Book Review: Understory

By Patsy Cotterill

Understory: An Ecologist’s Memoir of Loss and Hope, by Kevin Van Tighem, 2025. Rocky Mountain Books Ltd., rmbooks.com

Albertan nature writer, Kevin Van Tighem, has published his latest book, Understory, a candid and self-reflective memoir of his life and career as an ecologist and administrator in the mountain national parks. It is probably his best exposé yet of what it is like to be a conservationist in present-day western Canada.  Both background and foreground in the narrative are the ecological and sociological landscapes of an Alberta changed by colonization and still changing according to a western worldview, which sees nature as a resource to be exploited rather than respected and protected as something of which humans are a part. 

This book will be of special interest to those of us who follow conservation issues and indeed are somewhat familiar with the places and people mentioned in it, but all readers will be able to relate to his accounts of family life and the vicissitudes of working for a living; hopefully they will also find their minds broadened by his bouts of free-thinking and philosophizing.  

At one point Van Tighem tells the story of planting a native garden in his yard in Okotoks from prairie sods salvaged from development sites, only to have it removed by the new owner when the family moved. He expresses astonishment at the extent of his grief, a small grief compared with his chronic dismay at the loss, province-wide and elsewhere, of ecosystems and wildlife. 

Understory’s underlying and recurrent theme is also the quest to find a “home place” to which the author feels he can belong, physically, morally and spiritually, given his values. It is a quest that many of us share, immigrants and Indigenous peoples alike.  

Oldman Gap in Kananaskis Country, with the Oldman River in the middle ground and limber pine (Pinus flexilis) in the foreground, 2021-07-29. Photo: M. Parseyan. The Oldman River is one of Van Tighem’s favorite rivers and he was instrumental in the unsuccessful fight to stop the construction of the Oldman Dam in the late 1980s. The campaign was fought by the Friends of the Oldman River, including fellow conservationist Cliff Wallis, and the Piikani Nation. (Ed. I still have the “No Dam Way” button in my drawer!)