Explore: A Canadian Geographic podcast

We're thrilled to welcome Julian Brave Noisecat to Explore to talk about his award winning documentary Sugarcane, the powerful and very personal story of the multi-generational trauma caused to his family and members of the Williams Lake First Nations by the physical and sexual abuse endured for almost a century at St. Joseph's Mission Residential School in British Columbia. The documentary won the Director's Award at the Sundance Film Festival and is showing in cinemas across North America and around the world.

Julian will be familiar to many of you for his work as contributing editor at Canadian Geographic and his many smart and thoughtful articles in the magazine around First Nations issues. His award-winning journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker. His first book, We Survived the Night, will be published by Knopf and Penguin Random House in fall 2025.

“This might be why people go down rivers!”



We're back in the Arctic for the last of our 2024 Summer Canoe Series. This time, it's with Dave Greene, who, along with paddling partner Chris Giard, led an RCGS-flagged Akilineq Canoe Expedition from Yellowknife, N.W.T., to Baker Lake, NU, in 2023. During this time, they covered 1400 kilometres, including Canada's newest national park, Thaidene Nëné. A good chunk of their trip also involved paddling upstream (see episode title). Greene has some incredible stories to share from this trip, including close calls with wildlife and a lot of great wisdom on how to plan, carry out and fund remote expeditions of this scale.

This is Greene’s third RCGS-flagged expedition. In all, he has led nine expeditions, most of them by canoe and lasting 30 days or more. Greene is a teacher in Halifax, N.S., and education is at the core of his travels, bringing Canada's natural world to young people. Greene hosts the storytelling platform Night of Adventure, which is focused on travel and adventuring and includes a podcast and a film festival.

Musician Sam Polley’s first canoe trip was with his dad, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, his mom and siblings. He doesn’t remember much about it, but he clearly got hooked. All these years later, he’s still an avid canoe tripper with a love of the lakes and rivers in northern Ontario. Sam is best known for his rockabilly band Sam Polley and The Old Tomorrows and playing with The Jim Cuddy Band, fronted by his father. When Sam isn’t touring or in the studio or writing songs, he likes to feed his muse by taking off on canoe trips into the wilds north of Toronto. We’re into September now. Summer is drifting away, there’s mist on the water in the morning and a nip in the air, even when the sun is out. One of the things we get into in this conversation is Sam’s love of autumn canoe tripping. The lakes and rivers are largely empty of people and along with all that space and peace — and your pick of campsites — there’s also no bugs. And while Sam is a self-confessed Toronto boy through and through, he is proof that even if you live in the most densely populated city in Canada, amazing canoe tripping adventures are still accessible. We get into his trips in Algonquin Park, Killarney and Temagami. It’s a fun romp spiced with his own music.

"In my mind, when I want to relax, I take myself back to the Wind River."

Tetlit Gwich'in means people of the headwaters, and Bobbi Rose Koe is on a mission to live up to her people's name. 

Born and raised in the Tetlit Gwich'in community of Fort McPherson, on the Peel River north of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories, Koe was lucky to spend her childhood with her grandparents, who regularly took her hunting and fishing out on the land. When she reached her mid-20s, she translated those skills into guiding adventure canoe trips on rivers in the Canadian Arctic. But just a decade ago, she was shocked to discover that she was one of the few First Nations people in the industry, let alone Indigenous women. The resistance she felt coming into river guiding led her to be the change that was needed.  

She set up Diinji Zhuh, an Indigenous-run canoe-tripping outfitter based in Whitehorse, YT. She is also setting up the first school to train Indigenous river guides. Koe and her teams lead trips across the Arctic. Still, her favourite rivers are in the traditional lands of her people, the Peel Watershed, a system of stunningly beautiful whitewater rivers. I paddled some of those rivers with my son Graham and cousin Terry in 2018 for Canadian Geographic. Koe and I bonded over talk about her favourite rivers in the Peel watershed, her role in the successful fight to protect the watershed from mineral development, mapping by storytelling, her mission to get Indigenous people back out into their ancestral lands, and the warm feeling of excitement she gets paddling through lands that her family have travelled and known for generations. Also, in 2021, Koe was presented with the Canadian River Heritage Award.  

Enjoy!

Canadian Geographic’s Explore Podcast Canoe series is back for its third year, and we’re thrilled to start with Canadian canoeing legend Mike Ranta.

Ranta was not only the first person to canoe solo across Canada in a single paddling season but he's also done it twice! His adventure began with his dog Spitzi and a portage over the Rocky Mountains. In this fun and engaging episode, Ranta takes us on a journey from his earliest paddling experiences as a child in and around Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park, one of the world’s premiere canoe-tripping destinations, to his many canoe adventures across Canada. This includes his little pandemic getaway from Lake Huron to James Bay and back. He discusses his love for the poet Robert Service, some of his favourite camping hacks, gear and canoes, his Métis heritage and the welcome he's received in the many First Nations communities he's paddled through. Ranta spoke to us from his home base of Killarney, Ont., on Lake Huron, where he leads canoe expeditions and makes paddles, including the world's largest paddle, The Big Dipper. At 32 metres, Ranta carved it to appreciate Canada's veterans, one of his favourite causes. 

Stay tuned for more canoe episodes coming in August and September!

"Shackleton died on that ship. And he's the only one who died on that ship. Of all his expeditions under his direct command, nobody else died except him, on his own ship. And that's the ship that we found. And it tells that story about his leadership."

- David Mearns, world-renowned shipwreck hunter and search director for the RCGS Shackleton-Quest Expedition.

Welcome to the second part of our series on the RCGS Shackleton-Quest Expedition. Today, we're delving into the intriguing details of the successful hunt for Quest, the last ship of the legendary polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. The discovery of this shipwreck holds a significant place in maritime history.

In this episode, we get a bit more into the nitty-gritty of the hunt, talking to David Mearns, the expedition's search director, and his associate director, Antoine Normandin, who did the research and math that helped pinpoint Quest’s location in the vast Labrador Sea.

Few are as renowned or have had as much success in finding shipwrecks as Mearns. For decades, he’s been uncovering famous wrecks around the world, including the oldest wreck from the age of discovery and the world's deepest wreck. His work on Shackleton’s shipwrecks has been particularly notable, showcasing his expertise in the field.

We’ll hear David Mearns' exciting description of leading the deep-sea search for Quest in this episode. But first, we’re going to talk with Antoine Normandin. As well as finding his first ever shipwreck with Quest, Antoine is a geographer who sits on the board of governors for the RCGS and is director of transportation planning for the National Capital Commission in Ottawa.

"That's it!" exclaimed John Geiger as he caught the first glimpse of Quest, the last ship of legendary polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Now resting 390 metres below the surface off the coast of Labrador, Quest was Shackleton’s last ship and the vessel he died on. 

Geiger, CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, is our guest on this episode of Explore, in which he tells the riveting story of the epic hunt for Quest and Shackleton's legacy. 

On June 9, in the rolling seas off Labrador, the RCGS-led Shackleton Quest Expedition made an amazing discovery. This was a historic moment for the Society and in the story of Shackleton, one of the greatest polar explorers of all time.

Geiger gives us an edge-of-your-seat, blow-by-blow description of the open-sea search for Quest, in which mechanical failures and setbacks nearly resulted in an abandoned expedition, just as the ship was discovered. 

Geiger, a bestselling author who has written extensively about Shackleton, also discusses the man who inspired the Quest hunt and his well-deserved fame as an explorer and inspirational leader.

Expedition members included the world-renowned shipwreck hunter David Mearns, RCGS Governor and geographer Antoine Normandin and RCGS Explorer-in-Residence and legendary diver Jill Heinerth. The expedition's honorary patrons included Shackleton’s granddaughter, the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton, and Chief Mi’sel Joe, the administrative Chief and spiritual leader of Miawpukek First Nation, in whose traditional waters the wreck was found.

Geiger is the international bestselling author of seven books, including Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition and The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible. His work has been translated into 14 languages. A graduate of the University of Alberta, Geiger holds an honorary Doctor of Law from the University of Calgary and is the recipient of both the Polar Medal and the Order of Canada.

Watch Inside the search for Quest, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last ship, a 12-minute documentary captured by RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Jill Heinerth.

"They can't fight if they don't eat."

That was the motto of the Farmerettes, the thousands of young women who took the place of male farmers and farmhands who had gone off to fight in the Second World War. While much has been written about the crucial role women played in factories during the war: building tanks, planes, munitions, and weapons of all kinds, etc., the story of Canadian farms, the breadbaskets of the war effort, remains largely untold. 

In this episode of Explore, we’ll rectify that by diving into the story of the Farmerettes, the mostly high school-aged women who kept Canadian farms running at a critical time.

Alison Lawrence’s newest play tells that story at the Fourth Line Theatre and Blyth Festival this summer. Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz is based on personal interviews with Farmerettes as well as letters, memoirs and oral histories. Her play is an intimate look at how that experience was not only transformative for the war effort but for these young women as well. 

Among the many hats she wears, Lawrence is currently a regular cast member on the Amazon Prime series The Lake and a familiar face on stages right across the country. She’s also the co-author of Bittergirl, the play that became a book, which became a musical, playing off-Broadway, across Canada and in the UK. She’s also a MacDowell Fellow and an alumna of the Banff Playwrights Lab.

Notorious for their seafaring ways and conquering territories far and wide, the Vikings burst onto the world scene around 800 AD. For hundreds of years, they raided, conquered, settled, and farmed in lands across Europe, Russia, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and across the North Atlantic to Iceland, Greenland, and then to what they called “Vinland,” our present-day Newfoundland. They did all this in longboats, effectively 60-foot open row boats with sails and virtually no navigation tools. 

Whatever their legacy of terror (our guest today has some thoughts on that), they were remarkable explorers who left an indelible legacy wherever they went.

Vancouver-based author Bill Arnott spent a decade tracing the voyages of the Vikings around the world for his award-winning Gone Viking series. 

In the best tradition of travel writers like Bill Bryson, Gone Viking takes you to where history happened, full of legends, lore, interesting characters and plenty of humour.

The most recent of the Trilogy, Gone Viking III: The Holy Grail, was released in the fall of 2023. 

Bill Arnott’s writing frequently appears in Canadian Geographic magazine, including recently an excerpt from his newest book, A Perfect Day for a Walk: The History, Cultures, and Communities of Vancouver, on Foot, which will be released this fall. He is also a Fellow of the RCGS sister organization, the Royal Geographical Society.

"You can’t look at a canoe or kayak without grounding yourself in the knowledge that this is a water-craft of Indigenous origin. For us, it’s about honouring the stories, honouring the communities."

As The Canadian Canoe Museum moves into its stunning new home on the Otonabee River in Peterborough, Ont. on May 11, Carolyn Hyslop and Jeremy Ward, the museum's executive director and curator, drop by Explore to talk canoes.

For Hyslop and Ward, every canoe and kayak is special, each has a story worth telling, and a heritage worth preserving. They have devoted decades to building up the world’s premier collection of canoes and kayaks at The

Canadian Canoe Museum and are ready to celebrate the opening of a new home for the museum, a building worthy of the 600-plus water-

craft it houses.