Nelson RiisNelson Riis grew up in southwest Alberta, has an MA in Geography, and is a Fellow with the Royal Canadian Geographic Society. While he was an MP for twenty years, Riis wrote a weekly newspaper column and hosted a weekly half-hour TV show. He's had ovr 30 different jobs, having worked as a farm hand, timber cruiser, commercial fisherman, cedar and plywood mill worker, nightclub waiter, deck hand, and insurance broker, among other things.

Riis was a charter faculty member at today's Thompson Rivers University, where he taught Human Geography and was Chair of the Social Sciences Dept. As a geographer and as a Member of Parliament, he traveled the world. His hobbies include canoeing, camping, landscape painting, hiking, gardening, soapstone carving, auditing courses at Carleton University, and especially reading.

Riis currently lives on un-ceded Anishinabe Algonquin territory, in Ottawa, with his wife, Penny. They have two sons, Nils and Jon, and two granddaughters, Kathryn and Kristen. Currently, Riis has two cats and a backyard with eight squirrels, three chipmunks, a rabbit, and a family of raccoons. All sorts of birds too. Read More Read Less