Tourism Vancouvers Jorden Hutchison interviews JB MacKinnon about his new book and upcoming project at the Museum of Vancouver.
JB MacKinnon is best known for penning The 100-Mile Diet, a bestseller (co-written with his partner Alisa Smith) that helped spark the local foods movement worldwide. His new book, The Once and Future World, looks at the richer, more abundant natural world of the past and how we might rewild the planet in the future.
Nominated for three national nonfiction awards, the book has also been adapted into a Museum of Vancouver exhibit with MacKinnon as guest curator about the changing face of nature in the city. Rewilding Vancouver opens at the MOV on February 27.
How would you describe yourself? A self-taught writer who is endlessly investigating a single question: How should we live?
How long have you been a Vancouverite and why did you move here? I moved here 14 years ago. I always thought Vancouver would be too big-city for me, but it quickly became my favourite place. I travel a lot for research and reporting, and Vancouver is the perfect city to come home to.
Favourite way to spend a Saturday? On Saturdays youll find me rock climbing in Squamish or bird-watching in Iona Beach Regional Park, Boundary Bay Regional Park and along Vancouvers seawall. In winter months, I like to snowboard at Cypress Mountain or Whistler Blackcomb. These activities clear my head, though obviously in different ways.
Favourite festivals, events or activities taking place during winter months? The winter farmers market runs every Saturday at Riley Park (Ontario at E. 30th), and its consistently amazing especially for visitors to see what Vancouvers farmers are able to offer in the cold, wet months. Winter is my favourite time for local eating the fish and shellfish are tastier, and I love all the deep-flavoured root vegetables, pickles, sauerkrauts and jams.
How would you describe Vancouvers culinary scene? Bottomless. You could spend a year exploring Shanghai cuisine, the next year tasting your way through the local foods scene, the next eating from food trucks, and the year after that getting to know craft beer culture. By then, some other highlight will have emerged.
For your best-selling book, you spent a year only eating ingredients grown within 100 miles of your Kitsilano apartment. Now, where would you send visitors to experience the best of the citys locavore shopping and dining experiences?For the locavore, there is nowhere better than the farmers markets, which are more numerous than ever before (see EatLocal.org). Fishermens Wharf and the fish shops on Granville Island next door are another highlight. In my opinion, the best meal in town is cleaned-and-steamed Dungeness crab from The Lobster Man, eaten straight out of its newsprint wrapper.
For a special meal out, I like Burdock & Co. on Main Street. Chef and owner Andrea Carlson put together the citys first 100-mile menu back when she worked at Raincity Grill. Years later, shes gone on to open this great, seasonal, local-foods restaurant but still finds time to forage for mushrooms.
Heres how JBMacKinnon.com describes the new book: "The Once and Future World reveals the natural world of the past and what it tells us about nature today. Stepping back in time, MacKinnon finds a living planet more abundant than anyone had imagined, and traces how we lost that ecological wealth out of greed, yes, but also through a great forgetting. Calling on us to remember nature as it was, to reconnect with it as it is, and to remake it for the future, The Once and Future World is the deepest exploration yet of the idea of rewilding.
