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magazine / jf01
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January/February 2001 issue |
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An explorer at his peak
ON A SNOWY DAY IN FEBRUARY 1996, a few weeks after he had skied a perilous 1,500
kilometres to the South Pole with his partner Thierry Pétry, Bernard
Voyer wondered whether he could take on another expedition.
“I feel that I’ve reached the horizon,” he wrote in his journal. “I’ve covered as
many kilometres within me as I have skied in Antarctica. I have gone to the end of my dream, to the end of myself.”
If exhaustion spurred Voyer to write these words, it was short-lived.
Three years later, he stood at the top of Mount Everest, the
first Canadian to have reached the world's highest summit
and the North and South poles with no outside assistance. Only
three other people in the world have managed this feat. In honour
of his accomplishment, Voyer was awarded The
Royal Canadian Geographical Society's Gold Medal.
The 47-year-old native of Rimouski, Que., has made a 30-year
career of climbing mountains, skiing frozen expanses and canoeing
remote rivers, and of sharing his expeditions with the more than
70,000 people who have attended his educational presentations.
Still, he has no intention of resting on his laurels. Voyer arrived
at the awards ceremony in October fresh from climbing Russia's
Mount El'brus, the tallest peak in Europe. The ascent was part
of his latest endeavour - to scale the highest mountain of each
of the continents, known as the seven summits. Voyer has only
two peaks left to conquer before he pursues another long-held
dream: retreating to a cabin in the Arctic to pen his adventures.
— Monique Roy-Sole
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Canada's Mars on Earth
Canadian Geographic went on a mission to
mars last summer — or
at least the closest thing on Earth to Mars. Our crew was out
on Devon Island's Haughton Crater — formed 23 million years ago
when a 20-kilometre-wide meteor slammed into the planet's crust
— filming for our series "Canadian
Geographic Presents,"
to air on the Discovery Channel in January. With the Nunavut
crater's topography, geological features and harsh climate so
closely resembling those of Mars, it was the ideal site for research
by Nasa and the Mars Society, an organization promoting human
exploration and settlement of the red planet.
"Devon
Island is like no other place on Earth," says
field producer Ian MacRae of what it was like to shoot there.
"It is a frozen red desert on an epic scale, with little
rain or snow, just rugged, remorseless land the way creation
left it."
Vancouver's little Mexico
THINK VANCOUVER and new Canadians,
and you probably picture Asian-Pacific connections. But as University
of British Columbia geography graduate student Geoff
Rempel is
discovering, the city is also home to a small but rapidly growing
Mexican population, including these dancers at the Centro Communitario
Hispano. With economic and cultural connections between Canada
and Mexico on the increase, the winner of the Society's $5,000
Maxwell
Studentship in Human Geography set out to explore this
little-known community.
"I was surprised to find how different the Mexican immigrant
reality is in Canada compared to what it is in the U.S.,"
says Rempel, who conducted some 30 interviews for his master's
thesis. "Racism against Mexicans is much, much stronger
in the States than it is here, and by coming to Canada, they
believed they could enjoy many of the advantages that come with
living in the North without the discrimination they would find
in the States."
Still, among his contacts in the community, Rempel found that
for many of the dentists, teachers, engineers and other professionals,
securing work and accreditation in their fields hasn't been easy.
"We're worried about a brain drain, and yet we have all
these people who are working as dishwashers and restaurant cooks
who are really underemployed."
The fabric of a nation
BRIDGET O'FLAHERTY has Canada all sewn up. The Perth,
Ont., artist has created a series of 13 quilts representing landscapes
from each province and territory.
Displayed at the Society's annual
Fellows dinner in October,
the quilts are a rich tapestry of Canada's varied vistas, from
British Columbia wildflowers to Alberta canola fields. O'Flaherty,
who uses a unique style of "thread painting," worked
for more than a year on the quilts. Each image took 30 spools
of thread.
Shapes of the land
OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS,
the Canadian landscape has twisted, turned and morphed into various
forms, from jagged mountain peaks to sea cliffs and sand dunes.
These land formations have influenced our travels and exploration,
the distribution of our natural resources and even where we live
today. At www.canadiangeographic.ca, we cut it all down to size.
Our Shapes of the Land
section guides you to some familiar places — like streams and
rivers; to some that are obscure — like pingos and point bars;
and to some you might never have noticed. There's even an a-to-z
glossary to help you find your way. And look for our upcoming
new feature on beaches, the country's most dynamic coastal ecosystems.
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