The Inside Story: News from The Royal Canadian Geographical Society Women on top of the world Service with a smile Capital performance Cover appeal Tree of life

Northerners may have been noticeably absent during recent meetings of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, but that's only because it has been a particularly busy year for the Society's Northern representatives. In April, Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, a member of Canadian Geographic's editorial advisory committee, was named Commissioner of Nunavut, and in September, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, of the Society's board of governors, became the first recipient of the Governor General's Northern Medal.

Within the past year, Watt- Cloutier has travelled to New York City to receive a Champions of the Earth award from the United Nations and to Oslo to receive the Sophie Prize, a Norwegian environmental award. These were great honours for a woman who spent the first years of her life living on the land in northern Quebec, but Watt-Cloutier is particularly proud of the Northern Medal because it came from Canada.

As chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference since 2002, Watt-Cloutier represents the political, cultural and social interests of the 155,000 aboriginal people who inhabit the world's northernmost regions. Every honour leads to more speaking engagements, which leads closer to her goal — an immediate cap on greenhouse-gas emissions before the hunting culture that sustained her Arctic ancestors is lost to the big melt. "Public opinion becomes public policy," she says between meetings in Iqaluit, where she now lives. It's no wonder Watt-Cloutier has a hard time making it to meetings of the RCGS, which she joined in 2004.

"My goal for this project has always been to get people to express how important the mountains are to them," says Taylor. "When you have a physical connection to land, you are further motivated to protect and conserve it."

Hanson, who provides the Iqaluit weather report when she calls in for meetings of the editorial advisory committee, has also had to skip a few. One of her first duties as the federal government's senior representative in Nunavut was a trip to Kimmirut, the town that now occupies the land on which she grew up. There, she delivered a Governor General's Academic Medal to Petanie Pitsiulak, one of just six students to graduate in that community last year. Student visits are exciting for Hanson, who remembers when the first federal day school opened in Iqaluit. "Students today are doing something we didn't do when we were going to school," she says. "They're being taught their own language, their own culture, their own way of life."

- Sara Minogue

top

top

Hosts Cat (ABOVE, at left) and Sid embark on a tour of capitals, including Victoria (ABOVE).

Each episode showcases the geography of the area, with some humour thrown in. The new season will begin airing on TVOntario and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in January and on Discovery Kids in February.

top

Visitors to the CG website cast more than 35,000 votes in our Best Cover of 2004 contest. They chose Cougar attack! (May/June 2004) as their favourite.

Visit www.canadiangeographic.ca/covers before Feb. 17 to pick your favourite cover of 2005.

top

Growing up in Moncton, N.B., Ben Phillips spent his summers hiking the coastal trail of Fundy National Park among dense pockets of red spruce protected from logging because of the area's rough terrain. Then, last August, Phillips, an environmental studies and geography student at Mount Allison University, returned to determine how historical climate changes have affected the remote woods.

Ben Phillips (ABOVE, at left) and instructor Colin Laroque sampled red spruce to find the world's oldest.

For now, Phillips is keeping the location of the ancient grove a secret. "The only reason it's still there is because it's been undisturbed," he says. His unique knowledge has led to several TV and newspaper interviews. A group of elementary school students in Moncton, however, was less impressed. "I took some tree cookies [cross-sections] to show them how we count the rings, and they said, ‘You have to do that all day?'" Phillips sighs. "But I don't find it bad at all. Every tree is different and has its own personality tied up in its rings. I hope to do this for the rest of my life."

top