Peter is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and is a Geologist in Residence with the Shorefast Foundation on Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador. He has been working in the field of international development for over thirty-five years. He focuses on the relationship between environmental resources and climate change in developing countries and the Arctic. Peter is particularly interested in how climate change affects the polar regions and how the knowledge of Indigenous peoples can be applied to development challenges. His work has taken him to over forty developing countries, including a two-year stint of living and working in Namibia with his family on a regional public engagement capacity building program called Calabash.
Peter started his career prospecting for uranium, zinc, silver, petroleum, peat, and groundwater in Canada for First Nations. He also spent fifteen years as a wilderness canoe guide for Nature Ontario. In his spare time, Peter enjoys photography, cultural and adventure travel, organic gardening, and fiddle playing. He sits on the boards of several not-for-profit development organizations.
National Healing Forest Initiative
Peter has co-founded a reconciliation project called the National Healing Forest Initiative. The project is an invitation to Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, institutions, and individuals to create green spaces across Canada to honour residential school victims, survivors, and their families, as well as murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, and children who have been removed from their families and are now caught in the welfare system.
You can learn more about the National Healing Forest Initiative on their website. All Canadians can be part of this in some way if they wish.