Canadian Geographic articles from November 2001

Canadian Geographic archives from November 2001

A celebration of our rivers.(Geography Awareness Week)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... "A RIVER... has its own life and its own beauty and the creatures it nourishes are alive and beautiful also," wrote naturalist Roderick Haig-Brown in 1950. In an effort to preserve and restore these ecologically valuable waterways, this year's...

Arctic tripping.(winners of the Canadian Geographic Polar Bound contest)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
November 1, 2001... If heaven is white, I know not why this hell shares the colour of the house of angels.... This miserable, frigid land of frost shows no trace of God's existence: no love, no forgiveness, no hope. GRADE 12 student Meara Crawford (right) of...

Urban conversion.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... FALSE CREEK was once a much-maligned eyesore in an otherwise stunningly picturesque Vancouver. Log-littered and polluted from decades of industrial use, the tidal flat in the middle of the city underwent a massive facelift in the 1970s and...

Out of the woodwork.(researching Banff and Jasper National Park's past explorers)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... BANFF AND JASPER national parks are dotted with decaying structures -- some of the only remnants left by the explorers who have roamed the rugged Rockies over the last century. Last summer, University of Victoria geography student Karen...

CG Kids.(Interview)
November 1, 2001... GEOGRAPHY is the stuff of great TV for kids. That's the idea behind a new show slated to air in January. CG Kids, developed and produced by Summerhill Entertainment in partnership with Canadian Geographic, will introduce young viewers to...

Wildlife tracking and the last of the trappers.(Cree Indians)
November 1, 2001... WRAP AN EXPANDABLE radio collar around the neck of a moose or bear or wolf or lynx, and you get a privileged peek into its life. Tracking animals electronically allows scientists to know when they are moving, resting or feeding, the extent of...

Reverberations.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2001... Lost on the North Boundary How HUMBLING it is to know that park wardens, with their seemingly outdated methods (a simple horse and rider) in this technological age, are still the stalwart barometers of the parks that they patrol...

CANADA DRY.(Summer 2001, weather report)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 1, 2001... WHAT WE SAW in Canada this summer was a lack of weather," says David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada. And because of that, it was hot, dry and dirty. Day after day of high temperatures and clear skies resulted in the...

SUPERIOR VISION.(area of Lake Superior to enter Parks Canada's National Marine Conservation Area)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... ON THE SURFACE, Lake Superior's rugged north shore seems like a rough landscape of craggy cliffs and rocky islands. Yet below the surf is a world teeming with life -- a refuge for spawning trout; an ideal habitat for freshwater salmon; an...

FIELD OF BEAMS.(Canadian Light Source project's synchrotron)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... A LIGHT A BILLION TIMES brighter than the sun will soon be shining in Saskatoon to enlighten researchers on the minutiae of science. The Canadian Light Source (CLS) project is bringing synchrotron technology -- and one of the biggest science...

FROZEN IN THE CORE.(researching Mount Logan's ice-core)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... WHEN SCIENTISTS with the Ice-Core Expedition 2001 descended from Canada's highest mountain at the end of June, after five gruelling weeks near the peak, they left behind the prized sample they'd gone there to extract. After all, warming...

QUAKE-PROOF SPRAY.(new fibre-reinforced polymer developed for bridge reinforcement)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... A NEW fibre-reinforced polymer developed by University of British Columbia engineer Nemkumar Banthia may do for bridges what hairspray has done for unruly coiffures. When sprayed onto concrete structural features, the bridge's strength doubles...

AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE.(Andromeda Galaxy)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... A PALE OVAL parch, like a tiny erasure mark on the blackness of the night, is near overhead between 9 and 11 p.m. in November and 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. in December. It's the Andromeda Galaxy, about twice as big as our own Milky Way and the most...

WALK THIS WAY.(dinosaur tracks)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... IN THE SUMMER of 2000, 10-year-old Daniel Helm (right) and 12-year-old Mark Turner of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., were rafting down a local creek when they flipped off and made their way to shore. Both dinosaur buffs, they noticed depressions in the...

BIOLOGICAL TAKEOVER.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... GLOBAL SHIPPING may be good for business, but it's nor so great for local ecosystems when invasive species tag along for the ride. The Atlantic coast has been quietly altered by dozens of non-native plants, animals and microbes, and scientists...

A STAMP AND A SIGNAL.(Three Pence Beaver)(Morse code transmission)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... ANNIVERSARIES * The Three Pence Beaver (ABOVE), designed by Sir Sandford Fleming, was the first stamp issued by Canada when postal authority, was transferred from Britain 150 years ago. It was a significant departure from other stamps of...

CHANGING TUNES.(Inuit throat-singers)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... I NUIT THROAT-SINGERS gathered in the northern Quebec village of Puvirnituq in September to share their songs, which, to the untrained ear, can sound like a pesky mosquito or waves against a rocky shore. In the world's first such meeting,...

ELECTRIC ROCK.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... THE PSYCHEDELIC DANCE of the northern lights so dazzling to eye can also signal that rocks are abuzz underground. The magnetic events that cause the Aurora borealis sometimes impart an electrical charge to a rock deposit, turning it into a...

THIRD TIME'S A CHARM?(endangered species legislation)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... IT'S HARD to believe that Canada was the first industrialized nation to ratify the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992, when we're on our third attempt to enact legislation to protect species at risk; such as the threatened eastern...

Treacherous waters.(off Nova Scotia)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Nova Scotia's geography, weather and seafaring ways make it one of the most shipwreck-prone coasts on the continent AT 2 A.M. ON APRIL I, 1873, Captain James A. Williams of the SS Atlantic settled in for a brief nap, assured that his...

INTRUDING ON WILD LIVES.(wolves)
November 1, 2001... How far is far enough in our pursuit of knowledge about the other animals? IN THE HEADPHONES, John Theberge heard the wolf's radio-collar signal getting stronger and stronger and knew it could mean only one thing: a killing in the making....

WATERSHED DOWN.(Oak Ridges Moraine)
November 1, 2001... An aerial photographer documents the pressures of urban sprawl on the Oak Ridges Moraine, the rain barrel of southern Ontario WITH HIS DAUGHTER Melanie beside him in his single-engine plane, Lou Wise leans into the Plexiglas bubble in the...

Woodland crossroads.(Cree of Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan)
November 1, 2001... The Cree of Lac la Ronge straddle two worlds at the gateway to Saskatchewan's north HALFWAY UP THE MAP of Saskatchewan, the province's farms, towns, cities and roads start to fall away, and you enter the forest realm of the Woodland Cree....

URBAN VILLGE.(city living, Vancouver, British Columbia)
November 1, 2001... THREE FAMILIES DISCOVER THE JOYS OF SMALL-TOWN LIVING IN THE HEART OF VANCOUVER LIFE USED TO BE SO SIMPLE. A job and a spouse and a house with its own little yard in a suburb well away from the sinister doings downtown: this was the...

Street smart.(Mennonite village of Neubergthal in Manitoba)
November 1, 2001... Villages of farms that line a single street dot the Manitoba landscape, the legacy of Mennonite immigrants who refused to settle on isolated homesteads AFTER AN ARDUOUS two-month journey by ship, train and horse-drawn wagon, Johann...

In hot pursuit of a mystifying migrant.(Four Wings and a Prayer)
November 1, 2001... HOW DO YOU SOLVE a mystery? In Four Wings and a Prayer, Sue Halpern describes her encounters with monarch butterflies and with the scientists who study and pursue them from Canada to Mexico, attempting to understand the spectacular yet...

Giving history back to the people.(a history of Newfoundland and Labrador)
November 1, 2001... GEOGRAPHY has given Newfoundland at least 1,000 years of post-European history, but for those of us on the leading edge of the baby boom, politics have kept us from learning much about it. A few professional historians have already sniped...

A fruitless foray into the backcountry.(book explores far reaches of Canada)
November 1, 2001... PART OF OUR "national experience" is to be reminded from time to time that vast regions of Canada have never entered the general imagination with any kind of specificity: we are still a people more familiar with images of parts of the United...

Bon appetit!(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... FROM ROSEHIPS to cod lips, from yogourt to yams, we are a voracious nation of foragers, of cultivators, of food faddists. Some poke gentle fun at Inuit for their cravings for whale blubber, caribou eyeballs and meat fermented in walrus stomach....

Underground music.(street musicians play in Toronto subways, Ontario)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... STREET MUSICIANS are a fixture in many Canadian cities, but in Toronto, they are licensed to go underground -- in the subway. Playing on station platforms isn't as simple as opening up a guitar case and strumming a few tunes, however; every...

Home, on the corner of Yonge and mayhem.(making a home downtown on Toronto's Yonge Street, Ontario)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... ON WEDNESDAY, May 13, 1998, two men walked into an urban clothing store called Vibe at 363 Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, cocked handguns, grabbed the shopkeeper, covered his eyes with duct tape, and forced him into a waiting van with stolen...