©Louise Abbott

Louise Abbott is a longtime writer, photographer, and documentary filmmaker who has worked in rural Canada and abroad, documenting the history and contemporary life of fishing and farming communities and investigating environmental issues that affect these communities. She has published feature stories and photographs in newspapers, such as The (Toronto) Globe and Mail and The (Montreal) Gazette, and magazines, such as Harrowsmith Country Life and Heritage.

Abbott is the author of three books: The Coast Way, The French Shore, and A Country So Wild and Grand. She is currently at work on a book relating to the agricultural history of the Eastern Townships; it is scheduled for publication in 2007.

Abbott has written and directed three films, including The Pinnacle and the Poet and Alexander Walbridge: The Visionary of Mystic. She has two films in production—Crisscrossing Space and Time: A History of Farm Fencing and The Heart of the Farm: Historic Barns of the Eastern Townships; these documentaries will be packaged in DVD format with her Townships book.

Abbott has received several provincial and federal arts awards. In 2002 she won the Norman Kucharsky Award for Cultural and Artistic Journalism given by the Periodical Writers Association of Canada (now the Professional Writers Association of Canada) and the Greg Clark Internship Award given by the Canadian Journalism Foundation. In 2003 she won grants from the Townshippers’ Research and Cultural Foundation and the Bélanger-Gardner Foundation of Bishop’s University.