Joanne Liu

Dr. Joanne Liu has served as International President of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from 2013 to 2019. At the helm of MSF, she was a leading voice on medical humanitarian crises, namely in the Ebola outbreak of West Africa, attacks on hospitals, and forced displacement crisis, and has engaged with world leaders at the highest levels.

Dr. Liu’s role builds on a career of fieldwork with MSF, including over 20 medical-humanitarian field assignments. Dr. Liu trained at McGill University School of Medicine in Montreal. She holds a Fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine from New York University School of Medicine and an International Masters in Health Leadership, also from McGill University. 

Dr. Liu’s operational work has ranged from introducing comprehensive care for survivors of sexual violence to developing a telemedicine platform for connecting doctors in rural areas with specialists worldwide. 

Dr. Liu remains a practicing doctor, both in the field with MSF and also through hospital shifts in her home town of Montreal. She believes strongly in bringing and delivering high-quality, patient-centered care in all medical work contexts.

3 words to describe Nature?

Wholeness. Strength. Wisdom

3 things Nature taught you?

Humility 

Endurance 

Reverence 

3 most treasured Nature spots?

Desert of Yémen

Rice fields in Sri Lanka

Manado diving spots

When you look at the OCEAN, it makes you feel...?

Overwhelmed

When you see a FOREST, it makes you feel...?

Like whispering

When you see a VOLCANO, it makes you feel...?

Mesmerized 

When you see a SUNRISE or SUNSET, it makes you feel...?

Calm and centered

When you hear THUNDER, it makes you feel...?

Awake

When you hear the WIND HOWLING, it makes you feel...?

Foreboding

Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?

Sky

On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?

9

Share with us a childhood nature memory?

When I was a kid, I would go camping and I remember how much I liked to fall asleep while listening to the sound of the river.

 


Peter Simons

Peter Simons is the President and Chief Executive Officer of La Maison Simons. Established in 1840, La Maison Simons, commonly known as Simons, is a family-owned fashion retailer in Canada and is known for its outstanding corporate citizenship. Simons, and his brother Richard, took over the business in 1996, becoming the fifth generation of the Simons family to run the company.

Upon a visit to Paris, he discovered one of the seven existing Fontaine de Tourny pieces in an antique shop. The fountain was once located in the Allées de Tourny in Bordeaux. Simons had the fountain restored on Île d’Orléans and donated it to Quebec City as a gift for its 400th anniversary. It was installed in front of the National Assembly of Quebec in July 2007.

Peter Simons was recognized as a Knight of the National Order of Quebec in 2008, was awarded the Order of Canada in 2018, and received an Honorary Doctorate from Concordia University in 2019.


3 words to describe Nature?

Powerful. Wondrous. Inspiring

3 things Nature taught you?

Gratefulness

Resilience

Mindfulness

3 most treasured Nature spots?

Lake Lacon

Rivière aux Feuilles, Ungava Bay  

My little vegetable garden

When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?

The power of nature

When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?

The harmony of life

When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?

The mystery of existence

When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?

Hopeful or melancholic

When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?

Like a child again.

When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?

Adventurous

Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?

Forest

On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?

9

Share with us a childhood nature memory?

Flyfishing with my grandfather in Northern Quebec


Marc Seguin

Marc Séguin is a French Canadian painter and novelist whose work is held in several important collections. He splits his time between his home in Montréal, Québec, and his Brooklyn, New York studio. Touching on themes of the politically backward, the environmentally compromised and the socially divided, his work reveals deeper truths about the nature of humanity through images that are not only thought-provoking but beautifully elegiac.

Since 2000, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec have all acquired major works by Marc Séguin. His prints and paintings can be found in numerous Canadian corporate collections and those of major private Canadian and American collectors. To date, Marc Séguin has held more than 20 solo shows and participated in many more group exhibitions and art fairs around the world, including Madrid, Barcelona, Venice, Berlin, Cologne, New York, Miami, Chicago, Brussels, and Namur.

Marc Séguin has also published 4 critically acclaimed fiction novels – La foi du braconnier, Hollywood, Nord Alice, and Jenny Sauro. He also directed and produced a feature film, Stealing Alice, and directed a documentary entitled The State of the Farm.

3 words to describe Nature? 

A Resilient & Beautiful Thing

3 things Nature taught you?

Patience

Violence

Creativity

3 most treasured Nature spots?

The ocean

The island I live on

Anywhere in the wind

When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?

Introspective

When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?

Human, impaired and perfect

When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?

Like being on a spaceship made of rock

When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?

Like time has passed again

When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?

Unfit to live in nature. It also means I gotta get out of the river and stop fishing for a while.

When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?

Powerful forces can be invisible. And it draws a smile. Every time.

Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?

Anywhere, as long as it remains wild and not impacted by us.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?

10

Share with us a childhood nature memory?

Playing and shaping my child’s world with mud.

 


Jean-Daniel Petit

JEAN-DANIEL PETIT is the Co-Founder of abitibi & co., a Canadian canoe and kayak company that inspires great adventures and protects the great outdoors. He is also the founder of Beside, a media who aims to bridge the gap between humans and nature—with high-quality editorial content and immersive experiences.

Petit is the Former Creative Director at N/A Montréal, a new kind of marketing agency with a singular goal: to connect people and brands in ways that affect positive social change. Jean-Daniel has worked on several local and international accounts such as: RISE Kombucha, McDonald's Canada & U.S, Paramount Picture and more. Previously, Petit worked at SID LEE for over three years as an Art Director for New Era, Coca-Cola, Bacardi, Square Enix, Georges St-Pierre and more.

3 words to describe Nature?

Welcoming. Interconnected. Resilient

3 things Nature taught you?

To be humble

That life is a circle

To keep using all of my senses

3 most treasured Nature spots?

The Abitibi-Témiscamingue Region, in Northern Quebec, and its 15 000 lakes and rivers.

The Bonaventure River in Gaspésie, Quebec. Probably the most beautiful river in the world.

Anticosti Island, also in Quebec.

When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?

Grounded

When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?

Small

When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?

Powerless

When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?

Alive

When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?

Excited like a kid

When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?

Fragile

Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?

A Lake

On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?

10

Share with us a childhood nature memory?

I grew up in Northern Quebec surrounded by lakes, rivers and forests. Most of my childhood was spent outside, building tree houses, exploring the woods and observing small wildlife.

That said, there’s one memory that has a lot to do with who I am now. From the moment I was 11 until my late teenage years, I spent my entire weekends on a small island with two of my best friends. We would borrow a small boat from a relative and navigate our way there every Friday after school. This unnamed island felt like it was ours, like no one else had ever been there except us.

We learned to be on our own, to make good use of simple tools and to analyze our surroundings. We learned friendship and solitude through laughter and silence. We learned to fish, to make a fire and to leave as little trace as possible. We learned to be creative, independent and brave, but also silly once in a while.

During the day, we would fish and swim. And before nightfall, we would head to the mainland on a treasure hunt, to collect enough deadwood to sustain our campfire all night.

I never realized back then how important these little getaways were… until now.