magazine / so03
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September/October 2003 issue |
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In the mind of a clever predator
 As
a young boy, Andrew Manske spent hours scanning the skies for the flash of a falcon or the
swoop of a hawk. As soon as he spotted one, he quickly sketched its fleeting outline.
Manske eventually traded his pencil for a video camera, and while others his age were shooting
garage-band music videos, the teenager was outside capturing birds of prey on film. It would
become his life’s work.
Now an experienced wildlife filmmaker, Manske has spent seven years travelling across North
America to film the feathered predators that seized his imagination as a child. His most
recent project has him exploring the life of owls for a documentary in the "CG
Presents" series
on Discovery Channel Canada.
"We want to put the camera in an owl’s head," says Manske. "We want to give
the audience a chance to see what it’s like to be an owl."
Getting into the mind of an owl while carrying a bulky camera is no easy task. Manske spent
several weeks hoisted 12 metres up a tree and hidden in a blind a stone’s toss from a nesting
pair of great grey owls. Sitting silently through the evening, he captured such moments as
the male returning with the day’s catch and the female gently tending her two fluffy owlets.
Manske has also ventured into the boreal forest north of Edmonton to film barred owls, hawk
owls, snowy owls and the pop can-sized saw-whet owl. Using high-speed film, he has collected
stunning footage of razor-sharp talons snatching unsuspecting prey and the graceful fold
of wings as an owl torpedoes through the canopy.
Manske’s hour-long documentary will be one of eight broadcast early next year.
Michael Bhardwaj
Odyssey delayed
In the July/August issue of Canadian Geographic, readers were introduced to Dave
Woodman, who was planning a ninth expedition to the Arctic in August to hunt for one of the
lost ships of explorer Sir John Franklin, which were abandoned by their crews in 1848. A
number of Woodman’s previous expeditions have been supported by The
Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Due to difficulties in obtaining the required archaeology permit from the Nunavut
government, Woodman has been obliged to delay the expedition until August 2004.
Climb every mountain …
Montréal-based adventurer Bernard Voyer delivers to audiences in the Maritimes tales
of his treks to the North and South poles and to the world’s highest summits. His multimedia
presentation is to be held on September 29 in Halifax, September 30 in Moncton (in French)
and October 1 in Fredericton. For more information, please see the Society’s website.
A digital world view
High school students in the Far North will tour the virtual world of geography this fall
with a session of hands-on training in the use of geographic information systems (GIS).
Veteran teacher Al Friesen, who has been using GIS for the past four years to supplement
his geography lessons, will lead a series of workshops at Kiilinik High School, in Cambridge
Bay, Nunavut, in September. Friesen, from Brandon, Man., has been invited to share his knowledge
as part of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s Fraser Lectureship in Northern Studies,
which promotes exchanges of expertise between southern and northern Canada.
The students will learn the basics of GIS by using a mapping program that is able to look
at a specific location and the relevant population, climate or economic information simultaneously. "When
you have a group of 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds saying ‘That’s cool!’ then you’ve got
to be on to something," says Friesen.
M.B.
A geographic visionary
 Roger
Tomlinson was a freshly minted geographer in his twenties when he came up with a concept
that would revolutionize his field. It was the early 1960s, and he was working at an aerial
surveying and mapping company in Ottawa, involved in a project to find a site for a pulp
and paper mill in Kenya. The job required manual analysis of reams of maps at different scales,
a time-consuming and expensive endeavour. After he was told twice to sharpen his pencil on
cost estimates for the project, Tomlinson thought that if there were a way of entering maps
into a computer, it might crunch the information more effectively and cheaply. Soon after,
he began developing the world’s first geographic information system (GIS).
GIS is a computer system for integrating, analyzing and displaying data about Earth from
maps, charts or related statistics. The technology is used all over the world for national
defence, pollution monitoring, policing, school-bus routing and forestry management, among
countless other applications. For his singular vision and achievement in the field of geography,
Tomlinson has been awarded the RCGS Gold
Medal.
The widespread use of GIS shows that "geography is becoming a vital component of just
about every job you can think of," says Tomlinson, who likens the impact of GIS on geography
to that of the microscope on biology. "We’ve got a tool that allows us to describe the
world with much greater facility than we ever have before. And, by definition, that’s going
to change what we understand about it."
Monique Roy-Sole
Team Canada
 The
team representing Canada at the National Geographic World Championship stopped off in Ottawa
for a behind-the-scenes tour of Canadian Geographic before flying to the competition in Tampa,
Fla., in July. Ethan Macaulay, 13, of Bedford, N.S., Jacob Cosman, 15, of Kamloops, B.C.,
and Denny Fyck, 15, of Kitchener, Ont., join editor Rick Boychuk (at right, left to right)
at the layout wall, where they get a sneak peek at the September/October issue. The threesome
placed seventh out of 18 countries.
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