3 John Vaillant
The Golden Spruce with stripes is how John Vaillant has described The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance
and Survival, his latest book and winner of the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Although
the golden spruce stood deep in the forest of Haida Gwaii, and the endangered Siberian tiger roams Russia’s far eastern jungles, the parallel
is obvious: two of the natural world’s most magnificent living things are sacrificed by men who love them in order to save others of their kind. Logger
turned environmentalist Grant Hadwin tried to make a point about the environmental effects of industrial logging by felling one of the Haida nation’s
most sacred symbols. In The Tiger, conservation officer Yuri Trush tracks a wounded tiger that has exacted a gruesome payback on its human
attacker. John Vaillant has a rare talent for creating nonfiction books that read like page-turning thrillers and drip with irony.
Photo: Michael Lionstar
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