Ancient Celtic wisdom mixes with life of Irish orphan for memoir: To Speak for the Trees

Those attending the Dunedin Literary Festival this year will be getting advance copies of a new book by one of the world’s foremost voices on the science of trees.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger will be travelling to little Dunedin - a hamlet outside of Collingwood - for this year’s Words in the Woods festival where she will be debuting her new book, To Speak for the Trees, and will share a stage with Juno-award-winning musician Sarah Harmer for the Words and Music evening event.

For her latest published work, the Irish-born Beresford-Kroeger draws on her childhood years.

“I had a very extraordinary childhood,” she said. “When I was a little girl, my parents were killed and I was orphaned in Ireland.”

She was supposed to be placed in a system called the Laundry, which had orphans, prostitutes, and women with babies out of wedlock washing clothes in Catholic-church run institutions.

“It was the equivalent of what was done to the Indigenous in Canada,” said Beresford-Kroeger.

However, both her father and mother were from aristocratic families, and the judge handling her case when she was orphaned was afraid to put her in a Laundry.

Instead, the judge granted her bachelor uncle full custody, and she went to live with him.

“His whole blinking house was full of books,” said Beresford-Kroeger. “Wall-to-wall, under the table, under the chairs. He had 10,000 books. He and I lived together and books became a companion. We would read to each other at night - books on poetry, Buddhism, religion, theatre, physics, mathematics. So that was my childhood. For most people, it was weird.”

Beresford-Kroeger was also part of a line of old Irish Aristocrats from Killarney, and one of the last from Castle Ross.

In addition to the books she would read with her Uncle, she also received instructions from elders in the Brehon Knowledge of Plants and Nature. Part of that knowledge is an ancient language called Ogham Script, where each letter represented a tree.

According to Beresford-Kroeger, there were better protections in place for trees hundreds of years ago, than there are now.

Through her latest work To Speak for the Trees, she will be winding stories of her youth and lessons learned from ancient Celtic traditions together in the hopes of encouraging more people to preserve, protect, and value trees.

“What I’m trying to do is give people the idea of the value of trees,” she said. “In the whole of the natural world, we use oxygen, we are an oxidative species. That oxygen comes from trees. It comes from the molecular work of trees.”

Through her education in ancient traditions, a double major in botany and biochemistry, and the experience of reading thousands of books with her uncle, Beresford Kroeger has come up with a global bio plan.

“It will be through ordinary people that we make the difference,” she said. “If every person on the planet plants one tree each year for six years, that numbers billions of trees.”

She said it’s also key to protect what trees we have now and make sure politicians understand it’s important to the people who elect them.

“That’s all we need, it’s not a whole lot and everybody can do it,” she said.

Not only is Beresford-Kroeger a celebrated author, medical biochemist and botanist, she’s also received a Doctor of Laws awarded by Carleton University in recognition of her “outstanding efforts in preserving the Earth’s climate and forests through the use of ethical scientific, and traditional concepts.”

Her books include The Sweetness of a Simple Life, The Global Forest, Arboretum Borealis, Arboretum America, and A Garden for Life. Beresford-Kroeger was inducted as a Wings Worldquest fellow in 2010, she was elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2011. More recently, in 2016, the Society named her one of 25 women explorers of Canada. In addition, in 2011 she was named one of Utne Reader’s World Visionaries.

She said she’s excited to come to Dunedin, and considers it a “real treat” to come to the area for her first visit.

Though the book was due out a little after the festival, Beresford-Kroeger said she worked with Random House to make sure there would be copies at the event. She said she did it because the event was being organized by an independent book store (Curiosity House in Creemore). 

"I think people who are crazy enough and courageous enough to push the written word into the public independently are fantasic," she said.

She thought it was “a marvellous, fantastic idea” to hold a literary festival in the forest and is looking forward to sharing the stage with Harmer, whom she said is an amazing woman.

The Dunedin Literary Festival takes place Saturday, Sept. 14 at the Dunedin Community Hall (8994 County Road 9) and at the public park across the road. The author talks begin at 11 a.m. and Beresford-Kroeger will be on the stage at 7 p.m.

The day includes Canadian arts, literature, music, food, and community. The event was started by Curiosity House Books. For more and for tickets, visit the festival website here.