Candace Savage

When Saskatoon-based writer Candace Savage was a child, she either kept a jar of spiders on her bedside table or a box of ants on the back porch. “I have always been fascinated by the leggy strangeness of insects and other small creatures,” she says. “But, when I recently turned my attention to bees, I began to understand that insects are actually life-sustaining.” For example, bees are the “sexual go-between” for flowering plants, which allows them to grow fruits or spread seeds. “If it weren’t for bees, the world would be a very hungry place.”

She is the award-winning author of numerous magazine articles and more than two dozen books, including Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys of the Avian World. A women’s history and natural science enthusiast, these are persistent themes among her works, including in her most recent book, Bees: Nature’s Little Wonders.