ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Kevin Van Tighem. You have a new book coming out from Rocky Mountain Books called Wild Roses Are Worth It: Reimagining the Alberta Advantage. What’s this book about?

KEVIN VAN TIGHEM: It’s a collection of essays written over a number of years. Some of them are about nature, some of them are about conservation and conservation politics, and all of them are all about Alberta. They were written to try to create a different narrative and stimulate different conversations about our province. We’re known as a place of oil, and if you look at our reputation in many ways and the ways we talk about ourselves, it’s all about oil. It’s really meant just to remind Albertans that there’s so much more to this place than the oil economy. It’s up to us to imagine a future that will take us past the boom times that are finished, and in order for us to do that we need to be able to really see the place for what it is rather than this myth we’ve created that it’s ‘Oil-berta’ and nothing else.

RM: The term ‘Alberta Advantage’ usually ties into oil and gas. What does the Alberta Advantage mean to you?

KVT: I’m not objective, but we live in the center of the universe here. We have Rocky Mountains, we have the Prairies, we have the Northern Boreal Forest. We have some of the most beautiful rivers in the world, a deep heritage of First Nations people that still have their stories and their songs and their and their sense of what this place is, and we share with them that identity as treaty people. We have ranching heritage. We have our farming heritage. We have so many things going for us. The Alberta Advantage is multiple advantages. It’s the nature of this place and the nature of the people that live in it. Neither of those are defined by the oil lying underneath us in the ancient rocks. It’s everything that sits on the top of it. We have so much to be proud of and so much to take care of, but these things don’t happen by accident. A culture is a product of its stories. With this book I’m just trying to encourage Albertans to take a critical look at the stories we tell about ourselves and the conversations we have, because those are the ones that are going to lead to the future.

RM: This book is a collection of prose that was written over many years. Is this something you do frequently, take your thoughts and put them to paper?

KVT: I’m kind of an obsessive writer. I find that, as a writer, you haven’t finished thinking until you finish typing. Whatever you’re going to say is in your head, and then you start typing and different stuff comes out. The thought process doesn’t stay in the head. It flows through the body and out to the page. I can’t stop writing, I have to find out what I’m thinking.

RM: What inspired you to put all this prose together in a collection like this?

KVT: I’ve been hearing a lot of people expressing a lot of despair about the state of the world and the state of this province. These are really challenging times. We’re coming through a pandemic. We have this ongoing bust in the oil economy. We’re facing uncertainty relating to climate change and the loss of our nature, our biodiversity. A lot of people look to the future and all they see is impossibilities. That doesn’t get you anywhere. It just felt to me like the times demand different conversations, and somebody has to start them. When I looked at this body of work that I had done, these are columns that I’d written for Alberta Views magazine, feature length articles, and I looked at them in their entirety, I realized that unbeknownst to myself I was doing that as I was writing these individual pieces. As a body of work, they really say let’s wake up again to where we are and who we are and think about things differently than perhaps the mainstream media or perhaps the pundits and the vested interests would like us to think. Because the future is there and there is hope there. It just seemed like the times demanded it. We’ve been through dark times before. I’ve had this conversation with a couple of my kids too. Imagine 1945 Alberta and how hopeless it would feel with all the men overseas, coming out of a depression, no future in sight, but they didn’t despair. The best years of this province’s history came right after that, and it’s because we decided to become the best we could be. Let’s do that again. These are dark times, but if there’s any place that has a promising future it’s Wild Rose Country. I guess this is just one writer’s effort to try and help us move forward to the better place that we’ve always meant to be.

RM: I see on Rocky Mountain Books that the official publication date is April 27th, but I’ve heard that it might be available earlier than that?

KVT: Well, apparently the books are already in the warehouse so they’ll be shipping them shortly. I suspect they’ll be in bookstores before the end of the month. I’ve put out a bit of a personal promotion here saying anybody that pre-orders a copy from Café Books I’ll make sure they’re all signed, but also they’ll all be at a draw for a bunch of my other books.

RM: I know it’s a little challenging during COVID times. Are you planning on doing any kind of book launch event?

KVT: I do have any event coming up with Wordfest on April 29th. I’m kind of excited about it because I’m sharing the virtual stage with Alexandra Morton, the woman who’s been fighting the salmon farms off the coast of Vancouver Island for many years now. She’s one of my heroes so it’s going to be kind of neat to be on the stage with her.

The first shipment of Wild Roses Are Worth It is now available for sale at Café Books.

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