This book is my telling of four decades of professional life, as an artist, anthropologist and activist. It highlights themes and...

The summer of 1973, when I was seventeen, I hitch-hiked from Ottawa to Long Beach on Vancouver Island and back, by way of Dawson City,...

On the plane to Mexico City from Montreal I happened to sit beside Lilia, a young woman who had been part of Mexico’s Olympic gymnastics...

I arrived in Dawson from Mexico days after the waters had receded from the Great Dawson Flood of 1979. I arrived in Dawson from Mexico...

Image: An Olmec statue that was lost from the top of the San Martin volcano, Mexico. I spent my “gap year” between a Masters degree and a...

Doing a program of PhD studies in the social sciences is a strange and in many ways unnatural way to learn. It is based on traditions...

My first real job as an anthropologist began with Cajun blackened fish and Louisiana mud pie at a restaurant in downtown Manhattan....

Image: Kitchen and maize, the heart and soul of traditional Mexican life. In the morning hours of March 1, 1993, I was standing in...

Anthropology is a myopic discipline in some respects, grounded in the details of geography and community practice, place and place...

I worked at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) from 1995 to 2005. I considered myself, as many did, a “talent scout,”...

From the moment of my first visit to Bangladesh in the mid 1990s I was uplifted and strengthened by the political and spiritual ideas and...

I was a gymnast in high school. Short in stature and with compact muscles, my body type was well suited to the sport, encouraged by my...

“The sun slowly evaporated the dew off the tobacco leaves. The feeler of the picking machine bounced and groped its way between the...

Forthcoming: A remarkable journey of learning from and with my close friends and colleagues Jacques Chevalier and Michelle Bourassa,...

Forthcoming: Advocacy for municipal action on the climate emergency, and the love of trees I share with my wife and life partner Debra...