Sanctuary Key

Lore & Background

Harvey Locke was born in 1959 in Calgary, Alberta, to Ralphine Locke (née Harvey) and Dr. Gerald Lorne Locke. His family counts among Southern Alberta's earliest European settlers, living in the Bow Valley since the early 1870s. He attended Earl Grey Elementary School and Strathcona School for Boys in Calgary, graduating from Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School in 1975. After a year at College Wildhorn in Anzere, Switzerland, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in French and a Bachelor of Laws in 1984 (with silver medal) from the University of Calgary.

He worked as a lawyer and partner at MacKimmie Matthews law firm for 14 years and served as volunteer president of both Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) and the Alberta Liberal Party. In 1999, he became a full-time conservationist focused on national parks, wilderness, large landscape and connectivity conservation, and climate change. He is married to Marie-Eve Marchand and has two sons from a previous marriage.

Reader's Guide

Locke served as president or vice president of CPAWS for many years and is now its senior advisor on conservation. He is a founder and senior advisor for Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and was Vice President for Conservation Strategy at the WILD Foundation in Boulder, Colorado from 2009 through 2011. His writing and photography have been published in newspapers, magazines, and peer-reviewed journals in nine countries, including The New York Times, Canadian Geographic, and Backpacker.

He has lectured at many universities and spoken at conferences worldwide. In October 2009, he was the keynote speaker for the inaugural Thomas Foundation Oration in Australia during the country's first Linking Landscape Summit, speaking in Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne. In 2013, he spoke in Darwin and Sydney about large landscape conservation. He has also spoken at the Czech EC Presidency Conference on Wilderness in Prague (2009), given a keynote for Europarc Federation in Abruzzo, Italy (October 2010), and spoken at the Belgian EC Presidency Conference on Wilderness Restoration in Brussels (November 2010) and the launch of the Rewilding Europe initiative (November 2010).

In 2013, he chaired the plenary session on Nature Needs Half at WILD10 in Salamanca, Spain, and spoke in Ootacamund and Mumbai, India, writing a feature story for Sanctuary Asia. He conceived and co-curated the 2011 art show 'Yellowstone to Yukon: the Journey of Wildlife and Art' in collaboration with the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, artist Dwayne Harty, and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. Locke is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Did You Know?

• Harvey Locke was named one of Canada's leaders for the 21st century by Time magazine Canada in 1999.
• He received the J.B. Harkin Medal for Conservation and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2013.
• Locke's photograph of Canada's Nahanni National Park was featured on a stamp series cancelled by Mexican President Felipe Calderon at WILD9.