We use cookies on this site to enhance your experience.
By selecting “Accept” and continuing to use this website, you consent to the use of cookies.
My approach to climate justice, environmental education and eco-social work is culturally rooted in what I refer to as a small “c” canadien and catholic upbringing. From my many articles to my last sole-authored book A Canadian Climate of Mind (MQUP). I historically situate the cultural dimensions of our current climate of change through looking at various ancestral relations with Indigenous nations and the lands where I live. These have included French coureur de bois like Etienne Brule (early 1600s) and Antoine Leduc (late 1600s); Grey Nuns and Jesuit missionaries (1600s through 1800s); Canadian ecology of mind thinkers like John Livingston (late-20th century; and others. My current writing is primarily inspired by the work of Catholic hermit monk Thomas Merton and how his sense of spirit was transformed through three relational openings with the world: liberatory justice for all peoples in a context of white (Christian) privilege, a spirit-based practice approach to interfaith dialogue, and re-grounding his catholic sense of spirit in the forest relations around his hermitage.
To be critical of the culture we were born within and yet also find loving inspiration that can shed light on the path we need to walk is what it means for me to be a canadien catholic scholar The following words that Merton raised for the one he calls Hagia Sophia, Sister Wisdom, epitomizes for me the ancestral challenges I am constantly trying to face in my Earth-based writing and teaching: "My heart is broken for all my sins and the sins of the whole world, for the rottenness of our spirit of gain that defiles wisdom in all beings – to rob and deflower wisdom as if there were only a little pleasure to be had, only a little joy, and it had to be stolen, violently taken and spoiled. When all the while her warmth, her exuberant silence, her acceptance, are infinite, infinite!"
In 2022, I helped as Editor to publish a book by Cayuga Elder Norma Jacobs called Ǫ da gaho dḛ:s: Reflecting on our Journeys (MQUP). Rooted in her teachings around the Two Row Wampum, she calls us “to remember our journeys, stories, and songs; and recognize we are those sacred spiritual beings who descended from the Sky World to work on this spiritual journey.” In my reflective response to this and related teachings, I position my Two Row responsibilities along that great river where I was born and which my French Canadien ancestors renamed, in that colonial way, St. Lawrence. These lands and waters centre much of the work I have been doing for three decades, ever since my first social work job in a northern Indigenous community had me work out of a Roman Catholic Mission. That experience highlighted for me the ongoing position of social work in colonial missions, as well as my family’s ancestral position in these missions. In the context of our climate of change, I am trying to imagine what could have been, what it is to be a canadien catholic who lives and works in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect carried in the Two Row, the 1701 Montreal Tree of Peace and my birth stories.
After completing a MSW at the University of Toronto I worked in the area of anti-violence and then in Indigenous communities on issues related to Canadian colonialism, including youth solvent abuse, high suicide rates, and family violence. Those experiences led to a PhD in Environmental Studies that allowed me to consider the relation of land and climate to colonial histories, justice, and holistic healing.The primary focus of my scholarship is creative land-based writing (as research) about Canadian/canadien ancestral issues in relation to our present climate of change, as represented in my books Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North (University of Ottawa Press, short-listed for 2012 Canada Prize in the Social Sciences), and the more recent A Canadian Climate of Mind: Passages from Fur to Energy and Beyond (McGill-Queens University Press, 2016). This book is centered around particular lands along the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River corridor and what their historically changing relations tell us about healing land relations. I have also worked as Editor on the book by Gae Ho Hwako Norma Jacobs that is on renewing Two Row wampum relations and is called Ǫ da gaho dḛ:s: Reflecting on our Journeys (MQUP 2022). My current book project is focused on recovering holistic healing responses to the colonial disease that is at the core of ongoing Canadian colonial missions and our climate of change.
- 2022 SSHRC Award in Scholarly Publications Program (Ǫ da gaho dḛ:s: Reflecting on our Journeys, Editor)
- 2021 ECampus Course Development Grant (Eco-Social Work in Climates of Change)
- 2018 Best Conceptual Article, Council of Social Work Education ("Let us Continue Free as the Air")
- 2016 SSHRC Award in Scholarly Publications Program (A Canadian Climate of Mind)
- 2012 CFHSS Short-List for Canada Prize in the Social Sciences (Climate, Culture, Change)
- 2009-11 SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Toronto.
- 2010 SSHRC Award in Scholarly Publications Program (Climate, Culture, Change)
- 2006-7 President’s Dissertation Scholarship, York University
I have advised/supervised PhD and Masters students in the areas of environmental/social justice, place-based education/healing, land-based approaches to truth and reconciliation, and eco-spirituality. I have supported the writing and publication of both undergraduate and graduate students, including the inclusion of chapters by students in book projects. Here is a brief sample of graduate student topics that I have been involved as supervisor or committee member:
Best Practices for Social Workers Engaging with Spiritual/Religious Clients
Ecological Ethics and Social Work Therapy Practice
Environmental Justice and Land-Based Healing with Racialized Youth
Community and Arts-Integrated Approaches to Gardening and Experiences of Ecological Grief
- Leduc, T. (2024). “Replanting the [Montreal] Tree of Peace: Naturalizing Relations in an Age of Extinction.” In Religion and Extinction, S. Skirmshire & J. Kidwell (eds.). Indiana University Press: Indiana.
- Leduc, T. B. (2023). Renewing Settler Responsibilities on the Dish. In Earth to Tables Legacies, D. Barndt, L. E. Baker, and A. Gelis (eds), pp. 203-204, New York and London: Bowman & Littlefield.
- Jacobs, Gae Ho Hwako Norma, with Leduc. T. (Editor) (2022). Ǫ da gaho dḛ:s: Reflecting on our Journeys. McGill-Queen’s University Press. https://www.odagahodhes.com/
- Leduc, T. B. (2022). In the Wake of Covid-19: Reflecting on Social Work’s Climatic Future. Canadian Social Work Review, 39(2), 83-91.
- Theriault, N, Mitchell, A., Leduc, T., & Rubis, J. (co-editors) (2020). Special Issue Introduction – Living protocols: Remaking worlds in the face of extinction. Social and Cultural Geography, 21(7), 893-908.
- Leduc, T. (2020). Falling with Heron: Kaswen:ta teachings on our roughening waters. Social and Cultural Geography, 21(7), 925-939.
- Leduc, T. (2016). A Canadian Climate of Mind: Passages from Fur to Energy and Beyond. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- Leduc, T. (2010). Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. [Short-listed for the CFHSS Canada Prize in the Social Sciences].
Eco-Social Work in Climates of Change
Changing Social Work for Climatic Futures
Relational Accountability