Hans Tammemägi came to my attention via a telephone call from Kärtu Selde asking if I had read Saturday’s Going Green section of the Vancouver Sun "Civilization's Golden Era is Teetering on Collapse." She added, "With a name like that he must be Estonian or had an Estonian father." You see, we get very excited in the Canadian west at the prospect of a newcomer to our community.
For one thing it happens so rarely. The June 28th newspaper was close by so I located the article complete with a photograph of the environmental writer. In line with a tacit agreement between us, Kärtu being affixed to her kitchen the same way I’m cemented to my computer (she cooks, I write), I said "He’s included an email address in the article so I’ll contact him." I also found his article online on the Vancouver Sun website so I fired off an email asking for permission to post it on my website.
Tammemägi replied that he had no objection to the posting request but cautioned that Canwest may see a problem as they may hold copyright. Since I don’t wish to tangle with Canwest – or more importantly their lawyers –the article can be accessed at
http://www.canada.com/vancouve... Answering personal questions Hans advised that he had moved to Pender Island, one of the Gulf Islands east of Salt Spring Island 3 years ago with his wife. Previously they lived in Ontario in the Niagara district where he wrote ‘Exploring Niagara.’ In total he has published six books, one a national best seller and has won two book awards. Two areas of interest to him are travel and environmental writing, hence the contributions to the Vancouver Sun. He has traveled widely, is a kayak and orienteer enthusiast and an accomplished award-winning nature photographer. Many of his pictures chaperon his writings.
He wrote "This article has attracted astonishing publicity and is being circulated throughout North America by what appears to be an underground press, that is, various web sites and blogs are picking it up and linking to it. All my other columns together have garnered only a fraction of the e-mail I'm now getting."
Dr. Tammemägi holds a B.Sc. Physics; M.Sc & Ph.D. Geophysics and is a certified environmental auditor, two of his audits performed in Ottawa on the Parliaments Buildings and the Supreme Court of Canada. He does some teaching at the University of Victoria. He is presently working on a book about global over-population. His website is
www.hanstammemagi.com and his blog
www.runaway-human-population.b... invites dialogue about over-population. It also contains links to a cache of his other articles .
He is now environment columnist for the Vancouver Sun. Look for his articles online, the last Saturday of each month.
(Readers : do visit Eva Vabasalu’s West Coast Estonian website as most of her postings may not reach newsprint in EE English because of space limitations. http://www.estonianevents.com/... )
