Neil Griffin is a writer and naturalist from Calgary. Raised on the prairies and trained as a wildlife biologist, for more than a decade he tracked the disappearing and the dead of our world, from Canada’s boreal forests to the Amazon basin, from Ethiopia’s Afar desert to the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda, before giving up the glitz and glamour of tropical fieldwork for the financial stability of freelance writing. Griffin’s work has appeared throughout Canada and Western Europe, and is included in The Tyee anthology Points of Interest. He holds an MFA from the University of Victoria, where he is an instructor in the Department of Writing.
For readers of John Vaillant, Robert Macfarlane, and Helen Macdonald, a lyrical, panoramic exploration of extinction as it occurs and reoccurs in natural history, myth, and science.
It’s no secret we live in an age of extinction: our daily newsfeeds and disappearing wildlife make that abundantly clear. But what does extinction really mean for humanity? Naturalist and poet Neil Griffin seeks to answer that question.
The result is a globe-spanning, personal history of extinction: a grand tour of the dead, the nearly dead, and—against all odds—the still living. Griffin catches crocodiles in Belize, tracks bats on the Western plains, meets jaguars in Honduras, and, in Kenya, comes face to face with the northern white rhinoceros, the rarest mammal on Earth. Along the way, he connects our current moment to Earth’s deep history, exploring how mass extinctions occur and irreversibly shape life on our planet.
Written with curiosity, compassion, and a surprising humour, Endings: Encounters with Extinction is an eye-opening journey through extinction—from the fossil record to the field biologist’s notebook, from myth to memory. In bearing witness to what we’ve lost, Griffin discovers something unexpected: that even in an age of endings, wonder and hope remain defiantly alive.
The full Imaginairium schedule will be announced on Aug. 18, 2026.
Starring Starring Neil Griffin, Richard Kelly Kemick, Jackie Morris, Rosemary Sullivan, Jillian Tamaki & Dan Werb. Hosted by Pam Rocker
Hosted by David Gray
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
We’d love to be able to connect directly with you. Sign up here to receive exclusive weekly updates and new show announcements. We promise to make every email newsworthy and entertaining (and by signing up, you help us avoid having to pay to advertise our events on social-media channels).
Join our email list to receive a reminder when shows go on sale.
