University of Toronto Schools, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
John A. Livingston won a place at the University of Toronto Schools, then a boys-only elite academic high school.
College/University
Gallery of John Livingston
Victoria College of Toronto University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Academically gifted, John A. Livingston entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto at 16, just as the Second World War broke out. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy and earned and was granted a degree in English literature in 1943 while on active service.
Victoria College of Toronto University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Academically gifted, John A. Livingston entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto at 16, just as the Second World War broke out. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy and earned and was granted a degree in English literature in 1943 while on active service.
Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication
(Argues that humans have become so domesticated by and dep...)
Argues that humans have become so domesticated by and dependent on technology that they can no longer truly relate to nature and are more prone to damage their environment.
John A. Livingston was a Canadian naturalist and environmentalist. He was most known as the voice-over of the Hinterland Who's Who, a series of 60-second public service announcements profiling Canadian animals in the 1960s.
Background
John A. Livingston was born on November 10, 1923, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was the elder, by seven years, of two children of Harold Arthur Livingston, who was in the construction business, and his wife Vera Allen. The family moved to Toronto when John was a child and lived in North Toronto on the edge of one of the ravines that riddle the city.
Education
After attending Brown Public School, John A. Livingston won a place at the University of Toronto Schools, then a boys-only elite academic high school. Academically gifted, he entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto at 16, just as the Second World War broke out. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy and earned and was granted a degree in English literature in 1943 while on active service.
John Allen Livingston joined the Audubon Society of Canada (CAS, now Nature Canada) in 1955 as managing director and editor of its newsletter. A well-spoken advocate, his blunt comments about budworm spraying and proposals to raise and breed whooping cranes in captivity are now accepted truths. From the CAS, he went to the Canadian Broadcasting Program as executive producer for science programs on radio and television in 1962, arriving at the corporation two years after it launched The Nature of Things, the first regular TV-science series in North America. Livingston was a writer and presenter on many of the early broadcasts on the landmark program, including Animals and Man (which won a Thomas Edison Award in 1965), Danger: Man at Work and Darwin and the Galapagos.
Livingston had also begun publishing books based on the programs he was making for television and radio. Darwin and the Galapagos, with broadcaster Lister Sinclair, appeared in 1966 under the CBC imprint. He revealed his love of birding in Birds of the Northern Forest with paintings by J. Frederick Lansdowne (McClelland & Stewart, 1966) and followed that with Birds of the Eastern Forest, Vols. 1 and 2, again using Lansdowne's paintings (M&S, 1968 and 1970).
Livingston left the CBC in 1968 to work freelance and continued to contribute to The Nature of Things on an occasional basis. The following year, he formed a consulting company called LGL: Environmental Research Associates with lawyer Aird Lewis and ornithologist Bill Gunn, two men he knew well as founding members of The Nature Conservancy of Canada. Their first big job occurred in the mid-1970s when they worked for the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline inquiry headed by Justice Thomas Berger. After five years, Livingston's partners bought him out.
Livingston started teaching in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Livingston continued to write books and essays. He retired in 1993 and was appointed an emeritus professor and given an honorary degree. He moved to Ottawa in the late 1990s and, after surviving the 1998 ice storm, he made plans to move to Saltspring Island, where he settled in 2000.
John Allen Livingston died on January 17, 2006, on Saltspring Island, British Columbia, after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 82.
Livingston had an Orwellian disgust for eco-speak. He called sustainable development a full-blown oxymoron, eco-development a lunatic term.
Quotations:
"Alone among the beings who have arisen upon the Earth, we have evolved into virtually total dependence upon not our nature but our nurture."
"The end of human dominance over nature requires a major value shift, a change in the dominant culture. This is why theoretical work, that is, changing cultural mindsets, is necessary and vitally important."
Membership
Canadian Audubon Society
,
Canada
Federation of Ontario Naturalists
,
Canada
Connections
In 1948, John A. Livingston married art student Constance Margaret (always called Peggy) Ellis. They eventually had three children, Sally, Zeke, and Least. They divorced in the mid-1970s. Livingston married Ursula Moller Jolin in 1985.
Father:
Harold Arthur Livingston
Mother:
Vera Allen
ex-wife:
Constance Margaret "Peggy" Ellis
Daughter:
Sally Livingston
Son:
Zeke Livingston
Son:
Least Livingston
colleague:
Aird Lewis
colleague:
Bill Gunn
References
Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166
This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.