Margaret Atwood’s upbringing in Canada influenced many aspects of her writing and advocacy work. The daughter of an outdoorswoman, Margaret Killam, and entomologist, Carl Atwood, Atwood grew up spending a season of the year in the remote forests of northern Quebec and Ontario. Though both Northern Quebec and Northern Ontario are the largest administrative divisions in their respective provinces, they are the least populous; Northern Ontario, for instance, represents 90% of Ontario’s territory but just 6% of its population (“Prosperity and Growth Strategy for Northern Ontario 2025-2030.” Government of Canada). Such discrepancies are due mostly to the rugged nature of the regions’ terrain, characterized by boreal forest and scattered lakes shading into tundra, and extreme climate, which is mostly subarctic but extends into arctic in the far north of Quebec. While the more southerly regions in which Atwood’s family spent much of their time are comparatively mild, they were remote at the time; Pointe Des Chênes, for instance, did not become a tourist destination until the 1950s (Sault-Saint Marie Museum. “Pointe Des Chenes.” Museum Musings, 29 Mar. 2025).  

Atwood’s life at their rustic cabin, which had no running water or electricity, brought her into close contact with all the plants and animals in that part of Canada. She remembers, “Moose, dangerous in mating season. Beaver, which built their lodges on the shores of the lake. Red squirrels. Chipmunks. Porcupines. Skunks. Groundhogs. Bears, in the vicinity, though we were never raided by any there […] Wolves, howling far away. Otters, rumoured to be around; foxes, ditto. Mink. Fishers” (33). Her experiences in the Canadian wilderness shaped her into a knowledgeable outdoorswoman and animal lover. She fondly remembers putting this knowledge to use as the nature program guide for a summer children’s camp, becoming “Peggy Nature” to the campers. Atwood’s passion for nature and wildlife is also evident in her work. Her poem “A Boat” from the poetry book Interlunar is a reflection on a canoe trip in the wilderness with her father. She writes, “Evening comes on and the hills thicken; / Red and yellow bleaching out of the leaves. / The chill pines grow their shadows” (119).

Book of Lives reveals that Atwood’s adult experiences affirmed this love of nature. When Atwood met her partner, Graeme Gibson, she came to share his love of birding and contributed to bird conservation in Point Pelee, Ontario. Her interest in birds helped to preserve habitat in Canada, but she and her partner also contributed to international birding causes. She writes, “It’s difficult to overstate the role birds had already played in our life: on the micro scale, Graeme’s Birding in Cuba project, and the Pelee Island Bird Observatory; and now, on the global scene, BirdLife” (496).

Atwood’s upbringing in Canada also shaped her politics and worldview. As a young woman in Toronto, the most diverse city in the nation, she had neighbors, friends and classmates from around the world. Some of these people were refugees or Holocaust survivors, and Atwood recalls how knowing them helped to establish her awareness of political violence and human rights issues around the world. A teenage Atwood wrote a poem, “First Snow” about the failed uprising against the Communist regime in 1950s Hungary. She later became an advocate for human rights and artistic freedoms through Amnesty International and PEN Canada. Atwood’s awareness of governments’ abuse of power is reflected in her novel A Handmaid’s Tale, in which a young woman struggles to free herself from a brutal theocracy, its sequel The Testaments, as well as the Maddaddam Trilogy and The Heart Goes Last.