The Happy Camper: Best Books for Park Employees to Read



Last week I was given the task of presenting the Ontario Provincial Parks digital content and customer service team with the five “must read” books if you work for Ontario Parks. It wasn’t easy. I am a serious book collector, and it was a tough challenge to break it down to just five books. But I managed, and here are my choices to help and inspire park staff.

The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation

John A. Livingston 

The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation - Best books for parks employees

This book was one of my favourites to re-read over and over back when I started working as a nature interpreter for Ontario Parks in the late 1980s. It’s only a few hundred pages, but it took me a couple of months to read it through. Think of it as a Canadian version of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It was a radical read when it was first published in the early 1970s. Livingston’s strongly states—poetically and provocatively—that we must find new approaches to our perception of nature and our place within it or face the irreversibility of our destruction of nature. Like Carson, he was way ahead of his time, and throughout, he tells it like it is—by removing ourselves from nature, we have sown the seeds of our own destruction.

Round River

Aldo Leopold

Round River - Best books for parks employees

“To cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left.”  – Aldo Leopold

It would be too easy to pick Leopold’s acclaimed book, A Sand County Almanac. It was labelled the bible of the new conservation movement. Historian Donald Fleming called Leopold “the Moses of the new conservation impulse of the 1960s and 1970s, who handed down the Tablets of the Law but did not live to enter the promised land.” He died the same year the book went to print (1949). The content fits the list for sure, but I chose another one of his books instead. Round River is a collection of his essays, including one about a canoe trip he took.

Reflections from the North Country

Sigurd F. Olson 

Best books for parks employees

Sigurd Olson wrote a good number of books on canoe tripping and wilderness travel. All of them are exceptional. The Singing Wilderness is said to be his best. The Lonely Land is a book that should be read by all paddlers. But my preference is Reflections from the North Country. It’s more personal and thought provoking, and it’s what he labelled his “wilderness theology.” Throughout the book, he gives a sense of place and purpose.

Islands of Hope

Lori Labatt & Bruce Littlejohn

Best books for parks employees

This is a cover-table-style book that goes beyond a collection of nice images. Between the pictures are a number of essays celebrating the protection of Ontario Parks. Well-known authors like Margaret Atwood, Loraine Monk and Alec Ross pay homage to such wild areas as Algonquin and Temagami and why we need to continue protecting such places.

The book is structured in six major sections, each with a grouping of related essays: history and attitudes, regional introduction, the Canadian Shield, the Hudson Bay Lowland, youth and nature and thoughts for the future.

Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton

Jurassic Park - Best books for parks employees

This sounds cliche, but the book is far better than the movie. And the premise is perfect for a park employee to read and soak in. Humans create an iconic park filled with cloned dinosaur DNA, and there, fantasy becomes a horrific reality. It’s basically a more understandable and much easier read than Livingston’s Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, but with the same premise.

Here’s a few more I couldn’t resist quickly showing the staff beyond the top five “must read” books for Ontario Parks employees:

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