?
I'm a bit nervous. It was also new to me. I've never done anything like this before, you know, with this incredible group of people who are so well-known across Canada. It felt a bit intimidating. But I think that we're going to have a lot of fun together championing our books.
You've chosen to defend Life in the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller. Can you briefly describe the book for us?
I think that this book is probably the most important book for Canada this year. It's a memoir about Clayton — he's a Cree man who grew up in the city of Winnipeg. He comes from a family that is part of the Pukatawagan nation in northern Manitoba. But he grew up in Winnipeg with his mother, who went through the residential school system. And the first part of the book is about Clayton's experience growing up as a child of a residential school survivor. And it's traumatic.
I think that this book, for those who are non-Indigenous in Canada, will be such an eye-opener — a shock. And it might well remind us that the legacy of the residential school system is alive and it is affecting people's lives every day.
Just today in the news, the potential uncovering of more graves at the St. Joseph's Mission, just outside of Williams Lake, is a reminder that there are a lot of people still suffering — and Clayton is one of those people, but he has turned the suffering and that ability to get back up again into activism. And he is championing climate-change activism. He's had a huge influence on how the pipelines have played out across Canada, and other environmental issues. So he's really a powerful person and it's a powerful story.
As a scientist yourself, a professor and author, how are you feeling about defending his work — defending Life in the City of Dirty Water?
It gives me a great deal of pride that I'm able to do this. I feel that I have a lot to learn, of course, as a settler person, but I am deeply embedded in the issues that he is championing because I'm a conservation scientist. I'm a defender of the forests — I understand the importance of connection in forests and how our lack of connection and the exploitation of resources underlies so many of the problems that we're facing today — most of all, climate change and loss of biodiversity and so on.
So it's really important to me because I see truths about our past, a reconciliation with the atrocities of the past, and restitution are all part of this. It's all part of the healing and overcoming things like climate change.
The theme of Canada Reads this year is "One Book to Connect Us." So how do you think Life in the City of Dirty Water does that?
This is the book that connects us because it is about our past, it's about our present, and it's about our future. From coast to coast, from the West to the East, up to the Arctic, it touches every one of us because we're all living every day with the legacy of the residential school system.
This is the book that connects us because it is about our past, it's about our present, and it's about our future.
Even we haven't been directly affected by it personally, we are [in] all of our relations and how we represent ourselves in the world; how we connect with the land and how we are going to deal with the changing climate — every one of us is affected by this now, with the fires and floods and disruption of our everyday lives — and all of these things need to come together. It's all going to affect us all. We all have to work at it. We all have to get all of our hands and feet in this to make a better future.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. The interview was written up by Tabassum Siddiqui.
The Canada Reads 2022 contenders
- Christian Allaire champions Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
- Malia Baker champions Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez
- Tareq Hadhad champions What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
- Suzanne Simard champions Life In the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller
- Mark Tewksbury champions Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
