[separator headline=”h3″ title=”Les Stroud Takes a Pledge for Mother Nature”]

Les Stroud, Canadian celebrity and nature icon, takes the My Nature Canada pledge.

Read what he pledges to protect below:

How do you pick only one place to be your nature Canada?

I think we mostly turn back to the forests of our youth when we want to feel comfortable laying down and looking up through the trees or at the clouds passing by. And for this it has always been the swamps, rocks, trees and breezes of northern and central Ontario. Temagami, Muskoka, Wabakimi.

It is the place where I played ‘Tarzan’ survival in my youth. And the Mother Earth that shows herself here will always feel like home to me.

I once thought that places should be kept aside and off limits – let nature be nature. But I grew and I’ve changed. What we do not know, we won’t love. And what we don’t love, we won’t protect. So as a society, we need to get out and know our land again like folks used to. Then perhaps we will love it.

Then those young souls who have been taken out to know a land and perhaps to come to love a land, will one day be policy makers and as such will choose to save and protect, and celebrate a land. To connect to nature is to celebrate it. To know nature is to experience it. So we must get back out there and begin to experience it once again for it is beyond life changing. Knowing nature is world changing.

We need no courses, or programs, or specialized itineraries. We just need to get back out to our Canada’s nature in free time enjoyment. Both on a macro level and a grand level. Big skies and mountains and tiny little violets and clovers. Nature will do the rest. And then we will love it and cherish it once again. Before it’s too late.

Les Stroud, Survivorman

Visit My Nature Canada and take the pledge today!