Canadian Geographic articles from January 2000

Canadian Geographic archives from January 2000

Finding our way.(cartographic discovery of Canada)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... IT TOOK THE BETTER PART of four centuries to map Canada from coast to coast to coast. Charles Camsell, who founded The Royal Canadian Geographical Society 70 years ago, and many others like him spent years slogging across glaciers, through...

Dawn of an era.(location of first sunrise of new millennium)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... ON JANUARY 1, 2000, it will be all about being first. Putting aside the question of which year heralds the start of the new millennium, tiny and (we thought) laid-back Pacific island nations are squabbling over where the new century will make...

EXPLORATION.(exploration of Canada in 16th century)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... BECKONED BY THE RICHES OF THE ORIENT, 16th-century European explorers crossed the Atlantic Ocean seeking a northerly passage around North America. Jacques Carrier's 1534 discovery and mapping of the St. Lawrence River inspired others to test...

Seeking the Orient.(Martin Frobisher)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... England's contribution to New World mapping began with Martin Frobisher, who sailed into Frobisher Bay in 1576 while searching for a passage to the Far East. Relater excavated tonnes of ore from Baffin Island that he thought contained gold but...

Star guide.(astrolabe)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The Greeks invented the astrolabe in the 2nd century BC to measure the altitude of celestial bodies. Eighteen hundred years later, French explorer Samuel de Champlain used the one. pictured above (now in the collection of the Canadian Museum of...

Into the continent.(painting by J.H. de Rinzy)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Known as the "dean of land surveyors," Champlain penetrated deeper into Eastern Canada than any previous explorer. He began the formal mapping of the country, employing an astrolabe and compass, and he was guided by native peoples, as depicted...

West Coast probe.(Captain James Cook)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Captain James Cook painstakingly mapped the intricate coastline of Newfoundland from 1763-67. A decade later he sailed east across the Pacific in search of a northwest passage to the Atlantic Ocean. Landing at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island...

Mapping by memory.(Inuk Iligluik mapping technique)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Maps by Canada's aboriginal peoples were not permanent but sketched from memory on the ground, in the snow and on skins and birchbark. Their knowledge was often incorporated into maps of early European explorers. RIGHT: a map drawn in 1822 at...

North by northwest.(Alexander Mackenzie)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... When Alexander Mackenzie set out in June 1789 to explore what proved to be Canada's longest river, he was convinced it flowed west from Great to the Pacific Ocean. A month latter, he was disappointed do discover the river now bearing his name...

Society of adventurers.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Charles Camsell, founder in 1929 of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, explored and mapped large areas of northern and central Canada. The Camsell spirit lives on. In 1992, the Society, in partnership with the Geological Survey of Canada,...

Lost towns.(Canadian small towns removed from Ontario's provincial chart)
January 1, 2000... Ontario hamlets grapple with a cartographic identity crisis IT IS A BEAUTIFUL Canadian summer scene: three young boys, shirtless, fishing froma bridge above a sparkling river in a town that does not exist. A few steps away, under a...

Outer space.(mapping the Milky Way)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... TRYING TO PRECISELY MAP the Milky Way is like trying to measure a mountain in the middle of a blizzard. Cosmologists have to contend with interstellar matter -- gas, dust and plasma -- that clouds their understanding of the galaxy's structure....

Bodyscapes.(brain and heart mapping)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... FROM THE RUNGS of the human genome to the firings in the brain, maps showing the inner byways of the body offer new avenues for medical research and treatment. In the field of neuroscience, conformal maps present a flattened or disk-shaped view...

People space.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... DON'T BOTHER looking for gas stations or highway interchanges on these charts. Green Maps offer an alternative view of communities, one that values a city's natural and cultural attributes and encourages sustainable development. Established in...

Landscapes.(Icon Maps)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... ARE WE SHOWING OFF Grandma's needlework again? Hardly. These Icon Maps produced by Micha Pazner of the University of Western Ontario's department of geography pack a load of geographic information in each pixel. In Pazner's map, each icon...

Virtual space.(mapping the internet)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... ANALOGIES ARE OFTEN very useful but calling the Internet an "information superhighway" is little help to the cybergeographer. Following lines of asphalt is one thing; trying to visualize digital interactions among millions of people, or...

THE HELPING MIND SEE.
January 1, 2000... TALKING MAPS AND SATELLITES ARE GUIDING THE BLIND AROUND TOWN JEAN-MARIE LAPERLE is busy crunching code at his desk at VisuAide, a software company ensconced in a neatly manicured industrial park along Montreal's South Shore. Inside, the...

EXPLOITATION.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THE UNION OF UPPER AND LOWER CANADA in 1841 stimulated economic growth and enabled colonists to compete in European and American markets. The demand for timber to build ships and coal to operate trains spurred surveyors to chart the land and...

Covering the angles.(land surveying in Canada)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The late 1800s saw an explosion in land surveying. Geological fieldwork involved extensive trips through the bush and across icefields by pack horse, a mode of transport used until the 1960s to access the more rugged areas. The S.G. theodolite...

Crude discovery.(crude oil)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... While conducting a topographical survey in 1878, Allan Patrick was led by native people to an oil seepage along the banks of a creek in what is now Waterton Lakes National Park, Alta. Two decades and many unsuccessful attempts later, drillers...

Mapping minerals.(William Logan)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The Geological Survey of Canada, the country's first scientific agency, was founded in 1841 under William Logan. Logan's first priority was to search for coal to fuel the nascent transportation and manufacturing industries. In 1864, he drew the...

Promoting Canada.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Resource maps of the country were produced in the early 1900s by the Department of the Interior to promote Canada's natural wealth and attract investment and settlers. Agriculture was still in an experimental stage, which may explain why...

Aerial mapping.(used by lumber companies to survey forests)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... After the First World War, timber and pulp-and-paper companies expanded in response to the high demand for forest products. Canada was one of the first countries to use photogrammetry to survey forests. Tree species were identified in...

Farming by satellite.(information gleaned from Radarsat aids farmers)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Four years ago, Canada launched Radarsat, an Earth-observing satellite that can penetrate clouds to monitor floods, loss of forest cover, ice movement and environmental change. Other remote-sensing technologies are tracking moisture levels and...

SONGS of the NASS.(Nass Valley, British Columbia; natives dispute some land claims given to Nisga'a natives)
January 1, 2000... The Nisga'a drew upon clan songs and stories to trace their claim to the Nass Valley. But other First Nations also sing of the valley. Whose music will the mapmakers hear? WE CALL THE MONTH November, but in the liquid syllables of the...

NATION BUILDING.(mapping the Canadian/American border)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THE WAR OF 1812 DID LITTLE to resolve British-American rivalries, but it did lead to one fact on the ground: a clarification, by 1818, of the Canada--U.S. boundary in the West along the 49th parallel. For the next century, as this border was...

Marking the border.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The 8,891-kilometre line between the United States and Canada is the longest undefended border in the world. It is dotted with more than 8,000 monuments and markers. A provincial boundary marker bears the warning: "7 years imprisonment penalty...

Surveying for settlers.(how CP Rail attracted immigrants to use the transcontinental railroad)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Construction of the transcontinental railway began in 1880 and with it came large-scale, systematic surveys of the Prairies to lay out townships along the proposed route. But even before it was completed in 1885, the C.P.R. had begun using maps...

Supporting the surveyors.(reevaluating the 49th parallel as Canada's southern border)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The 49th parallel was determined in 1818 to be Canada's southern limit from Lake of the Woods in Northern Ontario to the Rockies. In 1873-74 a British boundary party surveyed the border across the Prairies accompanied by 30 armed Metis known as...

Claiming the Arctic.(Canada's exploration of the Arctic Archipelago once it received possession of it in 1880)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... When Britain transferred the Arctic Archipelago to Canada in 1880, the federal government funded a series of Arctic expeditions to conduct coastal, geological and hydrographic surveys. The government's top priority, however, was to fly the...

Fire insurance.(bringing improved safety from fire to Canada's business community)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... With the emergence of large urban centres in the late 1800s, the country's economic and social stability depended on a safe working environment. The constant threat of fire prompted insurance companies to produce detailed maps of industrial...

Nature's navigators: THE FEATS.(the navigational abilities of animals, birds, and insects)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Revealing animals' orienteering skills COLLEEN BARBER spent weeks preparing to study the settlement patterns of tree swallows north of Kingston, Ont. She waited for the male birds to return to the breeding grounds and watched them defend...

Nature's navigators: THE MAP.(controversy over how animals create maps or sense of direction in their minds)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Why it's pretty hard to trick a homing pigeon AN ONGOING CONTROVERSY in navigation circles is whether animals possess both a "map" sense and a "compass" sense. A map orients a creature in relation to its goal, whether it is finding a meal,...

Nature's navigators: THE COMPASS.(controversy over how animals navigate)
January 1, 2000... Why long-distance travellers like starry, starry nights Sun followers USING THE SUN as a compass is no simple feat. Navigators must calibrate their bearings with the sun's daily movements across the sky, roughly 15 degrees every hour....

Plumbing the Great Lake beds.(using sonar imaging equipment to look for channels in the Great Lakes)
January 1, 2000... With a sonar 'fish' on the line, marine mapper Steve Blasco angles for sea monsters and phantom waterfalls THEY NOW SAY he should have stayed ashore that day. The weather was foreboding even to the most experienced mariner. But the...

TO THE END OF EVERY RIVER.(untouched places in Canada)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Dane Lanken lives in Alexandria, Ont. The photographs on these pages are excerpted from Over Canada, An Aerial Adventure, published by Beautiful British Columbia. IT MAY WELL have been the austere coast of Labrador (RIGHT) that John Cabot...

Mapping misadventures.(history of errors in Canadian mapping)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... MICHEL FOURNIER is late. He dodges the crowds exiting a morning session at the 1999 International Cartographic Conference in Ottawa. In one hand, he holds a plastic bag stuffed with rolled-up maps that he accidentally picked up the day before...

Map songs.(many 19th century ship captains used songs, or singsong rhymes, as navigational aids)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THE 19TH-CENTURY skipper in Newfoundland may not have had the benefit of global positioning systems, or even navigational charts, which were available but prohibitively expensive. Instead he carried in his memory the knowledge of generations...

Mapping the brain.(traditional, mid-20th-century map of the brain is found to be flawed)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... A MAP OF THE HUMAN BRAIN drafted by Montreal neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield more than 50 years ago has been one of the most famous of anatomical images and a hallmark of modern neurocartography. Now comes news from a fellow Canadian that the...

Map origami.(the folding of maps)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... PROBABLY THE MOST common complaint about road maps is that folding them requires an engineering degree. Mapmakers have their own jargon for the process: there is the popular accordion fold; the Falk fold (the map is folded horizontally and...

Carto-colours.(traditional use of colors in map making)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... COLOUR IS USED on a road map for decoration and to improve its ability to guide users from town to town. Mapmakers follow general guidelines when using colour. Water features are blue for the obvious reason. Cities are usually shown in loud...

Measure of a map.(the popularity, and occasional frustrations of maps)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THERE'S NOTHING more frustrating than a map condensed so much in size that the tiny print is unreadable. Except perhaps for one so huge it rakes up the inside of your car. The ideal map is 70 by 100 centimetres, roughly the size of two...

Bearing up on money street.(Bay Street in Toronto, Ontario, the home of the Toronto Stock Exchange)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THREE PAIRS of identical black brogues pause at the corner of Wellington and Bay in downtown Toronto, topped by dark worsted suits of the thinnest stripe. The gentlemen in the Bay Street uniform evince the Bay Street bearing: hands thrust...

The BIG Picture.(satellite pictures from the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, normally used for environmental monitoring, aided firefighters during a May 1999 fire in the Ontario forests)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Taking the measurement all things, including the carbon sink WITH FLAMES licking at their heels and smoke clouding their vision, firefighters in northwestern Ontario began May 1999 wrestling with 37 ever-shifting forest fires. More than a...

Second time around.(Mike Beedell and Pamela Coulston, Arctic travellers)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... ARCTIC photographer Mike Beedell and freelance writer Pamela Coulston say they haven't lost their senses. Well, not by much anyway. "We are all crazy," says Beedell, when asked why he will try to circumnavigate Bylot Island in the High...

Feathered friend.(peregrine falcon tracking research)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... LINCOLN (ABOVE), was one of four peregrine falcons taken from urban nests in Guelph and Richmond Hill, Ont., and fitted with transmitters to track their migration. He amazed trackers with the Canadian Peregrine Foundation (who received...

A new medal for a new century.(Royal Canadian Geographical Society)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THE 1999 RCGS Camsell Awards for outstanding contribution to the Society were presented recently to former Society president Pierre Camu for his years of service, and to long-serving board and committee member Grete Hale. They are the first...

We travel well.(Sherry Kirkvold and Trudy Chatwin, biologists)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... OUR GOAL to make Canada better known to Canadians and to the world took on a new dimension last summer when Sherry Kirkvold, a Victoria-based natural history interpreter, and friend Trudy Chatwin, an endangered species biologist on Vancouver...

MAPPING CANADA.(online geographical service)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... A LOOK AT CANADA'S borders and boundaries between 1700 and 1999 is available in an instant on our new web feature: Finding our way into the new millennium. Users can choose any map and watch as borders metamorphose from one period to the next....

Deflating the myths of the seal wars.
January 1, 2000... MATCHING the right writer to the right story is as tricky as driving on black ice. Even the most skilful wordsmiths brake and skid on the wrong topics. So when we asked ourselves who could -- or would, for that matter -- cover the seal wars for...

REVERBERATIONS.
January 1, 2000... Coal miner's daughter I AM THE PROUD DAUGHTER of a IC ape Breton coal miner. My father worked in the mines for more than 30 years, but retired in December with the untimely closure of the Phalen Mine ("Last call for Cape Breton coal," CG...

Where the streets have no names.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... NEXT TIME you're in the capital of Nunavut looking for the legislative building, don't look for street signs for help. There aren't any. Since Iqaluit's establishment in the 1940s, few streets have been named. The address numbering system is...

Unhappy trails.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... All-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes are gaining ground on the Trans Canada Trail ANYONE WHO THINKS the Trans Canada Trail will provide a Safe, eco-friendly path across the country may be surprised to learn that the first rule for hikers...

A Norse yarn.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... ARCHEOLOGISTS and historians have long puzzled over a great mystery of medieval European history: what happened to Norse colonists who landed in Greenland after an epic voyage in the 10th century AD and stayed to tame the rugged shores for...

Luxury livestock.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THINK WESTERN Canada and ranching and the words rugged and tough aren't far behind -- unless, of course, you are talking about the newest trend in the livestock industry. You can't travel far these days in Alberta or British Columbia...

Reasoning ravens.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... I WAS HIKING through the spruce woods one morning last winter, my footsteps hushed by snow, the sky a pearly canopy of soft grey clouds. Then the silence was stirred by the rustle of taffeta wings, as a glistening raven swept over the clearing....

Great expectations: what will we do this year?
January 1, 2000... NEW YEAR'S EVE has come and gone. Auld Lang Syne has been sung, champagne drained and resolutions made. Everyone, of course, starts each new year with great expectations: plans to get a new job, buy a shiny new car, even have a bouncing new...

Water loggers.
January 1, 2000... Without cutting a single tree, loggers are harvesting some of the finest -- and rarest -- wood in Canada CLAD IN a bulbous yellow helmet and a red and black dry suit and tethered to a thick lifeline, Ewan Long steps off the side of a...

SEAL WARS.(seal hunting)
January 1, 2000... Hunters, protesters, press and politicians converge and clash on the Atlantic ice annually. Can anyone stop the March madness? WE LEAVE ST. JOHN'S airport at eight in the morning on March 18, 1999, in a small plane bound for St. Anthony,...

PLANE OBSESSION.(airplane collector and museum in Alberta)
January 1, 2000... An Alberta family turns a passion for aviation into a singular collection of vintage aircraft AT ABOUT 1,000 FEET, Byron Reynolds begins his descent. When the end of the run way appears under the trailing edge of the wing, he banks the...

To outfox the red fox.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The arctic fox has but one weapon in the ongoing turf with its pushy, red-haired Cosin--Winter ONE JULY, I CAMPED for 10 days in fog and drizzle on a tiny island in Alaska's Bering Sea to photograph thousands of belching walruses sprawled...

Photo finish.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Winners of Canadian Geographic's 15th annual photo contest WHAT THAT PARTICULARLY STRUCK the judges about the entries in the 15th annual Canadian Geographic photo contest was the amazing variety of subject matter: landscapes, portraits,...

Reflections on a nation's coming of age.
January 1, 2000... THIS COUNTRY has been measuring itself against a rather daunting standard ever since Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier declared in 1904 that "the twentieth century shall be the century of Canada." His prediction came at a golden time, when...

Two slim volumes explore land and sea.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... RIVING FROM Vancouver along D the Fraser River to the British Columbia interior, the climate shifts from mild, damp and coastal to desert-like around Kamloops. Even the most casual observer will notice the changes. Great, dripping spruce and...

How the West was really 'won'.
January 1, 2000... IN 1892, Cree leader Piapot held Na rain dance at a site 400 kilometres southwest of present-day Regina. This was the last time the Cree would celebrate their culture without interference from Indian agents and the federal government, who soon...

To the rescue.(rescue operations in British Columbia)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... VANCOUVER is a playground for those who love the outdoors. With mountains looming Just beyond the city lights, even wilderness neophytes are tempted to hit the trails. After all, if you can see downtown from the mountains, what can go wrong?...

FROM THE UNDERPAINTER.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... I CHECKED INTO the Prince Arthur Hotel in Port Arthur on Wednesday evening, collapsed fully clothed onto the bed in a room on the fifth floor, and slept for fourteen hours. The next morning I rose, opened the curtains, and was confronted by...

Muddy waters.(Winnipeg rivers, Manitoba)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... ONCE, A FEW SUMMERS AGO, my friend and I borrowed her sister's canoe and went for a ride on the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg that lasted maybe five minutes at the most. My friend screamed when her hand accidentally went into the water....