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January/February 2006 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Science of silence In-depth: Ground of music Feature: Bhangra beat Feature: Neighbours in song The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte CG playlist Mosaic

Echoes from the Valley

I have purchased all the copies of your magazine in Timmins and plan to share “ Call of the mine” (CG Nov/Dec 2005), which has a photo of my dad, William Ciccone, age 92, with local and out-of-town relatives. It is quite an honour for Northern Ontario mining, and my father, to be featured in your magazine.

Hector Ciccone
Timmins, Ont.

I grew up in Virginiatown, Ont., home of the Kerr-Addison gold mine where my dad was chief engineer for many years. In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Northern Ontario mining communities were prosperous and we had a good life, including exposure to many hard-working immigrant groups. One memory that I think is exclusive to mining towns is having to be mindful of the direction of the wind, or else your laundry hung out to dry could come in full of small holes from the smokestack’s acid fallout. As children, we were breathing in that smoke as we walked to and from school, not really thinking much of it.

Karin Arkinstall
Kelown, B.C.

Your publication has presented an outdated and erroneous portrait of mining in Ontario. Depicting mining equipment such as jackleg drills, which are no longer in use, mining procedures that are no longer practised and mines that have been closed for years fails to reflect the "call of the mine" in 2005.

Mining in 2005 in Ontario is a hightech, environmentally responsible and safe industry, producing the building blocks necessary to support society. More than 85 percent of the mining workforce uses advanced technology of some kind. Approximately 10 percent of the 16,000 people working in the mining industry in Ontario are employed in engineering and research and development. Ontario’s mining sector has 50 percent more employees with Ph.D.s than the manufacturing sector.

You can’t be productive unless you are safe on the job, and Ontario’s mining industry is the safest jurisdiction in Canada and among the safest sectors in the provincial economy.

Chris Hodgson, President
Ontario Mining Association

Iam Chad Lamond’s mother and Evan’s grandmother. [Chad Lamond fell to his death at the Creighton Mine near Sudbury in 2002. Evan is his young son.] It will be four years this March, and we are still not settled in the courts. There is no pain like losing your son, but it’s worse to lose him to a workplace accident. Many advances have taken place, but we have a long way to go.

Kathy Lamond
Chelmsford, Ont.

There is an unfortunate typo on page 49, which carries the eastern half of a map of the Ottawa Valley. The town of L’Orignal, which is the French word for moose, is given an extra "i" and identified as L’Original. Apart from this small blemish, I really enjoyed the article on the Valley, particularly since the Canadian Rochesters stem from Burnstown and Ottawa.

Michael Rochester
St. John’s

I am dismayed by the once-over treatment you gave Canada’s hardrock mining country. Your article failed to mine the richness of life in what was, at the time of the mining boom in the early 20th century, Canada’s northern frontier. Instead, it perpetuates stereotypes about a bleak life in a harsh environment, and it totally ignores the social life, which is a distinct part of the Canadian fabric.

The mines attracted a special kind of individual. Most Canadians were not willing to forgo the amenities of civilization or do the hard and dirty physical work required. It was mainly the adventuresome and immigrants who were prepared to take the risks and suffer the hardships of isolation (the mining belt was hundreds of kilometres by rough gravel roads or slow trains from the big cities). Those who went north into mining were prepared to face dangers and risks, to adapt and make do.

Besides producing millions of dollars’ worth of ore, hardrock miners produced several generations of offspring who carried their attitudes to work and in life. It is often said that Northern Ontario’s biggest export was its youth. Many young people moved on and up rather than follow their fathers into the mines.

L. Lehtiniemi
Ottawa

Museum revisited

In spite of my passionate support of Canadian veterans, I was one of the skeptical Ottawans who quietly protested the expense, location and very concept of the Canadian War Museum during the many months of design and construction ("Of war and regeneration," CG Nov/Dec 2005). But each time I drove along the Ottawa River Parkway and saw the magnificent structure arising from "the Flats," with the Peace Tower in the distance, I began to understand the vision.

The building itself is impressive — every exterior view, every room and hallway creates a sense of that vision, but after walking through it, I was left with the indelible sense of having been immersed in the hearts, minds and bodies of those Canadians who experienced war first-hand.

If it was the intent of the architect and planners to tell the story not of the governments that instigate wars or of the military organizations that execute them but of the people who live and die through them, then they have certainly achieved their goal. A friend refused to visit the museum because he thought it "glorifies war," but having seen it, the only thing it glorifies is the lives of those Canadians who served and suffered during some 200 years of armed conflicts.

Ellen Whittingham
Ottawa

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I agree that it is impossible to appease everyone when selecting what to include in the new Canadian War Museum. However, the museum staff portrays history as it sees it. While your story says it is not the Department of National Defence’s museum, it is the military whose image suffers from displays such as the Somalia paintings [of Canadian soldiers Kyle Brown and Clayton Matchee, who were charged in 1993 for their role in the torture and death of a young Somali man]. If the museum is to change for the better, it must ensure that the omission of certain "statistics" does not leave the visitor with a false impression.

G. W. Malloy
Orléans, Ont.

Nemaska scattered

The sentence in "The price of peace" (CG Nov/Dec 2005) that reads "Finally, in 1978, sensing that the forced resettlement was not working, Hydro- Québec relocated the villagers from Old Nemaska again, this time to a new town of their own" is erroneous and an outright insult to the vision, commitment, endeavours and accomplishments of the Nemaska People and their continued struggle for and development of a home of their own.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Government of Quebec, through its subsidiary Hydro-Québec, made numerous and frequent forays into the Nemaska People’s traditional territory for the purpose of gathering technical information to support the feasibility of the planned Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert Project. Part of these studies involved the gathering of information outlining and neutralizing potential problems. One of these problems was the original settlement of Nemaska on Nemaska Lake.

During the summer of 1968, a government official flew in to the original settlement with a letter of warning that the settlement would be underwater and that the people had to move out of the area, where they had subsisted and lived off the land for countless generations. The people, being simple hunters, fishermen and trappers, with little contact with the outside world and no one to represent them, were left with no choice but to be relocated.

In 1970, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development began airlifting the people to either Mistissini or Rupert House (Waskaganish), depending on their choice of relocation. The people were divided, with roughly half moving to each of the two communities. While in those communities, during the seven years of forced exile, the Nemaska People encountered prejudice and persecution and were left feeling unwelcome. They longed to return to their territory.

In September 1977, the Nemaska People held a one-week band consultation on the shores of Doethawagan (Champion Lake) to determine their future and develop a course of action. At the end of the consultation, they chose to stay and build their new community on the shores of Doethawagan.

Over the past 28 years, the Nemaska People have developed their own community without any special assistance, financial or otherwise, from any government or development authorities or corporations but rather, from regular program funding and loans and advances from Cree compensation funds. Hydro-Québec was responsible for the forced removal of the Nemaska People from their original settlement. Hydro-Québec did not relocate them to a new town but, instead, scattered them. It is insulting to insinuate that Hydro-Québec had any part in the development of the new community of Nemaska.

Isaac Meskino
Cree Nation of Nemaska

Smoked out

It’s encouraging to see someone acknowledging that smoke from home-heating wood stoves and fireplaces is actually a form of pollution which may pose a significant health concern ("Smoke signals," CG Nov/Dec 2005). Here in Nova Scotia, I suspect that the number of homes heated by wood-fired appliances is much higher than the 50 percent in Vancouver — probably more like 75 percent. There are many days during the heating season when we find it necessary to turn off our home airexchange unit to prevent our home from filling with the smell of woodsmoke. We have added two extra filters to the airexchanger intake, and the outside filter is changed weekly. It is often as brown as a cigarette filter! Perhaps someday woodsmoke will get as much attention as tobacco smoke and automobileexhaust emissions.

Robert Dawe
Bridgewater, N.S.

Corrections

Sooke, B.C., is on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, not in the Cowichan Valley as written in "Gumboot gourmets" ("Mosaic," CG Nov/Dec 2005).

In the photo of miners from Larder Lake, Ont. ("Call of the mine," CG Nov/Dec 2005), Gary Burns, not Harold "Tubby" Burns, is pictured on the right.

REVERBERATIONS ONLINE

Cowichan Valley tally

I enjoyed your Mosaic on the Cowichan Valley in the November/December 2005 issue of CG.  The Cowichan Valley runs from Mill Bay in the south to Ladysmith in the north with the city of Duncan being both the geographical centre and the largest urban area of the Valley.  However, Sooke is not in this region as this settlement is located on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island and the Cowichan Valley is on the southeast coast of the island.

Kevin van der Linden
Duncan, B.C.

The short article on page 112 of this issue (Nov / Dec 2005) has one or two inaccuracies in it. Sooke is not in the Cowichan Valley. It is about 50 or 60 kilometres away, separated by one of our mountain ranges.

The Cowichan Valley is either north of Victoria or northwest, depending if you are looking at a map or just local idiom. I suspect the writer did the article long distance by telephone and file pictures.

Thanks for a great magazine.

Ken Sharp
Chemainus B.C.

Dam debate

I just read "The price of peace" by Christopher Shulgan in the Nov/Dec 2005 issue of Canadian Geographic.  I found it to be very well balanced and informative, leaving the readers to come to their own conclusions regarding the dam project(s) in northern Quebec.
 
I am an author of seven nonfiction books, one of which deals with hydroelectric dams and focuses on the two dams on the Peace River in B.C. (Bennett Dam and Peace Canyon Dam). Titled This Was Our Valley, and co-authored with Earl K. Pollon, the book won the Alberta Nonfiction Award and the silver B.C. Book Prize in 1990 when it was first published.  

Shirlee Smith Matheson

While the ’The price of peace’ (CG Nov / Dec 2005) focuses on the impact of the diversion of the Rupert River on the Nemaska Cree Band, I consider what this indelible scar will mean to Canadians from coast to coast.  While Canada scoffs at China for undertaking similar projects, such as the Lancang Jiang dams, which will certainly impact the environment and human inhabitants, she is mute to the ambitions of Hydro Quebec. One cannot help contemplating whether Canada would be as silent if other provinces were to consider similar physical changes to this great country.

G.W. Malloy
Orleans, ON

Christopher Shulgan’s "The price of peace" is an interesting article, and generally strikes a balance. Normally, balance is a good thing in journalism, but in this case the author seems to set aside some of his facts in order to reach that balance.

The clearest examples are found in the sidebar on p. 84, on the long-term effects of the earlier James Bay hydro project.

1) Hydro Québec’s researchers have found that the new reservoirs have had a "negligible effect" on the climate, except within ten to 20 kilometres of James Bay’s periphery, where freezing is delayed by a few days and thawing comes a few days early (the wording is careless, but this is the sense). We are not told what length of coastline is affected; but a look at the article’s map suggests that we are talking about hundreds of square kilometers, not an insignificant area

2) Certain fish species have all but disappeared from lakes in the affected region. The two mentioned are trout and cisco. Virtual disappearance of even ’only’ two fish species is a major ecological event.

3) Over the first ten years after damming (p. 78) mercury content in fish and in the animals (including humans) that fed on them, rose alarmingly, the content in top predatory fish rising three to five times its normal level. The Cree had to be advised to cut fish to a fraction of its historic level in their diet to avoid mercury poisoning. Within a further twenty years, the mercury had dropped back to historic levels. So there’s thirty years of significant mercury contamination; and to avoid that particular health crisis, the Cree were obliged to undergo radical changes to their diet. Shulgan points out elsewhere (p. 80) that the dietary changes have led to a diet rich in fast, fatty foods, which in turn has led to "obesity rates of up to four times the Québec average." Is this supposed to be an acceptable side effect of the hydro project?

I learned a lot from this article. Most of it seems to have to do with greed. The rest has to do with our obstinate refusal, as a race, to learn from even our worst mistakes.

Martin F. Kilmer
East River, Nova Scotia

Ethics and advertising

I am a CG subscriber, and I wish to make a comment about the automobile ads in your magazine. Throughout the magazine (issue of Jul/Aug 2005), the ads encourage the reader to buy the largest automobiles on the market:

- First two pages: the Cadillac STS
- Page 14: the Jeep Grand Cherokee
- Page 21: the Nissan Xterra iwth its V-6 265 HP engine!
- Page 31: the Infiniti with its 335 HP engine!
- Page 37: the Equinox with its standard V-6 engine
- Page 69: the Toyota RAV4 truck
- Page 84: the Pontiac SV6 Montana with a 200 HP engine!

Meanwhile, your organization advocates environmental protection and conservation, while at the same time tells people to buy the largest automobiles consuming the highest amounts of non-renewable resources and increasing the CO2, thereby speeding up the warming trend of the earth.

Where are the ads about the smaller more efficient cars and the hybrid vehicles?

Are you serious about your messages, or do you just try to capture the largest amount of money for your ads, regardless of the messages?

I am on the eve of the renewal of my subscription and I am not sure that I want to participate in an organization that has this kind of message for its readers. Something to think about.

Tim MacLean

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I am a recent subscriber and just received your Christmas brochure. I was distressed to see many environmentally unfriendly and socially insensitive products. Specifically, there was much on Christmas but no other ethnic/religious holidays, though I imagine a fair number of your subscribers are not Christians. There were no fair trade items (e.g. chocolate). Promoting golf (the most unsustainable of sports in terms of logging and pesticide use) and promoting High Arctic tourism (unsustainable in terms of airplane fuel and a fragile ecosystem) both seem quite ignorant, especially from a geographic magazine. I have been keeping your magazines in my waiting room, and I hate to promote this sort of thing (not to mention wasting paper by so much advertising).

You’ve lost one subscriber.

Judith Deutsch

The Valley

"G’day, g’day" and "How are you now?" are salutations also commonly heard in rural Cape Breton Island. "Omadhaun" (amadan in Scots Gaelic) was a name sometimes applied in mild reproof to us as children when we acted the fool.

I wonder what linguistic connections there are between the Ottawa Valley and Cape Breton, and between other parts of the country where these expressions are heard?

Clarence Barrett
Middle River, Nova Scotia

Thank you for your interesting and amusing article on the Ottawa Valley in the September/October, 2005 issue. I have also been enjoying the map that was included. However, I did note an error on the map that I feel obligated to correct.

You have labeled the intersection of the old Peterson Road (Killaloe, through Brudenell, Rockingham, Combermere, etc) and the Brudenell/Quadeville Road as "Harriet’s Corners". This junction was not named for a woman named Harriet, but for William Haryett, who had a hotel, a blacksmith shop and store there in the 19 th century. Mr. Haryett and his son are both buried at Rockingham Church. So, the correct spelling is "Haryett’s Corners".

Myself, my father and my grandfather all grew up a mile from this location. My ancestors walked up the Opeongo Road in 1857, turned onto the Peterson Road at Brudenell and were certainly patrons of Mr. Haryett’s establishments. Both the hotel and the blacksmith’s shop had burned down before my father was born, but he remembered the community moving the small log building that had been Haryett’s store to his uncle Abe Murphy’s farm as a temporary residence for the Murphys, whose house had been struck by lightning.

When I was a boy, the foundation of the hotel was still visible, as was the brick chimney of the blacksmith shop. I remember digging unfinished horseshoes out of the ground near the chimney. I believe it’s still there but hidden now in thick bush. It’s wonderful, I think, that we are trying now to recover as much as we can of the pioneer history of regions like the Ottawa and Madawaska Valleys. Thanks to your organization for fronting much of this renewed interest.

Keith Kinder
Hamilton, Ontario

I was thrilled by Canadian Geographic’s regional profile ("The Valley", Sept / Oct 2005), and my expectations were set high by your editor’s notebook review.  
 
However, James Raffan’s article was barely readable and devoid of any discernable theme or relevance.  His poorly researched piece failed to reflect the three hundred year significance of the region as a national economic engine, the social and economic history defined by the river, or the harmony of homogenized culture that is the hallmark of the Ottawa Valley. The article was a regional insult, and a stain on Canadian Geographic.  As editor and valley resident, you should be ashamed to have let it go to print.  

Mike O’Malley
Almonte, Ont

I recently returned from vacation and was thrilled to find your magazine waiting for me. As soon as I saw the title, I knew which Valley you were talking about.

Despite now living in the beautiful city of Halifax, I am always happy when I return to the Valley at vacation time, particularly my hometown of Pembroke, Ontario. On this return, I dropped my luggage and immediately sat down to read the article. Needless-to-say, I was disappointed when there was not one mention of the capital of Renfrew County and the city, which framed my youth.

Certainly, I appreciated reading about places that I love like Wilno, Bonechere and various beauty spots on "the Quebec side". However, I believe that leaving Pembroke out was an oversight, particularly because I had just spent the previous evening strolling through Pembroke’s local park crammed with hundreds of campers and ringing with the sound of fiddles and voices, a truly spectacular valley event preserving the culture of the area.

Sheila Gordon
Halifax, N.S.

I always look forward to receiving my copy of Canadian Geographic. I find it interesting, with well-written articles illustrated by good photographs and excellent maps.

Usually I flip through the pages to select the article I will read first.  On doing this with the September/October 2005 issue I recognized one of the photos (page 74) of the mouth of the Natashquan River, although I am used to seeing it with north at the top of the page.

I spent three months in the area during the summer of 1959 collecting information for a Masters thesis and I was prompted for the first time in many years to look back to see if I could detect any changes over the past 46 years.  

Comparing a 1930 air photo of the mouth of the river with the space photo in CG revealed little change in the physical landscape, although in the 1930 photo the mouth of the river was filled with sandbanks compared with ice in the space photo, and in the summer of 1959, I had observed sandbanks. Some research on the internet revealed that a road now runs along the north shore of the St Lawrence, finishing at Natashquan and that the settlement is served by an airfield--off the area covered by the space photo.  In 1959 the only way to reach Natashquan was by boat or float plane along the north shore from the west.

John Welsted
Victoria, B.C.

It is very sad when a geographic magazine puts B.C mountains in southwest Alberta!!!!! I certainly expect better quality control than this.

In the September/October issue of CG on pg. 73, the picture of the mountains and snow is from B.C. It is at 51 degrees, 30 min North and 125 degrees, 49 min. West. North is at the bottom left of the picture.

Doug Stewart B.E.Sc. P.Eng.
London, Ont.

Seabirds in the wake

Having just read Harry Thurston’s’ article on the plight of the sea birds in Atlantic Canada ("Seabirds in the wake, CG Sept / Oct 2005), I am filled with remorse as it stands as another sad example of Canada’s indecisive fence sitting.

It never fails to amaze me how the Canadian government either bogs itself down with political bureaucracy until action is a thing of inconsequence or serves itself up as a door mat for other nations to destroy and pillage our valuable, and soon to be irreplaceable, resources as they stand idle and watch it happen without even yelling "foul." Canada needs to stand up and protect what is ours through tough and unforgiving legislation (mandatory jail time for individuals, steep fines for companies and seizure of vessels, and outright embargos for repeat offenders).

In his article, Mr. Thurston mentions that legislation has been passed to increase protection of our resources in Eastern Canada, but I am resigned to believe, as well as many other Canadians from coast to coast, that this will fall far short of making any real significant impact and that things will proceed as business as usual. We need to revamp the whole system and protect our backyard the same way the U.S. protects theirs.

Stefano Pascolini
Ancaster, Ontario

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* Letters may be edited for length, accuracy and liability.