I think long and hard about the label to be placed on my forehead for the rest of my career. Plant Ecologist. Community Ecologist. Plant Community Ecologist. Quantitative Ecologist. Quantitative Plant Ecologist. Vegetation Scientist. I decide on Theoretical Plant Ecologist. It does not occur to me at the time that “theoretical” could refer to a person or a plant, but I like that kind of ambiguity. What is so theoretical about it? I get asked, for most people only know ecology to be black and white, like the endangered pandas. Everything, I answer, if we want to predict the future, if we want to extrapolate towards any grey area beyond the observed.
There is a hill at the end of a residential cul-de-sac a few blocks away from the university that has been limed, seeded with grasses, and planted with tree seedlings. Within a few years—overnight in ecological time—it has been transformed from a grey area to a stand of mixed deciduous and coniferous forest, with mosses and lichens and understorey, a kaleidoscope of shades of green. I like to show the dramatic recovery, the before-and-after photos, to my Diversity of Vascular Plants class. I explain it in terms I think they will relate to—Nature on steroids. Nature with a ton of makeup. Nature taking multivitamins. But there is no need for metaphors. The second-year undergraduate students have already gasped.
The reclamation work was led by the professor whose job I have taken. Naturally, I am allocated his office. The label I chose for myself will go on the door to replace his own, but it will take some time for the order to be filled. The paperwork has to go through my Chair, the Dean, some VP, and then to Maintenance to schedule the install. All for a change in a black plastic label. Until then, people come by the office, and point out that the label on the door is wrong. Some people (always men). I also get the professor’s former desk. I am permitted, however, to pick a new ergonomic chair, because my legs and arms are shorter. The secretary hands me a thick, glossy catalogue from which to choose my style and colour. There are so many options now, she says. Of course I pick green.
The hill is part of a larger landscape denuded from historic air pollution, pollution caused by the mining and smelting operations of one of the largest nickel mines in the world. The citizens protest and, after a few scientific studies point the finger at industrial emissions, all the smelters processing the nickel ore are decommissioned.
One giant smelter is built to replace them all. It dilutes the pollution. The denominator—volume of air travelled through—is made very large, but the numerator—the amount of pollution—remains unchanged. Some say the death of Nature is inevitable, but that humans will survive because they will colonize another planet. It is second nature for humans to do this. This particular landscape, which lays bare and blackened for decades before reclamation, finds only one good use: NASA astronauts in training go there to practise walking on the moon.
It is an unwritten rule that green is good. Green for the new ergonomic chair of the new theoretical plant ecologist. Green for go, green for the greenback, green for the revolution. The word comes from the Old English grenian, “to grow or flourish,” which is, of course, inherently good. There is a mountain face in China that the local government decided to paint green because they missed the trees that were once there. It is a bright, neon shade of green that looks like green house paint. What makes paint green is very different from what makes plants green. The latter is chlorophyll, a catalyst for the transformation of light into sugar. The mineral pigment does not have this capacity, but the villagers have to try, because everyone secretly wants to save the world. What kind of a person will actually paint a hillside? There are too few to say. What kind of person will detoxify and then replant the hillside? Again, too few to say. And not enough to save the world.
The professor who has just retired is a kind man, an enthusiastic man, in his mid-sixties, but I never ask him his age. I get in touch with him even before I arrive on campus to learn first-hand about his work, and to make plans to continue his legacy. I have seen the publications. I have heard of the world-famous regreening efforts, which won an award at the United Nations. There is photo of him with Prince Charles, cutting ribbon on some scarred landscape from 1991 during a royal visit to Sudbury.
The summer before my position begins, he takes me out, in his own car, to his field sites. The weather is glorious. The view is rocks, lakes, trees, sky, on repeat. He points out every plant species, paying special attention to the ones with adaptations to the polluted soil. He shows me how you can tell by the arrangement of tree seedlings whether they are done by “do-gooders” (planted in neat rows) or by ecologists (planted haphazardly). Walking effortlessly and always ahead of me across hillsides, he shouts, “See, here is where the land has been assisted” and “See, here is where it has not.” Even though it is quite obvious, we enumerate the differences so that I can later apply statistical tests. We estimate the cover abundance of all the species in quadrats along transects. “It is important to record the bare ground,” he says. There are only a handful of species and I learn them quickly.
Floral formulas, pollination syndromes, the primitive magnolia, the more evolved orchids. That September, I admit to no one that I am learning all these things for the first time myself in order to teach them to undergraduates the next day. But I assure myself that I do not have to know everything. That is not why they hired me. It is my potential. The retired professor continues to help me. The fact is, I need help, and he is so generous and kind. We never speak about his retirement. He says he will continue to do his ecological work through an ecological consulting firm he has established, so he is happy I am taking over. He gives me all his photos, dating back to the 1970s, and even some unpublished data. He continues to take me out to field. He shows me the best site for picking blueberries. I have never tasted them in the wild before. Smaller and sweeter, a different species than the cultivated ones in the supermarket, imported from Argentina. And even though it is clichéd, I tell him they look like sparkling sapphires. An entire hillside covered in true greens and true blues. He shows me the Jane Goodall Reclamation Trail. There is a large information board at its entrance with a note—“Along this trail, you will see the results of liming, grass seeding and tree planting. There are also two lookout points which provide a perfect view of the healing of the landscape”—written by the chair of the city’s planning committee. My predecessor shows me his backyard pollinator garden and his collection of botanical guides, which have now re-located to his home office. Once, on our drive along the Trans-Canada Highway back into town after a long day of fieldwork, there is a bit of traffic and he says, “Look at us. All of us. In a hurry to get nowhere. Like ants.” I think then that he is not only kind and enthusiastic and generous, but wise. And a little pessimistic.
I find out the truth a few weeks later, from one of my new colleagues after a departmental meeting discussing the revision of undergraduate majors. I cannot recall which of the professors it is who tells me—the one who says he cannot believe I can speak French (because of the way I look, my South Asian face), or the one who says the off-colour thing about my nose ring. The retired professor did not retire, he was let go, forced to quit.
I go directly to the Internet instead of to the Chair. “He was given a six-month jail sentence and two years of house arrest in the fall of 1999…charged with gross indecency and indecent assault against two young boys dating back about 25 years.” I have to look up the difference between gross indecency and indecent assault, which are no longer in the Criminal Code. Before the establishment of sexual assault laws, indecent assault was any form of sexual assault that did not involve vaginal or anal penetration. Gross indecency, on the other hand, has always been a vague charge used to prosecute gay men who engage in sexual activity.
I do not know what to think. But I do have a feeling: shock. No, disgust. No, sadness. No, ultimately what prevails is betrayal. Because I feel that my relationship with the professor has evolved to one of friendship, and friends tell each other things like this. I do not have time for philosophy. To contemplate whether a lifetime of helping the forest, the landscape, the environment, the world, as a restoration ecologist might make up for indecent assault on two young boys. I return to my office and begin to remove his nameplate, which is still on the front door. Maintenance has been so slow to replace it. Black plastic background with white typeface. Plant Ecologist. I pry at the edges. I cannot get it off in one piece. The glue is too strong in some places. I bang on it with a heavy stapler, prying off the cracked pieces with scissors from my lab. I destroy it beyond repair, beyond reclamation. No regret, no remorse, no desire to “re-” anything. I bury all the pieces under crumpled aluminum foil and other non-recyclable things in my trash can.
“You didn’t think to keep it?” he asks, weeks later, on the phone. He calls because I have not returned his emails. “No,” I say, “I did not.” By then the new nameplate has been installed, my label, just as I ordered it.
A few years later, I continue to use his before-and-after photos of the hillside in my own research talks. I have data of my own now, for I have followed the fate of the reclaimed hills. I find new species colonizing them, both native and non-native. The most barren and disturbed sites attract an unusual diversity of insects. I order a textbook entitled Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration to consider for an upper-year course I am developing. I find a passage:…a retired professor of ecology at Laurentian University in Canada and a major force in the monumental restoration of the nickel mine-scarred landscape around Sudbury, Ontario, led a group of international restorationists through a review of SER definition and policies. We reworked the definition again, producing a fine and reflective description of restoration: “Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.”
Eventually I do tell the Chair about the off-colour comment my colleague made about my nose ring. He asks me if it hurts my feelings and I say, “Yeah. Like a mosquito bite hurts.” The fired professor dies a quiet death. There is no funeral, but someone writes a beautiful obituary. I sympathize with his loneliness and exile. I am angered by the label Gross Indecency and glad the term has been abolished. I learn how to make wild blueberry pie. In 2011, five years after I leave Sudbury, rare and endangered peregrine falcons move into the abandoned mine sites. See how close those two words, angered and endangered, appeared, organically, in this paragraph, nested.