So then, what qualifies as respect for and love of nature? Is it those people who venture out into natural surroundings to find themselves embraced by the natural world and the freedom to embark on personal recreational adventures using all the resources that nature allows us to, without impairing in any conceivable manner the veracity of her handiwork?

Say, for example, hiking in mountain settings, straining to reach the heights to enjoy the peerless views, the clear, clean air, the series of landscapes encountered through the endeavour.

Or planning a canoe excursion that will require patience and energy to negotiate a series of lakes and rivers, the necessity of camping within raw nature in a preserve geared ensure that humankind disturbs the landscape as little as possible, embarking on a series of paddling and portaging whose close-up of natural surroundings can be achieved in no other way.

Over the years we've been exposed to the presence of bears, of deer, coyotes, wolves and of moose in places where we've taken ourselves to enjoy nature. Those represented high adventure for us, venturing out to areas that are geographically remote, far from 'civilization' as we know it, prepared to be resilient and capable of looking after our immediate needs while pursuing the completion of a journey into nature.

The majestic and soaring mountains of the Cariboo range in northern British Columbia, in a circuit of the Bowron Lakes gave us an experience that transcended all the less ambitious journeys we had experienced in Algonquin Park over the years, spending days and weeks at a time canoeing-portaging to the interior of that vast area. The Bowron Lakes was that experience magnified immensely.

This afternoon I overheard an interview with a man who was identified as the leader of the British Columbia Conservative party. But the interview was anything but political in that sense, though it might have been, in another. The man was waxing ecstatic over his love for nature and how he was instilling that love and respect for the natural world into his eleven-year-old daughter's inner core by introducing her to the values that mean the most to him.

She had recently shot her first moose, an event that thrilled and excited her, solidifying her love of nature, to hear her father describe it. He had taken great pains to teach her how to handle a rifle, and had arranged for her to have tuition in handling firearms for the purpose of hunting. Killing an animal, he averred, was his way of tucking himself into nature's embrace. And so, he was dedicated to hunting, or as the conversation repeatedly mentioned, 'killing'. For there was, as far as he was concerned, something deeply sombre and noble about it all.