Gary Saunders
Gary Lloyd Saunders is a Canadian writer, artist, and forester from Newfoundland. He won the Evelyn Richardson Award in 2016 for his book My Life With Trees.
Early life and education
Gary L. Saunders was born in 1935 in Clarke's Head, Newfoundland. He attended the Newfoundland Academy of Art in 1953, followed by the University of New Brunswick, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Forestry in 1959. After graduating from the University of New Brunswick, Saunders returned to Newfoundland for some time where he began working in forestry and teaching dendrology at Memorial University. He subsequently moved to Sackville, New Brunswick and attended Mount Allison University, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1965.Career
After graduating from Mount Allison, Saunders moved to Truro, Nova Scotia, and began working with the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forests as a writer and illustrator. He regularly travelled to his childhood home in Newfoundland and created abstract landscape paintings, which have been featured in exhibitions across Canada. Some of his paintings are held in the collection of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.Saunders was inducted into the Forestry Hall of Fame by the Nova Scotia Forest Technicians Association in 2005. In 2016, he was awarded the Evelyn Richardson Award for his book My Life With Trees.