Trevor Goward

Naturalist & Lichenologist

I’m a life-long naturalist

with a naturalist’s passion for discerning patterns in nature – and for integrating those patterns into ecological narratives (hypotheses) of increasing complexity and reach. My birth certificate says I was born in Vancouver British Columbia in 1952, but I like to think I entered this world ten years later when a move to B.C.’s dry interior started me exploring the grasslands and pine-scented forests around Kamloops. It was there that I learned to recognize and (because I had no field guides) give names to scores of dryland plants and animals – in this sense “discovering” them to myself. Much later, during my university years, I worked as a seasonal interpretor in B.C.’s parks; and here too I took enormous pleasure in learning about wild places and the organisms that inhabit them. My interest in lichens dates from 1976 when as an undergraduate student in French and Latin (at Mt. Allison University, N.B.), I began to sit in on 3rd and 4th year biology classes. Eventually I decided to make lichens a personal focal point; and in the late 70s and early 80s I made several study trips to the National Herbarium in Ottawa, the UBC herbarium in Vancouver, and abroad. In 1984 I purchased the deed to 4 ha of “unimproved” land in B.C.’s Clearwater Valley, where I later built a home, Edgewood Blue, and a lifestyle, which I call designer living. For more than two decades I have supported myself mostly on “lichen dollars”, working as a consultant with a special interest in lichen ecology and taxonomy. The rest of my personal history can be gleaned from my writings: Bibliography. Keeners might also wish to link here: TLC interview