Hello fellow list members:
It was with sadness that I read in Saturday's Globe and Mail of the 
death of John Livingston, the very important Canadian ecophilosopher 
and naturalist. Two books of his have hugely influenced me, and I 
continue to consult them on frequent occasions. They are _The Fallacy 
of Wildlife Conservation_(1981) and  _Rogue Primate: An exploration 
of human domestication_(1994).  I always thought of Livingston as a 
true fundi in his thinking. I had read a bit about his struggles with 
David Suzuki over the content of that CBC TV series The Nature of 
Things. Livingston wrote to me in the mid 80s expressing his support 
for the philosophical orientation of our then environmental group, 
The North Shore Environmental Web in Nova Scotia. This group was 
headed in a deep ecology direction and Livingston had seen a copy of 
our basic orientation document where we defined ourselves as opposing 
"resourcism" and believing in the inherent value of all of nature.

Thanks, John Livingston, for remaining true to your beliefs and for 
inspiring so many of us. Through your writings you have been a 
magnificent ecocentric role model, who has showed us the death course 
that industrial society is on.

David

"I no longer believe that there is, in practice, such a thing as a 
'renewable' resource. Once a thing is perceived as having some 
utility - any utility - and is thus perceived as a 'resource,' its 
depletion is only a matter of time. I know of no wildlife that is 
being 'renewed' anywhere - not yellow birch or hemlock or anchovies 
or marlins or leopards or salmon or bowhead whales or anything else. 
'Renewable resource' is self-contradictory incoherence, as least as 
applied to wildlife." _The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation_, p.43.

******

The Globe and Mail
Saturday, January 28, 2006 Page S13

John Livingston, Naturalist 1923-2006

An unapologetic lover of nature who was blessed with tenacity and 
optimism, he took an uncompromising view of human arrogance and its 
role in destroying the environment, writes SANDRA MARTIN

By SANDRA MARTIN


Abear of a man with a gruff, nicotine-drenched voice, John Livingston 
was a naturalist, a broadcaster, an author and a teacher. For years, 
he was the gravelly voice-over of the Hinterland Who's Who series, a 
zoological equivalent of Historica's Heritage Minutes that brought 
the sounds and descriptions of the common loon and other indigenous 
species to radio and television audiences in the 1960s.

Through the Nature Conservancy of Canada, The Nature of Things on 
television, books such as The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation and 
Rogue Primate (which won the Governor-General's literary award in 
1994), he delivered his stern, uncompromising view of human arrogance 
and culpability in the destruction of the natural environment. In the 
process, he influenced environmentalists such as Graeme Gibson, Monte 
Hummel, Farley Mowat and David Suzuki, and countless numbers of 
viewers, readers and students.

He had two mottos. The first, "Ignorance more frequently begets 
confidence than does knowledge," was a quote from Charles Darwin that 
he hung on the wall of his study. The other was an observation from 
British satirist Kingsley Amis that he recited frequently: "If a 
piece of writing doesn't offend somebody, there's probably something 
wrong with it."

"He was one of the most determined men I've met," said writer Farley 
Mowat, who names Mr. Livingston as a definite influence on his own 
thinking about the environment: "We were going to play out our roles 
as the great exploiters and then we were going to go down the drain." 
Unlike "dewy-eyed optimists," Mr. Livingston "had a bulldog quality, 
a clarity of vision and he was extraordinarily honest."

Geneticist David Suzuki said Mr. Livingston was crucial from a 
philosophical standpoint for the whole environmental movement. Back 
in the 1970s, Dr. Suzuki had an anthropomorphic view of nature, which 
meant that he believed "humans were at the centre of the action." Mr. 
Livingston's radically different bio-centric stance regarded humans 
as just another species. "It took a long time for me to understand 
his position and it was a very important part of me coming to 
understand the environmental movement in a much deeper way."

Although Mr. Livingston was greatly respected, he also had a 
reputation as a naysayer, and a misanthrope who was against almost 
any form of commercial or resource development. "We didn't always 
agree," admitted Monte Hummel, president emeritus of the World 
Wildlife Fund. They remained friends, but they argued frequently. Mr. 
Livingston was an idealist who felt, for example, that the Arctic 
should not be developed at all and Mr. Hummel was a pragmatist who 
was keen on building consensus and achieving what was possible, 
rather than insisting on only doing the right thing for the right reasons.

This attitude led to arguments with Dr. Suzuki and other colleagues 
when he and Mr. Livingston worked together on A Planet for The Taking 
in 1985. "I was involved in the anti-nuclear movement and his 
attitude was if humans were stupid enough to develop nuclear weapons 
and to drop them, well, so be it, the rest of nature would be better 
off for it. I had a hard time with that."

John Allen Livingston was born in Hamilton. He was the elder, by 
seven years, of two children of Harold Arthur Livingston, who was in 
the construction business, and his wife Vera (Allen) Livingston. The 
family moved to Toronto when John was a child and lived in North 
Toronto on the edge of one of the ravines that riddle the city.

It is hard to say whether it was John's easy access to nature that 
bred his early interest in newts, toads, frogs and birds or whether 
it was his own innate fascination with the natural world that 
attracted him to the creatures living nearby. Certainly his 
commitment to defending nature dates from the city's decision in the 
early 1930s to put a storm sewer "through my ravine," thereby 
"ripping the heart out of the place," as he told Farley Mowat in 
Rescue The Earth! Mr. Livingston remembered "weeping with rage, anger 
and frustration. . . . It was like a piece coming out of my stomach, 
and I was only 10 or 12."

After attending Brown Public School, he won a place at the University 
of Toronto Schools, then a boys-only elite academic high school. The 
Royal Ontario Museum was within easy walking distance and he often 
ventured there to present staff with his latest trophies, including a 
Cecropia Moth (a beautiful mottled lepidoptera with a six-inch 
wingspan). The entomologists weren't impressed, but when he took an 
unusual warbler to Jim Baillie in the ornithology department, he 
found a mentor who would stimulate and nurture his love of birds and nature.

Academically gifted, he entered Victoria College at the University of 
Toronto at 16, just as the Second World War broke out. He enlisted in 
the Royal Canadian Navy and earned and was granted a degree in 
English literature in 1943 "while on active service." After the war 
ended, he was hired by Clarkson Gordon, the chartered accountants, 
working there from 1946 to 1949, while pursuing his true vocation in 
his free time: writing and delivering essays promoting conservation 
in magazines, film, radio and television.

In 1948, he married art student Constance Margaret (always called 
Peggy) Ellis. They eventually had three children, Sally, Zeke and 
Least. Although some believe his youngest son was named after the 
Least Bittern, a small member of the heron family, the name actually 
came from painter Frederick Lansdowne, a family friend. Apparently 
Mr. Lansdowne referred to him as The Least while he was in utero and 
it stuck, even after the baby boy was hatched. The Livingstons 
divorced in the mid-1970s.

Mr. Livingston joined the Audubon Society of Canada (now Nature 
Canada) in 1955 as managing director and editor of its newsletter. A 
well-spoken advocate, his blunt comments about budworm spraying and 
proposals to raise and breed whooping cranes in captivity are now 
accepted truths.

 From the CAS, he went to the Canadian Broadcasting Program as 
executive producer for science programs on radio and television in 
1962, arriving at the corporation two years after it launched The 
Nature of Things, the first regular TV-science series in North 
America. Mr. Livingston was a writer and presenter on many of the 
early broadcasts on the landmark program, including Animals and Man 
(which won a Thomas Edison Award in 1965), Danger: Man at Work and 
Darwin and the Galapagos.

He had also begun publishing books based on the programs he was 
making for television and radio. Darwin and the Galapagos, with 
broadcaster Lister Sinclair appeared in 1966 under the CBC imprint. 
He revealed his love of birding in Birds of the Northern Forest with 
paintings by J. Frederick Lansdowne (McClelland & Stewart, 1966) and 
followed that with Birds of the Eastern Forest, Vols. 1 and 2, again 
using Mr. Lansdowne's paintings (M&S, 1968 and 1970).

He left the CBC in 1968 to work freelance and continued to contribute 
to The Nature of Things on an occasional basis. The following year, 
he formed a consulting company called LDL: Environmental Research 
Associates with lawyer Aird Lewis and ornithologist Bill Gunn, two 
men he knew well as founding members of The Nature Conservancy of 
Canada. Their first big job occurred in the mid-1970s when they 
worked for the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline inquiry headed by Justice 
Thomas Berger.

After five years, Mr. Livingston's partners bought him out, because, 
as Mr. Lewis explained, if you are going to be a consultant you have 
to give your advice to the client based on scientific evidence, not 
your personal moral stance.

Afterward, Mr. Livingston found the perfect perch for a man of his 
temperament, skills and passions: teaching in the Faculty of 
Environmental Studies at the fledgling York University. Although he 
had few of the paper credentials now deemed essential for an academic 
post, he had a storehouse of knowledge, a passion for his subject and 
the performance skills of a veteran broadcaster. The students loved 
him. One in particular, Ursula Moller Jolin, then a graduate student, 
found him fascinating. He was "interested in so many things," and "he 
knew so many things" and "he had a memory like a mainframe computer."

"He was a very inspiring teacher," she added, remembering one class 
in particular in which three professors, a trained Jesuit, an atheist 
(Mr. Livingston) and an economist, gave a class on 
cultural/historical perspectives on environmental studies. "It was 
absolutely riveting because there we had a platter of different 
opinions that were extremely well debated. It generated a lot of 
excitement among students."

Mr. Livingston continued to write books and essays, but his opinions 
were becoming more despairing and his arguments more entrenched as he 
retreated from the opportunistic and pragmatic world of commerce and 
public policy into a rarefied and idealized philosophical atmosphere.

Mr. Livingston and Ms. Jolin married in 1985. He retired in 1993 and 
was appointed an emeritus professor and given an honorary degree. 
They moved to Ottawa in the late 1990s and, after surviving the 1998 
ice storm, they made plans to move to Saltspring Island, where they 
settled in 2000. An unrepentant smoker, he suffered from lung and 
heart disease in his final years.

John Allen Livingston was born in Hamilton on Nov. 10, 1923. He died 
on Jan. 17, 2006, on Saltspring Island, B.C., after suffering a 
massive heart attack. He was 82. He is survived by his second wife, 
Ursula, his three children, Sally, Zeke and Least. He also leaves his 
sister Judith and two grandchildren.



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