Explore: A Canadian Geographic podcast: Recent Episodes
Canadian Geographic
Host David McGuffin talks to Canada’s greatest explorers about their adventures and what inspires their spirit of discovery.
Raised on Newfoundland’s west coast, Jenn Thornhill Verma grew up immersed in the life and lore of fishing communities and the rhythms of the North Atlantic. She is the author of the bestselling book Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys, a contributor to Canadian Geographic, and a fellow with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network, where she recently reported a series for the Globe and Mail on the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
In this episode of Explore, Thornhill Verma and podcast host David McGuffin discuss the legacy of the cod fishery collapse in the early 1990's, the politics of fisheries management, and the urgent effort to protect one of the world’s most endangered whales: the North Atlantic right whale. With fewer than 400 individuals remaining, these whales face a variety of threats, including ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, and, of course, the climate crisis.
Want to learn more?* Visit Thornhill Verma’s favourite place in Canada: Nain, Labrador * Watch the documentary, Angry Inuk (National Film Board of Canada) * Browse Thornhill Verma's art (Art - Jenn Thornhill Verma) * Discover more about whales in Explore episode 99 with Canadian sperm whale researcher Shane Gero – a fascinating conversation about the attempts to decode the sperm whale's click language using AI * Read Punctuation's mark: Can we save the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale? by Alanna Mitchell with photography by Nick Hawkins
What does a ship that sank a century ago off the Florida Keys have to do with the birth of the Royal Canadian Navy?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
Before there was a Royal Canadian Navy, there was the HMCS Canada, a steel-hulled vessel that trained Canada's first naval officers, escorted First World War convoys, survived the Halifax Explosion, and helped lay the foundations of a young nation's naval service. Yet despite its remarkable legacy, most Canadians have never heard of it.
In this episode of Explore, host David McGuffin sits down with naval historian, underwater archaeologist and former Royal Canadian Navy officer Joseph Frey to tell the extraordinary story of Canada's forgotten first warship: the HMSC Canada.
From its launch in 1904 to its wartime service and eventual sinking off the Florida Keys in 1926, Frey traces the unlikely journey of a vessel that helped shape Canadian history.
The conversation also follows a modern RCGS Flagged expedition, led by Frey, to the wreck nearly a century after the ship's loss. Using advanced diving techniques and 3D photogrammetry, Frey and his team documented the wreck, answered long-standing questions about how it sank, and helped restore HMCS Canada's place in Canada's historical memory.
Along the way, Frey reflects on his role in the discovery of HMS Erebus, the enduring appeal of underwater exploration, and why forgotten stories like HMCS Canada still matter today.
Whether you're listening in a car, a canoe, a sailboat, a dock, or somewhere along Canada's coastline, this is a story of exploration, naval history, and the remarkable rediscovery of a ship that helped build a nation.
Joseph Frey is Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, a Fellow of The Explorers Club, a naval historian, an underwater archaeologist, and a retired Royal Canadian Navy officer. He was a member of the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition that discovered HMS Erebus, one of Sir John Franklin's lost ships, and has spent decades researching and documenting Canada's maritime history both above and below the waterline.
Recommended episodes
- Michael Palin — Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages
- Jill Heinerth — Bell Island's U-Boat Wrecks
- Under the Ice — Andrew Bramburger and Andrew Budziak
Credits:
Closing music is Heart of Oak, the official march of the Royal Canadian Navy played by the RCN's Stadacona Band. Halifax, NS.
Explore: A Canadian Geographic Podcast is hosted by David McGuffin.
Produced by David McGuffin and ExploreProductions.ca in partnership with Canadian Geographic.
Canadian Geographic:
- Editor-in-chief: Alexandra Pope
- Digital and travel editor: Madigan Cotterill
- Digital marketing manager: Caroline Workman
For more stories of adventure, science, history, and exploration, visitcanadiangeographic.ca
What do endless prairie highways, a runaway tour bus, a hockey stick used as cruise control, and one of the greatest Canadian rock bands of all time have in common?
Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman have the stories.
From overpacked motel rooms on the road, to their tour bus almost going off a cliff in B.C., to witnessing polar bear attacks in Churchill, to revealing the real inspiration behind hits like American Woman and Undun, Bachman and Cummings share unforgettable stories from more than six decades of music, friendship, and life on the road.
Along the way, they explain why the wide-open spaces of the Canadian prairies continue to inspire them, how growing up in Winnipeg helped nurture one of Canada's greatest songwriting partnerships, and why, after touring the world, they still feel most at home where "you can see forever."
Whether you're listening from a canoe, a campsite, or somewhere along a Canadian highway, this is a conversation about music, memory, friendship, and the prairie landscapes that helped shape one of Canada's greatest rock bands.
Credits
Explore: A Canadian Geographic Podcast is hosted by David McGuffin.
Produced by David McGuffin and ExploreProductions.ca in partnership with Canadian Geographic.
Canadian Geographic:
Editor-in-chief: Alexandra Pope
Digital and travel editor: Madigan Cotterill
Digital marketing manager: Caroline Workman
For more stories of adventure, science, history, and exploration, visit canadiangeographic.ca
In this episode of Explore, host David McGuffin sits down with lawyer, conservationist, former senior aide to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and one of Canada's most accomplished Arctic paddlers, Ted Johnson.
For more than two decades, Johnson and a remarkable group of friends, including diplomats, journalists, cabinet ministers, and occasionally Pierre Trudeau himself, set out each summer to canoe some of the most remote rivers in northern Canada.
From the Hood and Coppermine rivers to little-known rivers on Banks Island and Ellesmere Island, Johnson shares stories of first descents, close calls, vast caribou migrations, and landscapes few Canadians will ever see. Along the way, he reflects on a changing Arctic, the evolution of wilderness travel, and what it was like to paddle and camp alongside one of Canada's most transformational Prime Ministers.
This captivating episode explores a remarkable era of northern exploration and the enduring pull of Canada's wild rivers.
Ted Johnson is a lawyer, conservationist, pilot, and former senior advisor to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. An Officer of the Order of Canada and Fellow of both the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society, he has spent decades exploring Canada's North by canoe, helping document and promote some of the country's most remote wilderness rivers.
To learn more about the paddling adventures of Johnson and his friends, Sing Louder, Paddle Harder, edited by his colleague Robert Fowler, contains hundreds of images and stories from across the Arctic.
Credits
Explore: A Canadian Geographic Podcast is hosted by David McGuffin.
Produced by David McGuffin and ExploreProductions.ca in partnership with Canadian Geographic.
Editor-in-chief: Alexandra Pope
Digital and travel editor: Madigan Cotterill
Digital marketing manager: Caroline Workman
For more stories of adventure, science, history, and exploration, visit CanadianGeographic.ca
Follow Explore wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating or review if you enjoy the show.
"There's a humility in this kind of travel. You don't pretend to adapt the world to you. You adapt to the world." — Bruno Forest
In the summer of 2025, Bruno Forest and his team of five others pushed their canoes into the waters of the Saguenay Fjord, setting out on an extraordinary 1,200-kilometre journey, paddling from Tadoussac on the St. Lawrence River to Waskaganish on James Bay.
But this wasn't simply a wilderness expedition.
Travelling in hand-built cedar canvas canoes by Forest and veteran artisans, he and his crew retraced a route that stretches deep into North American history — following waterways used by Indigenous traders for centuries before becoming part of the European fur trade networks.
The journey demanded weeks of hauling canoes upstream through powerful rivers, reopening forgotten portages swallowed by the forest, and crossing some of Quebec's most remote landscapes. Along the way, the expedition connected with Innu and Cree communities whose histories remain deeply intertwined with these waterways.
In this episode, Forest shares stories of building the expedition's canoes alongside some of Quebec's last traditional canoe builders, encountering woodland caribou and wolves in the north, and discovering what happens when travel slows to the pace of a paddle.
More than an adventure story, this is a conversation about memory, place, and why the canoe remains one of Canada's most powerful symbols.
In This Episode
- A 1,200-kilometre canoe journey from Tadoussac to James Bay
- Building traditional cedar canvas canoes for the expedition
- Following ancient Indigenous trade routes and fur trade corridors
- Reopening long-forgotten portages in Quebec's interior
- Encounters with Cree and Innu communities along the route
- Wildlife, wilderness, and life on the water
- The philosophy of canoe travel and adapting to the land
About Bruno Forest
Bruno Forest is a Quebec-based canoe and kayak guide, filmmaker, author, and expedition leader. In 2025, he led the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's Expedition of the Year, retracing a historic route across Quebec from the St. Lawrence River to James Bay in traditional cedar canvas canoes. Based in Tadoussac, he is also documenting the expedition in an upcoming feature-length film. For updates on the documentary, follow Bruno on Facebook @alamerdunord.2025
“There’s something really profound in being in such a vast landscape with nobody else around… You feel like such a diminutive thing in the landscape, really insignificant. Putting you in your place in the world.” - Louise K. Blight
In this episode of Explore, host David McGuffin sits down with Louise K. Blight for a live conversation recorded at the Ottawa International Writers Festival about her new book, Where the Earth Meets the Sky.
Drawing on her time studying Adélie penguins in Antarctica in the early 2000s, Blight reflects on life at the edge of the world, where she lived among hundreds of thousands of penguins and endured brutal storms and isolation in this remote corner of the planet.
Working alongside legendary penguin researcher David Ainley at Cape Royds on Ross Island, Blight spent months immersed in one of the harshest and most surreal environments on Earth. The conversation explores the rhythms of penguin colonies, the eccentric culture of Antarctic research stations, the psychological realities of isolation, and the growing impacts of climate change on polar ecosystems.
Blight also shares stories of hurricane-force winds, skua attacks (predatory seabirds), the unforgettable smell of penguin colonies, and the profound sense of perspective that comes from living in a vast frozen landscape with almost no other humans around.
In this episode:
- What it’s like living and working in Antarctica for months at a time
- Studying Adélie penguins at the world’s southernmost colony
- The remarkable resilience and behaviour of penguins in extreme environments
- Life at McMurdo Station and the unique culture of Antarctic research communities
- Isolation, endurance, and the psychological challenges of remote fieldwork
- How climate change is threatening emperor penguins and Antarctic ecosystems
- The strange beauty of Antarctica’s landscapes, wildlife, and silence
- Why Antarctica continues to inspire scientists, explorers, and conservationists
Louise K. Blight is a conservation scientist, seabird researcher, and professor in the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Victoria. Her work focuses on seabirds, marine ecosystems, and conservation biology. She also serves as co-chair of the Bird Specialist Subcommittee on the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Her new book, Where the Earth Meets the Sky, chronicles her experiences studying Adélie penguins in Antarctica and explores the intersection of science, solitude, and environmental change.
“Even in the most peaceful village, you’re surrounded by fresh graves… and you know the war is still there.”
What does it mean to explore a country at war?
In this episode of Explore, host David McGuffin speaks with Laval St. Germain, a Canadian explorer who has just returned from a journey deep into the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine. Travelling overland into the country, St. Germain set out to ski the Chornohora Ridge and climb Ukraine’s six highest peaks — what he found was a place of striking contrasts.
In the high mountains, wildlife is rebounding due to a wartime hunting ban, with wolves, bears and lynx returning in surprising numbers. But elsewhere, the war continues to devastate landscapes, with some calling it an “ecocide” as forests burn, infrastructure collapses, and ecosystems are destroyed.
The Carpathians themselves are among Europe’s last wild regions — home to ancient cultures like the Hutsul people and layered with history, from World War I trenches to long-forgotten border markers that once divided empires. But even in these remote and peaceful settings, the war is never far away. In village cemeteries, fresh graves of young soldiers serve as a stark reminder of the ongoing conflict.
From skiing windswept ridgelines to navigating military checkpoints, and from quiet conversations with locals to witnessing the surreal normalcy of life in Kyiv, St. Germain offers a rare, ground-level perspective on Ukraine today — one that goes beyond headlines to reveal resilience, complexity and humanity.
In this episode:* Skiing across Ukraine’s highest peaks in the Carpathian Mountains * A landscape shaped by shifting borders, empires and conflict * Wildlife is rebounding in some regions while war devastates others * Life in remote Ukrainian villages and the impact of war on communities * Travelling through Ukraine during wartime — from trains to checkpoints * Kyiv today: a vibrant city adapting to ongoing conflict * How modern warfare, including drones, is changing life on the ground
Laval St. Germain is a Canadian explorer, commercial pilot in the Arctic and Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He is the only Canadian to have summited Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. His expeditions have taken him to some of the world’s most remote and politically complex regions, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. He has also rowed solo across the North Atlantic from mainland Canada to mainland Europe and skied to the South Pole.
More with Laval St. Germain: * Explore podcast episode 95: Laval St. Germain's journey to Afghanistan's highest mountain * Explore podcast episode 78: Laval St. Germain: Mountains, oceans and the Arctic * Jan 19, 2019 — Meet the Canadian explorer who just completed the Seven Summits
What if life isn’t just “out there”, but closer than we think?
For the first time in more than 50 years, humans have left Earth's orbit, marking a significant point in history. And as NASA’s Artemis II mission makes its historic journey around the moon, we explore the thought-provoking question driving this return to space: are we alone?
From pioneering techniques to study distant worlds to leading bold robot missions to Venus, Toronto-born Sara Seager is helping redefine how (and where) we look for life in the universe. Alongside podcast host David McGuffin, this episode featuring Seager is all about space: exoplanets, phosphine gas, future space missions and, of course, life beyond Earth.
As a global leader in exoplanet science, Seager shares the story behind the controversial detection of phosphine gas in Venus’s clouds, a potential biosignature (a substance or phenomenon that provides evidence of past or present life) that sparked global debate, and why our neighbouring planet may hold surprising clues to alien life.
A Canadian astronomer and professor at MIT, Seager is widely recognized for her work on exoplanets and planetary atmospheres. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, is a Companion of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Her research has helped transform exoplanets into one of the most dynamic fields in astronomy. More recently, she has led innovative efforts to explore Venus’s clouds for possible signs of microbial life. Her award-winning memoir, published in 2020, is called The Smallest Lights in the Universe.
In this episode:
- What exoplanets reveal about the potential for life beyond our solar system
- Why Venus, once overlooked, may be a key target in the search for life
- The mystery of phosphine gas and the scientific controversy that followed
- How future missions could directly sample Venus’s atmosphere
- How exploration, from Canadian wilderness to deep space, shapes discovery
Books on exploration recommended by Seager:
- Sleeping Island: The Story of One Man's Travels in the Great Barren Lands of the Canadian North
- Coppermine Journey: An Account of Great Adventure Selected from the Journals of Samuel Hearne
"The thing about desert expeditions that really takes you by surprise is how quickly things can go off the rails. It goes from good to bad almost instantly. In those moments, I remind myself: I chose to do this."
We’re excited to be joined again by Ray Zahab, an ultra-endurance athlete, public speaker, author, and RCGS Explorer-in-Residence, among other things.
In this thrilling episode of Explore, Zahab takes us through his latest expedition across the driest desert on the planet: Chile’s Atacama. Running a marathon a day over 200 kilometres in extreme heat, Zahab traversed over brutal terrain with constant risk. Carrying minimal gear and relying on cached water, he and his teammate, Stephano Gregoretti, pushed through deep sand, steep climbs, and temperatures that regularly topped 45°C. Along the way, their journey took an unexpected turn when they took part in a real-life rescue in the Andes.
This episode also touches on one of Zahab’s favourite endurance films, Running on the Sun, a cult-classic documentary from 2000 about the Badwater ultramarathon that captures the mindset behind pushing human limits.
This is a powerful conversation about resilience, decision-making under pressure, and the mindset required to endure when things go wrong.
And a special thanks to long-time listener and friend of the podcast, Aran O'Carroll, who sent in a very thoughtful question for this episode. Zahab has a great answer towards the end.
If you enjoyed this, check out Episode 104 with Zahab and RCGS Fellow Kevin Vallely on their self-supported winter ski expedition across Ellesmere Island, Canada's most northerly Arctic island.
About Ray: Ray Zahab (@rayzahab) is a Canadian explorer and ultra-endurance athlete known for completing some of the world’s toughest expeditions, including running across the Sahara desert and a record-setting expedition by ski to the South Pole. As an RCGS Explorer-in-Residence, he is dedicated to education and inspiring the next generation through global expeditions.
Raised on Newfoundland’s west coast, Jenn Thornhill Verma grew up immersed in the life and lore of fishing communities and the rhythms of the North Atlantic. She is the author of the bestselling book Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys, a contributor to Canadian Geographic, and a fellow with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network, where she recently reported a series for the Globe and Mail on the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
In this episode of Explore, Thornhill Verma and podcast host David McGuffin discuss the legacy of the cod fishery collapse in the early 1990's, the politics of fisheries management, and the urgent effort to protect one of the world’s most endangered whales: the North Atlantic right whale. With fewer than 400 individuals remaining, these whales face a variety of threats, including ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, and, of course, the climate crisis.
Want to learn more?
- Visit Thornhill Verma’s favourite place in Canada: Nain, Labrador
- Watch the documentary, Angry Inuk (National Film Board of Canada)
- Discover more about whales in Explore episode 99 with Canadian sperm whale researcher Shane Gero – a fascinating conversation about the attempts to decode the sperm whale's click language using AI.
*North Atlantic Right Whale sounds in this episode are courtesy of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“You see these massive calving fronts breaking off icebergs… you hear it, you feel the vibrations… everything is just absolutely magical.”
In this episode of Explore, podcast host David McGuffin welcomes back legendary underwater explorer Jill Heinerth to talk about her powerful new documentary, The Berg, airing on CBC’s The Nature of Things and streaming on CBC Gem.
For years, Heinerth dreamed of following the full lifecycle of an iceberg — from the calving glaciers of Greenland and around the Davis Strait to Newfoundland’s Iceberg Alley. In The Berg, she traces that journey, revealing how ice seeds the ocean with nutrients, supports entire food chains and acts as a critical carbon sink for the planet.
But the making of this film carried a deeply personal dimension. Heinerth shot portions of The Berg just one week before undergoing cancer surgery. The documentary now bookends a transformative chapter in her life, framing both the vulnerability and resilience she experienced during treatment.
In our conversation, Heinerth shares how her “explorer mindset” helped her navigate cancer, just as she approaches diving beneath unstable ice: prepare, visualize, understand the risks, and lean on her team. As her great uncle once told her: “You alone can do it, but you cannot do it alone.” That philosophy of courage and community guided her through radiation therapy and recovery.
We also dive into what it’s like swimming beside and beneath an iceberg, the physics of mixing fresh and saltwater, the explosive (and dramatic) end of an iceberg’s life, microscopic extremophiles and what they might teach us about medicine, and the new, under-ice research happening across Canada’s waterways.
Heinerth also reflects on working with filmmaker James Cameron, whose relentless drive to explore the oceans has deeply inspired her. And when asked about her favourite exploration film, she points to the book Touching the Void, the harrowing true story of climber Joe Simpson. For Heinerth, it captures the raw psychology of survival: determination, dark humour, impossible odds, and the thin line between life and death that explorers understand all too well.
Heinerth is once again taking part in the Canadian Geographic Polar Plunge, raising funds for Canadian Geographic education programs, expedition grants and storytelling initiatives.
Support Heinerth, or sign up and plunge yourself: https://rcgs.org/polarplunge2026
Heinerth is the inaugural Explorer-in-Residence of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and one of the world’s foremost underwater explorers. A pioneering cave diver, filmmaker and bestselling author of Into the Planet, she has led expeditions to some of the most extreme environments on Earth, including Antarctica’s icebergs to deep submerged cave systems. With more than 8,000 dives to her credit, Heinerth serves as the “hands and eyes” for scientists in remote underwater environments, translating complex research into powerful storytelling that connects global audiences to fragile ecosystems. Her work blends exploration, conservation, science communication and an unwavering belief in the power of community.
“Always travel with a fish-slapping dance in your bag.”
— Michael Palin
What value does a fish-slapping dance have when travelling in authoritarian countries? Quite a lot, as it turns out…
In this episode of Explore, founding member of Monty Python, acclaimed travel documentarian, author, and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Michael Palin joins host David McGuffin to reflect on a lifetime of comedy, curiosity, and crossing borders.
From being detained by paramilitary guards in Venezuela (and saved by Monty Python YouTube clips), to plunging into frigid waters to retrace the doomed Franklin Expedition in the Canadian Arctic, to starring in films like Life of Brian and Brazil, Palin shares stories that are hilarious, thoughtful, and quietly profound.
Now 82, Palin shows no signs of slowing down.
Alongside his work as an actor, author, and travel documentarian, Palin’s involvement in Monty Python has helped establish the comedy troupe as one of the world’s most influential. Beyond comedy, Palin has spent decades creating landmark travel documentary series, including Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Sahara, Himalaya, and, most recently, Venezuela. He is the author of multiple bestselling books, including Erebus, his acclaimed history of one of the ships from Sir John Franklin’s lost Arctic expedition.
Palin is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the recipient of RCGS medals, including the first Louie Kamookak Medal, which recognizes respect for Inuit knowledge and northern history.
In this episode
- Why the fish-slapping dance may be the perfect piece of Python humour
- Monty Python’s surprising Canadian connections, from CBC protests to the Lumberjack Song
- Palin’s journey through Venezuela, North Korea, Iraq, and other dodgy places
- Why The Life of Brian is his favourite Python film
- Talking about the weather with Robert DeNiro
- What the Franklin Expedition reveals about colonial blind spots and the importance of Inuit knowledge
- Visiting Franklin expedition graves on Beechey Island in Canada's High Arctic
- How Around the World in 80 Days changed the way Palin approached storytelling
- Why Palin avoids interviewing presidents — and prefers talking to everyday people
- The magic of truly disappearing while travelling
- Reflections on aging, curiosity, and why Palin never wants to retire
Did you know that Michael Palin has done a polar plunge — and loved it! Learn more about the Canadian Geographic Polar Plunge and support Canadian storytelling at rcgs.org/polarplunge2026
In this special episode of Explore, Canadian astronaut, engineer, and physician David Saint-Jacques shares a rare and personal perspective on what humanity’s return to the moon means for Canadians and the world.
On December 3, 2018, Saint-Jacques launched to the International Space Station, where he spent 203 days, 15 hours, and 16 minutes before returning to Earth on June 24, 2019. In this conversation, Saint-Jacques reflects on why NASA’s Artemis II mission matters, what the mission is designed to test, and how Canada’s role in lunar exploration signals a new era of international space cooperation. The episode also explores what Jeremy Hansen’s historic assignment means for Canada.
As the first Canadian and the first non-American ever assigned to a crewed lunar mission, Hansen will circle the moon aboard the still-experimental Orion capsule, marking a major milestone in Canada’s space history. As members of the same 2009 Astronaut Class at the Canadian Space Agency, Hansen and Saint-Jacques were not only colleagues but friends.
Through this relationship, Saint-Jacques brings an intimate perspective to this moment in history, reflecting on years of shared training, deep trust, and what it takes to prepare someone, not just technically, but mentally and emotionally, for a mission of this magnitude.
Episode Highlights:
- Jeremy Hansen’s historic role on Artemis II
- What it means to be the first Canadian and first non-American on a Moon mission
- David Saint-Jacques on trust, teamwork, and astronaut life behind the scenes
- Why Artemis II is a critical step toward long-term lunar exploration
Award-winning expedition filmmaker and RCGS Fellow Trevor Wallace joins Explore podcast host David McGuffin to talk about exploration, archaeology, and insights into his expeditions around the world.
In this conversation, Wallace goes into detail about his decades-long career working in Greenland and the Arctic, reflecting on Inuit knowledge systems, sovereignty, and why the North is so often misunderstood — and impossible to forget. He also discusses his latest documentary, Among Thieves, an investigative film that exposes the global black market for looted antiquities, following an undercover trail from remote burial sites to international art markets.
The conversation also highlights Wallace’s underwater archaeology work in Menorca, where his team is excavating rare 13th-century medieval shipwrecks, and how hands-on field schools are bringing new generations into archaeological research.
A member of the Explorers Club and an RCGS Fellow, Wallace has led and documented expeditions across the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Antarctica, Central Asia, Siberia, and the Mediterranean — using film to connect people with place, history, and culture.
“So does Christmas eliminate distance.”
Happy holidays from Explore! For this Yuletide episode, we’re dipping into our Canadian Geographic files for the reading of a story written by RCGS founding President and Arctic explorer Charles Camsell who recalls a memorable Christmas he had on the trail to the Klondike in 1897.
In the early 1900s, travelling by canoe and horseback, Camsell mapped hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Canada’s north for the Geological Survey of Canada.
Born at Fort Liard, N.W.T., in 1876, his father Julian was an English fur trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company. His mother, Sarah Foulds, was Metis, with deep roots in the Red River. After graduating from the University of Manitoba, Camsell returned to the Northwest Territories just in time to get swept into the Klondike gold rush. Like thousands of young men and women at the time, he and his friend Arthur Pelly set off for the Yukon to seek their fortune.
Lynne McGuffin, Camsell’s granddaughter, found the following story in his personal files. It was dated 1937, around the time he was writing his memoir, Son of the North. For the past two decades, it’s been a tradition of host David McGuffin to read this to his wife and children on Christmas Eve as they moved from continent to continent, country to country, often celebrating the holidays far from family and home.
So, pour yourself a favourite drink, settle into a comfy chair by the fire and enjoy this reading of Christmas at Devil’s Portage.
To learn more about the Camsell family and their role in the fur trade, check out Season 2 of Explore, which features fascinating full archival recordings of Charles Camsell and his brother Philip Scott Camsell looking back on their Arctic childhoods.
NOTE: This special episode of Explore is being re-released to mark an important moment in Canadian history: the original 1670 Hudson’s Bay Company Royal Charter is being sold at auction. But thanks to a joint purchase by the Thomson and Weston families, the charter will remain in Canada, ensuring this remarkable artifact of colonial history stays in public hands
In 2020, the Hudson’s Bay Company marked its 350th anniversary. At this time, podcast host David McGuffin headed deep into the HBC vault with Amelia Fay, curator of the HBC Collection at the Manitoba Museum. Together, they unpacked the story and the symbolism of the Royal Charter granted by King Charles II in 1670, a document that established what was then known as “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay.”
Fay describes the charter in vivid detail, from its shimmering vellum pages to its exceptional state of preservation, and explains how this corporate decree laid out the governance structures and sweeping territorial claims that would shape the future of northern North America. Their conversation explores the charter’s complex legacy: how it empowered the HBC to act as a government, shaped settlement and trade across a vast section of the continent and how it is inseparable from the Doctrine of Discovery and the harmful concept of terra nullius, both of which displaced and ignored the sovereignty of Indigenous nations.
With the charter now back in the public spotlight through its historic sale, this episode offers timely context on why the document remains both foundational and deeply problematic, and why understanding its legacy is essential to understanding Canada today.
Few Canadians have been closer to the front lines of global climate action than Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former Environment Minister. And this week on Explore, she opens up about what she’s learned from the fight.
Joining podcast host David McGuffin, McKenna discusses her new book Run Like a Girl: A Memoir of Ambition, Resilience, and Fighting for Change. She reflects on how a childhood insult became a personal rallying cry, how competitive swimming shaped her approach to tough political battles and what it actually felt like inside the high-pressure rooms of the Paris climate negotiations. McKenna also talks frankly about online abuse targeting women in public life and why she remains a realistic optimist about climate action.
Speaking candidly about the online harassment she faced, including being dismissed as “Climate Barbie” by a Conservative MP in 2017, and why these experiences only strengthened her commitment to supporting women in public life. Despite the noise, she remains a realist and an optimist about where climate action can go next.
McKenna served as Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change from 2015 to 2019 and Minister of Infrastructure and Communities from 2019 to 2021, helping negotiate the Paris Agreement and introducing Canada’s first national climate plan. An honorary RCGS Fellow, she is now the founder and CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions, leads Women Leading on Climate and chairs a UN expert group advising the Secretary-General on credible net-zero commitments.
Run Like a Girl is her first book, and, as listeners will hear, the culmination of a career spent pushing for a better, faster, fairer climate future.
On this episode of Explore, host David McGuffin is joined by Arctic explorer and elementary school teacher Dave Greene. Earlier this year, Greene completed his fourth RCGS-flagged expedition across northern Quebec’s Ungava Peninsula. As the leader of this ski expedition, Greene shares his experience, traversing the harsh landscape alongside teammates Chris Giard and Lee Fraser.
Skiing hundreds of kilometres through -40°Celsius temperatures, the goal of the expedition was to reach the spectacular Pingualuit Crater, a 450-million-year-old meteor impact site. Greene shares stories of extreme cold, frostbite, whiteouts and life above the tree line, as well as the moments of awe and resilience that define Arctic travel.
As a Nova Scotia teacher and a new CanGeo Education board representative, Greene also brought the expedition into the classroom, connecting students to Canada’s North with live updates, weather tracking and daily Arctic haikus.
Follow Greene on Instagram @greeneradventures
In this episode of Explore, podcast host David McGuffin speaks with Canadian climber and expedition leader Shira Biner, who led the first female-plus team to establish a new 600-metre route on Eglinton Tower in the remote fjords of Baffin Island. Biner recounts the 2025 expedition, which was partly funded by The Nat Gillis Adventure Photography Expedition Grant awarded by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
Over 29 days, the team travelled entirely under human power, skiing 150 kilometres across Arctic sea ice with teammates Kelly Fields, Heather Smallpage and Nathalie Afonina to reach the towering granite walls of Eglinton Fjord.
From navigating crevassed ice and polar-bear country to sleeping on narrow ledges high above the fjord, Biner shares the physical and emotional demands of exploratory climbing at the edge of the world.
Through her work as an expedition leader and a climber, Biner explores the intersection of human-powered travel, alpine climbing and geographic discovery. Based in Squamish, B.C., she approaches mountaineering as both an athletic pursuit and a form of storytelling.
In 2023, Biner received an RCGS Expedition Grant to support an alpine rock-climbing journey on the east coast of Baffin Island. In 2025, she received the RCGS Nat Gillis Adventure Photography & Expedition Grant, recognizing her leadership and visual storytelling in the North.
Topics covered:
- The 2025 Baffin Island expedition and first female-plus ascent of Eglinton Tower
- Skiing and hauling gear 150 kilometres across Arctic sea ice
- Climbing with Kelly Fields, Heather Smallpage and Nathalie Afonina
- Team dynamics, leadership and risk management in remote climbing
- The legacy of the late Natalie Gillis and women-led exploration
- Why human-powered travel remains central to adventure and storytelling
“From 1875 to 1975, there were 6,000 shipwrecks on the Great Lakes — one a week for a century. Everyone remembers one: the Edmund Fitzgerald. And that’s because of the song.”
— John U. Bacon, Explore Podcast
This year marks 50 years since the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the most famous shipwreck in Great Lakes history. In this episode of Explore, host David McGuffin welcomes back John U. Bacon, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Halifax Explosion, Cirque du Soleil: The Spark and The Greatest Comeback about the 1972 Canada–Soviet hockey Summit Series.
In this conversation, Bacon discusses his latest book, Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which revisits the tragedy that claimed 29 lives on Lake Superior and inspired Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting ballad, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Through rich storytelling and meticulous research, Bacon brings new insight into the ship’s storied history, its legendary Canadian captain, and the perilous world of Great Lakes shipping, where danger, devotion and duty collide with the power of nature. Bacon also explores the human stories behind the headlines and the Gordon Lightfoot song that has kept the memory alive for half a century.
The conversation also explores the haunting story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is often called the “Titanic of the Great Lakes.” Then, we dive into the brutal realities of Great Lakes shipping and why navigating these inland seas can be even more perilous than the open ocean. You’ll hear about Captain Ernest McSorley’s fateful final voyage, the mystery that still surrounds that November night, and how Gordon Lightfoot’s iconic ballad immortalized the tragedy and honoured the lost crew. We also reflect on the enduring importance of the Great Lakes, a lifeline that continues to shape North America’s history, economy, and identity.
The episode closes with a touching reflection on the late Ken Dryden, the Hall of Fame goaltender, author, politician and poet laureate of hockey, whom Bacon got to know when profiling him for The Greatest Comeback, Bacon’s earlier book on the '72 Summit series.
The bells ringing during the interview and at the end of the episode were recorded on May 2, 2023, at the Mariners Church in Detroit. They rang 30 times, once for each of the 29 men lost aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald, and once more for Gordon Lightfoot.
" Hubert Darrell is the greatest explorer of all time that no one has ever heard of. The Norwegian great Amundsen, the first to the South Pole and first person to sail through the Northwest Passage successfully, actually met Darrell in the Arctic. He was in awe, and he wrote that with men like Darrell, 'I could go to the moon.'"
In this episode of Explore, RCGS Explorer-in-Residence and bestselling author Adam Shoalts discusses his latest book, Vanished Beyond the Map, which chronicles the life of the nearly forgotten Arctic explorer Hubert Darrell.
Darrell, once a legendary figure from the early 20th century, made incredible solo journeys on foot across the Arctic, from Alaska to Hudson's Bay and onto the Arctic Ocean, earning the respect and praise of more renowned explorers like Roald Amundsen, Vilhjalmur Stefansson and many others Shoalts shares his exhaustive, years-long research process, which includes tracking down archival materials and retracing Darrell's steps in remote northern regions, seeking the answer to the mystery of Darrell's disappearance in 1910. The conversation delves into Darrell's respect for Indigenous cultures, his disdain for conventional society and the enduring call of the wild.
Adam Shoalts is a Canadian explorer, adventurer and bestselling author renowned for his epic solo journeys through some of the world’s most far-reaching northern landscapes. Shoalts has paddled nearly 4,000 kilometres alone across Canada’s Arctic, mapped uncharted northern rivers, and authored books like Beyond the Trees and Where the Falcon Flies. Shoalts currently serves as the Explorer-in-Residence at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) and is a passionate storyteller about wilderness, history and adventure.
This episode also features a brief interview with my 26-year-old nephews, Callum and Cianan McGuffin, who are on the final leg of a three-year sailing expedition around the world. They are currently navigating one of the most challenging passages on Earth, the Canadian Northwest Passage. You can follow their journey on social media at @mcguffinbrothersadventures.
For listeners interested in learning more about Shoalts’ expeditions and his latest book, they can attend a fireside chat, taking place on October 17th at 8:30 p.m. at the Arc’teryx Store located in Toronto at 339 Queen St W, ON.
“I think in any exploration there’s a nobility of purpose — it’s more than just pounding my chest and saying, ‘Hey, I’m on top of Mount Kilimanjaro.’ It’s about filling a knowledge gap or serving the greater good.” — Richard Wiese, President, The Explorer's Club
Join us for a fascinating conversation with Richard Wiese, world-renowned explorer, Emmy Award-winning host of Born to Explore and the newly re-elected 46th President of The Explorers Club, a role he has held seven times, including as the youngest-ever club president in 2002.
Wiese has spent decades leading expeditions around the world, from skiing to the North Pole to summiting Mount Kilimanjaro 18 times, all while championing conservation, inclusivity and the future of exploration.
In this episode, he shares incredible stories of adventure, discovery and resilience, along with his vision for what comes next in the world of science and exploration.
We also delve into the 2025 Global Exploration Summit (GLEX), which will take place from September 12 to 14 at 50 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, headquarters of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society and Canadian Geographic (RCGS).
Hosted in partnership with the RCGS, this landmark event will bring together explorers, scientists, and storytellers from around the world to chart the future of exploration and celebrate the shared human pursuit of discovery. This year’s event will also mark the first time GLEX will be held on Canadian soil.
Founded in 1904, The Explorers Club, headquartered in New York City, has supported legendary figures such as Jane Goodall, Dr. Sylvia Earle, James Cameron, Sir Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, and the Apollo 11 crew, among many others.
“On a paddleboard, you‘re vulnerable to tides and winds. You don‘t fight them—you learn to fit into natural rhythms.”
Journalist and author Dan Rubinstein joins the Explore Podcast for the second instalment in our annual canoe/paddling series to share the story of his epic three-month, 2,000-kilometre paddleboarding journey, which took him from Ottawa to New York City and back via the Ottawa River, the St. Lawrence River, Lake Champlain, the Hudson River, the Erie Canal and Lake Ontario. Along the way, he explored the idea of blue space—the powerful impact of water on our bodies, minds, and communities. In this conversation, Dan reflects on his new book Water Borne, the physical and spiritual pull of water, and why paddleboarding offered a unique way to connect with people, places, and history. From Mohawk communities reclaiming their relationship with the St. Lawrence River to grassroots activists restoring the Hudson to strangers offering kindness along the Erie Canal, Dan’s journey reveals how water shapes us, heals us, and connects us across boundaries.
“Days on the water have produced in me the intensifying feeling of somehow growing together with the river: not thinking with it, but being thought by it.” - Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?
This episode of Explore was recorded live in May 2025 at the Ottawa International Writers Festival.
Robert Macfarlane’s latest book asks the question: Is a River Alive? To answer it, the award-winning British author, academic and environmentalist spent four-and-a-half years exploring rivers and their watersheds across four continents. His journeys take him from an Ecuadorian cloud forest, where pristine waterways are threatened by Canadian gold mining interests, to Chennai, India, where activists are working to bring dead rivers back to life.
Macfarlane also led a personally transformative kayak expedition down Quebec’s Magpie River, or Muteshekau Shipu, on the territory of the Innu Nation. In 2021, the Magpie became the first river in Canada to be granted legal personhood, a landmark effort to prevent it from being dammed by Hydro-Québec.
This conversation explores the rights of nature, environmental activism and the interconnectedness of rivers and people. Through his book and this dialogue, Macfarlane underscores the need for a reimagined relationship with nature, emphasizing the importance of rivers as living entities and the hope found in environmental guardianship. It's a great and thought-provoking talk. Enjoy!
Robert Macfarlane is the bestselling author of the award-winning trilogy on landscape and the human heart: Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, and The Old Ways, as well as Landmarks and Holloway. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and published in more than 20 countries, and widely adapted for television, film and radio by the BBC among others. Macfarlane has contributed to Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. In 2012, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and he is currently a Fellow in English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
This episode is one of our annual canoe and paddling series. Next up is former Canadian Geographic editor Dan Rubinstein, who will discuss his epic 2000-kilometre waterboard adventure from Ottawa to Manhattan and back. His new book, Waterborne, details the expedition.
This special live episode of Explore features a thought-provoking conversation about the deep importance of our relationship with water between host David McGuffin and acclaimed Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, recorded at the Ottawa Writers Festival in May.
Leanne discusses her latest book, The Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, a genre-defying work that weaves together traditional storytelling, theory, and land-based knowledge. Through various lenses — skiing, eels, beavers, canoes, shorelines — Simpson reflects on the interconnectedness of people, water, and the natural world, and on how we might reimagine our relationships in a time of climate grief and transformation.
This live conversation touches on land based learning, Indigenous ethics, and the hopeful possibilities of communal learning, all grounded in Simpson’s unique voice as both an academic and artist.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is an award winning, best-selling Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, artist, and musician. She is the author of eight books, including the award-winning Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies and As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. Her newest work, The Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, continues her powerful exploration of land-based knowledge, community, and hope.
Simpson has been widely recognized for her contributions to Indigenous thought, activism, and the arts. She is a member of Alderville First Nation and is based in Peterborough, Ontario.
Canada does funny really, really well. So today we're poking that Canadian funny bone in conversation with Luke Gordon Field as he discusses his journey and experiences as Editor in Chief of The Beaverton, a popular Canadian satirical news site. Over 15 years, Field and his team transformed a side project with humble beginnings into an internationally recognized name in satire. Field recounts anecdotes from the early days, including a pivotal moment involving Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield that catapulted the site to fame ("Hadfield comes home to $1.37 million Rogers phone bill"). He talks about the challenges of producing timely satire with impact, the influence of American political comedy, and the unique nuances of Canadian humor. Field also shares insights into their funding model, discussing their successful Patreon campaign that allowed the site to continue and expand. How they escaped Facebooks Canadian news ban. The conversation touches on the creative process and Field's reflections on the comedian's life in Canada.
This episode was produced by David McGuffin and ExploreProductions.ca
Clare McGuffin - assistant producer
Do you have any questions about or suggestions for the podcast? Drop us a line: explore@canadiangeographic.ca or DM me on instagram: @david.mcguffin
“It's the reason why this Canadian Geographic thing means a lot to me. It’s about people and how they live and how we interact and celebrate how beautiful and natural this life can be.”
We’ve got a new honorary RCGS Fellow on Explore today! George Stroumboulopoulos is one of Canada’s great interviewers and broadcasters. In the span of his 30-plus year career, he has talked with thousands of people from King Charles to Gord Downie, from Maya Angelou to Lady Gaga and so many, many more. For decades he has served as a cultural prism for Canadians on MuchMusic, and CBC shows like The Hour, George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight and The Strombo Show. He was also a breath of fresh air, for too brief a time, as host of Hockey Night in Canada. He’s now on Apple Music, which has him dividing his time between Toronto and Los Angeles.
Active in giving back, Strombo is, among other things, a UN ambassador for the World Food Programme, which has seen him traveling to many of the world’s danger zones. For all his good works, he was inducted into the Order of Canada in 2023.
I’ve always enjoyed George’s work. The best interviewers are proxies for their audience, asking the questions we all want answered. There is a warmth, empathy, sense of humour, curiosity and connection in George’s presence that make him one of the very best at what he does. So, I’m really thrilled to be turning the tables on him in this episode. We get into it on a number of fascinating topics, including his childhood in the rough and diverse Jane and Finch area of Toronto, the books, music, movies and concerts that opened up his young mind, interviewing musical heroes like Joe Strummer and The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie, how Canada’s landscape shapes the music we love, why motorcycles are his preferred mental health escape, and what it’s like living as a Canadian in the U.S. during this “Elbows Up” moment. It’s a great talk. Strap in and enjoy!
Do you have any questions for me? Or suggestions for the podcast? Drop me a line: explore@canadiangeographic.ca or DM me on instagram: @david.mcguffin
"It was brutal again. There was a very good chance we wouldn't succeed. And if it's a foregone conclusion that you're going to be successful, is it really an adventure?" - Kevin Vallely
RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Ray Zahab and his exploring partner and RCGS Fellow Kevin Vallely have just completed an extraordinary expedition – skiing 500 kilometres across Ellesmere Island, one of the most remote and unforgiving regions in the Canadian High Arctic. This journey, completed in March and April 2025, marks a triumphant return after their 2022 attempt was cut short by extreme weather and treacherous snow conditions (listen to that adventure here).
Armed with experience and revised plans, the duo set out from the Eureka weather station and traversed to Grise Fiord, enduring relentless sub-30 degrees Celsius temperatures (not including wind chill), whiteouts and punishing terrain. Along the way, they were rewarded with moments of awe: encounters with 31 Arctic wolves, Muskox, Arctic hares and fresh polar bear tracks – reminders of the raw and untamed wilderness they were navigating.
Join us as Zahab and Vallely share stories from the trail, reflect on what they learned between expeditions and offer a rare glimpse into a part of Canada few will ever see. Tune in to discover what it takes to journey through the Canadian High Arctic in deep winter.
We are also thrilled to share that two of Explore's Passing the Mic sessions are linked to recent Canadian Geographic story nominations for the National Magazine and Digital Publishing Awards.
Our podcast training sessions for Inuit youth in Cambridge Bay inspired an article in the special Nunavut Anniversary issue of Canadian Geographic, which has been nominated for the Digital Publishing Award’s Best Large Digital Editorial Package for the magazine’s coverage of the 25th anniversary of Nunavut’s establishment as an independent Canadian territory. Canadian Geographic’s associate editor, Tom Lundy, is nominated for a National Magazine Award for his article, Protectors of Aqviqtuuq, which looks at the attempts to create the first Inuit conservation zone. This story was inspired by Explore’s Passing the Mic session in Taloyoak, NU.
Congrats to everyone involved!
"Buffalo are renewal. We know that — it’s baked into who we are."
This week on Explore, David McGuffin sits down with award-winning filmmaker, scholar, and advocate Tasha Hubbard to discuss her latest documentary, Singing Back the Buffalo.
This powerful film delves into the deep, sacred relationship between buffalo and Indigenous Peoples, highlighting how these iconic animals are more than just symbols of the past — they are key to cultural, spiritual and ecological renewal. Singing Back the Buffalo tells the story of the 2014 Buffalo Treaty, an unprecedented agreement now endorsed by over 80 First Nations, committed to restoring buffalo herds to Indigenous lands and traditional territories.
Through a focus on the bison reintroduced to Elk Island, Banff and Grasslands National Parks, Hubbard explores how the return of these herds is helping to heal both landscapes and communities. The conversation touches on the interconnectedness of Indigenous knowledge and Western science, the resurgence of biodiversity and the role of buffalo not just as survivors, but as teachers and guides for a more sustainable future.
Hubbard is a professor at the University of Alberta and a member of Peepeekisis First Nation in Treaty Four Territory. Her award-winning work challenges colonial narratives, centres Indigenous storytelling and envisions hopeful futures grounded in collective memory and resilience.
In this episode, Explore host David McGuffin is joined by Glynnis Hood, one of the world's leading beaver experts, to mark the 50th anniversary of the beaver as Canada’s national animal. This conversation focuses on this iconic Canadian animals significance in our country’s history. Hood shares her insights into the beaver's resilience, ability to modify landscapes, role as a keystone species, and its substantial impact on its environment. They delve into the beaver's history, from its near extinction to its current resurgence. They highlight the beaver’s role in maintaining biodiversity, regulating water systems, and potentially mitigating climate change and wildfires.
The episode also explores human and beaver conflicts and the coexistence strategies that emphasize the beaver's crucial role in shaping Canada’s environment.
Glynnis Hood is professor emerita of environmental science at the University of Alberta and an adjunct professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
Hood’s research interests include aquatic ecology, biology, and human-wildlife interactions. For more than 20 years, Hood has integrated her research on beaver ecology with more focused studies of beaver management to enhance human-wildlife coexistence. She is the author of Semi-aquatic Mammals: Ecology and Biology and The Beaver Manifesto: Conservation, Conflict, and the Future of Wetlands, which will be released in its second edition this fall. Her first children's book is A Cabin Christmas.
Learn more about the beaver in this recent Canadian Geographic feature by Brian Banks.
00:00 Celebrating 50 years of the beaver as Canada's national animal
00:22 The beaver's role in Canadian history and Indigenous culture
00:58 Personal beaver encounters and observations
01:51 Introduction to beaver expert Glynnis Hood
05:32 The beaver's comeback story
07:32 Beaver population and historical impact
16:53 Beaver's ecological engineering and climate impact
21:58 Beavers and wildfire resilience
24:30 Epic beaver dams in Wood Buffalo National Park
26:05 The impact of beavers on biodiversity
28:28 Beavers in the Arctic: challenges and changes
30:58 Historical context and the beavers' return
32:32 Beaver dam construction techniques
39:06 Beaver coexistence tools and strategies
41:37 Personal encounters and reflections
46:38 Conclusion and final thoughts
In this special episode of the Explore Podcast, we delve into the current and unique intersection of hockey, politics, and patriotism in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff war against Canada. Featuring an insightful discussion with Roy McGregor, award-winning Canadian journalist and author, this episode explores the politically charged 2025 4 Nations Face-Off, where Canada's triumph over the U.S. in the final helped revive a nation feeling battered by its southern neighbour.
The conversation touches on where this hockey moment ranks in Canada's history of international triumphs (up there with the '72 Soviet-Canada Summit Series, says MacGregor), the impact the game had on international tensions and Canadian politics, Wayne Gretzky's awkward friendship with Trump, the rise of Canadian patriotism and the interwoven histories of hockey and politics in the country. The episode also reflects on the broader implications for Canada's national identity and political landscape in the face of recent events.
Please also check out episode 44 of Explore, featuring MacGregor talking about Canada and the history of the canoe and episode 47 with author John U. Bacon on the importance of the 1972 Canada-Soviet Summit Series.
MacGregor is an award-winning author, columnist and feature writer for The Globe and Mail. He has also reported for the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, Maclean's and the Toronto Star.
He is the author of nearly 40 books, including one with former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and another, Home Game, with Ken Dryden, Montreal Canadiens Hall of Fame goalie and Liberal cabinet minister. His latest book, a memoir, is Paper Trails: From the Backwoods to the Front Page, a Life in Stories
00:00 Introduction 4 Nations and the 1972 Soviet-Canada Summit Series
00:34 Meet Roy McGregor: A Canadian journalism legend
01:37 The Intersection of hockey and politics
02:10 Where the 4 Nations Face-Off ranks in Canadian hockey triumphs
03:07 Canada's triumph and political implications
03:29 Roy McGregor's insights on hockey and politics
06:51 Historical context and personal reflections
09:03 The role of hockey in Canadian identity
17:00 Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr and Donald Trump
23:24 The impact of social media on modern politics
26:18 Conclusion and final thoughts
In this milestone 100th episode of the Explore Podcast, host David McGuffin welcomes back world-renowned cave diver and RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Jill Heinerth. This episode dives into Heinerth’s experiences, including her new, award-winning documentary Diving into the Darkness, her extraordinary career in underwater exploration and the risks and rewards of diving. Heinerth discusses her Antarctic expeditions, her struggle with decompression sickness, and the evolution of her exploration philosophy over the years. The conversation also touches on the challenges of making documentaries in the current media environment, the impact of climate change narratives and the importance of valuing and understanding our natural world. Additionally, Heinerth emphasizes the need for flexibility, multi-skilling and ethical exploration in today's changing world.
To learn more about her documentary, visit divingintothedarkness.com
00:00 Introduction to Jill Heinerth's diving adventures
01:01 Celebrating 100 episodes of the Explore Podcast
04:52 Introducing Jill Heinerth's new documentary
05:00 Behind the scenes of the documentary
06:05 The making of the documentary
13:36 Jill's Antarctic dive experience
15:07 The impact of climate change on diving
18:00 Touring the documentary
18:58 Challenges in the media landscape
19:37 The future of documentary streaming
21:35 The evolution of exploration and science
21:57 Navigating career advice for young explorers
23:48 Early challenges and determination
27:55 Facing life-threatening situations
36:41 Reflections on exploration and ethics
42:22 Concluding thoughts and future plans
In this episode of Explore, we dive deep with Canadian whale biologist Shane Gero, who shares his journey from a landlocked childhood in Ottawa to becoming a leading researcher in whale communication and conservation. Gero discusses how his early fascination with whales began, his fieldwork in Dominica and the intricate social structures of sperm whales. The conversation then delves into Project CETI, which aims to decode the complex language of sperm whales using machine learning while exploring the cultural identity expressed through the whales’ unique codas (a series of clicks). In this conversation, Gero emphasizes the complex cognition of these animals and their emotional lives, sharing personal experiences of witnessing whale births and the significance of interspecies communication. Incidentally, the pod of whales who he witnessed give birth are named after author and RCGS Fellow Margaret Atwood and her novel, Oryx and Crake.
Gero highlights the challenges sperm whales face due to human activities and the need for both individual and systematic changes to protect them. He expresses hope for the future, rooted in the connection between humans and nature, and reflects on his personal journey in understanding these magnificent creatures.
As well as being a Scientist-In-Residence at Ottawa’s Carleton University, Gero is also the founder of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project, a long-term research program focused on the sperm whale families living in the Eastern Caribbean. He is also the Biology Lead for Project CETI, applying advanced machine learning and robotics to decipher sperm whale communication.
This interview is exactly the kind of unique Canadian storytelling that is supported by your donations to the annual Canadian Geographic Polar Plunge taking place on Sunday, March 9, 2025.
To help Canadian Geographic tell Canada's story and support critical programming, please consider donating at Polar Plunge 2025.
Few people have been to the summit of Mt. Logan, and even fewer people have been to the summit and stayed for more than 24 hours. But for the sake of science, RCGS Fellow and world-leading ice core scientist Alison Criscitiello and her team took 10 days to summit Canada’s highest peak, where they camped for 16 days.
In her new documentary, For Winter, Criscitiello takes viewers on a gruelling journey to the top of Mt. Logan, where she and her team of six researchers extract the longest ice core ever drilled at a high altitude: 327 metres. The goal was originally to drill 250 metres, but the team was able to go deeper, successfully extracting an additional 77 metres of valuable data about our climate and environmental history.
For Winter premiered at the Banff Film Festival this past fall and was produced by National Geographic. Along with being a National Geographic Explorer, Criscitiello is also the director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab at the University of Alberta and a leading high-altitude mountaineer who has led expeditions (many of them all female) up some of the world’s highest peaks. In this week’s episode, we get into her early days as a US Park Climbing Ranger in the Pacific Northwest and her journey into ice core science, which has taken her all over the Arctic, the Antarctic and many fascinating places in between. Enjoy!
Welcome back Explore listeners! We are thrilled to have award-winning photographer and explorer Jillian Brown as our first guest of 2025. Based in Squamish, B.C., Brown has an epic list of adventures. She was the first Canadian to paddle across the continental US, from Oregon to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. Brown was also part of the first crew to paddle down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in a sea kayak, which is not made for whitewater, as she explains.
As a survivor of trauma and abuse, Brown is a strong and vocal advocate for those suffering from PTSD, promoting the importance of connecting to nature as a tool for healing while working with military veterans, first responders and more.
Brown’s adventures have taken her up mountains and down rivers across North America.
I couldn’t help noticing that many of her stories ended with the phrase, “But we survived!” So buckle in and enjoy!
And good news, the Canadian Geographic Polar Plunge Fundraiser is back! This year, the plunge will occur on March 9th in Canada's lakes, rivers and oceans. Check-in on the Canadian Geographic website and social media to learn more about how you can contribute and support Canadian Geographic’s mission of making Canada better known to Canadians and the world!
Oscar nominated!
Congratulations to Canadian Geographic Contributing Editor Julian Brave NoiseCat for his and Emily Kassie's Best Documentary Academy Award nomination for their film Sugarcane. Please enjoy this encore presentation of NoiseCat's interview with Explore, which was originally posted in September, 2024.
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.
"So, does Christmas eliminate distance?"
Happy holidays from Explore! For this Yuletide episode, we’re dipping into our Canadian Geographic files for the reading of a story written by RCGS founding President and Arctic explorer Charles Camsell who recalls a memorable Christmas he had on the trail to the Klondike in 1897.
In the early 1900s, travelling by canoe and horseback, Camsell mapped hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Canada’s north for the Geological Survey of Canada.
Born at Fort Liard, N.W.T., in 1876, his father Julian was an English fur trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company. His mother, Sarah Foulds, was Metis, with deep roots in the Red River. After graduating from the University of Manitoba, Camsell returned to the Northwest Territories just in time to get swept into the Klondike gold rush. Like thousands of young men and women at the time, he and his friend Arthur Pelly set off for the Yukon to seek their fortune.
Lynne McGuffin, Camsell's granddaughter, found the following story in his personal files. It was dated 1937, around the time he was writing his memoir, Son of the North. For the past two decades, it's been a tradition of host David McGuffin to read this to his wife and children on Christmas Eve as they moved from continent to continent, country to country, often celebrating the holidays far from family and home.
So, pour yourself a favourite drink, settle into a comfy chair by the fire and enjoy this reading of Christmas at Devil’s Portage.
To learn more about the Camsell family and their role in the fur trade, check out Season 2 of Explore, which features fascinating full archival recordings of Charles Camsell and his brother Philip Scott Camsell looking back on their Arctic childhoods.
Laval St. Germain’s journey to Afghanistan’s highest mountain
Today’s conversation with extreme athlete and adventurer Laval St. Germain is fascinating as we journey through Afghanistan to its highest peak, Mt. Noshaq, which stands at 7,492 metres. On the way, St. Germain reveals the current state of a country that was a central focus for Canadians and the world for almost two decades, post-9/11, during the War on Terror.
Afghanistan was home to Canada's longest war, and you hear little about it today, not since the US and NATO pulled out of the country in August 2021. That retreat cleared the way for the extreme Islamist group, the Taliban, to take back control of the country for the first time since being ousted by the US and NATO forces in 2001.
I am fascinated by the place. In 1979, I got my first shortwave radio for Christmas, and I remember the first thing I tuned in to was Radio Moscow reporting that Soviet troops had gone into Afghanistan at the "invitation" of the Afghan government in what would be a long and bloody Soviet defeat. Decades later, in the spring of 2008, as a CBC correspondent, I spent two months embedded with the Canadian military in Kandahar, Afghanistan. I went out on regular patrols with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in armoured vehicles, where every bridge and every culvert crossed was a potential roadside bomb. I went on foot patrol in Kandahar city, visited schools newly opened for the education of girls, and ran for shelter at Kandahar Airfield to avoid incoming Taliban missiles.
I was impressed with what the Canadians were able to do then, maintaining a degree of peace in the Taliban heartland and doing all that with fewer than a thousand combat troops. Still, in that dry, stark, beautiful, mountainous country, that peace and our presence always felt tenuous.
So, what is Afghanistan like now? St. Germain helps peel back some of the layers of that onion as he travels to Mt. Noshaq, talking and travelling with locals from the capital, Kabul, in the centre to the north of the country near the Tajikistan border.
As St. Germain confirms, the Taliban deserves its record as having one of the worst human rights records of any government in the world, largely because of its brutal treatment of women. Hunger also remains an issue, with one in four people needing food aid, according to the UN. And as St. Germain notes, that is not as dire as many had predicted. We also get into the debate about the pluses, minuses and dangers of travelling in a pariah state.
As much as he’s an extreme adventurer, doing amazing things like climbing the highest peaks on all seven continents or rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean, what I love about St. Germain is that he is also a student of history, geography and current events, and he brings all of that to his expeditions.
He's got a great story to tell. Enjoy!
I’m thrilled to have Ray Zahab back on Explore. Many of you know Ray as an extreme adventurer, Royal Canadian Geographical Society Explorer-in-Residence and friend of this podcast.
Ray joins me to talk about his gruelling solo run across one of the hottest places on earth, Death Valley, California during a record breaking heatwave this summer. The last time we talked, in spring 2023, he was heading off to Death Valley. He had just completed chemotherapy for a rare form of blood cancer, during which he somehow managed to fit in a trek across Baffin Island between chemo sessions, in the depths of winter. That’s a great conversation, check it out if you haven’t already. The Death Valley trip that followed wasn’t completed last year for some dramatic reasons Ray gets into in our talk. So, in true Ray fashion, he tried again. In July, he ran across Death Valley from its highest peak down to Badwater Basin — the lowest point in North America — over some incredibly tough terrain, with temperatures well above 50 degrees Celsius, 120 Fahrenheit.
For those of you who don’t know Ray, his list of accomplishments are long. He set the land speed record for reaching the south pole in Antarctica on foot. He spent three months running right across the Sahara desert during the peak of summer. He has trekked unsupported in winter in the Canadian Arctic, Siberia and Kamchatka. He has run across the Gobi Desert in China and the length of the Atacama Desert in Chile. And he leads youth adventure program Impossible 2 Possible, giving children from around the world the opportunity to experience nature up close at no cost.
More than military conquest: Manitoba's historic Dawson Trail with Pierrette Sherwood and Mimi Lamontagne
We do love history here on the Explore podcast, and one of the reasons is that the more you poke around, the more you dig, and the wider you cast your research net, the richer the story that gets revealed. Our guests today are the perfect example of that.
Pierrette Sherwood is the founder, artistic and creative director of Manitoba’s Dawson Trail Commemorative Project, and Mimi Lamontagne is the project researcher. If any of you out there have heard of the Dawson Trail, it’s probably best known as the route that British and Canadian troops used in 1870 to get to Manitoba and put down the Red River Resistance led by Louis Riel. It then became the pre-railroad overland route from Eastern Canada into the west.
Starting in 2019, the Dawson Trail Commemorative Project aims to illuminate a richer story beyond just conquest and migration. It's a story focused on the First Nations, Métis and French Canadian people who lived along the route for hundreds and thousands of years and what that reveals about our history and who we are as a people, including some remarkable characters. The route is 150 kilometres long, mostly just off of the Trans-Canada Highway. It features historical markers illuminating the extensive research into the history of the trail done by Lamontagne, Sherwood and their team. Along with being the Dawson Trail Project founder Pierrette Sherwood is a proud French Canadian Métis and award-winning arts and cultural professional. She makes her living as the artist-owner of Papillon Creations along the historic Dawson Trail.
Mimi Lamontagne is a career heritage specialist, researcher, and educator in Manitoba. She is a proud Franco-Manitoban and ally to Indigenous Peoples. She has worked with the Manitoba Museum, Parks Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
To learn more about the Dawson Trail visit dawsontrailtreasures.ca.
There are few greater champions of our trees and forests than Diana Beresford-Kroeger.
From her base in her forest reserve in Eastern Ontario, the Irish-born Beresford-Kroeger has led a decades-long campaign to save our planet’s forests and trees, while working in the fields of medical biochemistry, botany and medicine. She is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, winner of the RCGS Louie Kamoookak medal and the author of multiple award-winning books including To Speak for the Trees and the documentary Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees. Her latest book is another best-seller: Our Green Heart - The Soul and Science of Forests.
There is a lot that’s fascinating and hopeful in this conversation: how the North American king nut tree can solve hunger and aging issues, why oak trees may be the superheroes in the battle against climate change, and the critical link between forests and oceans. Beresford-Kroeger also examines simple, accessible tree-planting solutions to the climate crisis and the links she sees between her traditional Irish Druidic education and the traditional Indigenous knowledge in North America.
It is definitely hurricane season, so what better time than now to sit down for a conversation with one of the world's leading storm chasers, Jaclyn Whittal.
You probably know Whittal as the long-time co-host of Storm Chasers, where you’ll regularly find her reporting from Oklahoma's Tornado Alley, at the leading edge of some of the biggest hurricanes on record, or facing down fires in the interior of B.C. As a Fellow of the RCGS, Whittal also spends time working in the Arctic and running across deserts like the Atacama and Death Valley at the hottest times of year.
With all that as her platform, she is a leader in educating the public on the climate change science behind the increasingly extreme weather we are experiencing. We get into all of that in this fascinating conversation, as well as how she started out in musical theatre before switching to storm chasing. Did you know Whittal took over from the legendary Canadian pop star Shania Twain in a musical review at a famous Muskoka resort? She's a fascinating person with a great story to tell. Enjoy!
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 season, 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!" exclaims John Geiger as he catches 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 same vessel he died on.
John 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 Shackleton-Quest Expedition made an amazing discovery. This was a historic moment for the Society and for 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 hunt for Quest, as 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.
Among Geiger’'s 23 crew mates on this voyage included the world-famous shipwreck hunter David Mearn, RCGS Fellow and Geographer Antoine Normandin, RCGS Explorer-in-Residence and legendary diver Jill Heinerth. The expedition's honorary patrons included Shackleton’s granddaughter, Alexandra Shackleton, and Mi’sel Joe, the traditional Chief of the Miawpukek First Nation, on whose territory the wreck was found.
John 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 and his work has been translated into 14 languages. As 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, in an 11-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.
"Canada's claim to the Arctic derives from the Franklin expedition and the search that evolved out of it."
We’ve touched on the Franklin expedition in several other Explore podcast episodes, so we're excited to be taking the first proper deep dive into the story now with Ken McGoogan, an author who has been passionately writing about this topic for decades. We also discuss Ken’s latest book, Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery, which examines Franklin’s legacy from a contemporary perspective.
In the 1800s, Sir John Franklin led two Arctic expeditions 20 years apart, both ending in death and disaster. The second claimed his life along with all members of his Royal Navy crew.
In 1845, Franklin set off with 129 officers and men onboard the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus. His mission was to find the elusive Northwest Passage, a dreamed-of shortcut from Europe to Asia, through the dangerous sea ice of what is now the Canadian Arctic.
Both ships disappeared, seemingly without a trace, and everyone on board perished.
It sparked a massive international search and rescue effort, unprecedented in scale and duration.
The two Franklin ships were only found on the Arctic Ocean floor in the last decade, 160 years after their embarkment. Their discovery was largely due to Inuit oral history, especially the work of Ken McGoogan’s friend, the late Louie Kamookak, a one-time RCGS Honorary Vice-President.
Searching for Franklin focuses on the often overlooked Inuit role in the search for the missing expedition. He also suggests a compelling new theory on why the death toll was so high. This theory echoes an earlier and highly praised Franklin book, Frozen in Time, by our own RCGS CEO, John Geiger.
Ken and I begin our chat with the story of John Rae, a great Hudson’s Bay Company explorer and arguably one of the greatest Victorian explorers. He found the first traces of the dead from the Franklin expedition, which had dire consequences for his career.
"Polar Exploration is not for the faint of heart."
We're absolutely thrilled to welcome RCGS Fellow Susan R. Eaton to this episode of Explore.
Eaton is a well-known polar explorer, geoscientist, educator, and the founder and leader of Sea Women Expeditions. In 2015, she was named one of Canada’s greatest 100 modern-day explorers by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and a year later, she was selected by Canadian Geographic as one of Canada's greatest modern women explorers. She was also inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2020. For the past decade, her organization Sea Women Expeditions has led Indigenous and non-Indigenous women scientists, artists, educators, storytellers and more on Arctic sea voyages of discovery.
In this episode, we get into a lot of what is involved in this discussion. Our conversation includes swimming parts of the Northwest Passage, diving with orcas and humpback whales, working with Indigenous communities, fundraising lessons from Ernest Shackleton and what she’s learned about the polar seas with the changes brought there by climate change. It ends with a lovely ode to Haida Gwaii.
Enjoy!
"I took one step further and we were looking into the eyes of four lionesses and two cubs. The fourth lioness with the cubs exited down the ravine like a shot. The other three lionesses jumped up at us. We ran backwards, yelling at the top of our lungs. The lions came up after us. Their teeth were pulled back in a grimace. The noise was beyond belief."
I'm thrilled to have one of Canada's leading naturalists, Brian Keating, join us today. As you can tell from that quote, Brian has had some amazing adventures in some of our planet's most wild and beautiful places.
This conversation is a fun ride. We go from his early work at a weather station in the Canadian High Arctic to his travels to Antarctica, sub-Saharan Africa, the Himalayas, and more. There isn't a lot of our natural world that Brian hasn't seen and experienced.
Brian’s nearly 30-year career at the Calgary Zoo was split between being the Director of Education and Director of Conservation. For more than 20 years, he taught Anthropology at the University of Calgary. Presently, he’s the owner of goingwild.org and co-producer of greatBIGnature.com
Brian is a regular guest naturalist on CBC Radio and, for many years, was on the Discovery and National Geographic channels, using much of his own wilderness adventures and wildlife films to tell stories about the value and importance of nature. His constant travel partner is his wife Dee, a doctor, naturalist and also a Fellow of the RCGS.
Enjoy the ride!
I am thrilled to have Laval St. Germain as our guest for this episode of Explore. An avid adventurer, Laval has rowed solo across the North Atlantic Ocean and is the only Canadian to have summited Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. He has also climbed the tallest peaks on all seven continents, including Antarctica and many more of the world's most remote and challenging mountains — not to mention that he is also a commercial pilot, flying in the Canadian Arctic and was one of our RCGS Polar Plungers in Calgary.
As everyone who follows me or Canadian Geographic knows, we held our third Annual RCGS Polar Plunge last week to support another season of Explore.
Thank you to all of our amazing plungers and donors. We not only hit our goal of $35,000, we crushed it, topping $50,000 — our most successful polar plunge ever. This was mostly done in the best grass-roots way possible, with many smaller donations from many of you.
We did get five significant donations, and I want to thank those donors.
Dr. Ian Hammond’s donation helped compel RCGS CEO John Geiger to jump into a freezing Lake Ontario.
Connor Fitzgerald’s donation persuaded RCGS Fellow and polar filmmaker Mark Terry to jump into that same great lake. And Nancy Love’s generous donation got RCGS Vice President Sarah Legault to follow John and Mark into Lake Ontario too.
I also had two donors who got me to lead the plunge into a chilly Meech Lake in the Gatineau hills. One is my mother, Lynne McGuffin, an RCGS Camsell award winner, and my big cousin, Lynne Evenson.
Thank you all so much!
I also want to single out our top three fundraisers, all of whom won a fantastic Danish cold-water swim coat from Sitting Suits. Congratulations to RCGS Fellows James Raffan, Susan Eaton, and Mark Terry, all of whom, fittingly, spend a lot of time working in our polar regions.
Thank you as well to the dozens of RCGS Fellows and friends of Canadian Geographic who took part from coast to coast (there were 11 plunge sites in all) and, of course, to all of you who donated.
I’m humbled to be a part of this incredible RCGS community and to be bringing you another season of Explore.
Over the past two years, Canadian Geographic has been running “Passing the Mic,” a podcast training program in remote Nunavut communities. This week, we are pleased to showcase the third episode of this year’s series, which features stories produced by the students at the Netsilik School in Taloyoak, Nunavut.
The aim of this program is to give Inuit youth the tools to share their stories with the world in their own voices, using their words. I think you’ll agree that these stories provide a wonderful window into a unique and welcoming Inuit community.
Taloqroq is mainland Canada's most northerly community, sitting on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and the Northwest Passage. My Canadian Geographic colleague Tom Lundy and I spent a week in late October working with the students at Netsilik School, teaching podcasting. The students' ages ranged from 13 to 18, and we couldn’t have asked for a more enthusiastic group.
Today, we will hear from Nellie and Tyra, Faith Pauloosie and Leah Aklah, Leo Lyall and Steve Alookee, Alexis Ruben and Alayna Aklah and Shayna Nanook and Amaiyah Totalik.
Thanks to all of them for the amazing work they put in. Enjoy!
Also, these kinds of stories are exactly why we do the #RCGSPolarPlunge fundraiser every year. On March 4th, your donations will compel a lot of otherwise sensible people to plunge into the freezing lakes, rivers and oceans across Canada, including in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, in support of Canadian Geographic and this podcast.
So, to keep this kind of unique, balanced, thoughtful, independent storytelling coming, please go to RCGS.org/polarplunge
Thank You.
And thanks to Netsilik students Joyce Ashevak and Martha Neeveacheak for providing the beautiful throat singing used in this episode. You can hear their story in the previous episode.
And if you're community or school in Nunavut that would like to take part in the "Passing the Mic" podcast training program, drop us an email at explore@canadiangeographic.ca
In this episode, we're back in Taloyoak, Nunavut, mainland Canada’s most northerly community, to talk with Joyce Ashevak, Martha Neeveacheak and Roger Oleekatalik. They are three of the students who took part in Canadian Geographic’s Passing the Mic program, which aims to give Inuit youth the tools to share their own stories with the world.
Joyce and Martha are both throat singers, a unique and incredibly powerful Inuit vocal art form. And Roger is one of the leading young hunters in this community, which sits on a peninsula jutting out into the Arctic Ocean, west of Hudson Bay.
I got to spend an amazing week with them and 15 other students at the Netsilik School last October, teaching them interviewing, storytelling and podcasting. We’ll hear many of their stories over the next two episodes.
I started with these three young people because their stories are rooted in the land and in Inuit traditions and you can sense the positive impact this has had on them. A strong connection to culture has been proven to be important in overcoming challenges around mental health and addiction, which are major issues in northern communities.
Martha and Joyce have been throat singing for several years. It is an amazing thing to witness and it was a pleasure talking to them about how powerfully it changes them and their lives.
We actually met Roger’s grandfather Jimmy on this podcast last fall, in an episode focused on Jimmy‘s effort to create the first Inuit-led conservation area around Taloyoak. Go check that out if you haven’t already. It’s amazing. Roger is a chip off that block, for sure. In his last year of high school, he spends as much time as he can on the land, hunting to provide for his family and the community. It's an occupation that brings him both pride and joy.
I hope you enjoy these conversations, and the singing!
Passing the Mic is made possible with the support of Polar Knowledge Canada. And also by listeners like you who donate to the RCGS Polar Plunge Fundraiser. The 3rd annual Polar Plunge is taking place March 4 in rivers, lakes and oceans across Canada. To find out how you can participate and donate, go to RCGS.org/polarplunge. You’ll be helping make this kind of unique Canadian Geographic storytelling possible.
We are thrilled to be taking you back to Taloyoak, Nunavut, the northernmost community in mainland Canada. In this exciting episode, we sit down with Lenny Panigayak, Taloyoak’s mayor and viral TikTok star (@aqigiaq), who shares moments from his life and Inuit culture with his tens of thousands of followers.
The Explore Podcast team met Mayor Lenny when we went to Taloyoak to spend a week teaching podcasting to the amazing students at the Netsilik School in a program called “Passing the Mic,” which is supported by Polar Knowledge Canada.
Taloyoak is a lovely little community nestled on Spence Bay in western Nunavut, overlooking the Arctic Ocean and the Northwest Passage. It is a warm and welcoming community of about 1000 people living in brightly coloured, single-story homes, where people embrace traditional Inuit life, such as hunting, fishing, and being out on the land. Those are very much the themes that makeup Mayor Lenny's TikTok feed, with posts getting up to half a million views at a time.
This is the first of three episodes we'll bring to you from Taloyoak, including storytelling about life there from the amazing high school students at the Netsilik School. That includes the throat singers you'll hear in our podcast introduction today, Martha Neeveacheak and Joyce Ashevak.
Also, the 3rd Annual #RCGSPolarPlunge, a fundraiser in support of this podcast, is happening in frozen lakes, rivers and oceans across Canada on March 4th. Find out how you can help Canadian Geographic and Explore our mission to "make Canada better known to Canadians and the world" by visiting rcgs.org/polarplunge starting in early February.
The pack-ice 'round us cracks and groans;
The old St. Roch, she creaks and moans.
- Stan Rogers
In 1940, the wooden-hulled St. Roch became the second ship to successfully sail the Northwest Passage and the first to do it from west to east, captained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Henry Larsen. Our guest on this episode, Ken Burton, recreated that voyage 60 years later on another RCMP ship, the St. Roch II. A new RCGS Fellow, veteran sailor and polar explorer, Burton shares the incredible story of Larsen and the St. Roch's two-and-a-half-year journey through the Arctic ice in the early days of World War II and its secret mission to invade Greenland. He also shares the story of his own incredible Northwest Passage journey on the St. Roch II and how that trip set the speed record for the circumnavigation of North America.
As well as being an RCMP Coastal Commander and expedition leader in the Arctic and Antarctic, Ken Burton has served as Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue Society and the Executive Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum.
For this holiday episode of Explore, we’re dipping into our Royal Canadian Geographical Society files for the reading of a story written by RCGS founding President and Arctic explorer Charles Camsell, recalling a memorable Christmas he had on the trail to the Klondike in the late 19th century.
In the early 1900s, travelling by canoe and horseback, Charles Camsell mapped hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Canada’s north for the Geological Survey of Canada.
Born at Fort Liard in the Northwest Territories in 1876, his father Julian was an English fur trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company. His mother, Sarah Foulds, was Metis, with deep roots in the Red River.
After graduating from the University of Manitoba, Charles Camsell returned to the Northwest Territories just in time to get swept into the Klondike gold rush. Like thousands of young men and women at the time, he and his friend Arthur Pelly went off to the Yukon to seek their fortune.
Lynne McGuffin, Charles Camsell's granddaughter, found the following story in his personal files. It was dated 1937, around the time he was writing his memoir, Son of the North. For the past two decades, it's been a tradition of host David McGuffin to read this to his wife and children on Christmas Eve as they moved from continent to continent, country to country, often celebrating the holidays far from family and home.
So pour yourself a favourite drink. Settle into a comfy chair by the fire. And enjoy this reading of Christmas at Devil’s Portage. Happy Holidays!
In our second season of Explore, you can learn more about the Camsell family and their role in the fur trade, featuring full archival recordings of Charles Camsell and his brother Philip Scott Camsell recalling their memories of their Arctic childhoods.
“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!
The Westaway Explorer-in-Residence discusses his newest book "Where the Falcon Flies: A 3,400 Kilometre Odyssey From My Doorstep to the Arctic" and more!
Podcast host David McGuffin sits down with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discuss his passion and history with canoeing, including childhood trips and being taught to paddle by canoeing legend Bill Mason
The lifelong friends sat down for a fireside chat at the RCGS headquarters to discuss exploration, how the two undersea explorers met and more
Breaking into the business of wildlife photography is no easy task, but Ryan Tidman has experienced great success through his work photographing Vancouver Island's iconic mammals — bears, sea wolves, marmots and more
When Pascale Marceau came up with a name for her latest high Arctic expedition, "Arctic Awe," she thought this would refer to the awe she felt looking at the stark beauty of the land and sea ice she encountered. It wound up being so much more than that, awe born from extreme external challenges and the need to dig deep within herself. We're lucky to get Pascale, just weeks after finishing her ski expedition with partner Scott Cocks, in the depths of winter, across the sea ice from Ellesmere Island, over to the ice caps and glaciers of Devon Island and back again. In all, it took seven weeks, covering 650 kilometres. There are many near misses and dangers encountered described in this conversation, including a birthday she won't soon forget. And there is a lot about the spiritual impact of being in the vast, open beauty of a Canadian high arctic winter, the importance of adaptation to circumstances and environments, and why taking journeys on foot is a distinct part of who we are as a species.
As a mountaineer, Marceau has recorded a number of firsts:
- The first recorded winter ascent of the 4800-metre-high Mount Wood in the Yukon, which was also the first female winter ascent of a major peak in the subarctic.
- In 2021, she led the first all-woman ascent of the Yukon’s Mt.Lucania, Canada’s third-highest peak at 5200 metres.
Since then, she has focused on goals lower to the horizon, Arctic expeditions, including a 2022 crossing from Greenland to the Canadian High Arctic on sea ice. And the trip she is just back from skiing from Ellesmere to Devon Island this year. Her enthusiasm for exploration rings through here. Enjoy!
In her Great Island Expedition, RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Jill Heinerth and her team went to raise the voices of lives, ships and an aircraft lost during the Second World War from the waters in and around Newfoundland.
When we last had Jill Heinerth on the podcast, one of the stories she shared as she prepared for this diving expedition was about Lanier Phillips, an African-American mess attendant on a U.S. Navy ship that sank off the coast of Newfoundland during the Second World War. Back then, African-Americans like Lanier Philips could only work the lowest jobs in the racially segregated US Navy. And they were warned by officers that if they ever went ashore anywhere, they’d be lynched by locals. With his ship going down in harsh winter seas off of southern Newfoundland, Lanier Philips convinced his fellow attendants that the risk of lynching was better than almost certain death on a sinking ship. What followed would change his life. On her Great Island Expedition, Jill and her team dove to the wreck of the ship Lanier Philips escaped from, among many other second world war dive sites.
Our conversation starts with her dive to an RCAF B-24 Liberator bomber that no one had seen since it crashed and sank in the cold, dark waters of Gander Lake 80 years ago, taking with it the lives of four young Canadian men.
"I've done a lot of hard things. At last count, I think I've done 33 or 34 expeditions, and I would say this was the hardest thing I've ever done. Chemo and the monoclonal therapy that I was doing... I was a mess. I would build myself up (between treatments) over the course of a few weeks, where I'd have a seven or ten-day decent period where I would go and do stuff. I was on Baffin Island in February, across the Paalik Valley, a combination of skiing, trekking and snowmobile. Doing it!"
When Ray Zahab says something is the hardest thing he’s ever done, you know that means it was unbelievably hard. He’s coming off a battle with cancer in which he somehow managed to work in an expedition in the Canadian Arctic at the coldest time of the year. Ray Zahab is not just a friend of this podcast, he’s a friend. We’re about the same age, we live near each other in the Gatineau Hills, and we’ve had a lot of laughs together, usually over coffee on my front porch.
Like many people, I was worried and saddened to learn about his cancer diagnosis last year. Like many, I was then even more concerned about his decision to go ahead with a Baffin Island expedition in February, in between chemo treatments.
And I also know this. Ray is one of the most positive people I've ever met.
He is someone who faces risks head-on and weighs dangers from every possible angle. He’s set records for getting to the South Pole on foot and for running across deserts in the blazing summer heat. He has carried out expeditions in the harshest environments on the planet. Ray’s decisions around his cancer treatment were done in close consultation with his doctors and family.
It’s not likely what most of us would have chosen. It worked for him.
This is his story to tell. He does so beautifully.
"On our way back out, we hit all the volcanic gases. It was like the volcano had burped. We had hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. We were hoping to not find sulphur dioxide because that's one of those gases that is more indicative of an active magma chamber."
RCGS Fellow Christian Stenner joins Explore to talk about his adventures inside Canada's most active volcano. Last year, the Calgary native and one of the world's leading cave explorers was part of the first RCGS Trebek Initiative grantees. That grant helped fund his expedition into the Mt Meager volcano, just north of Vancouver on the BC coast. There he and his team made some amazing discoveries about a very active volcanic range that last erupted 2400 years ago. Stenner's expedition into the glacial ice caves leading to the volcano's vents was partly to see how close Mount Meager is to erupting again. He also teamed up with NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists to test out space probes that could be used in the search for life on one of Saturn's moons, Encelados, which has a similar landscape to Meagers fire and ice combination.
To learn more on this fascinating expedition, join Christian Stenner and his caving partner Kathleen Graham in their CanGeo Talks event at the RCGS headquarters at 50 Sussex Drive in Ottawa on May 4th at 7 p.m. To register, visit cangeo.ca./volcano
It’s always a special moment when one of the RCGS Explorers-in-Residence drops by the podcast. This conversation with George Kourounis is no exception. George is one of the world’s leading storm chasers, broadcasters, and adventure travellers. His busy schedule has him doing everything from chasing tornados to jumping into volcanoes to surviving epic hurricanes and major weather events. He is all about exploring those moments on our planet when nature is at its most extreme and then sharing what he’s learned from that experience. In this episode, George takes us iceberg climbing off of Newfoundland and then into Africa’s most active volcano, in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way, George shares some great behind-the-scenes tips for young explorers on how he made these expeditions come together. Enjoy!
“If you want to understand what it means to be fully human, go to Africa.”
Mario Rigby’s claim to fame is an impressive one. The RCGS Fellow was the first person to walk from Cape Town to Cairo solo. A Toronto based eco-adventurer, focused on sustainable travel and transport, Rigby covered 12,000 kilometres over two-and-a-half years and had a lifetime’s worth of adventures along the way. He was robbed of most of his money on just his second day out; he was attacked by wild dogs, pinned down under gunfire in a war zone, turned away at borders and detained by police multiple times. But mostly what he remembers is the incredible warmth and hospitality of the people he met along the way — that sense of community, ubuntu, that transcends African borders. It was a journey that he says fundamentally transformed him as a person and how he interacts with the world. He has since focused on being a positive and vocal advocate for diversity in the outdoors, encouraging people of colour to get out and explore nature. As part of that, he cycled across Canada. This fall, he’s spending a month travelling across the islands of the Bahamas using only human power: walking, swimming and paddling. He’s about to start a new adventure TV series with a focus on eco travel, working with the late Anthony Bourdain’s producers. And he’s working on a memoir about his African walkabout. That is the focus of this conversation. As well as amazing travel stories, there are a lot of great tips for young explorers in here, from what to wear on your feet to how to introduce yourself to new communities, learning to accept help and funding expeditions.
George Angohiatok grew up as among the last Inuit people to live a fully traditional, nomadic life in the Canadian Arctic. As a child in Nunavut in the 1950s and 60s, he lived with his parents, siblings and grandparents on the land, seal hunting on sea ice in the winters, and returning to land to hunt game and fish in the warmer months. That all came to an end when George was sent to Residential School, and his family was forced by the government into the community of Cambridge Bay. Those days on the land deeply shaped who George is today, and at 67, his mission in life is to teach the skills and traditions he learned from his parents and grandparents to a younger generation by taking Inuit youth hunting and teaching them survival skills in what can be a harsh environment. In this episode, George shares some incredible stories from that unique childhood and stories his grandparents passed on to him. I hope you enjoy listening to this interview as much as I did talking with him. He is both a powerful and gentle human being, who has done as much as anyone alive to keep Inuit culture alive. And here's a little aside George shared with me about surviving an Arctic winter. He says, "Fifty percent of it is staying out of the wind."
And a big thank you to everyone who took part in and donated to the RCGS Polar Plunge, in support of this podcast. With Polar Plunges in the Pacific Ocean, Lake Okanagan, Cambridge Bay, Canmore, Toronto, Gatineau Park and the St. Lawrence River, we raised an incredible $30,000 to keep Explore going for another season. Thank you!
In this second episode of Explore from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, we're passing the mic to two of our star students from our Canadian Geographic Podcast Workshop at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station. Tyler Agligoetok and Sinclair Lyall were among local Inuit youth who took part in five days of podcast training and community open houses. In this conversation, Sinclair interviews Tyler about his favourite memories of a recent goose hunt out on the tundra of Victoria Island. They discuss other favourite hunting memories and why Tyler loves feeling that connection to the land. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed putting it together!
The opening music in this episode is performed by a Cambridge Bay group called Huqqullaarutit Unipkaangit, which means “Stories Told Through Drum-Dance Songs.”
If you enjoy this podcast and the stories we bring you, please consider donating to the 2nd Annual RCGS Polar Plunge, being held on March 6 in support of the RCGS and storytelling that makes Canada better known to Canadians and the world.
"Indigenous People have the knowledge. And if we work together with scientists, we can come up with so much more than what only Inuit know or what scientists know. It's a great tool." - Jeannie Ehaloak, Polar Knowledge Canada, Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
We're thrilled to bring you the first of three episodes from our December visit to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, where we visited with the Inuit community and spent time at the new Canadian High Arctic Research Station there. CHARS, as it's known, is an effort to move the centre of gravity for science and research in Canada a little further north, according to Chief Scientist David Hik. In this fascinating episode we'll explore this $250 million, state of the art facility that just opened in 2019. We'll talk to people involved on how this represents a new chance to blend traditional Inuit knowledge with science, in an effort to overcome some big issues, not least of which is the impact of climate change in the Arctic, where temperatures are rising at a rate 6 times faster than in southern Canada.
The opening music is by a Cambridge Group called "Huqqullaarutit Unipkaangit," which means “Stories Told Through Drum-Dance Songs”.
If you enjoy this podcast and the stories we bring you, please consider donating to the 2nd Annual RCGS Polar Plunge, being held on March 6th in support of the RCGS and storytelling that "makes Canada Better known to Canadians and the world."
You can contribute by visiting rcgs.org/polarplunge
"The boreal forest is the largest intact forest left on the planet, it holds a quarter of the world's wetlands. It is a climate regulator."
You could argue there is nothing that binds Canada together like our boreal forest. It's defined by vast stands of spruce and seemingly endless lakes and swamps stretching beyond horizons. It runs in an uninterrupted band from British Columbia across the three territories and every province into Atlantic Canada. And it's a hugely important part of efforts to buffer against the impacts of climate change.
Our guest Valérie Courtois is currently at the UN Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, in Montreal, making the case for preserving the Boreal as part of the 30 by 30 goal. That is the pledge Canada and dozens of other nations have made to set aside thirty percent of our lands and waters as protected spaces in an effort to halt the dramatic decline of the planet's biodiversity, a decline that is directly linked to the climate crisis.
In our conversation, Courtois talks about the importance of the Boreal, why Indigenous people are and always have been the best protectors of our wild places, and the growing role of the Indigenous Guardians program in preserving the Boreal and our wilderness.
Courtois is Innu from Goose Bay Labrador, a registered forester, she focuses on indigenous issues. As well as being the Director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, she has advised the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador and the Innu Nation on forestry.
Hop aboard the Polar Prince with David McGuffin as he sails Atlantic Canada's Bay of Fundy with the scientists, students and researchers that make up this Students on Ice conservation expedition
John Robinson of Parks Canada talks about the work being done to help bring back Fundy Atlantic salmon populations from the brink of extinction
Join Students on Ice President Geoff Green aboard the Polar Prince as he discusses his experience as an expedition leader and how he built Students on Ice to be the vital force that it is today.
Join fungi expert Keith Seifert and podcast host David McGuffin on an educational mushroom and fungi walk through Ottawa's Gatineau Hills
As Canada’s first Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children, Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with former Residential Schools, Kimberly Murray discusses her new role and how she endeavours to support communities searching for their missing children and seeking justice for the children, families and communities
Best-selling author and American journalist, John U. Bacon discusses the 1972 Summit Series and how Team Canada radically changed the game
Senator Mobina Jaffer discusses the lead-up to the expulsion, the difficulties and benefits of starting a new life in Canada and the important lessons to be learned by Canadians in how we treat refugees today
Award-winning Canadian wildlife photographer, Michelle Valberg joins the podcast to discuss her new appointment to the Order of Canada, philanthropic work and early days as a photographer
Award-winning journalist and best-selling author, Roy MacGregor discusses the history of the canoe and how it continues to capture the imaginations of people across Canada and beyond
Canoeing legend Wally Schaber talks about his lifelong love of the Dumoine River, the last of the wild rivers in the Ottawa river watershed.
As NASA and the world’s space agencies prepare to return to the moon, geologist Dr. Gordon "Oz" Osinsky helps train potential lunar explorers in remote northern Labrador on what they could find there
Connie Walker discusses her late father’s experience of abuse as a First Nations child at St Michael's Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan
During the pandemic, it’s safe to say most of us spent some time self-isolating, but not quite in the way our guest today did.
Polar explorer and RCGS Fellow Sunniva Sorby spent over a year and a half, including two long winters, in an uninsulated 1930 trapper’s hut on the Arctic island of Svalbard, which is halfway to the North Pole from northern Norway.
Along with her Norwegian colleague, Hilde Falun Strom, they set a record with their all-women project, called Hearts in the Ice, for their time spent in their isolated outpost while doing scientific research for NASA, the Norwegian Polar Institute and the British Columbia Technical Institute, among others. Their work focused on bringing attention to the massive impact climate change is having on our polar regions.
And now they are about to do another Hearts in the Ice project, this time at Cambridge Bay in Canada’s High Arctic.
Born in Norway and raised in Canada, Sunniva Sorby has spent decades carrying out expeditions in the Arctic and especially the Antarctic. She was part of the first ever all-woman team to reach the South Pole.
You can learn more about the Hearts in the Ice project at www.heartsintheice.com/
This episode is about the incredible journey of a group of new Canadians. Former child soldiers who fought in Sudan during Africa's bloodiest civil war were shipped off to Cuba and finally found refuge in Canada — many of them in Brooks, Alta.
Our guest is Canadian anthropologist and author Carol Berger, who spent 20 years gathering the stories of former child soldiers in South Sudan, East Africa, Canada and beyond, for her new book The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army.
Two million people died in Sudan’s Civil War from 1983 to 2005, a conflict that eventually led to the creation of a new nation, South Sudan. The tens of thousands of child soldiers made to fight in that war came to be known as the “Lost Boys.” As we discuss in this conversation, they were never really “lost,” but rather stolen by the same leaders who are now heading up the government of South Sudan, and who continue to press children into the conflicts that have flared up since.
As well as being an anthropologist and author, during the 1980s and 1990s, Carol Berger was a foreign correspondent based first in Khartoum, Sudan, and then later in Cairo, reporting for the BBC, The Guardian and The Economist.
Born and raised in cattle country in southern Alberta, she now lives in the Egyptian capital.
I'm thrilled to have Christian Stenner, one of Canada’s leading cave explorers and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, as our guest on this episode of Explore.
It's the International Year of Caves and Karst, which is why we wanted to have Christian on the podcast now. But given the mind boggling stories he has, the tight squeezes he's been through, he's definitely welcome anytime.
As one of Canada’s top cavers, Christian has been part of many of the most important cave expeditions in this country, and beyond, over the past decade. These include the exploration of Bisaro Anima in British Columbia, where he and his team proved it was the deepest cave anywhere in Canada or the U.S.
He has also led expeditions in the Castleguard cave, Canada’s longest,
and inside active volcanoes in the U.S. Pacific Northwest like Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier. And those experiences led to him becoming one of the first grantees of the Society’s Trebek Initiative in 2021. He’ll be using those resources to explore Canada’s only known active volcano, Mount Meager.
We’re thrilled to have Ray Zahab back on the podcast. He was our very first guest back in 2019. Give that one a listen if you want a great overview of his amazing career as an extreme athlete and expedition leader travelling to some of the hottest, coldest, most remote parts of our planet.
His latest expedition, a traverse of Ellesmere Island on foot and by ski in the depths of the Arctic winter, fits right into that mould.
What I love about this conversation is not just hearing what he saw and about the immense challenges he faced along with his partner Kevin Vallely and their team, but also his decision-making process in calling a temporary halt to that expedition in the face of far worse-than-expected winter conditions. And, how that decision making process has changed in his 20-plus years taking on these extreme kinds of journeys.
When Moose Jaw, Sask. comedy duo “Leroy and Leroy” began posting their short video hot-takes on Instagram and TikTok in 2021, their hope was to get up to 10,000 followers. Just over a year later, their quirky videos highlighting the odd sites and signs found along Canada’s roadways now have hundreds of thousands of followers and over 12 million views on TikTok alone. In the process they’ve helped bring some much needed comic relief to the world, while road-tripping back and forth across Canada, signing off with their signature catch phrase: “There’s Always Something to Do!”
In this interview, David and “Leroy in front of the camera” talk about the duo’s origins, the creation of that catchphrase, the legend of Brandon (Leroy and Leroy’s Pete Best), the moment they knew they’d taken off, Leroy’s fashion sense and where they’re headed next (look out mid-west America!).
It’s always fun when one of our RCGS Explorers-in-Residence comes on the podcast; they’re always up to the most fascinating things. That’s especially true of Jill Heinerth. An internationally acclaimed cave diver, bestselling author, and award-winning documentary filmmaker, Jill has been spending the pandemic exploring Canada’s longest underwater cave system, underneath the Ottawa River, just northwest of the nation’s capital and down the road from her house. What she found there is remarkable: “The most dense biomass I've ever seen in a freshwater cave.” Heinerth takes us into those caves to reveal the remarkable life inside. And she previews her forthcoming RCGS-flagged expedition diving around the coast of Newfoundland, which includes the incredible story of Lanier Phillips, an African-American sailor in the Second World War who survived the sinking of his ship off the coast of Newfoundland, got ashore and expected to be lynched by the locals, but instead was rescued and nursed back to health, sparking lifelong friendships and a remarkable life in the civil rights movement.
Severn Cullis-Suzuki, the new Executive Director of the David Suzuki Foundation, has been an environmental activist for almost as long as she can remember. That isn’t surprising when you consider that her father is David Suzuki, Canada’s leading environmentalist and longtime host of CBC’s much-loved show The Nature of Things.
Cullis-Suzuki’s moment in the environmental spotlight came early. It was 30 years ago this year when, at the age of 12, she gave world leaders a dressing down about the state of the environment in a speech at the Earth Summit, the first ever UN Climate Change Conference in Rio.
We talk about that viral moment in a pre-social media age, and how its echoes are found in the words and actions of today’s young environmental activists, like Greta Thunberg. We also discuss what it’s like to fill her father’s very big shoes at the foundation that carries his name. And, as the RCGS marks the UN Decade of Indigenous Languages, we get into her immersion in Haida culture on Haida Gwaii, off the northern coast of British Columbia, and why she believes the link between Indigenous languages and the land is key to turning around the state of the environment.
“To protect the Arctic is to protect the rest of the world.”
So says Lisa Koperqualuk, Vice-President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, in this fascinating episode about the challenges faced by Inuit communities in the Arctic today. Koperqualuk discusses the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, the need to regulate Arctic shipping, the importance of speaking Inuktitut, and her experiences growing up a small village in Nunavik, on the shores of Hudson’s Bay, as the granddaughter of legendary Inuit artist Aisa Koperqualuk. He was a major influence in her life and her career focused on preserving Inuit communities and culture. To this day, she carries his advice to her as she faces down a long list of challenges: “Continue.”
Musician and politician Charlie Angus is our guest this episode, talking about his new book, Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower. It is a fresh look at his Northern Ontario hometown of Cobalt and its silver mining boom in the early 1900s, which he says changed not only Canadian mining, but how mining has been carried out around the globe ever since — and not always for the better.
For the lucky, the Cobalt silver rush built fortunes. It turned Toronto from a provincial backwater into a world financial and mining hub. It was a factor in the eventual creation of the National Hockey League, the inspiration for a Broadway play and drew immigrants from countries as far flung as Syria and China. But its legacy is a murky one, which Angus’ book brings into the light. The book also reveals neglected histories of the centuries of Indigenous mining that went on in the north long before European settlers arrived.
Charlie Angus is the longtime New Democratic Party MP for Timmins-James Bay and, as we discuss in the interview, he’s also the longtime front man for Grievous Angels, a Canadian band that was alt-country before alt-country was a thing
It's a fascinating talk. Enjoy!
We’re thrilled to have Perry Bellegarde on the podcast, the new Honorary President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society
You likely also know Bellegarde from his time as a transformational National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations from 2014 to 2021, where he helped push key legislation through parliament, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and the Indigenous Languages Act, just to name a couple. He is a proud member of the Little Black Bear First Nation in Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. Last year he was named Nation Builder of the Year by the Empire Club for his "record of achievement built over 35 years in First Nations leadership and advocacy for Indigenous rights, human rights, and building bridges within Canada and globally."
In this lively and fascinating episode he discusses growing up in Little Black Bear, his time in First Nations politics, the importance of indigenous languages, culture and ceremony, and his new role with RCGS.
It’s hard to think of a person who has written with more passion about Canada, and in as many different mediums, as Dave Bidini. You might know him as the songwriter and frontman of the Rheostatics – that most Canadian of Canadian bands — or for his best-selling books On a Cold Road, The Tropic of Hockey, Keon and Me or Midnight Light, or from his award-winning journalism and documentaries, or for his latest endeavour, the West End Phoenix, a community newspaper he founded in Toronto.
The Phoenix is a bold effort to fill the void caused when big newspaper chains started closing down community newspapers. With a focus on great reporting and storytelling, it features guest writers like Margaret Atwood and Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson. The interview also gets into why the Yellowknifer newspaper in the N.W.T. was the inspiration for the Phoenix, and touches on Dave’s deep love of the Toronto Maple Leafs, a special moment with Wendel Clark, and a possible cause of the Leafs’ decades-long Stanley Cup curse.
Today we’re lucky to be talking to Dr. Daniel Pauly, professor of marine biology at the University of British Columbia, the leading expert on the declining state of the world's fisheries and something of a philosopher.
Fish is the last wild catch: the last animal food source we hunt and eat en masse from the wild. But Daniel Pauly warns that we are rapidly approaching the end of fish due to industrial fishing methods, government subsidization of corporate fishing operations, and climate change.
The French-born marine biologist has dedicated his long and award-winning career to improving the data that’s used to understand global marine stocks, especially in the developing world, where illegal fishing is rampant. This is the principal aim of the Sea Around Us initiative that he helped found at UBC. More accurate data helps better pinpoint where fisheries are collapsing and how best to protect them with ocean reserves, government regulation and a shift from industrial fishing operations back to smaller, traditional in-shore fishing. We discuss all that and what lessons have and have not been learned from the collapse of Atlantic Canada‘s once thriving cod fishery.
With this December marking the 100th anniversary of Agnes Macphail becoming the first woman elected to the Canadian Parliament, Explore welcomes one of the most prominent female political figures of our present day to the podcast. Before stepping back from public life in the fall of 2021, Catherine McKenna was a federal Minister of Industry and Minister of the Environment in the government of Justin Trudeau. She was lead Canadian negotiator and signatory of the Paris Climate Accord, and got federal carbon pricing legislation passed by Parliament.
In this engaging and thoughtful conversation, she discusses the joys and challenges of being a woman in politics today, how to make politics more inclusive, what needs to be done to shut down the threats and hate of internet trolls, where things stand with the environment after the Glasgow Climate Conference, and why she is passionate about open- and cold-water swimming.
We're thrilled to welcome Emily Choy, the newest RCGS Explorer-in-Residence, to the Explore Podcast. Based out of McGill University, Emily is an award-winning expert on the impacts of climate change on the Arctic, with a focus on a sea-bird called murres. Emily describes her summers on Coats Island in Hudson's Bay, studying a colony of 30,000 murres that nest high on the island's barren cliffs. Looking like a cross between a penguin and a puffin, these remarkable sea birds can dive up to 100 metres deep while hunting for fish. Emily explains how summer heatwaves are seeing murres die in their nests from heat exhaustion, and how they are being forced to change their diet as their staple food source, Arctic cod, shifts north searching for colder waters. She also describes how her passion for nature was nurtured at her grandparents’ cottage near Lake Simcoe, her time spent studying beluga whales, and why she sees her role as a Black female scientist as an important one, especially in her work in the North.
Viola Desmond was arrested 75 years ago this month for refusing to leave her seat in the “whites only” section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. This brave stand by a Black Nova Scotian against the segregation rules of the day in Nova Scotia would inspire future generations to break down the racist structures that had been suppressing Black people in Canada for centuries.
George Elliott Clarke, Canada’s former Poet Laureate, is intimately familiar with that world. His family roots stretch back centuries to the earliest days of Black Nova Scotia, which is the subject of his latest book, Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir.
“One of the great things about being Africadian,” Clarke says, “is no matter the oppression, and the racism and the apartheid, what made our communities special is that we had communities, we had land, we had homes, we had neighbours who had the same struggles you had, who could share their resources with you, who shared your faith, and all of a sudden you've got this distinct lifestyle that is linked to where you actually live.”
Through the prism of his remarkable family, Clarke takes us on a fascinating journey through Africadia, his name for the tightly knit, Black Nova Scotian communities that are now fading away into the broader culture.
As well as being an award winning poet and former Poet Laureate of Canada, George Elliott Clarke is a professor at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
The UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow is being described as a critical moment in human history, as our ability to reverse global warming reaches a point of no return.
Harvey Locke is in Glasgow, leading the charge against biodiversity loss, and linking it firmly to climate change. As a leader of the "Nature Needs Half" movement, Locke and a growing number of experts believe that the way to reverse both climate change and biodiversity loss is to set aside half of the world's natural places, and let nature be nature. Locke explains why this is both possible and necessary, and discusses his own grassroots experiences as the co-founder of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.
Based in Banff, Alta., Locke has dedicated his life to conserving the world’s wild spaces. He is also the Chair of the Beyond Aichi Targets Task Force and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
It's bird migration season. Geese are flying south, loons making their last mournful cries on northern lakes and bird feeders are getting set up in backyards and on balconies.
To celebrate our avian friends, we’re thrilled to have Patrick Nadeau joining us. He is the new President of Birds Canada, which is the largest organization for citizen science in Canada.
This episode is about birds and you, and how by simply observing and noting those birds in your backyard, on your balcony feeder, or in the wild, you can do a lot to advance the understanding of not just birds, but also the state of our planet. You can join in at https://www.birdscanada.org/
Patrick Nadeau is a New Brunswick native, with a long career in preserving our wild and natural places. He is the former executive director of CPAWS Quebec, where he played a leading role working with the Inuit in Nunavik to create Tursujuq National Park, the largest protected area in eastern North America.
And as we discuss in the podcast, he was also executive director of Ottawa Riverkeeper, where he helped attain heritage designation for the Ottawa River — one of the world’s great exploration routes — by the Canadian, Ontario, and Québec governments.
October ... The nights grow longer and darker. It's time for Hallowe'en, time to gather around fires and tell ghost stories. And that is exactly what RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Adam Shoalts has in store for us in this episode. He joins us to talk about his new book, The Whisper on the Night Wind. It's a wilderness tale of the supernatural, an investigation into a century-old legend of a strange, demon-like creature that haunted the remote fur trading posts of Labrador. This creature, known as the Traverspine Beast or Traverspine Gorilla, was described in detail by multiple eye-witnesses over several years. Armed with those accounts, and a travel companion trained in mixed martial arts, Adam set off in his canoe, up roaring Labrador rivers and into the ancient, mist-shrouded Mealy Mountains, in search of this legend.
The resulting story is a fantastic, fun and chilling tale, a look, as he puts it, into “the strange and scary things that lurk in the darkness, beyond the flicker of the firelight.”
Our spooky music for this episode comes to us courtesy of Liam Seagrave (@pianogeist).
September 30, 2021 marks the first ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. It's a federal statutory holiday, a time to reflect about the brutal impact of the Indian Residential School System. Hundreds of thousands of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were forced to attend those institutions from the 1830s to the 1990s, and the impact of that has resonated through families, communities and generations.
This holiday was the direct result of the 94 Calls to Action from the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. Our guest today, Marie Wilson, was one of the three Commissioners of that Commission, which worked from 2009 to 2015.
In that role, Wilson criss-crossed the country hearing heartbreaking testimony from residential school survivors. Stories of the mental, physical and sexual abuse children suffered as part of a system, run by the churches and government, aimed at forcing Indigenous children to assimilate into white society — or as one official bluntly put it, “to kill the Indian in the child.”
In this episode, Wilson reflects on how she will mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the recent tragic discoveries of unmarked graves at several former residential school sites, and what still remains to be done to address the TRC Calls to Action.
The subject matter discussed in this episode may be upsetting or triggering for some listeners. If you are a residential school survivor in distress or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools crisis line toll-free at 1-866-925-4419.
Commander Chris Hadfield is arguably Canada’s most famous astronaut. There was even a time, during his 2013 mission aboard the International Space Station, when he was quite possibly our most famous Canadian, appearing as a guest on talk shows and capturing the imaginations of millions with his viral dispatches from life in orbit. A veteran of multiple missions to space with the Canadian Space Agency, NASA and the Russian Space Program, he was the first Canadian to do a space walk, was commander of the ISS, and spent five years as the NASA representative to the Russian Space Program based in Moscow, becoming a fluent Russian speaker in the process.
It’s fair to say that Hadfield knows a thing or two about space, so when it came time for him to write his first ever novel, he turned for inspiration to the cosmos and the heyday of the Space Race, particularly the Apollo Missions to the moon in the 1960s and ’70s. Out next month, The Apollo Murders is a classic Cold War-era spy thriller. In this fascinating conversation, we discuss the moments in his own career that inspired a novel that now has leading Hollywood figures like James Cameron and Ryan Reynolds exploring turning it into a film.
“I thought trying to write a fiction book that would really give people a feel for what space flight is like, not only would that be an interesting personal challenge, but also once people have read this book they'll have almost an intuitive feel for what those various things are,” says Hadfield. “It gave [me] another avenue to share those extremely rare experiences that I've been lucky enough to have.”
“Colombia is a place where magic seems to happen every moment and I would argue that only a people like the Colombians, with their enduring spirit of place, their indescribable capacity for joy, could have endured the agonies of the last 50 years.”
Wade Davis says his latest book Magdalena: River of Dreams is a love letter of sorts. Colombia, he says, is “a nation that allowed me to dream, that gave me my wings to fly.” His love affair with Colombia began as a 14-year-old in the late 60s, when he went on an exchange from suburban Montreal. He has been returning ever since, as a writer, botanist, traveller, and scholar of Indigenous religions, captivated by the unbelievable range of history, cultures, environments, climates, and people that exist in this diverse South American nation.
In this interview, Davis discusses the five years of travels he undertook along the Magdalena River, “a corridor of commerce and a fountain of culture, the wellspring of Colombian music, literature, poetry and prayer,” as the nation emerged from decades of civil war and drug cartel violence. He reveals a resilient, vibrant Colombia, a country where almost every ecological zone found on the planet can be reached within a day’s travel, from Caribbean beaches to snow-capped mountains, rainforests to deserts; a country of literally a thousand musical rhythms, where Indigenous cultures continue to thrive, and where the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez is “just journalism” — a cataloguing of the magic that unfolds on a daily basis.