I was at the Calgary Zoo, watching the bison family that lives there — two females, two young males, all going about their day with that particular bison energy that makes you feel very small and very grateful at the same time. But it was the father I kept thinking about. The patriarch. The bull who is no longer there, whose name we never learned.

There was something about not knowing his name that stayed with me. He existed. He fathered a family. He was enormous and powerful and completely indifferent to being watched. And then he was gone, unnamed, uncelebrated.

I couldn't let that stand.