Daniel WOOD

DANIEL WOOD 1943 - 2021 Daniel passed away peacefully at home on September 19, 2021, surrounded by family members and closest friends. He battled leukemia for almost five years and finally lost. He was 78 years old. A maverick and a fearless writer who fought to highlight issues that others hesitate to touch, Daniel Wood fought tooth and nail to get his message across. Daniel had worked in the media for almost 40 years. He had written fifteen books, and hundreds of articles for such publications as Discover, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night, Chatelaine, Islands, Vancouver, Explore, The Georgia Straight, GEO, BC Magazine, and Canadian Geographic. His photography regularly accompanied his articles. Prior to working as a writer, Daniel Wood taught in and organized schools, both in Canada and abroad. He spent two years in rural Borneo, helping to set up the first schools there. He taught at a junior high school in Port Alberni, B.C. and at Vancouver's experimental New School. In the mid-70s, he taught in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. It was at that time that he wrote his most successful book, Kids! Kids! Kids! It sold 150,000 copies. His other books include: a novel, The River of Gold; a social studies textbook, Exploring Our Country; a book on natural history, Wolves; a kids' book, Simon and His Knock-out Yawns; and a book exploring the meaning of nature called Western Journeys: Discovering the Secrets of the Land, co-authored with Beverley Sinclair. He was a feature contributor to CBC Radio for years, and had appeared on numerous TV shows. Between 1989-1991, he was Writer/Editor of the Globe and Mail's WEST magazine. During his tenure at WEST, it won the National Magazine Award as the best periodical in Canada. He had received 28 finalist nominations in the National Magazine Awards (NMA), including the 1990 nomination for writing the best article in Canada. He had won the NMA's Gold Award five times and the Silver Award three times. He had, as well, been a non-fiction finalist in the National Author's Awards and won the National Science Writer's Award in 1994. He was nominated 52 times as a finalist in the Western Magazine Awards and won on 16 occasions. In 2002, he was finalist for the Lowell Thomas Award from the American Travel Writers Association for best travel article in the world. In the same year (and again in 2007), he won the Northern Lights Award for writing the best travel article in Canada. He won the Western Magazine Awards' top prize for best magazine article three times: 1986, 1992, and 1996. He was also a finalist six times for the Jack Webster Awards, B.C.'s top journalistic prize. In 1998, he was finalist in the B.C. Book Prize. In total, he had been a finalist or had won over 100 regional, national, or international writing awards. In recognition of his work, the Western Magazine Awards gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000, the only fulltime freelance magazine writer so honoured. In the 1980s, he was co-founder and President of the Federation of B.C. Writers; co-founder and President of the Western Magazine Awards; and served on the National Executive of the Periodical Writers' Association of Canada (PWAC). Daniel taught non-fiction writing at Simon Fraser University for 25 years, and served as a faculty member at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Surrey International Writers' Conference, and the Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt, B.C., plus several dozen other writers' festivals. Daniel Wood had travelled to over 100 countries worldwide and lived for extended periods of time in the United States, Denmark, Nepal, Malaysia, Afghanistan, and Greece. His recent writing and photographic assignments had placed him in a number of unusual situations. He was treed by a pair of unhappy rhinos in Nepal, had spent a week in South Africa's Kalahari Desert with the last nomadic Bushmen, spent five days off Newfoundland to report on life on the Hibernia Oil Platform, gotten drunk on tuak with Borneo's Iban tribesmen, kayaked for two weeks north of Greenland, spent a month crossing Mongolia's Gobi Desert hunting for evidence of dinosaurs, and joined an expedition studying new-found tombs, full of gold-faced mummies, in the remote Egyptian Sahara. As well, he was a member of The Explorers Club, the prestigious international organization that represents the world's leading field scientists, adventurers, and explorers. His hobbies include collecting tribal artefacts and modern art, cooking, and playing poker. Daniel's family would like to express their deepest gratitude to the Vancouver General Hospital and Ravensong care teams; to all the doctors who cared for him over the years, and to the nurses whose kindness made his stay at the VGH more bearable.