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November/December 1999 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Inside Story Feature: Cape Breton coal Whale-eating bears

Canada’s silver medallists (from left): Alexander Schull, Mark Laurie, Bryan Jansens and Alexander Subtelny

FEW CANADIANS had heard the word "Papiamento" before 16-year-old Torontonian Mark Laurie offered it as the correct answer to the following question at the International Geography Olympiad, held in August in Toronto: "Name the Spanish-based creole language of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire that contains Dutch and Portuguese influences."

Papiamento has since been cited in many news reports about the competition and become oddly familiar. This is partly because Laurie’s answer ended an agonizing 12-question tiebreaker round with Costa Rica, propelling Canada’s team to the medal round. There, Laurie, Alexander Schull, 16, of Pembroke, Ont., Bryan Jansens, 13, of Calgary and Alexander Subtelny, 14, of Toronto — winners at the Great Canadian Geography Challenge over the past two years — won silver. The U.S.A. won gold and Russia took bronze.

Canada’s medal follows our 1995 Olympiad bronze and 1997 gold. "We now have a complete set," says Dick Mansfield, chair of the Canadian Council for Geographic Education and coordinator of the team. "We’re the only country to consistently be in the medal round."

There is no denying this is impressive. But the real reason Laurie, the team’s captain, has received so much attention is the obscurity of the fact he so effortlessly plucked from his memory. Even his teammates thought it eerie. "Mark Laurie must have some psychic ability," says Schull. It was one thing that Laurie had heard of Papiamento, quite another that he had mentioned it to teammates the night before.

Laurie insists there is nothing remarkable about this; it is simply a matter of having a broad knowledge and reviewing it, topic by topic — in this case, languages. "It’s not in the least ESP. I was not saying ’This is going to be a question.’ It’s more, refresh your memory, this is worthy of note."

The biannual Olympiad, founded by the National Geographic Society in 1993, attracted 11 countries this year. It included an orienteering challenge at the Metro Toronto Zoo, a 45-minute written test with 60 questions, and a series of oral questions.

When Laurie was a young boy poring over maps and atlases and devouring information about places he hoped to visit — initially the Caribbean, hence the Papiamento nugget — he had no motive beyond curiosity. The Great Canadian Geography Challenge and the Olympiad have changed that. "It allows you to appreciate your knowledge. That’s really a gift. Now I can see what more I could possibly do with geography." For now, he says, that simply means to be a good traveller.

But that, says Mansfield, is enough. "Geography is a fundamental discipline that regardless of career path is an important form of literacy. You’ll find lots of competitions for kids who play the violin or basketball. We think it’s important that students who have an affinity for geography have the opportunity to shine."

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Turning points
IN 1992, a team of mountaineers and scientists reached the summit of Mount Logan in the Yukon — Canada’s highest peal — and obtained the first accurate measurement of its height (5,959 metres) using GPS satellite technology. This marked the first time the RCGS coordinated a major expedition. Following its success, the Society began to support the ventures of other Canadian explorers. Notable expeditions include the recreation of voyageur travels by birchbark canoe from Thunder Bay, Ont., to Cumberland House, Sask., and a trek to King William Island, Nunavut, to seek records from Sir John Franklin’s last voyage.

Arctic oases and cultural beacons
Scholarship winners probe northern wetlands and the demise of lighthouses and grain elevators

ROBERT HODGSON was drawn to the Arctic as many geographers have been before him: alight with the desire to encounter the unknown. "It’s more challenging than to work on something that’s been studied so much I would just be adding a small piece to a big puzzle," says Hodgson, a master’s student at Toronto’s York University.

Hodgson’s chance to start piecing together the edges of a new puzzle came this year, with the James W. Bourque Studentship in Northern Geography. The $10,000 award, funded by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society and administered by the Canadian Northern Studies Trust, goes toward Hodgson’s thesis study of Arctic wetlands. He spent June, July and August at Resolute, Nunavut, testing water levels and measuring moss thickness to determine the stability of these small, lush carpets in a barren, gravel landscape. They are, says Hodgson, the oases of the Arctic. His main concern is how resistant these wetlands will be to climate change and global warming. What would happen to the wetlands if year-round snowbanks that feed them melted away?

Kerry Lynn Lake, recipient of the RCGS’s other major scholarship, the $5,000 Maxwell Studentship in Human Geography, is also concerned with the impact of accelerated geographical change, but in her case the change is largely economic and the geography is cultural. A geography major working on a Master of Arts degree at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., Lake spent the past year in the town halls of Newfoundland and Saskatchewan, listening to talk of lighthouses and grain elevators. She sought to understand what it means to those who built, ran, used, or simply lived near these once-essential structures to see them disappear.

"There’s a nostalgic romanticism there with lighthouses," says Lake. "With the call of light, guiding people home." She draws parallels with grain elevators. "It’s the Prairie lighthouse, a vertical structure in a horizontal landscape. Without them you drive past whole communities."

Her study is grounded in geographic theory on landscape and memory, identity, and the transformation of landmarks into icons. She is examining, she says, "how people react when they see a piece of their culture slowly dying."

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