In conversation: Paul Joosse, Life on Wiebo Ludwig’s farm: head shaving, dandelion wine, and surprising humour

In conversation: Paul Joosse, Life on Wiebo Ludwig’s farm: head shaving, dandelion wine, and surprising humour by Nicholas Köhler, April 26, 2012, MacLeans
While writing his dissertation on radical environmentalism, Paul Joosse, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Alberta, began examining a string of bombings in 2008 and 2009 targeting EnCana gas installations in northeast B.C.’s Tomslake area. Speaking to rural people who felt under siege by the oil and gas industry, Joosse heard one name pop up again and again, often with admiration—that of Wiebo Ludwig, convicted in connection with similar attacks on gas wells in Alberta 10 years earlier. Joosse felt he had to interview Ludwig, leader of a radical Christian community in Hythe, Alta., called Trickle Creek, and talked his way onto Ludwig’s farm. Over multiple stays there, he got to know him, and wrote a chapter of his dissertation on Ludwig and his followers. Ludwig died this month of esophageal cancer at age 70.
Q: How did you first meet Wiebo Ludwig?
A: Fittingly perhaps, I met him on the set of a TV show—Alberta Primetime. That’s the thing about Wiebo Ludwig. As much as people like to point out that he loved courting the media, it was reciprocal—journalists loved interviewing him, because he would always give incredibly pithy, often humorous soundbites that would make you think. … He was a strong, charismatic figure—a combative personality. He was also fearless, and I think that inspired his community. … The Trickle Creek families moved away from contemporary society because they felt it had gone off track. And our dependence on fossil fuels is a large part of that. That’s why they tried to establish a new way of living more in accordance, they thought, with a Biblical rather than a consumerist vision. … That’s what Wiebo hoped would be his legacy, really: the straw-bale houses, the biodiesel refinery, the bee-keeping operation—an alternative vision for how you can live without being dependent on the oil industry.