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Celebrated Canadians helped launch the RCGS's magazine, Canadian
Geographic.
This portrait by renowned photographer Richard Harrington
graced the cover of the Canadian Geographical Journal in December 1950.
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IT WAS NOT AN AUSPICIOUS BEGINNING for the
fledgling Canadian Geographical Society. Founded in the year
of the Great Crash, the Society launched its magazine, then
known as the Canadian Geographical Journal, just as the Great
Depression set in. Yet despite its early struggles, Canadian
Geographic has evolved into a popular, award-winning periodical.
Early contributors to the magazine, some of whom were among
the most illustrious characters in Canada's arts, science
and political circles, helped pave the way to that success.
The first issue of the Journal, published in May 1930, included
contributions from a number of high-profile Canadians. There
was a congratulatory message from then Prime Minister William
Lyon Mackenzie King and a feature story by Dr. Frederick G.
Banting, co-discoverer of insulin and Nobel Prize winner.
Banting wrote about and sketched his travels on an arctic
supply ship with friend and Group of Seven painter, A. Y.
Jackson. |
By the end of 1930, Canada had a new prime minister, R. B. Bennett,
who penned this message in the magazine. 'I have watched ... the
growth of The Canadian Geographical Society, of which I am very
glad to count myself a member,' he wrote. 'Its purposes are altogether
admirable....'
Admirable they were, but the Society was barely making ends meet
in its early years, through the height of the depression. Popular
humorist Stephen Leacock graced the pages of the magazine with two
articles during that era: one in 1932 on the forgotten explorations
of the French Baron de Lahontan, and another in 1935 on Leacock's
old stomping grounds around Ontario's Lake Simcoe.
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The magazine has always attracted talented photographers, willing
to go to the extremes of the country for the perfect shot. Richard
Harrington was one such photographer who travelled the globe and
sold his works to the likes of the Smithsonian Institution and New
York City's Museum of Modern Art. He was renowned for his portraits
of Inuit, many of which were published in the Journal through the
1950s.
Canadian Geographic has evolved into a venue for more journalistic
and popular writing, but the Journal was for many years a vehicle
for scientists. John Tuzo Wilson, the Canadian geophysicist best
known for his explanation of plate tectonics -- the constant readjusting
of the Earth's shell -- wrote for the Journal in 1946 and in 1958.
Joseph Dewey Soper, an explorer and naturalist for whom Soper's
ringed seal and the Dewey Soper Bird Sanctuary on Baffin Island
were named, also wrote frequently about his adventurous travels
in the 1930s and early 1940s.
These famous Canadians influenced the origins of Canadian Geographic
and, like them, those who now contribute to the magazine continue
to follow the Society's mandate of making the country better known
to Canada and to the world.
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'I understand that the Islands of the Aegean Sea have been
regarded for centuries as a scene of great beauty; I know,
from having seen them, that the Mediterranean coast of France
and the valleys of the Pyrenees are a charm to the enchanted
eye; and I believe that for those who like that kind of thing,
there is wild grandeur in the Highlands of Scotland, and a
majestic solitude where the midnight sun flashes upon the
ice-peaks of Alaska. But to my thinking none of those will
stand comparison with the smiling beauty of the waters, shores
and bays of Lake Simcoe and its sister lake, Couchiching.'
From 'The Lake Simcoe Country' by Stephen Leacock, Canadian
Geographical Journal, September 1935 |
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