Annie Proulx revisits her Canadian roots

AP: “I was not compelled to write it; I worked on this book for some years because I felt the subject — the disappearance of the world’s forests and the harm humans have done to the earth now expressed in climate change — is important.”

Are you worried about the future of our world?

AP: “If I were not worried about the earth’s future I likely would not have worked on this book. Recently the Working Group on the Anthropocene, a committee of geologists and climate scientists, started examining evidence for calling an end to the Holocene Epoch, which has sufficed for the last 11,000 years, and replacing it with the label ‘Anthropocene Epoch.’

The Anthropocene recognizes that the behaviour of human beings has had a massive effect on earth’s environment: nuclear bomb tests, plastic pollution, power plant soot, animal and plant extinctions, forest destruction and much more have redefined the world’s geological identification.

Barkskins is a literary effort to chronicle one tiny part of the vast change we have caused — a look at deforestation.”

You have been awarded so many prizes. What do they mean to you?

AP: “Literary prizes are all very well, but they do not change me or the way I see the world. It is delightful that more people tend to read one’s books than otherwise, but I feel it would be very stupid to start telling myself that a prize somehow validates one’s existence.

At the same time I realize that for some that is exactly what it does.”

What do you think about the “Brokeback Mountain” phenomenon? Why do you think “Brokeback Mountain” resonates with audiences as deeply as it does?

AP: “‘Brokeback Mountain’ coalesced thoughts and feelings that many people secretly held. The story and the film helped show the injustice of ostracism to a general public.

The time was right for change and the story seeped into the culture. By making the protagonists individualistic, hard-working tough cowboys, the most masculine American identity, the story packed a stronger punch than if the characters had been any other profession.”

Ennis del Mar, Jack Twist, Ribeye Cluke and Beaufield Nutbeem. How do you come up with your characters’ names?

AP: “I keep lists of names, have done so for years, and friends sometimes contribute. Sometimes it’s a chance discovery.

Last spring on a tour of the San Juan Islands off the [American] Northwest coast, a biologist was pointing out various seaweeds along the shore. One was Bull Kelp, which I thought would be a good name for an overbearing ranch manager.”

How would your characterize your time at Concordia/Sir George Williams? How did it help shape you?

AP: “Long time ago. I commuted from St. Albans, Vermont, and remember the 60-mile winter drives vividly. I still keep in touch with some old classmates. And it is still a rush to have gone to a university that had Mordecai Richler, that brilliant Canadian novelist, as a student.

I was a grad student in history, and at that time the department was dedicated to the French Annales School. The teachers I met and the books I read showed me a rich way to study history by looking at the ordinary ways people lived in the past, showed me that geography and climate were often more important than the ukases of political and ruling figures.

I learned that rigorous examination of the past in as many ways as could be found opened important views of times gone but still reverberating in our culture. I also learned at Sir George Williams, as it was then named, habits of research, the rewards of close observation.

Last, but not least, I found that what I had learned translated best into a life of fiction writing rather than pedagogy.”

Barkskins is now available in bookstores or through Simon and Schuster.

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