magazine / apr09
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April 2009 issue |
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REVERBERATIONS
I picked up your latest issue (Jan/Feb 2009) while
shopping the other day, as I recognized three of the throat-singers and dancers on the cover
from spending the summer of 2006 working in Pond Inlet. The following summer, in Arctic Bay,
two 10-year-old girls stopped me as I was walking my dog and gave me a spontaneous throat-singing
demonstration. Hopeful at 10, but where will they be at 20? Thank you for this insightful
but realistic article on our newest territory.
Bonnie Patterson-Payne
Edmonton (via Facebook)
What’s Innu name?
I enjoyed your recent article describing the efforts by the Nunavut
Inuit to document their place names as well as the various United Nations initiatives
to promote consistent and accurate use of such names around the world (“Solving the
riddle of place names,” Jan/Feb 2009). In
November 2008, the Labrador Innu made their own contribution to international toponymy
by publishing the first comprehensive website dedicated entirely to aboriginal place names.
The long-term objectives of the website are to promote the use of Innu place names among
Innu and non-Innu alike and to nurture a land-based Innu sense of place. I invite your
readers to visit www.innuplaces.ca.
Peter Armitage
St. John’s
Blight on Bloor
I can assure you that not all citizens of Toronto are enamoured of the crystal-shaped facade
on the Royal Ontario Museum (“Age
of Renaissance,” Jan/Feb 2009). Some of
us refer to it as the “Blight on Bloor Street.” It is ugly and really cheapens
the look of what was a magnificent old building.
This is a classic case of celebrity architects building monuments to themselves with total
disregard for the beauty of the existing building and surroundings. This facade looks like
a piece of cheap costume jewellry worn at a Gucci party. It’s a big disappointment.
Bernie Merrett
Toronto
Working together
Your December 2008 issue was an exciting adventure, offering
insights into the lives of bears, bees and turkeys. But the tale about the teenager who died
on a glacier 200 years ago (“The messenger”)
was the ultimate in storytelling.
It was amazing to read about botanists, archaeologists, forensic pathologists, First Nations
and many others all working together in pursuit of a common goal. Canadian politicians please
take note.
Barbara Dreury
Poplarfield, Man.
The article on the frozen teen was awesome. The author made me feel as if I actually were
family to this incredibly brave young man. Congratulations to all those people who did so
much high-tech research and to those who turned it into an interesting and warm story.
Marjorie Thompson
Chilliwack, B.C.
14,000 phantom whales
That’s me in the kayak on Isabella Bay, in Nunavut, in the photo with the stunningly
incorrect headline “Bowhead whales back in abundance” (“The
year of getting closer,” Dec 2008). The caption
says Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced that there are 14,400 bowheads, far more than
its earlier estimate of 5,000. The new number, it says, is based on improved survey methods
and acceptance of Inuit knowledge. This new estimate is preposterous.
Directly behind me in the photo is a prominence from which I conducted bowhead whale studies,
supported by the World Wildlife Fund, over a 14-year period, beginning in 1983. I presented
my results to the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission. The count
of the Isabella bowheads, combined with numbers obtained by my colleagues in Baffin Bay and
the Northwest Passage, offers a best estimate of the total bowhead population in the low
hundreds.
This estimate was obtained through dangerous aerial surveys covering hundreds of thousands
of kilometres and months of arduous, uncomfortable watches from coastal headlands. These
studies of the northern part of the range have never been repeated, nor have the results
been refuted. So where are the 14,000 missing whales hiding?
Fisheries and Oceans Canada initiated its studies, focused on the southern part of the range
in Hudson Bay, in 1996, only when it was forced to by the constitutional terms of the Nunavut
Land Claims Agreement, which guaranteed that Inuit could begin hunting bowheads again.
My review of the bowheads concluded that protecting endangered species requires an increased
recognition that most contemporary extinction problems are the result of socio-economic and
political forces, just like the ones that destroyed the cod.
James K. Finley
Sidney, B.C.
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* Letters may be edited for length, accuracy and liability.
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