 Good evening everyone. Thanks so much for joining us tonight. My name is Sarah Tersia and I am the acting manager of public services at the North Vancouver City Library. Taunche, hello. As I already mentioned, my name is Sarah. I grew up on the shared territories of the Quatlin, the Wasonic, the Stolo, the Katzee and the Stamiamu peoples. My grandparents on my mother's side are of European descent and come from Eotearoa, what is now known as New Zealand. My grandparents on my father's side are European and Creme Metis and they come from the Metis homeland on Treaty 1 territory in what is now known as Winnipeg. We are presenting this virtual program to you today from the shared territories of the Squamish, the Slewa Tooth and the Musqueam Nations. We recognize that you may be joining us from different territories, so we do encourage you to visit www.whose.land to learn more about the territory on which you reside. As a settler on the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish people, I am very grateful to live and work on these lands that have been and continue to be stewarded with such care by the Coast Salish people. I seek to be in good relations with the Squamish, the Slewa Tooth and the Musqueam Nations, so I strive to learn from them and reflect that learning in my professional and personal life. It's also a great pleasure. I would like to introduce Sitsai Hamat of the Squamish, she's of Squamish and Musqueam descent. She's devoted her life to preserving the Squamish language, Salish weaving and cultural teachings that have been handed down to her from her late papa and his papa, and so on and so on since the beginning of time. Sitsai Hamat has performed worldwide promoting language and culture, representing Coast Salish people and practicing protocols with song and dance, sharing history with storytelling and weaving workshops to empower her people. She believes that no matter where you are from, it is so important to know your history, your culture and your ties to the land. So thank you so much for being with us Sitsai Hamat tonight and I will turn it over to you. I'm Sarah, I'll see you tonight. Sitsai Hamat, Queen Kushamin, Rebecca Queen, Sna, it's a great pleasure to be here with you today. Welcome everybody. My true name is Sitsai Hamat. Thank you so much for acknowledging that. And my nickname or my English name is Rebecca Duncan. I am Squamish and I am also from the village of Musqueam. It is my honor to welcome you all to our sacred lands of the Coast Salish people this evening. I would like to stress the importance of the ties that we have with one another and the ties that we have with our lands and with our ancestors. So we are people of the Salmon. We are people of the Longhouse. The Longhouse to us is our school, our hospital and our church. And we are people of the Canoes being on the wet, I mean the West Coast here. And we are people of the cedar trees. So the cedar has brought so much life for us as Tomoh people. We look to the cedar for spiritual cleansing. We utilize the cedar to make our precious canoes, our Cadillacs. We utilize the cedar for our clothing, our hats, our baskets and our tools. So my hands go up to each and every one of you. For taking this time to learn about the beautiful mother tree, it's so important to have that bonding and connections to nature. Just to listen to the trees, to open your mind, open your heart to the message that may be blowing in the wind. So I'd like to start us off in the proper way by following Coltmish protocol. And I'd like to sing a celebration song to celebrate and be grateful for all our trees, our waters and our lands and for all the people who are taking care of the trees, the lands and the animals. So the song is from Erin Nelson Moody, who we all know is Splash in Taqsh in Yakhwala. Be safe. I can't stress that enough. Be safe in this scary pandemic. It's really, really taken its toll. So I ask the Creator to bless each and every one of you and your families, your dear children, your dear elders. Take that time for self care and get out there and listen to some trees. Oh, Sam. Thank you so much. Since I met for your beautiful opening for your welcome and for your beautiful song as well. So I'd like to now welcome everyone again to our North Shore Reads event with Dr. Suzanne Samard in conversation with Sheila Rogers. North Shore Reads is a collaboration between the North Vancouver City Library, the North Vancouver District Public Library, and the West Vancouver Memorial Library. We know that our community here on the North Shore treasures the natural beauty around us. So we thought that finding the mother tree would be an out book for us to read to end discuss for our first North Shore Reads collection selection. We have so much gratitude to the three amazing women who are joining us this evening. We have previously had the opportunity to work with both Sheila Rogers and Sitsai Hamat, and we are so grateful that they are back with us tonight. It was almost exactly a year ago today when we first tried to make contact with Dr. Samard to visit with our libraries to discuss her work with Forest Ecology. Unfortunately, we had the very bad timing of making that contact just before a high profile piece in the New York Times, which was followed by the announcement of her first book, Finding the Mother Tree. And then of course there was a subsequent whirlwind of media attention, not to mention the exciting news that her book was optioned to be made into a movie. So we feel so fortunate that we were ultimately able to arrange to have Dr. Samard here tonight to discuss her book, her work and her life. Dr. Samard is a professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, and is of course the author of the book Finding the Mother Tree. She's a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence, and has been hailed as a scientist who conveys complex technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound. Her work has influenced filmmakers, for example the Tree of Souls in James Cameron's Avatar, and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. Dr. Samard is known for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below ground fungal networks, which has led to the recognition that forests have hub trees or mother trees which are large highly connected trees that play an important role in the flow of information and resources in a forest. Her current research investigates how these complex relationships contribute to forest resiliency, adaptability and recovery, and has far reaching implications for how to manage and heal forests from human impacts, including climate change. Dr. Samard will be joined this evening by Sheila Rogers. Sheila is a veteran broadcast journalist at the CVC and currently the host and a producer of the next chapter, a radio program devoted to writing in Canada. In 2011 she was inducted as an honorary witness for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That same year she was inducted into the Order of Canada as an officer for promoting Canadian culture, adult literacy, mental health, and truth and reconciliation. In 2016 Sheila received the first ever Margaret Trudeau Award for Mental Health Advocacy. She holds eight honorary doctorates. Sheila is currently Chancellor of the University of Victoria. 100 years ago this year her great grandmother Edith Rogers was the first woman and the first Metis woman elected to the Manitoba Legislature. Sheila is a member of the Métis Nation of Greater Victoria. So I'd like to give a very warm welcome to Suzanne and Sheila and I will turn the evening over to them. Thank you. So what a wonderful welcome and I want to say Marcy to you, Sarah, and Tansi to everybody. Good evening. Thank you, Sitsay Ahmad, for your beautiful welcome and a celebration song. How lucky are we, Suzanne, to be gifted a celebration song as we begin our discussion. I just want to say I'm coming to you this evening from the territories of the Songhees and the Esquimalt Nations in Victoria, and I'm very grateful to be able to live here and to work here as well. And Suzanne, please feel free to acknowledge where you're coming from. So thank you so much and thank you for this amazing welcome and thank you, Sheila, for being here with me tonight and to the Vancouver Public Library system for for having this conversation and I really appreciate it. I am in Nelson, British Columbia. I am on the unceded territory of the Tanaha, the Sinai and the Okanagan nations. I conduct research throughout British Columbia, across many nations up and down the coast and through the interior of the province which I've worked hard to develop relationships and still have a long way to go but it's very rewarding and yeah and much of the work that I do, I can attribute to the work on that on their land. Well I want to begin by saying first of all you've allowed me to call you Suzanne, so I will thank you for that honor and thank you for sharing your research and your life with us through this. You know it reads like a thriller, Suzanne. It's absolutely amazing. So thank you for a thrilling read. I want to ask you first of all about you know what they would say in Newfoundland is who knit you. What are your family's roots in in British Columbia go back quite away. Yeah, I mean I guess they go back to the late 1800s. When my great grandfather who I never met emigrated across from Quebec to Saskatchewan and then landed in Enderby, the Samaritan side of the family and Enderby is in the Monashie mountains or just to the on the edge of it. And my family settled in the at Mabel Lake which is a great big lake you know there's a lot of big lakes in that mountainous region and this is one of them it's deep and rich and it's, you know completely shrouded in inland rainforest and so this is where I grew up this is what how I got to know for us and I'm proud of my heritage there. What was their relationship to the forest. My great grandfather was a horse logger. And so he, my family the Samar family were in from Quebec or originally from France but emigrated to Quebec and settled in the tribe of the area and did some started logging in that area and then slowly kind of move to the west to find an easier life I think. And, and I, and my great grandfather was actually looking to go to California because he heard that it was sunny and warm and, you know, not as not as cold as the as the Canadian shield. And off they went so they made it to Saskatchewan over winter there and it was so cold and harsh that they kept going and on a train a box in a box cars and when they arrived, the boxcar doors opened and the sun shone through and they thought we're in California. And they jumped out of the train car and up to their eyebrows and snow. They were not in California they were in Enderby. And so that's where they were and that's where we settled and my great grandfather continued to horse log in those those thick inland rainforest and taught my his son Mike my grandpa Henry and all of his sons and then my, my uncles and dad. So just, you know happened on through the generations. Well, we're on the subject of your family you have a lovely passage that I'd love you to read that's about your family and it. Maybe I should do a warning there may be a few curse words in French in this reading. Yes. Yes, so I'm going to read from from chapter two called hand fallers. And this is on page 34 if you want to follow along. Hand falling a single tree took the better part of the day. A week for a patch. Grandpa was the jokester next to Uncle Wilfred a shrewd businessman, but both were inventors. He had built a manual elevator with trolleys in his two story farmhouse, and grandpa Henry made a water, a water wheel on Samarit Crete to generate electricity for the house boats. These old forests grew as high as a 15 story building and grandpa would locate the straightest trees. He and Uncle Wilfred would stand across from each other on rough human springboards, elevated above the butt swell of the tree, where there was only a slightly smaller section of the girth to cut through. They studied the lean of the tree and the lay of the land, then plan the cuts so the tree would fall in the direction of the flume. The cross cut saw saying like a slide guitars the men sweated it with each push and pull, and saw this coated their woolen sleeves as they started with the top cut slicing horizontally through the trunk on the side of the land's downward slope. A third of the way through the bowl, the trunk, they paused for a rest and chewed on some smoked salmon jerky while sap oozed from the cut. Grandpa cursed while studying the tree's particular peculiar lean. Il est embattard and pointed his half chopped off index finger to warn how the tree would fall in at least two directions. Another hour of aching forearms and they made a bottom cut at the 45 degree angle to the other cut, set to join it deep in the heartwood. Mon choux Wilfred explained while knocking the wedge of sap wood out of the back of his axe head, leaving us a yawning grin that resembled their own mouths since they'd lost most of their teeth to cavities in their teens, now replaced with dentures. With the face cut completed on the lower side, the men sat and ate strawberry short shortcake and drank drums of water. They rolled and shared a smoke, Cravenay. Then they climbed back onto springboards to begin the back cut on the other side of the bowl, about an inch above the top cut. Any mills calculation and the timber could buck backward and take their heads off. They dropped the saw when the tree shifted a tad forward and only a handful of intact fibers were left running up the heart of the tree. Grandpa muttered, sacramon, as he pounded a metal wedge into the back cut with the blunt end of his axe. The xylem cracked. With a groan, the tree tilted toward the flume as the hand fallers shouted, Timber! And ran as fast as they could upslope. The tree whooshed through the air, its crown catching the wind like a sail, creating such an eddy that the ferns below blew forward, revealing their pale undersides. Branches and needles swirling. In seconds, the tree landed with a deafening thud, the ground shattering, limbs cracking like bones breaking. A nest of birds catching a draft and floating to the earth in a cloud of feathers. Grandpa Henry and Uncle Wilfred worked along the fallen tree and limbed the branches with axes. They bucked 10 meter long lengths so that prints could haul them more easily to the flume. To do this, the men wrapped the end of each cut piece in a choker, as if setting a lasso around a calf. But their lasso was an iron chain thick as their wrists. For smaller pieces, they cinched the end of the log using a handforged tong that opened as wide as a lion's mouth. They hitched the choker to the tong to a whiffle tree, a wooden bar carved from a sapling that hung over Prince's tail to tilt and equalize the weight. Prints groaned and snorted as they hauled each bucked log from stump to flume. The brothers then rolled each log into the top of the flume using a peevee, a pole with a swiveling iron hook. Job done, a tree delivered to the water below. They stood sharing another smoke, safe and sound, one more day, one more day. An image and refrain that still punctuates my images of the hand-falling labors of my family. Thank you for that lovely reading. And there's so many beautiful metaphors in there. Crosscut saw, sang like a slide guitar might be my favorite. Your language is so beautiful. And you write, I don't want to say poetically, but I feel such a strong sense of place. I feel like I'm really there. And the writing, as I said, is exquisite. Is this a danger when you're a scientist? You know, maybe, yeah, I think so. I think I'm just entering into the danger of the lion's jaw right now. But, you know, I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid. And my pragmatic side and also my family history sort of led me into forestry. But I always held in my heart that I wanted to write as well. And as a scientist, you know, you're really constrained in your style of writing. And you really have to carve it down, simplify it. So it's just telling you the bare raw facts of what you've done. And I always found that so frustrating that I couldn't express myself. And I felt like I was losing the ability to express myself in that more poetic and creative way. And so I think I was just yearning to let myself loose and allow myself to write in the way that came from my heart. Instead of my head. I think that's so important. And I think that one of the reasons people are grabbing finding the mother tree is that there is that that sense of heart language as well. And I think it relates so much to the subject matter that you're dealing with as well. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's funny because I did this incredible research that is sort of like the backbone of this book. And, and I felt so frustrated that like nobody really knew about it except for other scientists. And, and I knew how important it was, because of what's happening in our forests, what's happening with our people, the, the link between forests and people were, you know, we really need to make some transformational changes and sort of like working around the margins and the current narrative wasn't working for us. And so I really wanted to reach into the hearts of people until in a story as a story, and to really have people understand that this story began with my life. And the questions that I went on to ask in science grew from who I was as a child of the forest in the heart of British Columbia. And so I hope that I convey that in the book that this has deep roots as a Canadian deep roots as a child who grew up in these complex intertwined forest, and that the questions were so logical for me to ask. And I think, I think that they really do expand our understanding, or at least how we've understood, at least how Westerners have understood forests for the last century or more. And, and, and hopefully speaks also to the indigenous roots in our country where I think that this understanding is already, you know, well founded well understood, and really it would serve us as all to understand this more deeply. I think we had such a wonderful, sincere thank you to you from Scythia Matt to begin with, in acknowledging how also you acknowledge the indigenous understanding how important the trees are, and how important, as she said the mother tree is. But speaking of stories and and when you were a kid, I wonder what kind of stories you grew up with about the forest. I think about fairy tales. And the forest seems to be a place where children are abandoned like Hansel and Gretel, or it's a place of danger. But indigenous stories, of course, it is a place of shelter and a place of safety. Did you read any of those fairy tales and did it did it affect how you thought of the forest as a kid. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I certainly I've read those fairy tales and they were read to me. They were meant to sort of scare us away from for us like the forest is a dangerous place, which is really like a European view, I think, but it's certainly not how I lived. I read the stories but I lived in these forests and they weren't scary to me at all they were great places of exploration and discovery and play and, you know, climbing mountains and building rafts. And maybe they were just like, like, so exciting, not scary at all. I think you're so right about the Western thing. I, you know, the way towns were built, right there were walls to keep the wild out, you know, what cities were all walled off. I just read Hunting by Stars by Cherie Demiline, the Metis writer, and it is in the forest that they the kids find safety they're on the run, but they are so at home in the forest and it is what gives them safe harbor it's it's really beautiful. And I have to ask you about another story from your youth because this is a critical story. And I think you know where I'm going it involves jigs, the dog, and an outhouse. Yes. So jigs was actually Uncle Wilfred's dog, and he was the family dog of course but and jigs was a curious beagle. And I guess sort of like me. And we were actually we were in loggers houseboat so my grandfather built these loggers houseboats and so Uncle Wilfred had to and we were moored at this Bay called Cottonwood Bay. And there was an outhouse of course that we use that was on the shore with a gang plank up to the outhouse and one day we were waking up in the summertime and we heard this great howling up in the bush and we all knew right away. And so this jigs had fallen into the outhouse. And so, everybody just rushed up to try and save jigs and, you know, people were running down the shore, Uncle Wilfred with his pickaxe and my grandpa with his shovel and my, my uncle Jack was there and rushing up to the outhouse flung open the doors and the flies are coming out and look down and there's jigs way down at the bottom. And so, and so we had to dig them out, or at least my dad and my uncles did and. And so it was just a great moment of laughter, you know, family laughter but also of, for me this incredible. This was just, you know, in awe at what was being uncovered as they were, you know, trying to get jigs out of the suit at the bottom. And that's when, you know, I think, as I read in the book that it really solidified me this incredible world under our feet. And so I kind of knew about it because I ate dirt as a kid. And my family, you know, picked mushrooms and, you know, so, you know, the soil and the earth was part of where we came from. But I hadn't seen it below that really, you know, other than what I put in my mouth. And, and I, and it was revealed to me as they went through all these different layers there is the forest floor and the humus and which happened to be like incredible places of activity. It was full of life, you know, bugs and worms and columbola and springtails and bacteria and fungi. And then underneath that there is like this little silver layer that's that I later learned was where all the humus had washed through and gets deposited in this other layer, which is as red as the curtain behind you, Sheila, like a beating heart as I describe in the book. And, and below that, you know, was where jigs was well, way down and the rocks that were the alluvial rocks and eventually, yes, we pulled jigs out and I had learned so much and I guess I had a great time. And, yeah, take it took him down to the lake and threw him in and washed him off and it was a, it was a great story. But this episode, I mean, less people think we're being trivial here that I'm asking you a salacious question but it really incited something in you didn't it. I mean, I think it was like, you know, the roots were incredible and I had this relationship with roots already because I remember as a kid I used to always climb trees and then fall out of the trees onto the roots and think gosh these roots are so strong and, you know, they don't budge against my hip and my legs and and so I had this fashion fascination with roots and I would always, I also remember falling in this big hole that was full of roots and, and so this digging process, I got to see you know how you had to chop through these this matter of roots and realizing this was like the foundation of the forest. This is what kept the trees up, and it also was where all these soil creatures lived and crawled all over each other. So I knew that, you know, roots were pretty special. How old were you Suzanne. I was about five when jigs fell in. Yeah, I wasn't very old five or six. Yeah. Old enough to keep on eating dirt for a while I guess definitely I still do and I teach my students how to eat dirt to because you can get a lot of flavor, and you can also get to taste or get to detect the texture of the soil. You know if it's really fine or if it's really course it's really easy to tell just by chewing on a little bit of dirt. What does it taste like depends on what part you eat. Keep the forest floor and it depends on what kind of forest you're in but if it's got Naples and birches in it is quite sweet. The forest floor if it's conifers it's kind of sour. If it's mineral soil it's gritty and a very earthy tasting. So yeah it really just depends on what kind of forest you're in. Thank you. I want to say to people who are viewing as you are already contributing questions and that's wonderful. And I would love to be able to unfold them as our conversation is going along instead of waiting till the end. So then already we have six questions. I'm going to begin with the first one I see and I'll read it Dr. Samard. In the epilogue to your book you suggest the best way to understand how trees are interconnected is to go find a tree, your tree. Imagine linking into her network connecting to other trees nearby. I took you up on that and set my heart on finding the tree pictured in your book with the caption thousand year old western red cedar mother tree in Stanley Park. I'm thinking it must be the oldest living thing in Vancouver and I've obsessively hunted for it on several occasions with no luck with you or Dr Teresa Ryan who took the photo be able to pinpoint where this treasure is located. I can. So you know where the hollow tree is. This is a good case why don't know all the names of the roads but that's the that's the road that's just west of the main road that goes over the goes over the lines gate bridge, and as you come towards the city. There's a little pull out on the left and there's a hollow tree there. It's a really old tree it's actually a western red cedar that has died but it's still there and kind of supported and and cared for. There's a little trail that takes off from there, and it goes straight across. I think it goes to Los Lagoon, and along the way. That's where this tree is, and there's lots of other beautiful trees but there's yeah there is. Actually there's a junction about a junk, yeah juncture at about a few hundred meters in and there's the tree right there. Yeah, it's still there. I don't have to get some signage, but I think that's a great idea. Julie asked this question since we're talking about your family. How much is your French Canadian identity, a major way that you see yourself. You know, a really strong way, but you know I'm embarrassed to say that I don't speak French other than what I learned in high school and I learned from my grandfather and my uncle's speaking French around the kitchen table. When my dad and his brothers and sister grew up. My grandmother was actually from Finland and she couldn't understand French. And so she prohibited it from being spoken when she was present. Just because she felt left out and disregarded and so the language didn't get passed on to my dad's generation. And then in my generation we learned it in high school but I think that, you know, it wasn't as good of learning as right now when the kids can go to French immersion my both of my daughters speak French. But I feel like really hobbled by my inability to actually, you know, converse fluently in French although I can read it and I can hear it in conversation. And I can't really speak it other than reading, you know, the odd word and I like to mix those words up in in conversations as you can read in the book. But I'm very, very proud of my French heritage, and I'm very proud that my family came from Quebec. And, and I, I, yeah, I hope that we can we can keep it in our family and yes definitely a very strong part of our forestry heritage as well. And my grandfather Wilfred Sutherland had tuberculosis, and he was told to get better he had to work outside. So he became a logger in Manawaki Quebec, and I guess in those days, it would have been horse logging. And you talk about how things would be very different. If, if we respected some of those old traditions and perhaps worked more lightly upon the land. Can you imagine the difference. I definitely can imagine that I know the difference. So, you know, when I grew up with this small scale logging family operation horse logging everything was really, really small, really small slow, everything was just like the odd tree taken out here and there. And so when I look at looked at the landscape as a child, you know, I just saw it as an intact forest with a few little gaps in it that were created from the logging that filled in immediately with all this lush, you know, growth of the hemlocks and cedars and furs and burst out of the ground. So to me it was this incredibly regenerative place in that with that kind of logging. And then since then of course everything has changed or almost everything has changed. And our landscape is logged with industrial methods where people are in machines. You know, using fellow bunchers and hoe checkers to pull logs out. But the impact on the landscape is so much more is so much different. And I had the great pleasure actually in this summer of going into a number of areas in the Kwakawa territory on Eastern Vancouver Island, and looking at the logging that stretches back 130 years and so back then it was all hand falling and it was clear cutting because they use steam engines to actually pull the logs from with the hand fallers in there to the ocean or to the rail that's along along the ocean side. But when you walk into those forests of course they've regenerated and now we're called second growth forest. But the forest floor is still thick. It's still deep. The forest has rebounded like, like I learned it did when I was a kid. The trees are beautiful. They're not they're not ancient trees like what I grew up around they're not 800 years old they're 150 years old but they're on their way to having full lives. But when I walk into the industrial logging, you know, that's been logged with these machines that's a completely different story because, you know, these machines actually do, you know, disturb the forest floor a lot more. That's where a lot of our precious carbon and roots are. They're planted back to, you know, plantations of one or two or for lucky three species. Usually it's only one. And so the forests are much simpler. The species compositions are different. So it is it creates a whole different kind of forest is. Yeah, it's, it's quite, it's quite shocking really. I'm getting a number of questions about the mother tree. And so, I guess, first of all, you've had a number of Eureka or aha moments or even call one moment a mare. Woo, you know, the all all of your lights go off and when when was that moment regarding the mother tree. So, I did, I did, I made these discoveries when I was in my early 30s that trees were passing carbon photos that they back and forth. And I met a whole bunch of resistance when I published that paper. Well, not just in forest practices but academia as well and it's because it really challenged our view or at least the modern industrial view of how forest grew which was that they're, you know, highly competitive trees are just fighting for their own survival they're trying to get you know all the light and soil resources that they can. And that's really, you know, it created a huge backlash. And there was a period of about 10 years or more, I guess, it was, yeah, about 13 years that I got sort of mired in this backlash. And so did the, so did the study of this phenomenon of this connection is below ground connections in the forest and so I set out to map try to map what that what those networks in the forest look like so let me back up a little bit. What what these networks are is that you know all of the trees in our forests in Canada, in fact all over the world, have this symbiotic mutualistic association with fungi. And there are these certain fungi, my carrizo fungi which literally means fungus root, where the, where the tree provides energy to the fungus in photosynthate, and the fungus takes that energy and uses it to grow itself. It grows itself through the soil, winding around all the pores and all the soil crumbs and pulling out nutrients and water and delivering them back to the tree. What I discovered is that these fungi can actually link these trees together. And there are literally hundreds of species in a single forest of these fungi. And so you can imagine what that tapestry might look like. I think like the one behind you. And I mapped one with my student Kevin Biler, I'm not one species, two subspecies of this rise of Pogon fungus, and we found that everything in that forest was connected by these two sister species. And the most highly connected trees, the ones that were the hubs of the network were the biggest trees. And, and so then I set about with a bunch of other graduate students to figure out what were these big trees doing. We did these things like planted seedlings around the trees. We sowed seeds around them. We had seeds of different species of different genetic makeup. We had seeds from those old trees themselves. We had seeds from other trees. And we found out that these old trees nurtured the seedlings. They help them establish, they help them germinate, establish, survive, grow, improve their nutrition. And the way they did this after many, many more experiments was they did a couple of things. One is that they supported this massive network, the little trees could, could tap into to, to, you know, gather up a lot of resources, right away, even as they're just getting going, even before they have, you know, many needles or leaves. The other thing that these old trees did is they actually delivered carbon and nutrients and water directly to these little seedlings. And so this nurturing ability, I thought, you know, how can we convey this so that people understand this. And, and that's how we came up with the term mother tree because they really were the role of them in the forest was as a mother, you know, and not just as an elder but as a mother to, to nurture these young seedlings. Even, even in death, right, even even in death. Absolutely. So, you know, just a reminder that this this multi generational for us that that there it's a cycle. And there's a fine line or even maybe no line between the living and the dead, where, you know, as trees die and they get old and die that they, they, they also trend, transmit or send messages to these young seedlings. They send them messages about about health, about disease, about how to look after themselves. They also send energy to help them grow. In fact, what we found is about 40% of their current photos since they ends up going straight into these little seedlings that are in their network as they die. Yeah, the whole dying process is really a birthing process right at the same moment. It's, it's an incredible cycle. Yeah, exactly. And I hope VICIC, I don't know how to pronounce your name but I hope you feel that that answered the question can you talk about what the mother tree does in the forest. Suzanne, why did you encounter such opposition to this research. I think, you know, I've, I've thought long and hard about it and of course at the time, and I was in my mid 30s by the time I published this work I was having children of my own, and, and I, it took me by surprise. You know, I didn't expect from the academic side, especially to have a backlash. But now I realized it quickly. It didn't take me very long to figure out what that what I was doing is challenging basic tenets of ecology and evolution. And that's where, you know, competition has long, especially since Darwin published his famous papers on origin of species, and especially since the advent of capitalism which was happening in Europe around the same time that I was doing his studies that this idea of competition sort of being the dominant force by which there's natural selection occurs, and then translated into ecology that this is how whole communities are structured is through competition. And it kind of challenged that tenant. I was showing that they actually collaborate a lot as well. They compete but they also collaborate. And, and I think that that there was a threat there, there was a perceived threat that I was trying to overturn all of this great work that had been done. That wasn't my intention at all. I was just trying to expand our understanding of the multiple interactions that trees and other creatures have with each other it's such a sophisticated way of conversing with each other of communicating of, of interacting and, and relating to each other. So there was that aspect. And then there was also the aspect of force management, and I think, and this is a longer conversation but, you know, force management as agriculture as any resource management really took those ideas from evolution and applied them in ecology in the management of resources. And in forestry this led to, you know, basically growing single species plantations that are spaced apart where they're weeded of plants that are considered to be competitors. They're spaced and thinned all to favor the dominant ones. And this resulted in the simplified forest. But what I was challenging with these views that we should be more inclusive of biodiversity and all the different, you know, functions in the forest challenged, you know, a huge industry that was built on the huge infrastructure was built on, you know, developing, you know, seedlings to grow so they grew fast on, you know, herbicide companies that were developing herbicides whole consulting companies that were out spraying these forests, you know, so so there was a great resistance to change and that still exists today. Thank you for that for that answer and I know it is a longer conversation and I wish we had more time but I've got to tell you the questions are coming fast and furiously so I'm going to go to it looks like me cows question. The North Shore and Lower mainland was logged 150 years ago. What do the trees do in the absence of the mother hub tree. Well, you know, so these big old trees, you could think of them like they're the grandparents of the forest right and so with with those old trees. I call this wisdom, you know, some people think that's like the wrong trees that are human but it really is wisdom that is encoded in genes. It's encoded in the nutrient capital of the site. It's encoded in, you know, the biomass or the logs and the branches that are left behind, following a disturbance, and they provide bootstraps the next generation of forest. You know they provide the mycorrhizal inoculum, for example, they provide the seeds. They provide actually nurse logs where trees can regenerate on they provide all this platform for the new forest to to to grow back. If there's no mother trees left if we lost all of those are they're burned, you know, the forest regenerates. It's going to regenerate eventually that's the beauty of resilience of our forest that's so hopeful and that's, you know, I think we all need to remember that the forest do grow back and and they will stratify themselves and emerges out of that he what might seem like a simple single story canopy. There's actually a lot of structure in there where you have some trees that emerges the bigger trees. Eventually, those ones become the hubs of this below ground network, and they become the mother trees, just like in our society's leaders emerge and we look up to them and they do, you know, make hinges or they make connections in society in our human societies it's the same for us they do emerge out of the out of even a simplified forest. Here's a question that's, it's anonymous. How old does a tree have to be to function as a hover mother tree. The answer to this question relates to research I'm doing in West Vancouver on an area of old growth that has been selectively logged but where many mature trees of say 200 years still occur. And, you know, every forest, even a small plant, a young plantation of five years old, or less will have this structure in it and, and so you can even, you know, call those little seedlings that are the biggest most robust ones as the mother trees in the in in that even young plantation. In fact, a lot of the research I did in forest was married with with with small trees because it's really hard to do the research I did like labeling them with isotopes. It's hard to label a 200 year old tree so we would work with smaller trees and this structure emerges still as you know nuclei of these mother trees as nuclei of the forest. And we just go a little bit further that, you know, there's old trees are a little bit different than this they have different special qualities that are not captured even by the biggest trees. So when we think of old growth, for example, in our coastal ecosystems to be an old growth for us they, they're supposed to be about at least 250 years old, an interior forest 140 years old. There's reasons for this because scientists have studied them and figured out that they have these, you know, special emergent properties. Some of those things are, for example, an older tree will be host to, you know, 10 fold more fungal species for example than a little seedling. Instead of, you know, five or six on a seedling there'll be 100 or more on a big old tree. And they all function. They have niches in ecosystems that allow the tree to capture resources from this enormous pool of wealth the nutrients the nitrogen the phosphorus and so on, and the micro rises help them do that. So people could be like in these big old trees they have huge crowns that also are homes to bears and cavity nesting birds, ducks and wolves are not wolves but, you know, large, large creatures, and that diversity matters to because they are dispersers of seed of a big old tree. And so, you know, in the curriculum of the micro rises. They, they're connectors they form nest webs themselves and ecosystems but these big old trees really are again emerge as really important to those kinds of connections as well. So even little plantations have, you know, emergent larger trees but these big old trees the old growth ones have especially important qualities that we need to save in our ecosystems. At one point, as you describe everything working in concert quite literally you talk about how it's kind of like an orchestra is going on out there in the forest right. Yes, all of that kind of collaboration and communication. Yeah, I know I often think you know when I'm in the force I'm listening to a symphony, you know, you do hear you do hear stuff of course, but just knowing all the, the niches all the players that they're working together to create this incredible wealth of an ecosystem that is so productive and so diverse and provides, you know, oxygen for us and food, you know, and for all of the creatures that live in the forest. So yeah it really is like it takes a symphony to create a beautiful piece and that is really the what the forest is it's a symphony to a question about your research does it apply to small natural areas of urban places as well. And also is it reasonable to consider that when trees are being cut down. They do the equivalent of cry out to others perhaps cry in pain. I guess here so happy to be hearing you doctors are right I love your book and tell others about it all the time, but those are two really interesting questions and I think as people read your book. They walk through cities differently they look at trees in urban places differently. Yeah, I mean it really isn't. I mean it's different but it's not that different in that you know trees, they grow in communities. They, they thrive on diversity and they thrive in being in neighborhoods, just like we do right we we can't grow in isolation they can't either. And so, you know, even in a boulevard where you might have a row of trees and they're planted and they might be all the same speeds well this is very common of course, all the same species planted and even rows and, and there's cement and sidewalks around them, as long as the trees have the ability to grow roots, and that there aren't huge solid barriers between them, they will connect as well they form micro rises as well. And they communicate with each other as well, not just through the roots but trees in forests in urban environments also communicate through the air. This isn't an area that I study but others do where trees will actually warn each other they they communicate with each other about about their environment and, and, and there's responses so there's perceptions responses changes behavior adjustments, according to that language that's going above ground. And so, scientists call those things floating through the air volatile organic compounds, you can think of them just as the things that you smell in a forest, that's their language that's them speaking to each other. In areas in urban environments you can foster that community better by growing trees in in communities in good soil where they can, you know, form micro rises and connect together. A lot of these things we don't do in urban environments but we really should because our, you know, our urban areas are are hot. They're kind of hostile environments for all kinds of creatures, but trees we all know really improve that living space. And, and so anything we can do, and there are so many things we can do to improve the life of trees we should do. Yeah. The other part of that question was about trees being cut down and right. You know, do they do they have the equivalent of a cry, a cry of pain. You know, I, yeah, I, I'm not sure I know. Okay, so here's one way to think of it because, you know, I, I'm hesitant to, to call it a cry of pain because that's so much what we do and we think and I can. And I'm not sure that it's the same response or it's it is it's actually isn't the same the same but there's so many parallels. So let me try to explain. You know, when a tree is injured, whether it's cut or even if you pull off a leaf or needle or break a branch or cut into a tree. It has an instant response to that injury. An instant cascade of hormonal changes go on in it where, you know, a lot of chemical pathways are activated, a whole bunch of byproducts chemical bright byproducts are produced. And it's instantaneous. So it's almost like, you know, if somebody screams at you you have this, you know, this emotional response. The trees are doing the same thing it's instant and that hormonal response or that biochemical response gets transmitted through these networks below ground to the neighboring trees. And so there actually are, you know, eavesdrop there are eavesdrop the neighbors are eavesdropping on what's happening to those mother trees that are injured, and they're understanding those messages and they actually increase their own defense. They actually in upregulate their own RNA, RNA remember being that, you know, that the messenger RNA that that is the basis of our COVID vaccines, you know, trees have kind of us. The neighbors have a similar kind of anti antibody response in upregulating their own RNA and produce more defense enzymes and defend themselves against whatever is around and so, you know, is that a cry in pain well it's definitely a message. It's definitely a message of danger and and and warning. So, yeah, I think that's what I'll say and I'll leave the rest up to your imagination. Is it dangerous to veer into anthropomorphism. The reason I'm so hesitant is I'm trained as a scientist right and I've been, you know, I've got, you know, three degrees in science and and one of the first things that you that you learn is you better not anthropomorphize or you're going to lose all your credibility. This harkens back really to, you know, Descartes and and the separation of man from nature, our minds from our bodies, and, and it became sort of like a touchstone for the validity of science. To me, as I mature as I get older I realized that this has actually been the Achilles heel of science is that by removing ourselves so much from our, what we study from nature, by not acknowledging these, these mysterious things, but by being happy when we understand only half of what's going on and say oh we understand it all by by ignoring that complexity, we've simplified our ecosystems, because we thought they were simple. And now the damage that's come from that has brought to bear on, you know, the, on what's happening in our forest the insect infestations the pathogen infestations, the vulnerability to wildfire and so on. And so, so I asked people in my book and again here to to let's get back to our roots of who really are that these trees in these forests are our kin, they are our relatives. We come, we evolved from the same basic soup of DNA. And that, you know, by not treating them as as our kin, as our relations that we have given ourselves license to exploit these creatures to our detriment. And so I think that, you know, the fundamental thing that we have to get back in order to start healing that is, is to relate to the forest in that way as we do to our, our, our human neighbors, you know, as as our relations. And once we do that, once we start seeing them as as, as we see each other as people, then we'll start caring for them. And I'll just end this by saying, you know, the, our First Nations people have long recognized trees and wolves and bears as their relations and they're way ahead of West the Western world, or maybe the, maybe I should say the Western world forgot its roots at some point and we need to get back to them. Okay, at this point, I am going to say I apologize for all the questions I can't get to because we still have 23 questions from attendees and I'm very grateful they are wonderful questions and a lot of people have read your book. So a really early question came in from Richard Walton who said, at what point did you read Richard Powers over story, who influenced whom, if either. Yeah. When did I read of the over story read it a few years ago and I actually I was writing my book. I was writing this book when his book came out and he won the Pulitzer Prize. And, and somebody says, Oh, you know, there's a, there's this character that seems like you and, and, and they study plant communication and I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. But I didn't really know anything about the book other than that it would have won the Pulitzer Prize and then I thought well maybe I should read that book and so I read it and I'm going oh my goodness this is so much like my story. And it turns out that Richard Powers did actually base his character. Patricia Westerford, partly on me and partly on a couple of other women who who study trees and forests. So it's kind of a combination character but but yeah that's when I read the book and I was just thrilled to see it because he did such a great job you know it's such a fine piece of literature. And he did such a great job of bringing to life, you know, all the people care about forests about trees, gave them characters the complex characters and the trees and forests themselves so I was really happy to see that. And the first, I guess I started doing this Richard search 40 years ago. And so I guess the research came, and then Richard read about it and heard about it and wrote about it. I think you could write a wonderful book called the understory. That's got to be the next one I guess. A question about popular culture. What about Ted lasso. So, Ted lasso the biggest hit that's been on television over the last year and he refers to your research to the mother tree by name. You know, I on all I could, you know, it's funny because I started getting these messages Ted lasso Ted lasso, and my, my daughter's boyfriend Bobby Joe love, who I love sent me a message almost instantly he said Ted lasso he's your name got mentioned on Ted lasso Bobby manages my Instagram account so he knows all about my work and he's like, Wow this is amazing. And so then of course I had to watch it and and Bobby's, you know, helping me, you know, hack into his Apple ID so I can watch this episode and I'm, it was amazing I mean, and I only watched that one episode but now I know I want to watch the series because I think the story kind of parallels the story of forestry or you know how how you know I apparently Ted lasso came to the UK and he was kind of like a not very well liked and was a little bit, you know, a bit mean to his neighbor his fellow players and his anyway and then he eventually evolved into this more caring collaborative person, which is sort of like the tipping point in that episode apparently so anyway, it's really cool. It is it is really cool. Here's a question from somebody who has two young children five and two, given the importance of fostering a strong relationship with the natural world. What are your suggestions for instilling this in children at a deeper level. One of the most important things to take them outside right and and let them explore and and this have them spend as much time out there as possible, because it really is being in those spaces in those places in the forest that where you develop those deep connections, get them away from their phones, get them away from the distractions that don't that really make them not present in the real world, and, you know, even, you know, leave them out there to play for a while and to get maybe even get a little lost and you kind of got an aware they are kind of but um, to really make those deep connections, be quiet and being quiet in the forest and just making discoveries I mean there's nothing like being out there that makes you just want to, you know, you love, love them to death, you don't ever want anything to happen to them. So that's what that's what I would recommend that's what I did with my own children and that's how I grew up. From my 1311 and five year old daughters a question from Megan Friesen. How can we find the mother tree in the forest by our home. Just, you know, go wherever you are just go and find the biggest tree. And, you know, one thing you can do is just look at the girth of the tree. And you have to look up because the diameter of a tree is completely correlated with the height of trees so usually if it's a big factory it's also a big tall tree. But even if it's not very tall it still will be a mother tree because the important thing is that these trees have huge crowns so the leaf, the leaf area, they're photosynthesizing like crazy. Energy gets transmitted down through the trunks into the root system and that's where all the cycles the big biogeochemical cycles of the earth are actually happening in the soil, fed by these enormous roots of these enormous trees. And so yeah so yeah just look for those big trees with a big girth and a big crown and those are the mother trees. Thank you. Teresa just notes here Michael Christie's wonderful novel Greenwood talks about the relationship amongst trees. And it also caught her interest and it is a it is a great great novel too so thank you very much for that Teresa. I'm just looking at the time we have about 15 minutes. There's still 22 questions, and I still have a few myself. But I want to, I want to ask here. This is a question that's very open Sylvia Garcia asks, What is one of the many gifts that the forest has given you that you've applied to your own life and also as thank you Suzanne for all you do for the forest. Thank you. Um, you know, it gives me a sense of peace and recovery and healing. I go to the forest every day. Unless I can't that day, if I'm traveling or something but when I miss my day in the forest I really miss that healing moment. It's not even like I have to look at the details I just need to walk up a trail. Let's breathe in the sense and feel these, these gentle creatures around me and I instantly calm down. I can feel my heart, I can feel my soul breathing again. So yeah, I mean, the forest is just an incredible healing place for me. And of course, in my book I talk about even more, you know, concrete things where I went through breast cancer and the forest was a solace for me I would go to the forest to, even though I was dead tired from the chemo just go there and just be with the trees and feel envelop enveloped by them. And one of the drugs that I was given in chemo was paclitaxol which is from the U tree. And, and where I live, it's full of U trees. And so I would go to these forests and, and wrap my arms around these U trees and thank them for the life that they've given back to me, and I would take my children there and we would do that. You know, the other thing I've done is I have a graduate student Eva, Eva Snyder, who, who's doing her PhD on the U, and, and the development and the production of paclitaxol by you, and how neighbors influence the production and quality of that medicine. And so, use connect with cedars and maples and, and I think that community really enhances that chemistry of the trees that's my hypothesis. The huge trees actually use paclitaxol for their own medicine for their own defense against disease. So anyway, I vowed to the trees when I was going through my cancer treatments that I would do this study and, and yeah it's pretty exciting. I found that this neighborhood of trees is highly connected and interacting. So, stay tuned. That is a very powerful part of your book as well and, and I love the fact that you, you pay homage to the U trees for the gift that they have given you. I can we have another hour. I mean, seriously, I can't believe how fast this is gone. But how can we change the way we as, as a great big culture, Western culture, think about forests. You know, I think that shift is happening now. I think that we're at a moment in our history in our environmental crisis, where we have paths to choose. And, and I think it's clear. It's clear to many people it's clear to me which path to choose and that is a regenerative pathway, rather than continuing on the exploitative pathway that we've been on for the last century. And, and I think that we know so much about forest now I mean we know it innately in our DNA and our bones. When I speak of the mother tree and connection and for us everybody gets it right away. It's because we know it in our souls. And, and so we've got the tools there we have the knowledge. We, and people are making changes in how they think about forests and resources already. And I think that you know when we see the protests that fairy creek for example. And this is an expression of that knowledge and an expression for change, and really, you know, it's, it's up to us to make those changes but the moment is now. And, you know, we are in a climate crisis we don't have a lot of time to shit make this, you know, shift the direction of this big ship, but we can do it. The trees are telling us how it happens, you know how the forest heals it they've shown us this. And so really we have the knowledge and, and we just need to make the right choices. And I would say you know I'm more concrete ways, you can pressure your politicians to make better choices for us to I'm Heather bowl, we depend a great deal on wood in our economy and our society. As only one example the province of British Columbia now allows buildings over five stories to be built with wood. Are you hopeful for changes in silver culture and the use of wood and I will throw in policy and and do you have hope for the stewardship of our forests. I hope is what we depend on and I do have hope I, you know, changes happen and, and I've studied, you know, equal ecosystems. There are a lot like social systems in that when you start to make changes, it can seem imperceptible at first, and you almost give up because you think oh nothing ever changes. But then when there's enough people in place enough policies have shifted practices have moved, you start to see these changes and then it can be dramatic and rapid if we make put the right things in place. And so that's incredibly hopeful, and it's incredibly possible we have all the tools there to do that. And yeah, and so we need to do it and I don't think I don't it's not rocket science is choices is about making those correct choices. And I can't remember the beginning of that sentence but Okay, but hope it I think it is a lot about hope but hope for or are you feeling optimistic about the way silver culture is practiced in the province. Currently, silver culture practices are not very good. I should say, we have the foundation for it right we we have a good understanding of our ecosystems we know what grows here. We have a really good science based foundation for do making, making good practices. We haven't shifted away from some really draconian policies that really compel us to reinforce our landscape with simple plantations made of conifers that actually are really increasing the vulnerability of our landscapes. By weeding out birches and aspens and cottonwoods and understory plants we increase the flammability of our landscapes by taking away the old mother trees we reduce the genetic capacity of our landscapes. And so yeah, we, I know that we can do better we have knowledge to do better to change silver culture so that's based more on the values of the forest ecosystem, rather than on these simplified products, and those values need to include things like our spirituality, the ability to store and sequester carbon the ability to make oxygen out of CO2 out of photosynthesis, the ability to house biodiversity. All of these things are the cornerstone to our lives. And so we can do silver culture that can honor those things. So far, it hasn't done that. It's actually been the source of loss of biodiversity, the way that we've lost carbon from our ecosystems, and people feel disenfranchised from the very places that we live in. But we need to we have to get this back and get back on the right track. I want to ask a question that I'm curious about, because reading reading the book, I know that public speaking wasn't your thing when you first began to speak in public. But you were, you know, you were sort of charged the gauntlet was thrown down by by your then boyfriend Don who became your husband, who said you can't hide if you want change. What is that that phrase meant to you over your life, Suzanne? You know, I grew up as I was so shy. I mean, I was a really shy kid. I sucked my thumb till I was 12. I think that I, you know, I'm, I might be unique in that way. I hid behind my mom probably because it tasted like dirt. I probably did. I, it was covered in dirt most of the time. But um, yeah, and then I, I got through through high school, being incredibly shy and then I went to university and I realized I took a public I had to take this public speaking course I was just like terrified of it. And I was asked to give a talk on the spot, and I froze, and I couldn't get, and I was given one word to talk about that word was dog I could have talked about jigs, you know, it would have been so easy but I didn't think of that. And, and I froze and then I said to myself you can't go on with your life like this you've got to be able to have certain basic skills. Otherwise, you know, you're not going to do anything. And so I learned how to speak. And I learned how to write well I could write already but I learned how to write better. I learned some basic communication skills and then over the years I just, I just worked and worked at it, you know I started off terrible and I ended up being a decent speaker. And it's just through sheer will and practice. I'm sure you could offer your own wisdom on how you've done it to Sheila. I love a microphone. I do I have to admit, it's real life that I have real difficulty with me to put me in a party and I'm terrible but you know I can speak me to on yeah. Thank you for answering that question because I think people people do want to know what they do but they feel they can't they can't get past their, their shyness or their introversion, but you are living. You can do it yeah I think just practice and being really well prepared, and then you get through the first one and it might not be great but just keep going, you know practice really does make. Well, it's never perfect but practice makes interesting. Well, that's even better. It's way better than perfect. A couple of questions about is there such a thing as a father tree. For sure, you know, and I mean again I'm going to I'm going to invoke first Nations culture where and lots of nations around the world. Call these old trees grandfather trees or grandmother trees or father trees or mother trees, and a lot of the species of trees in the world have both sexes right within the same individual, including most of our trees except for the you trees in Canada. I mean, you know, these mother trees are really parent trees are elder trees but I use the term mother tree to invoke that idea of nurturing so that we understand immediately, you know the role of these trees in the forest but certainly there are father trees and grandparent trees and grandfather trees as well. I have a question about. I think I've just lost it but do bamboo trees have a mother cane. Wow. I don't know. I'm stumped. All right. Okay, that's fine. We'll just we'll carry on. The impact of invasive non native worms on trees but but also let you know if you want to throw in the pine beetle. We do see resilience but what what do the trees have to go through. A lot of trees die, of course, but they also, I'm just going to talk. So the earthworms are a special case. They do change our ecosystems in dramatic ways and I just want to put that out there that they're not native to Canada. That they they actually bring up nutrients from deep in the soil churn the soil and make it seem like it's more fertile but it's actually not that great for our native forest. And as far as the mountain pine beetle goes. Interestingly enough that that the infestation by mountain pine beetle actually, of course, causes all kinds of responses in the old trees. And what we found is that that that that messages actually transmit through the micro rises to the next generations of seedlings which affects their ability to produce mono terpenes, which is a defense. And this affects the genetics of multiple generations down the road. And so, yeah, I mean, the mountain pine beetle has co evolved with logical pine in our forest. And I think that that is born out and what I just said about these, this co evolution means that there is a conversation going on that crosses generations and it's, it's not all a bad thing it's just that climate change on top of that has created an imbalance in these in this co co evolved relationship. And I think that there are going to be there are resistant trees there are going to be resistant newcomers are new new generations of trees. And these forests will eventually, in my view, regenerate, they're going to look different, because climate is changing, but there, there are, there is resistance in the populations, natural resistance. Okay, I have I have a five minute warning but I'm not sure when it happened. So that's, that's great. I want to ask you a question about the time of year that we are in in universities and it's convocation time. A lot of universities will be having in person convocations. If you were to address convocation and you probably have already at various universities across the country. But right now, what would you be wanting to tell people as they go out into the world. Well, I think one of the things that's front of mind of many students is global change and climate change. And I think there's a lot of fear and anxiety. There's depression. There's where do I fit in this big picture. And I think my message to you is that we are, as I said we are, we have evolved to heal. Our ecosystems are poised to recover that they need our helping hand and that you as an individual as a new person coming up in your career that you have agency in this that that there's a very positive relationship that that can exist between humans and nature. And we've just kind of lost our path for a bit but we can get it back. And I would call on people to be part of that change to make it part of your everyday life to, to, and to hold our leaders to task when they promise to do something and then they backtrack on those promises to keep them. We have really, you know, we, we have no choice but to make dramatic changes coming forward, but we can do it. And just, you know, I call on everybody to be part of that change. And stay curious and stay curious. Yes. And stay hopeful and stay happy. And then when you have those things you'll have much more resources to go forward and be a productive member of all this change. All right, I've got, I do again, I want to say thank you so so much to the people who have asked questions. I'll go with Mary Ann Pangelli's question just saying, thank you to you Dr. Samard Suzanne for bringing ancient wisdom forward. I've always felt a pain in the heart when I've seen clear cut forests or even if trees in our cities are smashed down. I don't think I'm the only one to feel that way. Do you think you think we might have a forest gene? Well, we, we certainly evolved from the same backbone of DNA, right. So, you know, the first creatures that that inhabited the terrestrial landscape were, you know, plants that had co-evolved with fungi and moved on to land and oxygenated our environment. And, and so, yes, and then eventually evolved higher level plants and eventually evolved, you know, vertebrates and eventually human beings. And so we are all part of this phylogeny or phylogenetic tree we are related at, you know, back in millions of years ago. And so, yeah, I mean, the trees are our ancestors really. They're in our genes. We have shared gene sequences. And, yeah, and I think it's comforting to know that they've been around for a long time and they're patiently waiting for us to just learn a little bit more. I have a question from, from the viewers. This is Joan Sharp. I'm going to cut to your, right to your question, Joan. Can you talk a little bit about what it takes to be a field biologist who can commit so deeply to living in and growing to understand the forest that you studied despite your connections to family and life outside the field? Yeah, it's kind of a unique job to be a field biologist and I encourage people to do it because it's so enriching to be a naturalist in so many ways to really, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, today are really enamored by, you know, lab work and molecular biology and genetics, which is all good. You know, we need that too. But we've some, some, in some ways, with all that glamour we forgot about the natural life of the field biologist. And, and so I invite you to go and observe nature because you, you know, that's, that's an essential part of it to see these creatures to study them to be with them. And, and live that life that is free, right, it feels so free. You know, I mean, it has its pressures to especially for women with children, you know, I know that I had a lot of pressures like that and all the people, the women that I worked with. But you, you know, bring your kids to the field or, or, you know, work part time or, you know, figure out a way that you can envelop that field biology into your life because it will be good for your kids too. That is a great answer. And I want to say thank you so much on behalf of, of the audience on behalf of me. Thank you for entertaining all of our questions. And I want to say thanks to jigs as well. Jigs up in heaven. Whatever jigs if you hadn't fallen into the outhouse. Where would Suzanne Simard be right now. I'd be nothing. Well, and thank you. So thanks and such gratitude for this beautiful profound book. Thank you for our conversation Suzanne. Thank you she though that was really fun and lovely. Thank you. Yes. I'm Sarah I'm with the North Vancouver District Public Library and on behalf of the North Shore libraries we are so grateful that both of you could be here. And I think I'm not alone in wondering when the Suzanne and Sheila podcast is going to start so we can listen to you every week, because I'm sure we did not get our fill and as you said Sheila there were so many brilliant questions and we really do thank everyone for being so engaged and for giving us these beautiful questions. And if you haven't had a chance to read Finding the Mother Tree all three of our libraries have many copies so come and get one from our libraries and of course your local bookstore would be a great place to get pick up that book. And we really do encourage you to give this fascinating and really hopeful, really hopeful book of read it's worth your time. And if you have any feedback about this event you can email us at the email that sent you the zoom link. And we really do thank you all for being here tonight, and I do wish I'm putting half everyone a safe safety warmth, comfort, happiness and joy, and hope you can get into a forest sometimes soon. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Thank you.