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Eddy Carmack has a special affinity for American ecologist Edward Ricketts, who was fictionalized in John Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row. Studying marine life along the Pacific coast aboard small fishing vessels, Ricketts became known as the father of "fishboat science." Carmack, a climate oceanographer with Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Sidney, B.C., also subscribes to fishboat science, "which is synonymous," he says, "with 'on the cheap.'" In his spare time, he explores the Koeye River and estuary on British Columbia's central coast from the deck of his converted 1947 troller. His goal, he says, is simply to document this unspoiled ecosystem "before it is too late." It's a measure of his passion for lakes, rivers and oceans that Carmack devotes holidays to monitoring the Koeye. In his day job at the Institute of Ocean Sciences, he is an internationally respected expert on the Arctic Ocean. Over the past four decades, he has participated in more than 60 field studies in Western Canada, Siberia, Antarctica and the Arctic, including the first scientific crossing of the Arctic Ocean via the North Pole. For his leading role in ocean science, Carmack has been awarded the 2007 Massey Medal for outstanding achievement in Canadian geography. Established by Governor General Vincent Massey in 1959, the award is administered by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society. A creative thinker, Carmack has a knack for making science accessible. As a volunteer on Students on Ice expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica, he has introduced teenagers to the complexities of ocean currents by having them drop beer bottles into the water to see where they end up (see "Message in a bottle," July/Aug 2006). "He got the students switched on to ocean currents," says Geoff Green, executive director of Students on Ice. "He was explaining climate change to students way before it became the big issue that it is today." For International Polar Year, Carmack is embarking on the most ambitious study yet of Canada's oceans. Scientists aboard two icebreakers will document the oceans' physical properties, such as currents, and life forms ranging from bacteria to whales. They will travel a 12,000-kilometre course, from Victoria through the Northwest Passage to Halifax. Their goal is to develop a large-scale picture of the ecosystems in the Arctic and subarctic seas. Geographic research usually implies things terrestrial, explains Carmack. "What we're exploring is a part of Canada that is very poorly explored. It's almost like the last wilderness area of the world ocean." Monique Roy-Sole RESEARCHVéronique Tremblay hiked and kayaked throughout the Cap-Chat River valley in Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula last summer, searching for traces of a long-lost era. The environmental geography student at Université de Montréal is piecing together the geomorphological changes that marked the region from the latter part of the Wisconsinan glaciation, some 18,000 years ago, to today. Funded in part by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Tremblay is also attempting to settle a question that continues to puzzle scientists: "We'd like to know whether this region was covered by the same glacier that covered the centre of Quebec, the Laurentide ice sheet, or whether there was a local ice sheet over the Gaspé Peninsula." Tremblay climbed the highest peaks in the area, Mont Logan and Mont Nicol- Albert, to determine whether they were once covered in ice. Her results show that during the last glaciation, the Laurentide ice sheet advanced from the north shore of the St. Lawrence River to the present site of Cap-Chat. But there is no evidence that it crept farther into the Gaspé Peninsula or Monts Chic-Chocs. She is also trying to chart the extent of rising sea levels in the Cap-Chat River valley following deglaciation. "I've found fossilized shells in layers of clay up to 10 kilometres into the interior of the valley," she explains. Radiocarbon dating of her samples will likely offer more clues to the demise of the ice-age landscape. Monique Roy-Sole CHALLENGE
MAGAZINE Five years ago, Judit Nagy and her husband, Mátyás Bánhegyi, became Canadian Geographic subscribers, and it is changing the way Hungarian youth learn about Canada. Nagy and Bánhegyi teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to high school and university students in Budapest and assist with a Canadian Embassy program that provides materials to EFL instructors across Hungary. Nagy says Canadian Geographic has become a valuable tool for many teachers in her country, who use it to teach vocabulary, presentation and writing skills from fill-in-the-blank worksheets based on articles from the magazine and CG website. Nagy also uses photos and stories from the magazine to illustrate the settings featured in Canadian fiction. "Most of my students feel intrigued by the Canadian content, because it represents something really new," says Nagy. "They feel that a door has opened for them." — Julia Kilpatrick
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Copyright © 2008 The Royal Canadian Geographical Society