“The question would be, “Why not?” 

We love a good journey here on Explore, and Dianne Whelan went on a doozy of one with lots of great stories to share.

Whelan became the first person to travel the entire Trans Canada Trail across Canada, the longest hiking trail in the world stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific. She travelled by bike, foot and canoe through all seasons. Throughout her journey, she focused on reconciliation, honouring First Nations, Inuit, and Métis People who have been an essential part of the story of this land for thousands of years, long before Canada was created. Her six-year, 24,000-kilometre odyssey is now captured in her new documentary, "500 Days in the Wild." It premieres at the Whistler International Film Festival in early December 2023.

Enjoy!

Today’s guest is Jimmy Ullikatalik, the manager of the Taloyoak Hunters and Trappers Association and project manager for the Aviqtuuq Inuit Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA), a proposed 90,000 square kilometres of marine, terrestrial and fresh-water ecosystems in Nunavut. Jimmy also represented Nunavut at COP26, the UN Climate Change conference in Glasgow.

In October, I was lucky enough to make my second trip to Nunavut, to the hamlet of Taloyoak. It is the most northerly community in mainland Canada. It is home to about 1,000 people, mostly Inuit, on the Aviqtuuq or Boothia peninsula, which juts into the Arctic Ocean and Northwest Passage west of Hudson's Bay. The town is charming, featuring rows of brightly coloured homes reminiscent of Atlantic Canada. It's situated on Spence Bay and surrounded by a lovely rolling, rocky landscape. 

I was there with my colleague Tom Lundy for a week of podcast training with Inuit youth at the Netsilik school, supported by Canadian Geographic and Polar Knowledge Canada. We'll be bringing you the students amazing storytelling in the new year.

Today, we focus on Jimmy, an engaging and remarkable person. The Aviqtuuq Peninsula that he is pushing to make into an Inuit-run conservation zone would be the first of its kind anywhere in the world. Inuit locals are already patrolling it as part of the federally funded Guardians Program, Inuit-led ecological monitoring and knowledge gathering.

The wildlife population here on the Aviqtuuq Peninsula remains strong and healthy, with large herds of caribou and muskox, polar bears, foxes, seals, whales, fish, migratory birds and more. That, in part, is because the elders in this community successfully blocked a planned oil pipeline through the peninsula in 1972. That victory is important in a place where hunting and fishing on the land are significant contributors to local food security and a means of maintaining physical and mental health. Jimmy hopes to lock that 1972 victory into place for generations to come.

The opening song was performed by Talyoak throat singers Martha Neeveacheak and Joyce Ashevak, who participated in the Canadian Geographic “Pass the Mic” Podcast workshop. 

Enjoy!

Best-selling author Karen Pinchin is our guest on this episode of Explore. Her new book, Kings of their Own Ocean, is the phenomenal tale of an incredible fish, the bluefin tuna, which has gone from being the cornerstone of the Roman Empire to the much sought-after catch brought to near extinction in the past century in our own boom-bust, globalized economy. Ultimately, this is a heartening wildlife story, filled with an incredible cast of characters, a globetrotting look into the history of bluefin tuna and how regular people, along with industry, scientists and governments, banded together and brought this magnificent fish back from the brink of being completely wiped out. Karen Pinchin is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work has appeared in Canadian Geographic along with Scientific American, Vox, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, National Geographic, the Canadian Press and Maclean's Magazine. Originally from Toronto, she teaches narrative non-fiction writing in the Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of King’s College in Halifax.

I’m thrilled to have Mark Terry with us today. He’s had a long and interesting career that includes everything from being a newspaper reporter at the Toronto Star to making a documentary about the master of horror Clive Barker to his ongoing work with the UN producing groundbreaking documentaries about the impact of climate change on our polar regions. This is a fun and interesting conversation with a true innovator. We get into everything from swimming with penguins to how he wound up on the back of the Canadian 50 dollar bill (look at the tiny figure on the top deck of the icebreaker) to his documentary work and how he has shifted that into geo-docs, a new way of making climate documentaries and information more accessible, "google maps with documentaries" as he puts it. Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Canada and is an Adjunct Professor at York University and Wilfred Laurier. 

He has two new books out, Speaking Youth To Power: Influencing Climate Policy at the United Nations and Mapping the Environmental Humanities – The Emerging Role of Geomedia in the Environmental Humanities.

In January 2023, Caroline Coté set the record for a solo expedition to the South Pole by a woman, travelling 1,130 kilometres on skis from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole in just 33 days. This is a fun and fascinating conversation.

The bulk of it is about her record-breaking trip to the South Pole on her own, dragging everything she needs in a sled behind her through harsh terrain and climate. Coté gets into the physical and mental challenge of doing this alone, dealing with broken skis and gear, being reduced to eating butter on her last days and how the music of Gilles Vigneault and others blocked out the Antarctic winds and kept propelling her forward.

We also get into her journey from growing up in Longueuil, Quebec, outside of Montreal, finding inspiration in nature in the little forest behind her house, to becoming a documentary filmmaker and the epic polar adventurer she is today. We also discuss why her favourite place in Canada is Grise Fjord in Canada’s high Arctic. 

For more on her work expeditions, go to www.caroline-cote.com Enjoy!

*Trigger Warning. This episode is about Residential Schools and includes descriptions of abuse. It may only be suitable for some listeners. If you require emotional support, there is a 24-hour Residential School Crisis Line, which you can reach at 1-866-925-4419. 

Jeannie Ehaloak was just four years old when she was taken away from her parents on Victoria Island in what is now Nunavut and sent to a Residential School far away in Inuvik. The impact on her was profound and long-lasting. It is a period of her life she feels she has had to work hard to overcome, which in many ways she has: becoming Mayor of Cambridge Bay, a member of Nunavut's Legislative Assembly and a cabinet minister - all of this, a victory over the attempts to erase her identity while in Residential School.

There is a lot of focus, and rightly so, on the impact of the Residential School system on First Nations people. The system was first set up to wipe out their cultures and languages by forcing First Nations children to attend government-funded, church-run boarding schools, which were sites of unspeakable systemic sexual, mental and physical abuses. Over 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to these institutions between the 1830's and 1990's. Thousands of them died there.

The story of the Inuit in Residential Schools is less well known but very similar in its brutality. The Inuit in Canada’s Arctic weren’t forced to send their children to Residential Schools until the early 1950s, about the same time the Canadian government was forcing them off of the land and into permanent communities, ending millennia of traditional, nomadic life.

Despite the shorter timeline in the North, the impact of Residential schools on the Inuit was very damaging to children, families, and communities. This is Jeannie Ehaloaks' story. 

Early in the podcast, Jeannie mentions the Dew Line, which was a series of radar stations set up by the U.S. and Canadian governments during the Cold War to protect against Russian missile attacks over the Arctic Circle. The stations were often in remote locations and maintained by Inuit employees and their families.

We're thrilled that Gary and Joanie McGuffin are joining us for this last episode of our 2023 Summer Canoe series. Be sure to check out the previous two, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Adam Shoalts. 

Arguably no couple has paddled more of Canada's waterways than Gary and Joanie have together, and it all started just over 40 years ago when, as newlyweds, they turned their honeymoon into a canoe trip from the Atlantic Ocean, across Canada and up into the Arctic Ocean. That trip inspired the best-selling memoir Where Rivers Run, which was followed by many more paddling adventures and best-sellers. Their documentary, Painted Land: In Search of the Group of Seven, about their efforts to track down, by canoe, the exact sites of famous Group of Seven paintings in Northern Ontario, won a Canadian Screen Award. They are the founders of the Lake Superior Watershed Conservancy and their current project is a Smithsonian exhibit, traveling through Canada and the U.S., called Stories of the Boreal Forest.

Gary and Joanie have a lot of great stories from their many paddling adventures and there are a lot of great nuggets of advice in here for young explorers, including how to get started and how to canoe long distances as a couple, and then with a child, and then with a dog. It’s a fun and inspiring conversation. Enjoy! 

"That's what was in my head. If anything went wrong, if I let the paddle slip out of my hand, if it broke, if I had some freak muscle spasm or cramp, I'm going over Niagara falls." 

It's always great to have RCGS Westaway Explorer-in-Residence Adam Shoalts back on the podcast. And this conversation underlines why. He joins us to talk about his epic, solo 3400-kilometre canoe and hiking journey from his backyard near Long Point on Lake Erie all the way to the Arctic Ocean in northern Quebec. It's also the subject of his newest book, Where the Falcon Flies: A 3,400 Kilometre Odyssey From My Doorstep to the Arctic. Unlike his previous journeys, in the remotest parts of Canada, this journey first takes Adam through the mostly densely populated parts of Canada, providing lots of insights about Canadians, our cities and their relationship to nature, as well as Adam's more familiar adventures with northern wildlife and fast flowing rivers heading into the Arctic ocean.

If you haven’t listened to episode one of our canoe series featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, go back and check that out where you listen. It’s a fascinating conversation about how canoeing has shaped him into the person and leader he is.

And there’s a video version on Canadian Geographic’s YouTube channel.

We also want to let you know that on November 29th, Adam Shoalts will be appearing in person for a CanGeo Talk about this latest expedition in the Alex Trebek Theatre at RCGS headquarters, 50 Sussex Drive in Ottawa.

We're thrilled to have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as our guest on Explore as we kick off our second annual Summer Canoe series. This is a fun one.

As you will hear, he is absolutely passionate about canoeing. It's a past-time he fell in love with early while paddling with his father, the late Prime Minister and fellow canoe enthusiast, Pierre Trudeau and continues to enjoy today whenever his busy schedule allows.

In this episode, he talks about the canoe trips he took with his father, both as a child and an adult. And how he was taught to paddle by the filmmaker and canoeing legend Bill Mason. 

The conversation takes us into the rapids of the Nahanni, to the lakes and rivers of the boreal forests, and frothing waters of the Rouge, the Tatshenshini-Alsek and the Dumoine. And he shares some tips along the way: "Duct tape is like the force, it has a dark side and a light side, and it binds the universe together." And "What happens if the wind comes up on the river? Well, paddle harder and sing louder."

Enjoy! 

“When you have that moment of empowerment — when someone believes in you — all of a sudden, a switch is thrown in your head, and you believe it’s possible.” 

James Cameron, ocean explorer and Oscar-winning director of Titanic, Avatar, Aliens and more, is our guest with Dr Joe MacInnis on this episode of Explore. The two friends took part in an intimate conversation honouring the important role that MacInnis, Cameron's longtime mentor, played in his career and in ocean exploration. It's a fascinating discussion about the future of our oceans, leadership and the importance of mentoring.

“Mentorship is magical,” says MacInnis, “because it moves information from one generation to the next. And it’s reciprocal because there is a lovely exchange between two paired minds trying to overcome obstacles.” 

Their conversation is tied to the exhibit, PRESSURE: James Cameron Into the Abyss, on at the RCGS headquarters, 50 Sussex Drive, in Ottawa until September 1st. It features the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible that Cameron used to dive to the deepest parts of our oceans and our planet.