Canadian Geographic articles from July 2001

Canadian Geographic archives from July 2001

Suburban lessons.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... LARRY MCCANN has a special stop when escorting his University of Victoria students on field trips. At a big wood-frame house in Oak Bay, McCann points out his childhood home. He is an avuncular teacher with a soft-spoken manner that belies...

On a winning note.(Patricia Thibodeau's student wins contest)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... PATRICIA THIBODEAU couldn't have mapped out a happier ending to her teaching career at Ecole Cormier. The now retired educator from Edmundston, N.B., has sent three of her students to the national finals of the Great Canadian Geography...

Hatching a hypothesis.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... THE NESTING HABITS of gray jays (Perisoreus canadensis) are as shady as their plumage. But Dan Strickland, a retired naturalist who's spent some 30 years observing the birds, hopes to uncover their mysterious ways by studying them on Quebec's...

Spring cleanup.(Canada's Living by Water Project)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... IN MAY, the staff at Canadian Geographic did a little spring cleaning. To kick-start the Shoreline Action program -- a river-restoration campaign promoted by the Living by Water Project -- staff in Ottawa donned rubber gloves, grabbed some...

Going for gold.(National Magazine Awards and the Canadian Science Writers' Association Awards.)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... It was a weekend of awards for Canadian Geographic in early June, with recognition at the National Magazine Awards and the Canadian Science Writers' Association Awards. Writer Alan Morantz took home gold in the technology category at the...

Killer conversations, liberating a river.(killer whales)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... JOHN FORD presses the play button on his tape recorder, you hear clicks and high-pitched whistles, and you wonder about his sanity when he assures you that he is able to discern communication in the cacophony. In the end, we have to take his...

Reverberations.
July 1, 2001... Energy surge YOUR LAST ISSUE (CG May/June 2001) may have been the best yet. It certainly illustrates the wrong-headed thinking behind spending billions on the development of a non-renewable resource, when a fraction of that would go far in...

FIRST FLOWER ON THE LEFT.(hummingbirds)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... IT'S A COMMONLY HELD NOTION that hummingbirds prefer to feed at red flowers. According to a University of Lethbridge biologist, however, a hungry hummer is much more than an avian automaton irresistibly drawn to nature's crimson beacons. New...

SING A SONG OF PUKASKWA.(using music to publicize national parks)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... TUNES BY CANADIAN musicians such as Joni Mitchell, Rogers and Blue Rodeo, have long sung the praises of the country's breathtaking landscapes. Now, government agencies and nonprofit groups are commissioning artists to record songs that lure...

REVENGE OF THE 'MUD TURTLE'.(the Atalanta to compete in America's Cup)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2001... THE BAY Of QUINTE Yacht Club, on the shores of Lake Ontario, may be one of the smallest in Canada, but more than a century ago, it entered the world's biggest yachting challenge, the America's Cup, and lost. It lost so badly, in fact, that the...

NOTHING TO DECLARE.(bringing endangered species into Canada)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2001... WITH MILLIONS travelling in and out of Canada each year, agents enforcing endangered-species laws never know what they'll find. At Calgary International Airport, for example, RCMP Sergeant Ken Chatel once reached into the purse of a woman...

MILKY WAY.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... THE SILKY RIBBON of the Milky Way spanning the summer sky was a common sight before bright outdoor lighting clouded the view. These days, you have to choose your observing location carefully -- away from the direct glare of street lights -- to...

POWER OF THE BAY.(Bay of Fundy)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2001... SOMETIMES the Bay of Fundy tides give back what they take away. That's what a group of hikers from Salisbury, N.B., discovered last spring during a trip to Fundy National Park. On the last day of the outing, 10 hikers attempted a shortcut...

MISSING WHISTLERS.(marmots becoming scarce in Whistler, British Columbia)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... THE MOUNTAINSIDE marmots that gave Whistler, B.C., its name are disappearing. No one is certain why, but resort operator Whistler Blackcomb has taken steps to solve the mystery. The western hoary marmot (Marmota caligata) -- dubbed a...

FOREST SANCTUARY.(model forests)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2001... ROY MULLIN calls it a holy place -- and it's easy to see why. This patch of forest at the edge of a busy highway near Cornwall, Ont., provides a glimpse of what used to be in southeastern Ontario: white pines towering 37 metres above the forest...

DIGGING THE PAST.(The Rooms museum)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2001... THE LARGEST cultural investment Newfoundland has ever made, a facility called The Rooms, is being built to preserve the province's artistic, historical and archaeological treasures. But in building the stare-of-the-art centre, critics s the...

Meet the neighbours.(exploring the Milky Way)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2001... STANDING UNDER a starry sky on a clear summer night, it is hard to believe that our part of the galaxy is filled mainly with stars which are too dim for our eyes to see. The fact is, though, that the stars in such familiar configurations such...

EAVESDROPPING ON ORCAS.
July 1, 2001... The world's longest-running study of killer whales reveals that pods pass on their vocal and social traditions FROM THE COCKPIT of the research cruiser Squamish, biologist John Ford squints into the morning sun toward the Broughton...

An ITCH to REMEMBER.(poison ivy)
July 1, 2001... An amateur arborist learns the hard way about poison ivy and its irritating relatives AROUND THE FIRST of May last year, I planted a row of little oak trees along a fencerow at the back of our old farm in eastern Ontario. In so doing, I...

PEOPLE OF THE BLOOD.(Blood Indians)
July 1, 2001... A decade-long photographic journey into a place of suffering, stoicism and spirituality THERE IS A DRAMATIC BEAUTY to the land in the Blood Indian Reserve, with the Rocky Mountains thrusting suddenly up out of the plains to the west and...

A RIVER REBORN.(Saint-Maurice River)
July 1, 2001... Quebec's long-mistreated Saint-Maurice River offers hope for the future a region grappling with its industrial past THE ACRID SMELL of pulp and paper fills the air, as it does most days in the forestry town of La Tuque. On a cool morning in...

Battling walls of 'orange hell heat'.
July 1, 2001... PHOTOGRAPHY COMING THROUGH FIRE The Wildland Firefighter Experience Text by David Greer; photographs by Noel Hendrickson Raincoast Books 149 PP., $45 hardcover WE HUMANS are blessed with the instinct to flee fire....

B.C. between the covers.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... REFERENCE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Edited by Daniel Francis Harbour Publishing 806 pp., $99.99 hardcover THERE MUST BE a special place in heaven -- or maybe in hell -- for a publisher who defies 21st-century wisdom and...

Backcountry by horseback.
July 1, 2001... WHEN A GROUP of European alpinists hired Alberta outfitter John Yates to guide them along the Snake Indian River into the Athabasca Valley in 1910, they were embarking on the first recorded traverse of the rugged North Boundary Trail within...

Palatial sanctuary.(Guan Yin Temple)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2001... THE SCENE is reminiscent of Beijing's Forbidden City. A Buddhist temple with a flared roof of golden porcelain tiles surrounds a tranquil courtyard where rhododendrons and camellias bloom. Outside the front entrance, worshippers pay respect to...

Smoke season.(watching for forest fires)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... WHEN I ARRIVED at my isolated fire tower one April day a few years back, I felt the same infatuation I felt every spring. I was grateful to have escaped the incessant scuttle of the city, and willing to suffer any inconvenience to experience...

Correction.(Brief Article)(Correction Notice)
July 1, 2001... Correction: The e-mail address for Richard Harrington, mentioned in "The Inside Story" item on his book Padlei Diary, 1950 (CG May/June 2001), is meypl@yahoo.ca.