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May/June 1999 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook À la carte Inside Story Feature: Landfill landscapes Saving moose by feeding the bears

RICK SEARLE ENCOUNTERS a common reaction when he tells people he is writing a book on Canada’s national parks: delight. Unfortunately, it does not last. "I have to explain that this is not a pretty picture book, but one meant to wake people up to a very serious problem." Searle, a former Parks Canada naturalist who teaches geography at the University of Victoria, began to study the parks in 1996 after hearing reports they were under environmental siege. His goal: to see the state of the parks first-hand.

Searle’s research, funded in part by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society and World Wildlife Fund Canada, took him to 26 of the 38 existing parks. The more he toured, the more alarmed he became about the future of Canada’s "protected lands." "You can’t appreciate how bad it is until you see it," he says. "Park staff are frustrated and deeply concerned. Though they are winning small battles, they are losing the war."

This "war" is being fought against a growing number of threats, chief among them the ballooning recreational use of national parks, and industrial and commercial development encroaching on park borders.

Searle witnessed dozens of examples of these pressures. The "Banff Blob" — scores of elk collecting near the populous town, where they feel safe from wolves — threatens surrounding aspen forests. "Elk walk down the street. People who don’t understand ecosystems don’t see this as a dysfunction," says Searle. The wolf population in Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park is half the size it once was, and loons in Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia are threatened by mercury and the exploding raccoon population. Mining near Jasper in Alberta and logging around Pukaskwa in Northern Ontario are too close to park borders for comfort.

Particularly unsettling was Searle’s discovery of the war within Parks Canada itself, where a new, official philosophy — that ecological integrity is a priority — clashes with the older principle that puts people first. "’People first’ means when push comes to shove, compromises are made," says Searle. "An extra boardwalk, an extra trail, more picnic sites, more ecotourism in the back country."

Realizing the fragile state of Canada’s national parks has not discouraged Searle so much as spurred him on. The final chapters of his book — to be published by Key Porter Books in early 2000 — will suggest ways of stemming the parks’ decline. For example: "When you go to a park, do you really need to take your 30-foot runabout with 30-horsepower twin engines, or can you go in a canoe?" It is a difficult question for a society that claims a deep affection for its natural landscape. "We say we love our wild," says Searle, "but what I see is that we exploit it." It is a pattern that has to change, he insists, if Canada’s national parks are to survive.

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Explorer earned northerners’ respect
BY THE TIME Thomas Manning, a Massey Medalist of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, passed away in November 1998 he had accepted the limitations of Parkinson’s disease. "He was remarkably resigned and cheerful in spite of not being able to do the work he wanted to do," says Diana Rowley, whose husband first travelled the Canadian Arctic with Manning in 1936. That Manning was 86 years old and still hankering for more work would not surprise anyone who knew this indomitable explorer.

Tom Manning (Photo courtesy of Diana Rowley)

When he invited archeologist Graham Rowley to join that first expedition, Manning, a native of England, was 25 years old and had already spent two years on Southampton Island studying Inuit survival techniques. His success at dogsled travel and his willingness to consume game as Inuit do earned him high respect in the North. "An Eskimo said Tom was the best white man ever to travel Banks Island," says Graham Rowley, referring to a later expedition. "He was oblivious to the cold. He seemed to enjoy discomfort."

Manning’s stamina served him well in a career that included mapping the last major uncharted tract in the Canadian Arctic: the Foxe Basin coast of Baffin Island. He studied archeological sites, birds and wildlife, particularly polar bears. He once travelled almost 1,000 kilometres alone, by dogsled, partly over fioating ice. He canoed the circumference of Banks Island. And he initiated and led an effort to rebuild the caribou population on Southampton Island, using helicopters to fiy young caribou from nearby Coats Island.

Manning earned many honours for his work, including the Massey Medal in 1977 and a Patron’s Medal of Britain’s Royal Geographical Society; he was also an Officer of the Order of Canada. A quiet man, he spoke little of his northern adventures, but his commitment to geographical studies never wavered. He left a generous bequest to the Society, which will be used to promote geographic education in Canada.

— A.L.

Turning Points
In 1953, royal fever gripped much of the nation as Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom. The Canadian Geographical Journal reflected the mood in its coverage of all things royal, from a story on swans, the royal bird, to entire issues devoted to the Queen’s coronation (August 1953) and to the royal tour of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway (September 1959). In 1957, the Canadian Geographical Society was granted the right to add royal to its title, through the efforts of Governor General Vincent Massey, then patron of the Society.

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