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April 2009 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Trois-Rivières Feature: Vikings Feature: Métis population The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte Mosaic

SPEAKER SERIES
Pictures worth thousands of words

(Photo: Paul Nicklen)

“People don’t realize what goes behind making a photograph,” says Nicklen from his home in Whitehorse. “When you work for magazines such as National Geographic, you often work out of fear: fear of failure. To me, it is the hardest job in the world, yet it is also the greatest job.”

Just seeing his pictures published in glossy magazines used to satisfy the awardwinning shooter, who was born in Saskatchewan, raised in Kimmirut, Nunavut, and trained as a marine biologist. But after a few years, the thrill faded, and Nicklen realized the valuable skills he’d acquired on assignment and the knowledge he’d gained of the natural world were too profound to be squandered on pretty pictures alone.

As a regular contributor to numerous major magazines, including Canadian Geographic, Nicklen, 40, has a worldwide audience of millions.

And with the global community focusing on the fragile Arctic and Antarctic environments — Nicklen’s specialty — he is ideally positioned to achieve his ultimate goal: to make people care about the impact of climate change on polar species and their habitats.

Paul Nicklen will share his experiences on April 22 at Ottawa’s Centrepointe Theatre as part of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society Speaker Series.

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MAGAZINE
A new editor for a new era

Photo: David Trattles

That’s the spirit of innovation Harris intends to continue as Canadian Geographic’s newly appointed editor-in-chief, the eighth in its 79-year history.

With 35 years of journalism experience under his belt, Harris has a strong vision for where the magazine is headed. “Every story should be timely and compelling, about people whose work and passion has relevance to all Canadians,” he says. “I’d also like to strengthen the links between the web side and the print side of the magazine, to encourage readers to be more involved and to express their views.”

A native of Montréal, Harris graduated from Ottawa’s Carleton University, where he studied sociology and anthropology, and began his journalism career in 1974 as a reporter and reviewer at The Montreal Star. He succeeds Rick Boychuk, who spent 14 years in the top post. Under Boychuk’s editorship, Canadian Geographic won dozens of awards, including Magazine of the Year honours at the 2001 National Magazine Awards.

“My goal is to build on Rick’s legacy,” says Harris, an honourary Fellow of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society. “By channelling the voices of a generation of writers, photographers, editors, artists, scientists and everyday people with extraordinary stories to tell, he made an enormous contribution to the national dialogue. I hope to help stimulate that lively conversation.”

— Margo McCaffrey

EDUCATION
All the motivation in the world

Photo: Alysia Garmulewicz

In 2002, at the age of 15, Alysia Garmulewicz had a life-changing experience: she joined a student expedition to Antarctica to learn about global warming. “Seeing that profoundly beautiful and fragile environment being affected by climate change motivated me to take action,” she says.

That new-found consciousness inspired Garmulewicz to organize a climate-change conference for Canadian youth in 2005. Supported by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and her family, she raised more than $120,000 for the gathering and attracted attention from environmental bigwigs such as Elizabeth May and David Suzuki’s daughter, Severn.

Now 21 and finishing her undergraduate degree in climate change and sustainability at Carleton University in Ottawa, Garmulewicz knows her next stop: a master’s in geography and the environment at the University of Oxford in England as the recipient of a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

Not one to limit her horizons, Garmulewicz is also the founder of the Changing Climates Educational Society, a not-for-profit group involved in projects such as the organization of the World Changing Careers symposium to be held in Vancouver this July.

“Developing career paths that work toward a sustainable future,” Garmulewicz says, “is one of the most powerful tools we have to change society for the better.”

For more information, visit www.changingclimates.org.

— Margo McCaffrey

AWARDS
Going beyond the book

“It’s not the sort of experience a geography teacher would usually have.” So says Sonia Rebellato, a Mississauga, Ont., high school teacher who travelled to Kansas City, Missouri, in 2007 for Project Atmosphere, a program that offers educators hands-on meteorology experience. Rebellato learned how to read radar, for instance, and discovered that Canadian weather sensors once used human hair to detect humidity fluctuations. Back at home, she felt re-energized while passing along her new knowledge in the classroom.

Rebellato’s trip was made possible by the Canadian Council for Geographic Education’s (CCGE) Phyllis Arnold Award. While attending American geographic conferences in the early 1990s, textbook author Phyllis Arnold often thought it was “a shame there are thousands of Canadian geography teachers who don’t get to go to meetings like this.” In 2001, Arnold won the CCGE’s Geographic Literary Award and parlayed the prize money into the creation of a professional-development award to facilitate conference attendance. She has since augmented her initial bequest with royalties from textbook sales. The award ensures that Canadian teachers can travel, Arnold says, “and bring that knowledge back.”

— Graham Lanktree

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