Helen Campbell

Helen Campbell has been a fervent environmentalist since childhood, when, she says, she read a book in school on the complete extinction of the Java tiger in Indonesia. From that point forward, she began to take an abiding interest in the destruction of natural habitats – land and water based. It was a given that this girl would study biology in college, and she ultimately graduated with honors from McGill University in Quebec. She began her career as a secondary biology teacher in Toronto, but never abandoned her interest in environmental activism.

Helen used her two-month annual vacations to take part in a number of Green Peace efforts, studying animal and plant life in Asia and the Pacific. She became so involved that she spent a year teaching English in China and another in South Korea, in order to be closer to the ongoing research.

Ultimately, Helen returned to Canada, where she earned her Master’s Degree in Marine Biology and then returned to Asia, settling in southern Japan to continue her research work. She also began blogging regularly, on sites related to marine life and the continuing danger of extinctions. In the midst of all of this, Helen finalized the months-long process of adopting a little girl from China, eventually returning to Toronto where she teaches at the university level and works toward her Ph.D. in Marine Biology.

Helen is a bit of a “Renaissance” woman, with interests not just in biology and environmental causes. She has also developed an abiding interest in educational systems in Asia, and is currently writing a book about her experiences during her two years of teaching experience in Chinese and Korean schools. She is also a musician and reluctantly admits that in her younger wilder years, she was a vocalist for an alternative rock band and used the proceeds from her weekend “gigs” to finance a lot of her living expenses during college. She keeps her “finger in that pie” still, composing cotemporary songs and selling them to aspiring musicians, as well as being a frequent guest blogger on music sites.