Bridging the gap between humans and nature

WHERE NATURE MEETS CULTURE

BESIDE is an independent media at the intersection of nature and culture. We offer personal essays, field stories, and ideas—both old and new—aimed at finding better ways to live in the world.

Conceived in Montreal in 2016, BESIDE was born from the desire to create a globally influential brand at the crossroads of nature and culture. The project has grown significantly, with a unique offering: BESIDE has developed expertise both in publishing and hospitality in nature.

Magazine

Relationships

What are you looking for in your relationships? Maybe something slow and enduring — safety, belonging — or perhaps something more effervescent: the joy of a spontaneous connection, the spark of inspiration.
Altered State
Article

Altered State

Humans are impacting the earth more than all other natural forces combined. In a new multidisciplinary body of work called The Anthropocene Project, famed photographer and filmmaker Edward Burtynsky investigates our outsized influence on the fate of the planet. We asked him about it.
What Moves You?
Magazine

What Moves You?

What do rock skipping, pigeon racing, and van-dwelling have in common? All are expressions of movement, with surprising lessons to teach us.
Inner Landscapes
Article

Inner Landscapes

Architect Pierre Thibault makes nature his laboratory, and beauty his philosophy.
Magazine

What Makes a Home?

Home can mean many things: a comfortable dwelling, a familiar landscape, the smell of a favourite meal. But home isn’t simply the place you come from or where you live.
Object Permanence
Article

Object Permanence

Catherine Blanchet’s drawings are quiet odes to the mineral world and the rocks washed up by the tides on the shores of the St. Lawrence.
Magazine

What Kinds of Power Do We Want?

Power. It’s a word that evokes control and oppression. But power has other meanings too. It can be inspiring, supportive, and constructive. It can lift us up. All of us. Most importantly, power can be shared.
Being a Shark
Article

Being a Shark

Reflections on Blackness in Canadian Wilderness.
New Times
Magazine

New Times

It often feels like time is happening to us, a fickle and unforgiving force beyond our control. But there are other ways to experience it.

Book

Green Screen
Green Screen
Green Screen
Green Screen
Green Screen
Green Screen
Green Screen

Green Screen

$25.00 $28.00

Spending your weekends at the cottage (and documenting them on Instagram). Meditating (using an app). More and more, our modern lives are crossed by a tension between connection and disconnection, between technology and nature. How can we combine these two poles that are necessary to us, each in our own way? Far from wanting to fuel polarizing discourses, Green Screen offers a curious, sensitive and playful look at this new reality to tame, even to invent.

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Our Transformations
Magazine

Our Transformations

This issue presents stories of committed individuals and caring communities whose actions are bearing fruit in transformation. Because good work and good ideas are always revolutionary.
The Little Boy and the Sea
Article

The Little Boy and the Sea

At the foot of the mountain in Bromont, Noah Forand runs fast but grows up slowly and a little differently than others. Without knowing it, he’s teaching his family and friends l’art de vivre.
How Do We Embody Our Nordicity?
Magazine

How Do We Embody Our Nordicity?

Many of our aspirations are linked to our desire to reconnect to the land. Could nordicity help us embrace this way of life? Could it infuse our daily lives with precious tools: slowness, presence, and a sense of community?
Endangered Fellows
Article

Endangered Fellows

Until only a few decades ago, we didn’t regard nature as being vulnerable. We considered it to be a vast and powerful force.
What Communities Do We Belong To?
Magazine

What Communities Do We Belong To?

Communities are emerging all around us. Following the model of plants and animals that collaborate in the wild, we are learning new creative, ecological, and inclusive ways of coexisting.
A Feathered Thread
Article

A Feathered Thread

Through the eyes of raptors, migrations and the fabric of conservation span across hemispheres.
What Risks Are We Willing to Bear?
Magazine

What Risks Are We Willing to Bear?

At every point in our lives, we’re tasked with making brave, often uncomfortable, decisions to fulfill our personal, social, and environmental aspirations.
Tim and Hannah's Ark
Article

Tim and Hannah's Ark

Artist Hannah Fuller and pro snowboarder Tim Eddy had been building their secluded microcabin with their bare hands for two months. Suddenly, on week six, all their utopian plans to live sustainably were halted. By a toilet.
How Do We Preserve Our Traditions?
Magazine

How Do We Preserve Our Traditions?

How can we learn today what used to be passed down to us from previous generations? How can we combine ancestral and contemporary knowledge to forge newly shared rituals?

Book

SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents
SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents
SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents
SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents
SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents
SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents
SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents
SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents

SAVOIR FAIRE - Stories, tools, and wisdom from our grandparents

$49.95

Deep grooves of experience, hard-won advice, and wisdom anchored in the present: Savoir Faire draws up an inventory of skills and know-how from our grandparents with the unexpected potential to equip us for tomorrow, and which could easily slip between the cracks of generations.

Traveling from urban yards to the vast countrysides of Québec, Ontario and the Maritimes, journalist Eugénie Emond introduces us to twenty elders who share their knowledge.

A co-publication from BESIDE and Éditions Cardinal.

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What Does Our Future with Nature Hold?
Magazine

What Does Our Future with Nature Hold?

On a daily basis, we make decisions for our future selves, and live by decisions made by previous generations. In this issue, we explore the myriad ways in which we are already building our future with nature.
If Nature Sent Us the Bill
Article

If Nature Sent Us the Bill

Nature is not merely magnificent. It also provides important ecosystem “balancing” services, contributing to, among other things, climate control, water purification, and the circulation of nutrients in the soil.
What Can Nature's Trajectories Teach Us?
Magazine

What Can Nature's Trajectories Teach Us?

In this issue, we examine the impacts of our ever-evolving culinary tastes on our planet's biodiversity; the ways in which technologies rewire our brains; and how wilderness lies at the heart of so many of our personal trajectories.
Matty Started a Farm
Article

Matty Started a Farm

Chef Matty Matheson’s first transformation took him from downtown party animal to internet celebrity. Now he’s working on his next act as a champion of regenerative agriculture.
What's the Value of Nature?
Magazine

What's the Value of Nature?

We aim to calculate how much nature’s labour is worth, and the cost of not protecting it. We consider the much subtler, more personal value that manifests when we are inspired creatively, politically, even spiritually, by nature.
Climbing Cholitas
Article

Climbing Cholitas

These are the Cholitas Escaladoras or “Climbing Cholitas,” a group of five Aymara Indigenous women in Bolivia who are breaking stereotypes and shifting perceptions.
How Do We Keep the Outdoors Wild?
Magazine

How Do We Keep the Outdoors Wild?

This issue is introducing a community of scientists, entrepreneurs, philosophers and adventurers who deal with the inherent and daily paradox of being nature’s caretakers.
You Are Where You Eat
Article

You Are Where You Eat

Jim Denevan’s Outstanding in the Field, which brings the entire dinner table to the farm, wants to make you a little uncomfortable, and give your food a lot more meaning.
What Is at the Heart of Our Connection with Nature?
Magazine

What Is at the Heart of Our Connection with Nature?

An issue dedicated to the values, lifestyle and vision of a thriving, environmentally conscious new North American community of outdoor enthusiasts.

Book

The New Traditional
The New Traditional
The New Traditional
The New Traditional
The New Traditional
The New Traditional
The New Traditional

The New Traditional

$78.00
Heritage, Craftsmanship and Local Identity
Co-edited by gestalten & BESIDE

From Kenya to Korea, from Iceland to Canada, traditions surround us. They are carried in the passed-down stories, rituals, and skills that keep us afloat: things like cooking, sewing, farming, beekeeping, building, blacksmithing, and shepherding. Today, a new generation of people seeking out creative ways to revive and adapt traditions to make them more sustainable. As a way of inspiration, this book tells the stories of these individuals and communities taking part in a movement for a “new traditional”.
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