23 minute read
Alumni Profiles
JESSICA J. LEE
The award-winning nonfiction writer joins us for a Q&A
JESSICA J. LEE, BA(Hons)’08, is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author and environmental historian. Her memoir Two Trees Make a Forest was awarded the 2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the top prize for nonfiction writing in Canada. The memoir was also awarded a spot on the shortlist for CBC Canada Reads 2021. We spoke with Jessica J. Lee about her creative journey so far.
Jessica, congratulations! Two Trees Make a Forest is a memoir told through exploring your ancestral homeland of Taiwan. What made you want to tell this story?
It’s a book that in some ways I’ve been wanting to write forever. Even back when I was at King’s, I was trying to write a novel which was a fictionalized version of my grandparents’ story. I could never really find my feet with it, so I just had this story in the back of my mind.
After I had written my first book, Turning, I felt a little pressure to move onto my next book; but it was also at a point where I had been living in Berlin for a few years and I was feeling quite at home—but also quite sad. My German had gotten much better than my Mandarin ever was, my grandmother died, and I was feeling very disconnected to my mum’s side of the family and from the Taiwanese aspect of our heritage.
It really crystallised for me in that period of time, so I decided to devote that energy into the book. The core narrative spans a three-month period that I spent in Taiwan, hiking and trying to chase down my grandparents’ story and trying to find a ‘muscle memory’ in the landscape.
Your first book, Turning, is also based on a personal narrative and connection to nature—your account of swimming in 52 different lakes in one year. How did the inspiration for Turning come about?
I did my PhD fieldwork with winter swimmers in England and I got really hooked on it. When I moved to Berlin, I discovered that the city was surrounded by thousands of lakes—there are 3000 in the region. Swimming became a practice that gave me a way to connect and get to know the place, and to relate it intellectually to what I had been trained in—in doing so much landscape history and environmental philosophy. For me, being able to get out into the landscape and write about it and have the experience of connecting very physically really gave me some structure.
I was still trying to finish my PhD at the time, so I was doing two or three days of writing the book and then two or three days on my dissertation, and that was the deciding year—either applying for postdocs and looking at tenure track or going all in to writing books.
Can you articulate what it was that tipped you to favour 'all in'?
I think I ended up committing to writing in a fairly organic way. I started by leaving enough time to really devote myself to promoting my first book—which ruled out taking on a full-time job for a while—and then, as time rolled on, I realised I had enough work and momentum to stay with it. I loved the day-to-day of being accountable to myself, sometimes travelling, sometimes
researching, sometimes writing, sometimes giving talks. It seemed like the best way to draw on my academic training outside of the university context.
You’re based in London now. Was that always part of the plan?
It’s been a huge year of transition. After COVID hit I realized how much of my profession up until now has been predicated on me being able to travel easily: as most of the publishing I do is in the U.K., I realized that was untenable. So, we decided to move back to London—that was not a planned thing!
We moved, very unexpectedly, and I started a new job at Cambridge University, so I’m back in academia now, which is not at all what I expected! It’s great, though, and it’s the right kind of balance for me. I’m working on a project funded by the Wellcome Trust, where my job is to communicate the history of science research in different ways, through radio programs and engaging the public….
It’s cool to find my way back into academia with the training that I have previously, but as a writer. That fits really nicely for me. It was a stressful year, moving in the middle of a pandemic, but everything has really come together in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. To be honest, I couldn’t have planned it, because it was all a bit like dominos, one thing after another, working out.
Could you have ever imagined as an undergraduate at King’s that you would be where you are now?
No! Where I am now, I can’t even articulate it. It was my inarticulable dream when I was at King’s. But in a way, I would never have told anyone that because it seemed too unrealistic, too impossible—even impractical. I thought it was a really rigid process—I had to get my masters and do my PhD and I couldn’t make a mistake.
There are so many other paths to take. I often come back to thinking about my time at King’s, because I just approach it with multiple ideas in mind all the time. I try not to be so rigid about how I approach things. If someone had told me back then what would happen, I might not have believed them! What did life as a new King’s graduate look like for you?
I went directly into my master’s after I graduated. That autumn, I moved to the U.K. and started my masters in humanities and cultural studies. After that one-year program—even by the end of my undergraduate—I think I already knew I wanted to go into academia. So by the time I finished my master’s I made myself promise—just to be sure that academia was what I wanted to do—to take time off. I got a job working at an educational non-profit in London, working on primary school literacy.
After a while, I knew I really wanted to do a PhD in North America. I was lucky in the sense that my PhD was funded; I don’t want to diminish the financial aspect of making that work. I decided outright that I didn’t want to have to make the decision to do a Monday-to-Friday job at the expense of being able to write or being able to travel for my writing or research, or to do all of these other little things I wanted to do. I always worked part-time jobs on the side to make sure the bills were paid, until I got to the point where I am now, where I have enough work across my desk to keep me busy for a couple of years in advance at this point! It takes time and sacrifice in terms of financial stability. But it does work out!
What’s next for you, Jessica?
The good thing with the job at Cambridge is that it’s a five-year contract. It’s two days a week, which pays the bills and allows time to create. I’m doing that, which I’m really excited about and I am, theoretically, working on another book: I have actually booked off the entire winter and spring in hopes that I will be able to start a new book, staying in the nature writing and environmental history genre.
We can’t wait to see what comes next! Find out more about Jessica’s work at jessicajleewrites.com.
ROBERT MUGGAH
‘This is coming’: How Robert Muggah’s work anticipated the COVID-19 pandemic
IT WAS A GREY, OMINOUS DAY in New York City. Robert Muggah, BA(Hons)’97, was driving his wife and young daughter over the George Washington Bridge, headed for the Canadian border. It was February 2020.
Muggah and his family had moved to New York on a sabbatical from Rio de Janeiro, where he co-founded the Igarapé Institute, a ‘think-and-do tank’ that works primarily on citizen, digital and climate security across the Americas and Africa.
Just a few months into the sabbatical in late 2019, Muggah and his team, after hearing the first few reports of a new virus that had originated in China, started investigating.
“It was alarming what we were finding in local [Chinese] news—even before headlines hit the mainstream news,” Muggah explains. “We ran some models and quickly established that the coronavirus was going to be really bad. We started to call everyone we knew, foreign ministries, intelligence, and others around the world, to tell them that ‘this is coming.’”
As Muggah continued his work with New York University (NYU) and the United Nations by day, he stayed up late into the night at his computer poring over the numbers. He points out that armed conflict and criminal violence, on which he is a global expert, behave similarly to disease.
“Because violence is contagious, like many infectious diseases, they can move in similar ways throughout a population.” Over the years he has worked with organizations such as the World Health Organization to predict global pandemics and map vaccination supply chains. But COVID-19 was different.
“I’d been writing about this for years— the threat of pandemics to cities and their most vulnerable populations,” Muggah explains. He recalls contacting everyone he knew around the world with pre-existing health conditions to warn them of the magnitude of the emerging pandemic. “After I crunched the numbers for New York, my wife and I rented a car, packed up the apartment and left. Within a month, New York was the infection epicentre of the world for COVID-19.”
“To me it was clear, despite the uncertainties at the time, that this was the direction the virus was going in,” Muggah says. However, many people were skeptical that the virus could be as bad as he was predicting, including many of his co-workers.
“It was an interesting moment. I’ve spent years thinking about early warning and am always surprised about how reluctant we are to understand existential threats even when they are staring us in the face.” The lack of action was frustrating for Muggah. “It’s reminded me about how we need to think harder about how to get messages out to the public,” he adds.
On crossing into Canada, Muggah was relieved to be home after more than 25 years living abroad. He also felt an incredible sense of foreboding about what was to come. Settling in Ottawa, he has continued to work on COVID-19 and how it will shape the future of our planet.
“My work is focusing on the ways COVID-19 and other mega-threats are accelerating changes in our societies, including the future of cities. I’m also trying to take to action.”
This involves designing digital tools and platforms to help large cities like Amsterdam, Bristol, Chicago, Los Angeles and Ottawa recover and increase their resilience—both online and off.
Back in Canada, he’s closer to his technology company, SecDev, which works on another global challenge—digitisation. “Specifically, on speeding-up inclusive digital transformation, with governments, business and non-profits.” Muggah explains. The SecDev team are also working in the context of COVID-19—they set up a voluntary cyber security defense force in Canada to provide free and subsidised services to public health institutions.
Muggah continues to communicate with global audiences about how we can make tangible progress on issues related to climate change. His new book, Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years, is co-authored with Ian Goldin, Oxford University professor of Globalization and Development and the founding director of the Oxford Martin School, a world-leading group of experts from across Oxford tackling the most
pressing challenges facing humanity.
“The book is essentially a repository of everything I know in one place,” Muggah says. “The idea is to use powerful maps to help give signposts for dealing with future mega-threats. The big message is that we’re facing a host of systemic risks which are layered and cumulative … We all need to mobilise a much more determined and collective effort to address them. International cooperation is really the key to our survival; we need better globalization, not less.”
Muggah is now working on a landmark report with the UN Secretary General, a “post COVID-19 plan for strengthening multilateral action and international cooperation on global public goods.” And there’s a new environmental eco-thriller about crime in the Amazon, which he and his co-author Misha Glenny are developing for Netflix. And homeschooling his daughter. He smiles, “Like everybody else, I’m juggling home and work with pretty limited success!”
With no shortage of projects and global problems to work on, Muggah still credits the Foundation Year Program (FYP) at King’s for building his intellectual and ethical foundation for debate and critical reflection, which has informed much of his work.
“What I loved most about FYP was this idea of spending a year reading, maybe 70 or more books. You would then have to defend your ideas orally—and on paper—on a routine basis. It opened up a whole approach to critical inquiry that has become less common in the North American education system,” Muggah says. “We are in the midst of a truly monumental period of change, geopolitically, environmentally, technologically. We need to be steeped in our history to make wiser decisions for future generations.”
“I remain stubbornly optimistic, in spite of what we’re all going through,” Muggah concludes. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, we’ve seen some extraordinary collaboration and innovation—especially in the sciences.” Furthermore, he adds, “the virus has stimulated a deeper reflection about the health of our societies and forced a reckoning with the status quo. The Black Lives Matter protests are a reminder that people everywhere are reckoning with the past.
“We have an opportunity to take action, to trigger change, and that’s pretty remarkable. The decisions we take in this decade will shape the trajectory of this planet for the coming thousand years—and that’s an extraordinary thing to think about. We’re alive to be witness—to participate—in this history-making moment.”
HARRY CRITCHLEY
Bachelor of Arts (Hons), 2015 Law Student, Schulich School of Law
“ONCE YOU START TO HAVE meaningful connections with people in jail, it is really hard to turn away from them. These are people who have been systematically failed by society.”
Harry Critchley made those “meaningful connections” through the likes of Aristotle and Sophocles.
This is how it went. After his first two years at King’s Critchley spent the next year studying at the University of Oxford. He came back to King’s to finish up his degree, but he says his enthusiasm for the liberal arts had waned. At least it had until a friend suggested he volunteer with the Halifax Humanities Society. It is a program that offers university-level, non-credit courses for people on low incomes.
“That turned things around for me in a big way. People who were isolated by illness or by poverty were able to read these texts and come together and have really powerful conversations.”
That led Critchley to opening “the black box” of the corrections system.
“In my last year at King’s I got really involved in working in the provincial jails. We took the Halifax Humanities program and taught it in the Burnside jail in Dartmouth as the Burnside Education Program.”
Critchley says they would meet in a tiny windowless room around a table. It was like a book club. He remembers one day they were reading the play Philoctetes by Sophocles in which the hero, abandoned on an island, feels alone, without a friend in the world.
“So, we had one guy who said ‘This is exactly how I feel. I feel alone all the time, I feel incredibly isolated.’ And then everyone else in the class chimed in and said ‘Yeah, that’s how I feel too.’ It was such a beautiful moment of vulnerability. We’re in a place of hyper-masculinity and they are talking about feeling lonely, missing their kids.”
The Burnside Education Program, at the request of the inmates, morphed. Critchley and the others running the program started offering basic literacy classes and high school math.
As Critchley says, “Once you learn about the corrections system it’s like—if you have the ability to do something you have a responsibility to do it.”
Critchley took a couple of years off school to continue with the program. He also worked at Dalhousie University helping profs in the Faculty of Arts set their students up with work experience in the community. He then helped set up the Limitless program for the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC). Critchley was uniquely qualified. Limitless brings NSCC courses to people in jail.
While working on Limitless, Critchley earned his Master’s degree from Queen’s University. He is now a student in Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law. He has his sights set on working for Legal Aid in rural Nova Scotia.
“That’s what the humanities are all about. When you read Plato and Aristotle and all the others, you learn to appreciate different ways of seeing the world. That’s what I learned at King’s and that is what I take to all the work I do. You've got to meet people where they are with their own unique set of experiences and their own view of the world.”
LYNDSIE BOURGON
Bachelor of Journalism (Hons), 2008 Writer, Oral Historian
LYNDSIE BOURGON HAS HER writing sights set on poachers. Tree poachers.
“Poaching wood around the world is incredibly lucrative,” Bourgon says, then adds, “but people don’t always pay much attention to it because trees don’t have the same kind of charisma that, say, an elephant might have.”
Bourgon is writing a book about tree poaching, primarily in the American Pacific Northwest but also in Peru, where the illegal trade in Amazonian timber is flourishing. She understands the environmental damage such logging causes, but more than that she is fascinated by the human stories behind the practice, what she calls the entanglement of culture and identity with the environment.
“I was doing interviews in areas of Peru where timber poaching had taken place. I did interviews about what it was like in the ‘70s and how policy changed. But also about the broader relationship people had with the trees themselves. It was about how they related to the land and the forest. There was a shift from steward to guardian.”
Bourgon says gathering the oral history of the region provides us with a deeper understanding of poaching.
“Oral history gives us the nuance. It gives us empathy. It’s not just about one person who poaches a tree, there is so much more. There are many levels as to why it happens.” That way of thinking, Bourgon says, began at King’s.
“I found the Foundation Year Program (FYP) incredibly challenging. But it taught me to see current events at a much deeper level by seeking out different perspectives. Putting that together with the technical skills I learned in journalism such as writing and interviewing has made me so much better at what I am doing.”
But her path to researching and writing about poaching was not straightforward. After graduating from King’s, Bourgon worked as a freelance writer and a magazine editor, living for a time in Scotland, Toronto, Haida Gwaii and back home in Alberta. It was an important time of personal discovery she says.
“I figured out what I wanted to do. I wrote more about the environment and culture. And I wanted to go back to school.”
She did. Bourgon enrolled in a Master’s program in Environmental History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. While there she began writing a book about the illegal lumber trade. Getting to South America for research, though, was a difficult proposition.
“So, I applied for the early career grant from the National Geographic Society,” she says. “I was starting work on my book and I knew that I didn’t have the network and resources in Peru I needed.”
In 2018, Bourgon was granted the title “National Geographic Explorer.” It meant financial and logistics support that launched her career as an author. Her book is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2021.
“It was a boost for my intuition—that what I was thinking about and working on was something important,” she says. “This is something that stays with you. They support you long after your project is done. I felt like I had reached a new level that I never thought I would.”
KATHERINE CONNOLLY
Bachelor of Arts (Hons), 2012 Software Engineer at Neo Financial
KATHERINE CONNOLLY ADMITS that going from a liberal arts education at King’s to writing code for a brand-new digital bank is, well, an unusual path.
“And it’s even weirder when you see what happens in between the two,” she laughs. Indeed, it is.
Connolly’s first stop after graduating happened with a walk across the Quad. She worked in King’s Registrar’s Office helping with recruitment and student advising for a couple of years. That led to a gig as a residence don before she decided to try another university. Connolly graduated from King’s Environment, Sustainability and Society (ESS) program and enrolled in the University of Calgary’s Master’s program in Public Policy.
“Being so passionate about environmental issues I thought it would be valuable to study it in Alberta at the centre of the debate.”
With a second degree under her belt, Connolly headed off to the Czech Republic where she spent a year working at a hostel. It was a bit of a detour, but Connolly got back on the path when she came back to Canada. She applied, she figures, for 150 jobs, finally landing a position as Special Assistant to Ontario’s then-Premier Kathleen Wynne.
“She is the hardest worker I have ever met. Working beside her was life changing,” says Connolly.
Connolly’s job was to, among other tasks, manage the Premier’s schedule.
“I started thinking how much easier the job would be if I could write a computer program to help with the scheduling and organization. So, I started teaching myself how to code.”
Now Connolly will be the first to tell you that at that point in her life she was anything but a techie.
“I was an arts student through and through. But the skills I got from the Foundation Year Program (FYP)—the independence, knowing how to learn, and the self-determination—I could apply them to something totally different.”
When the Wynne government lost the next election, Connolly lost her job. But that interest in computer coding stayed with her.
“I signed up for a 10-week learn-to-code boot camp with Lighthouse Labs. That was the hardest thing I have ever done. I initially dropped out but then I figured out how to do it, just like I had learned how to write my papers at King’s.”
Connolly then applied to work for Lighthouse Labs. She says, “Having taken the boot camp and my experience from working at the Registrar’s Office at King’s advising and recruiting made me an ideal candidate.”
She got the job, but within months job offers from other companies started to pour in. She ultimately chose to work for a startup called Neo Financial, a brand new digital alternative to banking in Canada.
“They brought me on as one of their first developers. We are building everything from scratch so it is really exciting to be writing code that will ultimately create a fully functional bank.”
Connolly knows that her career path has been anything but conventional and is certain that it will continue down the same “weird” path that started at King’s.
“Tech touches every part of our lives now, which is what I love most about this industry. I am still passionate about public service and the environment and I know there is a future where I can combine those passions with tech in a new and interesting way.”
CHAD LUCAS
Bachelor of Journalism (Hons), 2001 Diversity and Equity Advisor, Government of Nova Scotia
JOURNALIST, AUTHOR AND communications advisor Chad Lucas uses storytelling to bring people together.
For someone with dreams of being a reporter, Chad Lucas’ working life began exactly where a graduate would want to end up. Lucas’s four-year journalism degree and combined English honours led him straight into a sportswriter job with the Chronicle Herald, where he covered basketball and interacted with fans through “one of the first blogs the Chronicle Herald ever had.” Lucas achieved his aspiration of becoming a reporter, but eight years in he was already thinking “Ok, what’s next?”
What was next was a variety of interesting projects with the provincial Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs. Lucas’s work in the civil service has continued through historic moments, such as the public apology issued by Premier Stephen McNeil to former residents of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. Remembering the October 2014 apology, Lucas recalls that “to be able to witness that and have a tiny role in pulling that day together—it was a really moving experience.”
Approaching 20 years out from graduation, Lucas is a father of four, an occasional lecturer, and a full-time advisor with Communications Nova Scotia. Reflecting on his dynamic and varied life, Lucas says, “sometimes the thing you think that you want is just the first step.”
He notes how studying the liberal arts prepared him to build the life and work that he wanted.
“More than ever, I think we’re in an era where people seldom lock onto one career path and follow it through from beginning to end. I know I certainly haven’t. I think the liberal arts gives you the broad flexibility to be able to think in bigger terms about your life, your career, and where you’re headed. There may not be one path; there may be some zigs and some zags—the liberal arts can help prepare you for that.”
In fact, Lucas has recently taken a new direction. His debut middle-grades fiction book, Thanks a Lot, Universe, is a coming-of-age story between two boys, set for publication in May 2021. In a way, this was a natural move for Lucas, who has already published several of his short stories. “Fiction has always been a love of mine,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller.”
