| Louis-René Sénéchal
Louis-René Sénéchal got his first picture of wildlife at the age of nine when he tried to take a photo of a squirrel. “I was interested in nature before I could even hold a camera,” says Sénéchal. It was the first of many of the Hinterland Who’s Who (HWW) co-host’s encounters with Canada’s wildlife.
But it was at his family’s cottage deep in Quebec’s Gatineau Hills, just north of Ottawa, where he discovered at an early age how closely the lives of humans and wildlife are interwoven. “Meeting a black bear once in Gatineau Park made a big impression on me,” he said. “I realized we aren’t as far removed from nature as we think.”
When Sénéchal isn’t hosting and narrating the Hinterland Who’s Who (HWW) television vignettes, he works as a public programs coordinator at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. “I’m very lucky to be teaching in an environment where the students are already interested in wildlife,” says Sénéchal. But he also enjoys the variety of work he does with HWW. “I get to gain some great experiences while still educating people about nature,” he says.
One such experience was filming the HWW’s Boreal Forest vignette. “It was a beautiful morning – sunny but cold. You could hear the songbirds singing in the tamaracks and catch glimpses of them hopping from one branch to another. It was great,” Sénéchal recalls.
Chance encounters throughout his life granted Sénéchal many opportunities to develop nature interpretation skills and interest other people in animals. An avid winter camper, he recalls sitting in lawn chairs on a frozen lake in January with a visitor from Paris, France, amidst a chorus of calling foxes. On another occasion, Sénéchal gave an impromptu nature interpretation to neighbours fascinated with a black bear’s visit to his family’s compost bin. Or another time educated a group spellbound by a fellow camper’s unfortunate experience with leeches.
“I love all life forms – even the small, slimy kinds,” says Sénéchal. “This love for nature is backed by an insatiable desire to learn more about the living world. Through HWW’s vignettes, I hope to share this passion I have for the natural world a large number of people – mostly children.”
Although city kids are his favourite audience, he spends a lot of his personal time in the wild, “loading up” on actual contact with animals, which he will share with visitors to the museum. “People don’t always understand their need for nature – most feel removed from it,” he says, “but really they are not, and I have been able to help them make the connection.”
|
