LEANNE ALLISON

Conservation filmmaker whose documentaries, Being Caribou, Finding Farley and Bear 71, have won multiple awards.

It wasn’t until I did the 3,400-kilometre Yellowstone to Yukon hike in 1998-99 with my husband, Karsten Heuer, that I changed my perception of nature from a playground to a lifelong passion. It took months of being out there on the game trails just watching and waiting for wildlife. I remember we spent an hour glassing these seemingly empty slopes that later came alive with a herd of elk. We wouldn’t have seen them if we hadn’t just sat down and watched.