Hildegard Westerkamp is a prolific sound activist, composer, and soundscape educator. Her compositions are known in many parts of the world. She came from Germany to Vancouver in 1968 and has lived on these ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples ever since, gratefully acknowledging that her career as composer, radio artist, educator and sound ecologist blossomed on these lands. With her expert ear carefully attuned to the world around her, Westerkamp has become a household name for pioneering soundscape composition and the practice of “soundwalking”. Her pioneering musical works and writing at the intersections of environmentalism, acoustic communication, radio arts, listening practices and soundwalking activate an awareness, that sound is a decisive dimension of the world, an idea that underpins contemporary thinking across social, political, artistic and scientific practices of environmental respect and concern. In June 2024 Simon Fraser University awarded Hildegard Westerkamp an honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa. www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca