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November/December 2000 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook The Inside Story Feature: Alert, Nunavut À la carte Curious by nature Reverberations

Sleuthing for Franklin’s crew
With a missing captain and crew, lead poisoning and cannibalism, the 1845 expedition of Sir John Franklin is one of the most riveting tales in the history of Arctic exploration. For long-time Society volunteer and Franklin-phile George Hobson, the news that graves believed to belong to some of Franklin’s crew were found this summer was bittersweet: he missed the find by only a week.

Researchers aboard the St. Roch II, a vessel that retraced the historic 1940-42 RCMP voyage through the Northwest Passage, were led to five graves on an island just off Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, by resident Louis Kamookak. Hobson (left, with the St. Roch II’s Sgt. Ken Burton) had been aboard the ship just days before, searching for remains of Franklin’s two vessels. A geophysicist, Hobson has been a Society expedition leader and lecturer and has been working on the Franklin mystery for some 30 years. He says the graves are "another link in the mystery of Sir John," and he is hopeful about what they may reveal of the ill-fated voyage. "Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just find a skeleton there, with a blue serge jacket on and a note in his pocket for his wife, explaining what really did happen?"

(Photo by David Barbour)

In the grey zone
In the coastal waters of British Columbia, grey whales like to go where it’s, well, grey. Just ask Ian Scott, who, with the help of a Society grant, has studied the cetaceans’ foraging patterns off Clayoquot Sound.

"It is a grey and foggy place most of the time, which can make it hard for research," says Scott, a recent geography graduate from the University of Victoria. Indeed, locals joke that the whale is "at one with the greyness" of the area.

Scott’s mapping work seems to indicate that Eschrichtius robustus likely uses less energy bottom-feeding than feeding in the water column - swimming along with its mouth partly open and squishing the water out through its baleen, where plankton is trapped.

Still, several of the greys, a species on the rebound after being hunted practically to extinction, did make themselves known to Scott and his fellow researchers. Whales nicknamed "Scratchy Dot" and "Taillights" were spotted regularly, and one of the 35-tonne mammals even gave Scott a close encounter of the whale kind. "We wouldn’t try and get too close to them," he says, "but one came right up to the boat, rolled on its side and had a good long look at us."

Kids keep it green
Watch for kids scoping out green spaces during Geography Awareness Week 2000, beginning November 12. This year’s theme is "Here Today, Here Tomorrow — A Geographic Focus on Conservation." Packages going to the 3,000 teachers across the country who are members of the Society’s Canadian Council for Geographic Education are chock full of material, including classroom activities and the Canadian Geographic wetlands poster from our annual environment issue (CG May/June 2000). But students won’t be bogged down with information: young eco-adventurers are encouraged to get first-hand conservation experience, mapping the green spaces in their schoolyard and neighbourhood, tallying their own water usage, drafting a water-conservation plan for their family or finding out about the wetlands in their own community and how they are being protected.

Teachers interested in joining the Society’s network of geography educators can register electronically by visiting the Council’s website at www.ccge.org.

Sliding across the world
We may be focussed on canada, but the RCGS still manages to do a little globe-trotting. Taking a cue from our goal of making Canada better known to Canadians and to the world, the Society has developed a slide photo set available for use in Canada or on foreign educational exchanges. So far, this visual snapshot of the people and places of Canada has had its passport stamped everywhere from Belgium, Sweden and Siberia to Brazil, Colombia and Peru.

Award
After 27 years of working above and beyond the call of duty, including taking the Society’s accounting and payroll department from the dark days of adding machines to more modern methods of number crunching, CG accountant Winifred Wadasinghe-Wijay, who retired this September, has earned more than the standard gold watch. Wadasinghe-Wijay is this year’s winner of the RCGS Camsell Award for outstanding service to the Society. But she won’t be gone for long: after a vacation abroad, she plans to return as a volunteer for the Society’s programs.

What do our parks mean to you?
Our members are passionate about national parks. When online editor Elizabeth Shilts asked what these protected areas mean to you, she was overwhelmed by the response. So far, hundreds have logged on to www.canadiangeographic.ca, including the Alberta woman who said parks "need to be protected for the richness of life within." Check it out, and share your passion. And, as part of our ongoing coverage of Canada’s national parks, watch for writer-photographer Dawn Goss’s upcoming feature on life next door to Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park.

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