Our belief is that too few people have a grounding, personal connection to the land and, far more troubling, even fewer have been schooled in the relationship between nature and cultural diversity, healthy communities and a strong economy.

We believe that a generational shift is needed in our understanding and appreciation for nature and only in the doing can we unite all Canadians to work toward a common purpose of a better nation for all life.

After all, nature is a fundamental building block of life, transcending politics, geography and age. Canadians need to be inspired to put aside their differences and engage in hard conversations, be open to thinking critically about the problems at hand and, together, rally behind promising solutions that allow innovation to trump compromise.

Ghost Bear Institute was founded to advance this vision and is underpinned by storytelling that provokes thoughtful dialogue and educational efforts that nurture a deeper sense of connection to, and shared ownership of, the issues facing Canada’s biodiversity.

As such, we will strive to share better stories of our natural inheritance, engage all Canadians in direct conversation about how we can work together collaboratively and create immersive experiences that allow for individuals to rethink their role in our nation.

Most critically, we will tie together each of these threads by working diligently to equip teachers with the tools to deconstruct the complex and enliven the obscure; to help students understand that we’re a nation of ecosystems and that each one offers an accessible waypoint to tangibly assess the impact of our behaviour.

This is Ghost Bear Institute and we invite you to join us in helping build our signature program, Nature Labs, and to participate in our work that supports its development: Field Trips for Adults and Community Conversations (the first of which will be held on Thursday March 22nd from 630-8pm at the Calgary Public Library’s Fish Creek Branch).

We want to help thousands of teachers gain access to critical resources that enable them to deliver better education. We want to help hundreds of thousands of students are learning to understand and appreciate nature – and put that knowledge into practice by designing newer, better ideas for moving forward.

We believe in a Canada that supports nature literacy in the classroom and a country where millions act with a foundation of nature literacy, making our environmental discourse constructive and productive.

This is our dream. We hope it’s yours too. Together, let’s make it a reality.