When Robert Bateman was a child, every Sunday morning his family would go to church and every Sunday afternoon theyd go for a hike. Although his parents werent naturalists, those hikes and summers at the cottage made him aware of the natural world around him. And the more aware he became, the more he fell in love with nature.
Six decades later, as one of Canadas foremost nature artists, he challenges parents to take a hike. Once a week, he wants them to take turns taking their kids, and their kids friends, and their kids friends parents, for a walk in Stanley Park, or along a North Shore mountain, or any park where theres greenery and wildlife. And when theyre on the hike, he wants everyone to turn off their smartphones and portable DVD players.
Theres an alarming mass of young people who dont go outside at all to play, he says during a telephone interview from his home in Victoria. Young peoples addiction to computer games and television is reinforced by a generation of parents whose fear the outdoors because of the imagined dangers that lurk there. Most bad guys who hurt children are already known by the child. There are hardly any dangers outside the home but lots of dangers inside the home.
From October 13 to 23, Bateman will join 80 artists from around world for the Artists for Conservation Festival. Hes including an oil painting he did of an endangered Amur leopard exclusively for the event. There will also be workshops, guest lectures, live painting demonstrations and the world premiere of a short film about Simon Combes, a wildlife painter who fought to conserve endangered species in Africa. He was killed by a charging Cape buffalo in 2004.
The event is delightful for artists, says Bateman. Its a gathering of the clans.
The festival is on Grouse Mountain. It is organized by environmental impresario Jeff Whiting. For Bateman, Whiting represents the flip side of a generation cut off from nature. Hes one of the young people who strongly advocates for nature and works hard to protect it.
At the same time Im describing kids who are amusing themselves to death, Ive never known more fantastic kids who are making a difference and helping the world be a better place, Bateman says.
