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November/December 2006 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Wildlife stories Feature: Stealing the scene Feature: Lake Winnipeg Feature: Alberta’s Cypress Hills The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

Squirrels on the porch, chickadees at the feeder, raccoons in the trash, black bears in the backyard, deer in the fields, moose on the highway: our lives intersect in so many ways with those of other species. Even the über-urbanites of Toronto encounter coyotes, foxes and other critters that range in and out of the megalopolis via its ravines and river valleys and the Lake Ontario shoreline.

While it is true that wildlife in your house, yard or neighbourhood can be a nuisance, get beyond the irritation, and you’ll quickly discover that their lives can be as interesting — and sometimes as mysterious and unknowable — as those of your human neighbours.

Wildlife stories are an important element in our editorial lineup. In the past year alone, we’ve explored polar bear paternity, travelled with Inuit narwhal hunters, told the tale of moose exported to New Zealand and followed the Porcupine caribou herd migration. But we hear so many more tales from writers and readers of threatened or recovering species, scientific studies about wildlife behaviour, terrifying encounters with predators and reckless human assaults on critical habitat that we decided to wrap up the year with a collection of great wildlife stories. In the first of what will be an annual compendium, executive editor Eric Harris has drawn together a selection of stories that range from an account of the first person believed to have been killed by non-captive wolves in North America in the past 100 years to the latest on that grizzly/polar bear hybrid discovered in the Arctic last spring.

Lake Winnipeg is the repository for dish soap, road salt and everything else that gets poured into sewers and rivers in cities and farms stretching from the Rockies to Ontario and four northern states. It is the world’s tenth largest freshwater lake, and despite its size, has been overlooked and neglected by Canada’s environmental authorities. Now, it is in crisis. We sent writer Allan Casey out for a cruise aboard a hand-me-down research vessel with a clutch of government scientists to report on Lake Winnipeg’s dire condition and on the remarkable group of citizens who have come together to address its ailments. Casey’s story is both disturbing and hopeful. The big drink, he concludes, deserves and needs our attention.

Also in the issue: Candace Savage introduces readers to an archaeological dig in Alberta’s Cypress Hills that has opened a window on 8,000 years of human history. Allen Abel meets the men and women who deliver scenic urban and rural Canadian geography for Hollywood films. And Craig Saunders recounts his punishing attempt to complete the world’s longest cross-country ski marathon.

— Rick Boychuk

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