Biologist and award-winning author Donna Naughton now spends her days leisurely enjoying Canada’s natural life with her partner and their two collies on a private island in North Grenville, south of Ottawa.
The City of Ottawa has seen fit to honour Naughton’s book The Natural History of Canadian Mammals by naming it a finalist for the 2013 Ottawa Book Awards.
After a 37-year career, Naughton recently retired from her post at the Canadian Museum of Nature as a senior research assistant, but not before leaving behind a published legacy to Canadians with her 824-page magnum opus, The Natural History of Canadian Mammals.
“I wanted to produce something like that before I left my job . . . so that the museum would be in a position to be able to provide information to the public even if they didn’t have a staff member, because they didn’t re-staff my position,” Naughton says.
The Ottawa Book Awards “recognize published books of literary excellence, written by authors residing in Ottawa,” as the guidelines state. Naughton is one of five authors nominated in the English nonfiction category, and while all finalists are awarded $1,000, they are competing for a $7,500 grand prize. The winners will be announced Oct. 22 at the Shenkman Arts Centre. Naughton suspects that she will split her winnings with the museum 50/50 – after buying herself a new lawnmower.
Naughton’s book has won five awards including the North America-wide PROSE Award for scholarly excellence. However, this is the first award with a monetary prize attached.
Being a first-time author, Naughton says the acclaim has come as quite a surprise. “I worked really hard to make it accessible. I wanted it to be a book that school children and teenagers and adults would be interested in reading because they had a question about something they saw.”
From wolverines and narwhals to bobcats and nutria to skunks and seals, Naughton’s book contains all 215-mammal species native to Canada, laid out in a comprehensive and informative format. With one exception, the ribbon seal, a species that appeared off the coast of British Columbia about six months after the book was published, Naughton willingly admits.
“I didn’t want it to be so full of jargon that they couldn’t understand the answer, so it took me . . .” Mid-sentence, Naughton dropped what she was saying and snatched the binoculars sitting next to her chair.
“Oh, red-tailed hawk!” she excitedly observed. Reaching for a pocket book containing a bird list of 106 species, the wildlife biologist said: “We’ve seen bald eagles and peregrine falcons and merlins and marsh hawks, great horned owl . . . all from the island, it’s a five-and-a-half-acre island, that’s pretty cool.”
She picked up where she’d left off: “So I wanted to make an accessible book that people would enjoy reading . . . answering the kind of cool questions that will grab a kid, you know? And then explain it to them in a way that they can get it.”
Naughton wrote the text of more than 500,000 words and designed all of the maps included in the book. Three artists helped create illustrations for the book. Before she passed away, Brenda Carter contributed a number of animal images. Paul Geharty picked up where Carter left off, doing the bulk of the paintings. Winnipeg-based natural history illustrator Julius Csotonyi often does work for the Canadian Museum of Nature, so Naughton used him as her on hand artist in the final years of the process.
“She is very particular with the details of the animals in the illustrations, so there was a lot of back and forth review and revision with the illustrations to get them just right,” Csotonyi says. Naughton recalls the specific detail she wanted for the wolverine, describing a fleshy flap above the eyes that has previously been missed in illustrations, giving the wolverine a fierce, almost angry disposition.
Csotonyi did all of his illustrations digitally and Naughton says he did a fantastic job capturing her vision while emulating previous watercolour styles produced by Carter and Geharty.
After 11 years of “nose-to-the-grindstone work,” Naughton says she’s enjoying the retired life, nurturing turtle hatchlings and hosting friends and family at her Rideau River oasis. However, she still makes trips into town for the occasional lecture.
“I know it sounds kind of hokey, but I kind of feel that this book is my retirement gift to Canadians to thank them for giving me a job for my whole life,” Naughton says.
“And I hope that it’s well read because I want Canadians to understand their heritage, which is why I was so adamant it be translated to French as well.”
The French version is expected out this fall.