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March/April 2005 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Wild horses In-depth: Wild horses The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

Footsteps across Labrador
Last year, Jerry Kobalenko set out on an expedition to test whether his years of experience travelling in the Arctic by ski and on foot would give him an edge against a much younger man making the same journey. Could he match the youngster in endurance? In ability to cope with fierce weather? Would he make better decisions about when to rest and where to seek shelter?

The person he selected to test himself against was "Jerry the Younger", the brash young upstart he was 20 years ago when he skied solo across the interior of Labrador in the deep of winter. Following the success of that outing, Kobalenko shifted his attention farther north, to Ellesmere Island. A book he wrote about the many journeys he subsequently made across and around that forbidding island, The Horizontal Everest, was published three years ago and was excerpted in Canadian Geographic in March/April 2002. Those travels taught him how to pack and keep dry and warm and what and how much to eat. Having learned those hard lessons and now in his late forties, Kobalenko sought and received support from The Royal Canadian Geographical Society for a return trip to Labrador. He would retrace his footsteps, travelling alone and again with no supporting communications equipment. The illustrated account in this issue of his 39-day race against his former self makes for compelling reading and viewing. Kobalenko wrote the story and took the marvellous photos that accompany it. When you turn to them, think about the effort he made, in the midst of a numbing Labrador winter, to set up those shots of himself.

Wild horses have ranged across British Columbia’s Chilcotin Plateau since at least the late 1700s. The Xeni Gwet’in people who occupy the area round up and break individual horses when they need them for ranching. Otherwise, they share the valleys and forests with the animals, some of which were once ranch ponies that were released or escaped into the wild. That’s why among the small bands of horses on the plateau are mares and stallions that carry brands. Our cover story is about the unique wild-horse culture that exists among the Xeni Gwet’in, the land claim they have launched, the conservationists who believe the Chilcotin horses may be among the last wild mustangs in Canada and area ranchers who consider the animals feral overgrazers that compete with cattle for forage. In this tangle of competing interests, the wild horses are rapidly becoming an emotionally appealing poster child for a campaign to protect the region’s environment from encroaching development and to buttress the land-title claims of a small but assertive First Nation.

As a 75^th anniversary gift to our readers, we tucked a new world map into our November/December 2004 issue that included the latest information on world-development issues. Now we’d like to hear from you about that gift. Tell us where and how you are using it.

— Rick Boychuk

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