In honour of our 25th anniversary of Wildsight Education, we’re featuring some of the amazing educators, powerful programs and memorable milestones that have made nature-based learning what it is today.
Dave Quinn has been teaching educational programs with Wildsight for almost 30 years! He’s taught hundreds of programs to all ages and inspired youth all over the region. We sat down to ask Dave a few questions about what he loves most about environmental education.
Q: What inspired you to become an environmental educator?
A: I really enjoy sharing and learning with students, and have always just felt like fostering connections between humans and the natural world was the best use of my passions for all things wild.
Q: What’s your favourite Wildsight program to teach?
A: Lately I have been really enjoying the gift of helping run Wildsight’s Go Wild! program. Getting keen youth out into really wild places and having moments of inspiration and connection solidifies ‘purpose’ to the work I do, which is really important to me.
Q: What’s a moment with students that made you think ‘this is why I do this job’?
A: So many cool moments over the years, but ones that stand out include a During ‘Classroom With Outdoors’, a student ran up to me shouting “I found an owl!” Sure enough, hunkered down under a tree was a pygmy owl digesting its last meal. The whole class got to see and learn about it. Any time we actually get to see and connect directly with nature, it is just so powerful.
Another recent one was a big burly excavator driver working on my street, and as I was walking by he opened the cab of his machine and yelled “Captain Powder! How’s it going?” Captain Powder was my alias through the many years I delivered Winter Wonder, and this man likely went through that program 15 years ago, but he still had some recollection of our time learning about winter wildlife and ecology. Pretty cool!
Q: What is a connection your students have made within the community through this programming?
A: Our Know Your Watershed programs (a former program operated by Wildsight on behalf of the Columbia Basin Trust) always had some Community Action Project associated with them, and I still see all the painted storm sewers with fish icons around Cranbrook, and see the restoration work we did along Joseph Creek now a thriving forest of shrubs and small trees that local wildlife and residents of the adjacent seniors home are really enjoying!
Q: Why is environmental education important?
A: In my view it is the only path forward to a hopeful, healthy future: building connections between the natural world and our ever-growing human population, and ideally instilling the passion and curiosity for the things that share the planet with us that students will have a lifelong desire to protect and steward wild spaces.
Q: Lastly, if you were an animal from this region, which one would you be and why?
A: I would be a Canadian Dipper (they are misnamed the American Dipper, AKA Water Ouzel). I think these non-migratory little birds are the most hard-core animals in the Kootenays. Even at -30 degrees, they are hopping into our mountain rivers, walking along the bottom eating aquatic insects. I often see them when I am out ski touring, flying like little brown fighter jets down the snow canyons of our mountain creeks, loving all seasons in the mountains.
