Author strives to inspire youth

A retired geologist is using literacy to inspire youngsters to speak their minds when it comes to protecting the planet.

Black Diamond resident Robert McWilliam recently published The Squirrel Who Saved a Tree, a 62-page children’s book he wrote in the 1990s about a nine-year-old boy’s quest to save a tree from being cut down in his community.

“The environmental aspect is so important for people to understand that we need to change the way we’re doing things,” he said. “We all need to start acting differently to put a higher priority on this planet we live on. Now is the time to do it when we still can as a choice.”

McWilliam admits it wasn’t his initial intention to inspire youths to take action when he penned the story, but after reading articles about young people taking initiatives to help the planet around the world he hopes the book will get more children doing just that.

“I’m noticing more youth are taking notice,” he said. “I’m really impressed by them taking the actions that they are taking and I think they deserve a lot of support.”

McWilliam said no matter how old a person is, if they believe in something they should take action to make change.

“I think it’s very important that kids get that message that they’re not too young to make a difference,” he said. “I think the more the message can get out that they can make a difference the better it is. It’s their future and I don’t think there’s any age requirements for doing things.”

After writing the book decades ago, McWilliam made several attempts to have it published to no avail.

“I’ve got a big binder at home with 100 rejection letters in it from publishers across Canada,” he said. “After the 100 I figured maybe it wasn’t going to happen and then I just left it and it sat for all of this time.”

McWilliam said a publisher told him his book neared the top of the list. He believes the rejections were due to the absence in illustrations.

Last year, McWilliam contacted a former student he had while teaching an environmental course at SAIT, John Rimmer, who was also an artist, to be an illustrator for the book.

Rimmer agreed, and more than a dozen of his drawings are showcased throughout the book.

McWilliam has since sent two more books he wrote years ago to Rimmer for illustrations.

“At that time I was writing quite a lot of short stories,” he said. “Some are on floppy disks, which I can no longer access. There is one or two that I retyped because I thought it was good enough to do something with.”

McWilliam also wrote a follow-up to The Squirrel Who Saved a Tree, featuring many of the same characters, in a book he calls The Rubber Duck that Saved a River.

“Most of the stories I’ve written have to do with the environment,” he said. “We’re at the beginning of a big crisis for the environment. There are lots of things happening that are disquieting in terms of the climate.”

McWilliam said he sees evidence in his own community, including last year’s cold spring and early snowfall.

“My apple tree didn’t blossom at all and the year before it was covered with blossoms,” he said. “I got one apple this year.”

While McWilliam’s crabapple tree did blossom, the September snowfall froze the apples and they were inedible.

In addition to growing fruit trees, McWilliam also has a rain catchment system on his property, a greenhouse and grows a lot of his food.

“Because of my training and years of work I have a real affinity for the Earth and I care about what happens to it,” he said. “My house is full of rocks and crystals and fossils.”

McWilliam is donating copies of The Squirrel Who Saved a Tree to C. Ian McLaren School in Black Diamond and Turner Valley School.

The books are available for purchase at Amazon, Chapters and Barnes and Noble.