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April 2011 issue

Table of Contents Short history of Canada's parks Dark-sky preserves National parks smartphone apps Conserving the red knot National park artists Birth of a national park Grosse Île, Quebec Oil drilling in Lancaster Sound Finding the HMS Investigator Historic graffiti National parks need you How our national parks evolved The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook À la carte In habitat Book Reviews Reverberations ----------------------------------------------- Past issues

Framed by an ice cave, Jerry Kobalenko (ABOVE, in front, and BELOW) and Bob Cochran pull sleds on the sea ice near Cape Norton Shaw, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, in 2007. (Photo: Jerry Kobalenko)

SPEAKER SERIES
Arctic high

Jerry Kobalenko

Kobalenko’s Arctic career began in 1984 when, at 27, he completed a 600-kilometre winter trek across central Labrador, just to get a taste of extreme solo sledding. That 46-day inauguration eventually led him to explore Nunavut’s Ellesmere, Axel Heiberg and Devon islands. Since then, the region’s snowy mountains, endless icefields, glaciers, fiords and meadows — many of which are found in Ellesmere’s Quttinirpaaq National Park — have captivated him and have been featured in his books Arctic Eden and The Horizontal Everest. He flies there as often as he can — so far, it’s 35 expeditions and counting — to photograph the land and wildlife, seek out prehistoric Paleo-Eskimo tent rings and ponder on the cairns and dilapidated shacks left by previous expeditions.

Kobalenko will share his adventures in the Arctic, including some of Canada’s national parks, on April 27 in Ottawa, as part of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s Speaker Series.

Kobalenko’s motivation for heading north, unlike some who have sought fame and fortune, is mainly to experience the solitude of the High Arctic’s austerely beautiful landscape. Given the natural glories of the region, including 24-hour sunlight from April to late August, it both amuses and discourages him that many armchair travellers discount polar journeys outside the traditional big-name destinations.

“To the public and to the expedition world, it seems that the only two polar trips are the North Pole and the South Pole, and everything else is insignificant,” says Kobalenko. “I’ve travelled tens of thousands of kilometres in the Arctic and I’ve barely scratched the surface. I could spend lifetimes never retracing my route.”

— Alec Ross

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RESEARCH
Pipeline clash

Sarah Panofsky (Photo: Andrew Querner)

A master’s student of human geography at the University of British Columbia, Panofsky is examining how the concerns of the Wet’suwet’en are being addressed through an environmental assessment process that will determine the fate of the project. Her thesis research has received financial assistance from The Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

At hearings last August and September in Kitimat and Prince George, B.C., Panofsky witnessed the Wet’suwet’en chiefs’ compelling presentations on the adverse impacts a pipeline will have on the land and wildlife. “There is such a clash of different world views,” she says, adding that the environmental assessment is a complex process skewed in favour of industry.

To share what she has learned, Panofsky is producing a documentary film in collaboration with the Office of the Wet’suwet’en. She hopes the film will bring to light the limitations of the environmental assessment in fully appreciating the repercussions of the proposed pipeline on the community.

— Catherine Labelle

MAPPING
Poster-perfect

To honour the centennial of Parks Canada — the first national park system in the world — Canadian Geographic has produced a poster map (above), in collaboration with Parks Canada. It highlights the agency’s evolution through the creation of 42 national parks, 4 national marine conservation areas and 167 national historic sites.

The natural splendour of our national parks and historic sites will also be displayed in a photography exhibition featuring images published in Canadian Geographic over its 81-year history. The exhibition will open in the United Kingdom later this year before touring Europe.

A journal’s incredible journey

Photo: Randy Hogg

GEO-LITERACY
A lifelong passion for geography

Photo courtesy Stuart Semple

“In many ways, I consider the award the pinnacle of my career,” says Semple, who helped found the CCGE in 1993. “I am deeply honoured that my work has been recognized in this way and remain as enthusiastic about geography as when I began.”

The award includes $5,000 from National Geographic’s Education Foundation, which Semple has donated to create a scholarship that will be given annually to a university student who wishes to pursue a bachelor of education in Atlantic Canada to teach geography or social studies.

— Julia Maffett

EXPEDITIONS
Permafrost on defrost

Antoni Lewkowicz has seen the not so subtle signs of warming permafrost in Canada’s North: a buckling Yukon highway and the aftermath of a landslide near Carmacks, in southern Yukon, that formed a bowl about 30 metres deep, dumped debris into a salmonfishing river and destroyed a forest at the bottom of a valley. While it’s clear that climate change is affecting this frozen layer of ground throughout the Arctic, it is difficult to detect where and how fast it is thawing until after it has happened, says the University of Ottawa geography professor, who has studied permafrost for the past 35 years. “Our ability to predict how long it will take,” he says, “and where it will take place is limited.”

As part of a long-term study on changes in permafrost conditions, Lewkowicz and graduate students Christina Miceli and Max Duguay set up monitoring stations last summer at 10 sites along a 1,300-kilometre stretch of the Alaska Highway between Fort St. John, B.C., and Whitehorse. Lewkowicz was awarded the $25,000 Expedition of the Year for 2010 from The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, financed by the RBC Blue Water Project.

The sites were chosen along the same stretch of highway studied by permafrost expert Roger Brown in 1964. Permafrost has since disappeared at half the sites where it was found in Brown’s survey. Nine of the 10 locations monitored by Lewkowicz and his students have a thin layer of permafrost — less than 10 metres thick — and are therefore very sensitive to climate change. “It could be that the permafrost at these sites will disappear even in my lifetime,” says Lewkowicz.

The goal of the research is to better understand how thinning permafrost will affect the North’s ecology and freshwater resources, as well as infrastructure like roads and pipelines, and how it can precipitate natural hazards such as landslides. “It’s only by doing this kind of long-term project that we will get the answers concerning how fast permafrost will thaw,” says Lewkowicz. “The Society and the RBC Blue Water Project are investing in work that will carry on for a long time.”

— Monique Roy-Sole

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