Explore every episode of the podcast Explore: A Canadian Geographic podcast

Musician Sam Polley’s first canoe trip was with his dad, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, his mom and siblings. He doesn’t remember much about it, but he clearly got hooked. All these years later, he’s still an avid canoe tripper with a love of the lakes and rivers in northern Ontario. Sam is best known for his rockabilly band Sam Polley and The Old Tomorrows and playing with The Jim Cuddy Band, fronted by his father. When Sam isn’t touring or in the studio or writing songs, he likes to feed his muse by taking off on canoe trips into the wilds north of Toronto. We’re into September now. Summer is drifting away, there’s mist on the water in the morning and a nip in the air, even when the sun is out. One of the things we get into in this conversation is Sam’s love of autumn canoe tripping. The lakes and rivers are largely empty of people and along with all that space and peace — and your pick of campsites — there’s also no bugs. And while Sam is a self-confessed Toronto boy through and through, he is proof that even if you live in the most densely populated city in Canada, amazing canoe tripping adventures are still accessible. We get into his trips in Algonquin Park, Killarney and Temagami. It’s a fun romp spiced with his own music.

"In my mind, when I want to relax, I take myself back to the Wind River."

Tetlit Gwich'in means people of the headwaters, and Bobbi Rose Koe is on a mission to live up to her people's name. 

Born and raised in the Tetlit Gwich'in community of Fort McPherson, on the Peel River north of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories, Koe was lucky to spend her childhood with her grandparents, who regularly took her hunting and fishing out on the land. When she reached her mid-20s, she translated those skills into guiding adventure canoe trips on rivers in the Canadian Arctic. But just a decade ago, she was shocked to discover that she was one of the few First Nations people in the industry, let alone Indigenous women. The resistance she felt coming into river guiding led her to be the change that was needed.  

She set up Diinji Zhuh, an Indigenous-run canoe-tripping outfitter based in Whitehorse, YT. She is also setting up the first school to train Indigenous river guides. Koe and her teams lead trips across the Arctic. Still, her favourite rivers are in the traditional lands of her people, the Peel Watershed, a system of stunningly beautiful whitewater rivers. I paddled some of those rivers with my son Graham and cousin Terry in 2018 for Canadian Geographic. Koe and I bonded over talk about her favourite rivers in the Peel watershed, her role in the successful fight to protect the watershed from mineral development, mapping by storytelling, her mission to get Indigenous people back out into their ancestral lands, and the warm feeling of excitement she gets paddling through lands that her family have travelled and known for generations. Also, in 2021, Koe was presented with the Canadian River Heritage Award.  

Enjoy!

"I took one step further and we were looking into the eyes of four lionesses and two cubs. The fourth lioness with the cubs exited down the ravine like a shot. The other three lionesses jumped up at us. We ran backwards, yelling at the top of our lungs. The lions came up after us. Their teeth were pulled back in a grimace. The noise was beyond belief."

I'm thrilled to have one of Canada's leading naturalists, Brian Keating, join us today. As you can tell from that quote, Brian has had some amazing adventures in some of our planet's most wild and beautiful places. 

This conversation is a fun ride. We go from his early work at a weather station in the Canadian High Arctic to his travels to Antarctica, sub-Saharan Africa, the Himalayas, and more. There isn't a lot of our natural world that Brian hasn't seen and experienced.

Brian’s nearly 30-year career at the Calgary Zoo was split between being the Director of Education and Director of Conservation. For more than 20 years, he taught Anthropology at the University of Calgary. Presently, he’s the owner of goingwild.org and co-producer of greatBIGnature.com

Brian is a regular guest naturalist on CBC Radio and, for many years, was on the Discovery and National Geographic channels, using much of his own wilderness adventures and wildlife films to tell stories about the value and importance of nature. His constant travel partner is his wife Dee, a doctor, naturalist and also a Fellow of the RCGS.

Enjoy the ride!

I am thrilled to have Laval St. Germain as our guest for this episode of Explore. An avid adventurer, Laval has rowed solo across the North Atlantic Ocean and is the only Canadian to have summited Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. He has also climbed the tallest peaks on all seven continents, including Antarctica and many more of the world's most remote and challenging mountains — not to mention that he is also a commercial pilot, flying in the Canadian Arctic and was one of our RCGS Polar Plungers in Calgary.

As everyone who follows me or Canadian Geographic knows, we held our third Annual RCGS Polar Plunge last week to support another season of Explore. 

Thank you to all of our amazing plungers and donors. We not only hit our goal of $35,000, we crushed it, topping $50,000 — our most successful polar plunge ever. This was mostly done in the best grass-roots way possible, with many smaller donations from many of you.

We did get five significant donations, and I want to thank those donors. 

Dr. Ian Hammond’s donation helped compel RCGS CEO John Geiger to jump into a freezing Lake Ontario.

Connor Fitzgerald’s donation persuaded RCGS Fellow and polar filmmaker Mark Terry to jump into that same great lake. And Nancy Love’s generous donation got RCGS Vice President Sarah Legault to follow John and Mark into Lake Ontario too. 

I also had two donors who got me to lead the plunge into a chilly Meech Lake in the Gatineau hills. One is my mother, Lynne McGuffin, an RCGS Camsell award winner, and my big cousin, Lynne Evenson. 

Thank you all so much!

I also want to single out our top three fundraisers, all of whom won a fantastic Danish cold-water swim coat from Sitting Suits. Congratulations to RCGS Fellows James Raffan, Susan Eaton, and Mark Terry, all of whom, fittingly, spend a lot of time working in our polar regions. 

Thank you as well to the dozens of RCGS Fellows and friends of Canadian Geographic who took part from coast to coast (there were 11 plunge sites in all) and, of course, to all of you who donated. 

I’m humbled to be a part of this incredible RCGS community and to be bringing you another season of Explore.

Over the past two years, Canadian Geographic has been running “Passing the Mic,” a podcast training program in remote Nunavut communities. This week, we are pleased to showcase the third episode of this year’s series, which features stories produced by the students at the Netsilik School in Taloyoak, Nunavut. 

The aim of this program is to give Inuit youth the tools to share their stories with the world in their own voices, using their words. I think you’ll agree that these stories provide a wonderful window into a unique and welcoming Inuit community. 

Taloqroq is mainland Canada's most northerly community, sitting on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and the Northwest Passage. My Canadian Geographic colleague Tom Lundy and I spent a week in late October working with the students at Netsilik School, teaching podcasting. The students' ages ranged from 13 to 18, and we couldn’t have asked for a more enthusiastic group. 

Today, we will hear from Nellie and Tyra, Faith Pauloosie and Leah Aklah, Leo Lyall and Steve Alookee, Alexis Ruben and Alayna Aklah and Shayna Nanook and Amaiyah Totalik. 

Thanks to all of them for the amazing work they put in. Enjoy! 

Also, these kinds of stories are exactly why we do the #RCGSPolarPlunge fundraiser every year. On March 4th, your donations will compel a lot of otherwise sensible people to plunge into the freezing lakes, rivers and oceans across Canada, including in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, in support of Canadian Geographic and this podcast. 

So, to keep this kind of unique, balanced, thoughtful, independent storytelling coming, please go to RCGS.org/polarplunge

Thank You. 

And thanks to Netsilik students Joyce Ashevak and Martha Neeveacheak for providing the beautiful throat singing used in this episode. You can hear their story in the previous episode.

And if you're community or school in Nunavut that would like to take part in the "Passing the Mic" podcast training program, drop us an email at explore@canadiangeographic.ca

We are thrilled to be taking you back to Taloyoak, Nunavut, the northernmost community in mainland Canada. In this exciting episode, we sit down with Lenny Panigayak, Taloyoak’s mayor and viral TikTok star (@aqigiaq), who shares moments from his life and Inuit culture with his tens of thousands of followers.

The Explore Podcast team met Mayor Lenny when we went to Taloyoak to spend a week teaching podcasting to the amazing students at the Netsilik School in a program called “Passing the Mic,” which is supported by Polar Knowledge Canada.

Taloyoak is a lovely little community nestled on Spence Bay in western Nunavut, overlooking the Arctic Ocean and the Northwest Passage. It is a warm and welcoming community of about 1000 people living in brightly coloured, single-story homes, where people embrace traditional Inuit life, such as hunting, fishing, and being out on the land. Those are very much the themes that makeup Mayor Lenny's TikTok feed, with posts getting up to half a million views at a time. 

This is the first of three episodes we'll bring to you from Taloyoak, including storytelling about life there from the amazing high school students at the Netsilik School. That includes the throat singers you'll hear in our podcast introduction today, Martha Neeveacheak and Joyce Ashevak. 

Also, the 3rd Annual #RCGSPolarPlunge, a fundraiser in support of this podcast, is happening in frozen lakes, rivers and oceans across Canada on March 4th. Find out how you can help Canadian Geographic and Explore our mission to "make Canada better known to Canadians and the world" by visiting rcgs.org/polarplunge starting in early February.

The pack-ice 'round us cracks and groans;

The old St. Roch, she creaks and moans.

 - Stan Rogers 

In 1940, the wooden-hulled St. Roch became the second ship to successfully sail the Northwest Passage and the first to do it from west to east, captained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Henry Larsen. Our guest on this episode, Ken Burton, recreated that voyage 60 years later on another RCMP ship, the St. Roch II. A new RCGS Fellow, veteran sailor and polar explorer, Burton shares the incredible story of Larsen and the St. Roch's two-and-a-half-year journey through the Arctic ice in the early days of World War II and its secret mission to invade Greenland. He also shares the story of his own incredible Northwest Passage journey on the St. Roch II and how that trip set the speed record for the circumnavigation of North America. 

As well as being an RCMP Coastal Commander and expedition leader in the Arctic and Antarctic, Ken Burton has served as Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue Society and the Executive Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

For this holiday episode of Explore, we’re dipping into our Royal Canadian Geographical Society files for the reading of a story written by RCGS founding President and Arctic explorer Charles Camsell, recalling a memorable Christmas he had on the trail to the Klondike in the late 19th century.

In the early 1900s, travelling by canoe and horseback, Charles Camsell mapped hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Canada’s north for the Geological Survey of Canada. 

Born at Fort Liard in the Northwest Territories in 1876, his father Julian was an English fur trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company. His mother, Sarah Foulds, was Metis, with deep roots in the Red River.

After graduating from the University of Manitoba, Charles Camsell returned to the Northwest Territories just in time to get swept into the Klondike gold rush. Like thousands of young men and women at the time, he and his friend Arthur Pelly went off to the Yukon to seek their fortune.

Lynne McGuffin, Charles Camsell's granddaughter, found the following story in his personal files. It was dated 1937, around the time he was writing his memoir, Son of the North. For the past two decades, it's been a tradition of host David McGuffin to read this to his wife and children on Christmas Eve as they moved from continent to continent, country to country, often celebrating the holidays far from family and home.

So pour yourself a favourite drink. Settle into a comfy chair by the fire. And enjoy this reading of Christmas at Devil’s Portage. Happy Holidays! 

In our second season of Explore, you can learn more about the Camsell family and their role in the fur trade, featuring full archival recordings of Charles Camsell and his brother Philip Scott Camsell recalling their memories of their Arctic childhoods.

“The question would be, “Why not?” 

We love a good journey here on Explore, and Dianne Whelan went on a doozy of one with lots of great stories to share.

Whelan became the first person to travel the entire Trans Canada Trail across Canada, the longest hiking trail in the world stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific. She travelled by bike, foot and canoe through all seasons. Throughout her journey, she focused on reconciliation, honouring First Nations, Inuit, and Métis People who have been an essential part of the story of this land for thousands of years, long before Canada was created. Her six-year, 24,000-kilometre odyssey is now captured in her new documentary, "500 Days in the Wild." It premieres at the Whistler International Film Festival in early December 2023.

Enjoy!

Today’s guest is Jimmy Ullikatalik, the manager of the Taloyoak Hunters and Trappers Association and project manager for the Aviqtuuq Inuit Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA), a proposed 90,000 square kilometres of marine, terrestrial and fresh-water ecosystems in Nunavut. Jimmy also represented Nunavut at COP26, the UN Climate Change conference in Glasgow.

In October, I was lucky enough to make my second trip to Nunavut, to the hamlet of Taloyoak. It is the most northerly community in mainland Canada. It is home to about 1,000 people, mostly Inuit, on the Aviqtuuq or Boothia peninsula, which juts into the Arctic Ocean and Northwest Passage west of Hudson's Bay. The town is charming, featuring rows of brightly coloured homes reminiscent of Atlantic Canada. It's situated on Spence Bay and surrounded by a lovely rolling, rocky landscape. 

I was there with my colleague Tom Lundy for a week of podcast training with Inuit youth at the Netsilik school, supported by Canadian Geographic and Polar Knowledge Canada. We'll be bringing you the students amazing storytelling in the new year.

Today, we focus on Jimmy, an engaging and remarkable person. The Aviqtuuq Peninsula that he is pushing to make into an Inuit-run conservation zone would be the first of its kind anywhere in the world. Inuit locals are already patrolling it as part of the federally funded Guardians Program, Inuit-led ecological monitoring and knowledge gathering.

The wildlife population here on the Aviqtuuq Peninsula remains strong and healthy, with large herds of caribou and muskox, polar bears, foxes, seals, whales, fish, migratory birds and more. That, in part, is because the elders in this community successfully blocked a planned oil pipeline through the peninsula in 1972. That victory is important in a place where hunting and fishing on the land are significant contributors to local food security and a means of maintaining physical and mental health. Jimmy hopes to lock that 1972 victory into place for generations to come.

The opening song was performed by Talyoak throat singers Martha Neeveacheak and Joyce Ashevak, who participated in the Canadian Geographic “Pass the Mic” Podcast workshop. 

Enjoy!

Best-selling author Karen Pinchin is our guest on this episode of Explore. Her new book, Kings of their Own Ocean, is the phenomenal tale of an incredible fish, the bluefin tuna, which has gone from being the cornerstone of the Roman Empire to the much sought-after catch brought to near extinction in the past century in our own boom-bust, globalized economy. Ultimately, this is a heartening wildlife story, filled with an incredible cast of characters, a globetrotting look into the history of bluefin tuna and how regular people, along with industry, scientists and governments, banded together and brought this magnificent fish back from the brink of being completely wiped out. Karen Pinchin is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work has appeared in Canadian Geographic along with Scientific American, Vox, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, National Geographic, the Canadian Press and Maclean's Magazine. Originally from Toronto, she teaches narrative non-fiction writing in the Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of King’s College in Halifax.

Canadian Geographic’s Explore Podcast Canoe series is back for its third year, and we’re thrilled to start with Canadian canoeing legend Mike Ranta.

Ranta was not only the first person to canoe solo across Canada in a single paddling season but he's also done it twice! His adventure began with his dog Spitzi and a portage over the Rocky Mountains. In this fun and engaging episode, Ranta takes us on a journey from his earliest paddling experiences as a child in and around Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park, one of the world’s premiere canoe-tripping destinations, to his many canoe adventures across Canada. This includes his little pandemic getaway from Lake Huron to James Bay and back. He discusses his love for the poet Robert Service, some of his favourite camping hacks, gear and canoes, his Métis heritage and the welcome he's received in the many First Nations communities he's paddled through. Ranta spoke to us from his home base of Killarney, Ont., on Lake Huron, where he leads canoe expeditions and makes paddles, including the world's largest paddle, The Big Dipper. At 32 metres, Ranta carved it to appreciate Canada's veterans, one of his favourite causes. 

Stay tuned for more canoe episodes coming in August and September!

I’m thrilled to have Mark Terry with us today. He’s had a long and interesting career that includes everything from being a newspaper reporter at the Toronto Star to making a documentary about the master of horror Clive Barker to his ongoing work with the UN producing groundbreaking documentaries about the impact of climate change on our polar regions. This is a fun and interesting conversation with a true innovator. We get into everything from swimming with penguins to how he wound up on the back of the Canadian 50 dollar bill (look at the tiny figure on the top deck of the icebreaker) to his documentary work and how he has shifted that into geo-docs, a new way of making climate documentaries and information more accessible, "google maps with documentaries" as he puts it. Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Canada and is an Adjunct Professor at York University and Wilfred Laurier. 

He has two new books out, Speaking Youth To Power: Influencing Climate Policy at the United Nations and Mapping the Environmental Humanities – The Emerging Role of Geomedia in the Environmental Humanities.

In January 2023, Caroline Coté set the record for a solo expedition to the South Pole by a woman, travelling 1,130 kilometres on skis from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole in just 33 days. This is a fun and fascinating conversation.

The bulk of it is about her record-breaking trip to the South Pole on her own, dragging everything she needs in a sled behind her through harsh terrain and climate. Coté gets into the physical and mental challenge of doing this alone, dealing with broken skis and gear, being reduced to eating butter on her last days and how the music of Gilles Vigneault and others blocked out the Antarctic winds and kept propelling her forward.

We also get into her journey from growing up in Longueuil, Quebec, outside of Montreal, finding inspiration in nature in the little forest behind her house, to becoming a documentary filmmaker and the epic polar adventurer she is today. We also discuss why her favourite place in Canada is Grise Fjord in Canada’s high Arctic. 

For more on her work expeditions, go to www.caroline-cote.com Enjoy!

*Trigger Warning. This episode is about Residential Schools and includes descriptions of abuse. It may only be suitable for some listeners. If you require emotional support, there is a 24-hour Residential School Crisis Line, which you can reach at 1-866-925-4419. 

Jeannie Ehaloak was just four years old when she was taken away from her parents on Victoria Island in what is now Nunavut and sent to a Residential School far away in Inuvik. The impact on her was profound and long-lasting. It is a period of her life she feels she has had to work hard to overcome, which in many ways she has: becoming Mayor of Cambridge Bay, a member of Nunavut's Legislative Assembly and a cabinet minister - all of this, a victory over the attempts to erase her identity while in Residential School.

There is a lot of focus, and rightly so, on the impact of the Residential School system on First Nations people. The system was first set up to wipe out their cultures and languages by forcing First Nations children to attend government-funded, church-run boarding schools, which were sites of unspeakable systemic sexual, mental and physical abuses. Over 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to these institutions between the 1830's and 1990's. Thousands of them died there.

The story of the Inuit in Residential Schools is less well known but very similar in its brutality. The Inuit in Canada’s Arctic weren’t forced to send their children to Residential Schools until the early 1950s, about the same time the Canadian government was forcing them off of the land and into permanent communities, ending millennia of traditional, nomadic life.

Despite the shorter timeline in the North, the impact of Residential schools on the Inuit was very damaging to children, families, and communities. This is Jeannie Ehaloaks' story. 

Early in the podcast, Jeannie mentions the Dew Line, which was a series of radar stations set up by the U.S. and Canadian governments during the Cold War to protect against Russian missile attacks over the Arctic Circle. The stations were often in remote locations and maintained by Inuit employees and their families.

"That's what was in my head. If anything went wrong, if I let the paddle slip out of my hand, if it broke, if I had some freak muscle spasm or cramp, I'm going over Niagara falls." 

It's always great to have RCGS Westaway Explorer-in-Residence Adam Shoalts back on the podcast. And this conversation underlines why. He joins us to talk about his epic, solo 3400-kilometre canoe and hiking journey from his backyard near Long Point on Lake Erie all the way to the Arctic Ocean in northern Quebec. It's also the subject of his newest book, Where the Falcon Flies: A 3,400 Kilometre Odyssey From My Doorstep to the Arctic. Unlike his previous journeys, in the remotest parts of Canada, this journey first takes Adam through the mostly densely populated parts of Canada, providing lots of insights about Canadians, our cities and their relationship to nature, as well as Adam's more familiar adventures with northern wildlife and fast flowing rivers heading into the Arctic ocean.

If you haven’t listened to episode one of our canoe series featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, go back and check that out where you listen. It’s a fascinating conversation about how canoeing has shaped him into the person and leader he is.

And there’s a video version on Canadian Geographic’s YouTube channel.

We also want to let you know that on November 29th, Adam Shoalts will be appearing in person for a CanGeo Talk about this latest expedition in the Alex Trebek Theatre at RCGS headquarters, 50 Sussex Drive in Ottawa.

We're thrilled to have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as our guest on Explore as we kick off our second annual Summer Canoe series. This is a fun one.

As you will hear, he is absolutely passionate about canoeing. It's a past-time he fell in love with early while paddling with his father, the late Prime Minister and fellow canoe enthusiast, Pierre Trudeau and continues to enjoy today whenever his busy schedule allows.

In this episode, he talks about the canoe trips he took with his father, both as a child and an adult. And how he was taught to paddle by the filmmaker and canoeing legend Bill Mason. 

The conversation takes us into the rapids of the Nahanni, to the lakes and rivers of the boreal forests, and frothing waters of the Rouge, the Tatshenshini-Alsek and the Dumoine. And he shares some tips along the way: "Duct tape is like the force, it has a dark side and a light side, and it binds the universe together." And "What happens if the wind comes up on the river? Well, paddle harder and sing louder."

Enjoy! 

“When you have that moment of empowerment — when someone believes in you — all of a sudden, a switch is thrown in your head, and you believe it’s possible.” 

James Cameron, ocean explorer and Oscar-winning director of Titanic, Avatar, Aliens and more, is our guest with Dr Joe MacInnis on this episode of Explore. The two friends took part in an intimate conversation honouring the important role that MacInnis, Cameron's longtime mentor, played in his career and in ocean exploration. It's a fascinating discussion about the future of our oceans, leadership and the importance of mentoring.

“Mentorship is magical,” says MacInnis, “because it moves information from one generation to the next. And it’s reciprocal because there is a lovely exchange between two paired minds trying to overcome obstacles.” 

Their conversation is tied to the exhibit, PRESSURE: James Cameron Into the Abyss, on at the RCGS headquarters, 50 Sussex Drive, in Ottawa until September 1st. It features the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible that Cameron used to dive to the deepest parts of our oceans and our planet.

Professional wildlife photographer Ryan Tidman has an up-close view of the damaging impact logging old-growth forests is having on Vancouver Island. The Trebek Initiative Grantee is investigating how cutting down the last remaining giant cedars and redwoods is taking away the dens of the island's black bear population. On that rainy island, caves are too wet for bears to live in, so holes in giant trees are where they spend their winters and raise their young. But for how much longer, and what can be done?

Tidman also talks about why he loves photographing Vancouver Island's sea wolves more than any other animal. And what attracted him to do a story for Canadian Geographic on Canada's most endangered mammal, the Vancouver Island marmot. 

And there are some great lessons here about his experience breaking into photography, the importance of mentorships by legendary National Geographic photographers Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier, and why perseverance pays off.

When Pascale Marceau came up with a name for her latest high Arctic expedition, "Arctic Awe," she thought this would refer to the awe she felt looking at the stark beauty of the land and sea ice she encountered. It wound up being so much more than that, awe born from extreme external challenges and the need to dig deep within herself. We're lucky to get Pascale, just weeks after finishing her ski expedition with partner Scott Cocks, in the depths of winter, across the sea ice from Ellesmere Island, over to the ice caps and glaciers of Devon Island and back again. In all, it took seven weeks, covering 650 kilometres. There are many near misses and dangers encountered described in this conversation, including a birthday she won't soon forget. And there is a lot about the spiritual impact of being in the vast, open beauty of a Canadian high arctic winter, the importance of adaptation to circumstances and environments, and why taking journeys on foot is a distinct part of who we are as a species.

As a mountaineer, Marceau has recorded a number of firsts:

• The first recorded winter ascent of the 4800-metre-high Mount Wood in the Yukon, which was also the first female winter ascent of a major peak in the subarctic. 
• In 2021, she led the first all-woman ascent of the Yukon’s Mt.Lucania, Canada’s third-highest peak at 5200 metres.

Since then, she has focused on goals lower to the horizon, Arctic expeditions, including a 2022 crossing from Greenland to the Canadian High Arctic on sea ice. And the trip she is just back from skiing from Ellesmere to Devon Island this year. Her enthusiasm for exploration rings through here. Enjoy!

In her Great Island Expedition, RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Jill Heinerth and her team went to raise the voices of lives, ships and an aircraft lost during the Second World War from the waters in and around Newfoundland.

When we last had Jill Heinerth on the podcast, one of the stories she shared as she prepared for this diving expedition was about Lanier Phillips, an African-American mess attendant on a U.S. Navy ship that sank off the coast of Newfoundland during the Second World War. Back then, African-Americans like Lanier Philips could only work the lowest jobs in the racially segregated US Navy. And they were warned by officers that if they ever went ashore anywhere, they’d be lynched by locals. With his ship going down in harsh winter seas off of southern Newfoundland, Lanier Philips convinced his fellow attendants that the risk of lynching was better than almost certain death on a sinking ship. What followed would change his life. On her Great Island Expedition, Jill and her team dove to the wreck of the ship Lanier Philips escaped from, among many other second world war dive sites.

Our conversation starts with her dive to an RCAF B-24 Liberator bomber that no one had seen since it crashed and sank in the cold, dark waters of Gander Lake 80 years ago, taking with it the lives of four young Canadian men.

"Shackleton died on that ship. And he's the only one who died on that ship. Of all his expeditions under his direct command, nobody else died except him, on his own ship. And that's the ship that we found. And it tells that story about his leadership."

- David Mearns, world-renowned shipwreck hunter and search director for the RCGS Shackleton-Quest Expedition.

Welcome to the second part of our series on the RCGS Shackleton-Quest Expedition. Today, we're delving into the intriguing details of the successful hunt for Quest, the last ship of the legendary polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. The discovery of this shipwreck holds a significant place in maritime history.

In this episode, we get a bit more into the nitty-gritty of the hunt, talking to David Mearns, the expedition's search director, and his associate director, Antoine Normandin, who did the research and math that helped pinpoint Quest’s location in the vast Labrador Sea.

Few are as renowned or have had as much success in finding shipwrecks as Mearns. For decades, he’s been uncovering famous wrecks around the world, including the oldest wreck from the age of discovery and the world's deepest wreck. His work on Shackleton’s shipwrecks has been particularly notable, showcasing his expertise in the field.

We’ll hear David Mearns' exciting description of leading the deep-sea search for Quest in this episode. But first, we’re going to talk with Antoine Normandin. As well as finding his first ever shipwreck with Quest, Antoine is a geographer who sits on the board of governors for the RCGS and is director of transportation planning for the National Capital Commission in Ottawa.

"I've done a lot of hard things. At last count, I think I've done 33 or 34 expeditions, and I would say this was the hardest thing I've ever done. Chemo and the monoclonal therapy that I was doing... I was a mess. I would build myself up (between treatments) over the course of a few weeks, where I'd have a seven or ten-day decent period where I would go and do stuff. I was on Baffin Island in February, across the Paalik Valley, a combination of skiing, trekking and snowmobile. Doing it!"

When Ray Zahab says something is the hardest thing he’s ever done, you know that means it was unbelievably hard. He’s coming off a battle with cancer in which he somehow managed to work in an expedition in the Canadian Arctic at the coldest time of the year. Ray Zahab is not just a friend of this podcast, he’s a friend. We’re about the same age, we live near each other in the Gatineau Hills, and we’ve had a lot of laughs together, usually over coffee on my front porch.



Like many people, I was worried and saddened to learn about his cancer diagnosis last year. Like many, I was then even more concerned about his decision to go ahead with a Baffin Island expedition in February, in between chemo treatments.

And I also know this. Ray is one of the most positive people I've ever met. 

He is someone who faces risks head-on and weighs dangers from every possible angle. He’s set records for getting to the South Pole on foot and for running across deserts in the blazing summer heat. He has carried out expeditions in the harshest environments on the planet. Ray’s decisions around his cancer treatment were done in close consultation with his doctors and family.

It’s not likely what most of us would have chosen. It worked for him.

This is his story to tell. He does so beautifully. 

"On our way back out, we hit all the volcanic gases. It was like the volcano had burped. We had hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. We were hoping to not find sulphur dioxide because that's one of those gases that is more indicative of an active magma chamber."

RCGS Fellow Christian Stenner joins Explore to talk about his adventures inside Canada's most active volcano. Last year, the Calgary native and one of the world's leading cave explorers was part of the first RCGS Trebek Initiative grantees. That grant helped fund his expedition into the Mt Meager volcano, just north of Vancouver on the BC coast. There he and his team made some amazing discoveries about a very active volcanic range that last erupted 2400 years ago. Stenner's expedition into the glacial ice caves leading to the volcano's vents was partly to see how close Mount Meager is to erupting again. He also teamed up with NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists to test out space probes that could be used in the search for life on one of Saturn's moons, Encelados, which has a similar landscape to Meagers fire and ice combination.

*** Please note: Christian misspoke in this interview saying the first ascent of Mt Rainier was in the 1980's. He meant to say 1870.

To learn more on this fascinating expedition, join Christian Stenner and his caving partner Kathleen Graham in their CanGeo Talks event at the RCGS headquarters at 50 Sussex Drive in Ottawa on May 4th at 7 p.m. To register, visit cangeo.ca./volcano

It’s always a special moment when one of the RCGS Explorers-in-Residence drops by the podcast. This conversation with George Kourounis is no exception. George is one of the world’s leading storm chasers, broadcasters, and adventure travellers. His busy schedule has him doing everything from chasing tornados to jumping into volcanoes to surviving epic hurricanes and major weather events. He is all about exploring those moments on our planet when nature is at its most extreme and then sharing what he’s learned from that experience. In this episode, George takes us iceberg climbing off of Newfoundland and then into Africa’s most active volcano, in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way, George shares some great behind-the-scenes tips for young explorers on how he made these expeditions come together. Enjoy!

George Angohiatok grew up as among the last Inuit to live a fully traditional, nomadic life in the Canadian Arctic. As a child in Nunavut in the 1950s and 60s, he lived with his parents, siblings and grandparents on the land, seal hunting on sea ice in the winters, and returning to land to hunt game and fish in the warmer months. That all came to an end when George was sent to Residential School, and his family was forced by the government into the community of Cambridge Bay. Those days on the land deeply shaped who George is today, and at 67, his mission in life is to teach the skills and traditions he learned from his parents and grandparents to a younger generation by taking Inuit youth hunting and teaching them survival skills in what can be a harsh environment. In this episode, George shares some incredible stories from that unique childhood and stories his grandparents passed on to him. I hope you enjoy listening to this interview as much as I did talking with him. He is both a powerful and gentle human being, who has done as much as anyone alive to keep Inuit culture alive. And here's a little aside George shared with me about surviving an Arctic winter. He says, "Fifty percent of it is staying out of the wind."

And a big thank you to everyone who took part in and donated to the RCGS Polar Plunge, in support of this podcast. With Polar Plunges in the Pacific Ocean, Lake Okanagan, Cambridge Bay, Canmore, Toronto, Gatineau Park and the St. Lawrence River, we raised an incredible $30,000 to keep Explore going for another season. Thank you! 

In this second episode of Explore from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, we're passing the mic to two of our star students from our Canadian Geographic Podcast Workshop at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station. Tyler Agligoetok and Sinclair Lyall were among local Inuit youth who took part in five days of podcast training and community open houses. In this conversation, Sinclair interviews Tyler about his favourite memories of a recent goose hunt out on the tundra of Victoria Island. They discuss other favourite hunting memories and why Tyler loves feeling that connection to the land. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed putting it together!

The opening music in this episode is performed by a Cambridge Bay group called Huqqullaarutit Unipkaangit, which means “Stories Told Through Drum-Dance Songs.”



If you enjoy this podcast and the stories we bring you, please consider donating to the 2nd Annual RCGS Polar Plunge, being held on March 6 in support of the RCGS and storytelling that makes Canada better known to Canadians and the world.

"Indigenous People have the knowledge. And if we work together with scientists, we can come up with so much more than what only Inuit know or what scientists know. It's a great tool." - Jeannie Ehaloak, Polar Knowledge Canada, Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

We're thrilled to bring you the first of three episodes from our December visit to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, where we visited with the Inuit community and spent time at the new Canadian High Arctic Research Station there. CHARS, as it's known, is an effort to move the centre of gravity for science and research in Canada a little further north, according to Chief Scientist David Hik. In this fascinating episode we'll explore this $250 million, state of the art facility that just opened in 2019. We'll talk to people involved on how this represents a new chance to blend traditional Inuit knowledge with science, in an effort to overcome some big issues, not least of which is the impact of climate change in the Arctic, where temperatures are rising at a rate 6 times faster than in southern Canada. 

The opening music in this episode is performed by a Cambridge Bay group called Huqqullaarutit Unipkaangit, which means “Stories Told Through Drum-Dance Songs.”



If you enjoy this podcast and the stories we bring you, please consider donating to the 2nd Annual RCGS Polar Plunge, being held on March 6 in support of the RCGS and storytelling that makes Canada better known to Canadians and the world.

"The boreal forest is the largest intact forest left on the planet, it holds a quarter of the world's wetlands. It is a climate regulator."

You could argue there is nothing that binds Canada together like our boreal forest. It's defined by vast stands of spruce and seemingly endless lakes and swamps stretching beyond horizons. It runs in an uninterrupted band from British Columbia across the three territories and every province into Atlantic Canada. And it's a hugely important part of efforts to buffer against the impacts of climate change.

Our guest Valérie Courtois is currently at the UN Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, in Montreal, making the case for preserving the Boreal as part of the 30 by 30 goal. That is the pledge Canada and dozens of other nations have made to set aside thirty percent of our lands and waters as protected spaces in an effort to halt the dramatic decline of the planet's biodiversity, a decline that is directly linked to the climate crisis.

In our conversation, Courtois talks about the importance of the Boreal, why Indigenous people are and always have been the best protectors of our wild places, and the growing role of the Indigenous Guardians program in preserving the Boreal and our wilderness.

Courtois is Innu from Goose Bay Labrador, a registered forester, she focuses on indigenous issues. As well as being the Director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, she has advised the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador and the Innu Nation on forestry.

For our final episode on board the Polar Prince, sailing Atlantic Canada's Bay of Fundy, we're spending some time under the waves and looking to the skies, as we join a fascinating cross-section of scientists, students and researchers who make up this Students on Ice Ocean conservation expedition. 

With the team from New Brunswick's Huntsman Marine Science Centre, we dive into the Fundy waters, gathering samples for baseline databases, crucial to understanding the changing nature of the Bay and the impacts of climate change. They are joined by Laval University's Loic Jacquemont, doing environmental DNA studies of the seas and Rolex Dive Scholar Millie Mannering from New Zealand. Acadia University First Nations student Valerie Campbell explains why Indigenous oral history is science. Minas Basin commercial fisher and researcher Erica Porter discusses her family's efforts to have energy companies harness the Fundy's tidal power in less damaging ways for marine life. And Rick Ludkin and his Canadian Wildlife Service team scan the skies for a seabird survey.

And a note: There is some talk in this episode about Hurricane Fiona, which was looming while I was on board. I left before Fiona hit, but the steady old Polar Prince and her crew rode out the strong winds and rain safely and with grace.

Many thanks again to the crew of the Polar Prince and to the staff of Students on Ice for making this journey possible.  

We're still riding the Bay of Fundy waves this episode with the Students on Ice - Ocean Conservation Expedition. 

Today we're leaving the sea and heading up the Point Wolf River in New Brunswick's Fundy National Park, with the story of a remarkable effort to bring the Fundy Atlantic Salmon back from the brink of extinction. A unique subspecies, unlike all other Atlantic Salmon, the Fundy Salmon doesn't migrate to Greenland after leaving its spawning grounds. It stays in the Bay of Fundy, in part because the waters are so rich. As recently as the 1970s, there were 40,000 Fundy salmon living in the Inner Bay and spawning in dozens of its rivers. By 1998 that number had dropped to just 200, caused principally by habitat loss. But a concerted effort led by the University of New Brunswick, Fundy National Park, Cooke Aquaculture, the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association, Fort Folly First Nation, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Parks Canada has seen those numbers begin to creep back up again, in a way that has researchers hopeful. In part, this is because of a first-of-its-kind Wild Salmon Marine Conservation Farm on Grand Manan Island, where the fish grow safely to maturity and are then released to their native rivers to spawn naturally.

Today, we visit Fundy National Park and talk to John Robinson of Parks Canada. He is one of the people working to bring Fundy Salmon numbers up to sustainable levels, through his Parks Canada job and his graduate work at the University of New Brunswick.

To learn more about the Fundy Salmon visit:  https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/nb/fundy/nature/conservation/saumon-salmon

And many thanks again to Students on Ice for making this episode possible. For more on their work, please visit www.soifoundation.org 

"That's it!" exclaimed John Geiger as he caught the first glimpse of Quest, the last ship of legendary polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Now resting 390 metres below the surface off the coast of Labrador, Quest was Shackleton’s last ship and the vessel he died on. 

Geiger, CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, is our guest on this episode of Explore, in which he tells the riveting story of the epic hunt for Quest and Shackleton's legacy. 

On June 9, in the rolling seas off Labrador, the RCGS-led Shackleton Quest Expedition made an amazing discovery. This was a historic moment for the Society and in the story of Shackleton, one of the greatest polar explorers of all time.

Geiger gives us an edge-of-your-seat, blow-by-blow description of the open-sea search for Quest, in which mechanical failures and setbacks nearly resulted in an abandoned expedition, just as the ship was discovered. 

Geiger, a bestselling author who has written extensively about Shackleton, also discusses the man who inspired the Quest hunt and his well-deserved fame as an explorer and inspirational leader.

Expedition members included the world-renowned shipwreck hunter David Mearns, RCGS Governor and geographer Antoine Normandin and RCGS Explorer-in-Residence and legendary diver Jill Heinerth. The expedition's honorary patrons included Shackleton’s granddaughter, the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton, and Chief Mi’sel Joe, the administrative Chief and spiritual leader of Miawpukek First Nation, in whose traditional waters the wreck was found.

Geiger is the international bestselling author of seven books, including Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition and The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible. His work has been translated into 14 languages. A graduate of the University of Alberta, Geiger holds an honorary Doctor of Law from the University of Calgary and is the recipient of both the Polar Medal and the Order of Canada.

Watch Inside the search for Quest, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last ship, a 12-minute documentary captured by RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Jill Heinerth.

For our 50th episode, Explore is taking to the seas!

We join a Students on Ice expedition to the Bay of Fundy aboard the Polar Prince, on an Ocean Conservation Expedition led by RCGS Fellow and SOI President Geoff Green. 

This is a working expedition with scientists, researchers, commercial fishers, Indigenous youth, students and artists.

Over the next few episodes, we’ll ride the Bay of Fundy tides, the highest in the world, exploring the many wonders of this spectacular part of Canada’s Atlantic seaboard.

For this episode, we’re on Seal Island, a windswept mix of colourful fisherman cottages and stunted trees and rocky shores and tidal pools.

I’ll talk with Geoff Green about his decades-long journey as an expedition leader in the Arctic and Antarctica. And his experiences build up Students on Ice into a vital force that combines sea voyages along with youth, scientists, artists, academics and Indigenous people to bring greater urgency to understanding the importance healthy oceans have for life on this planet. 

For his work with SOI and ocean conservation, Geoff Green was awarded the Order of Canada in 2012. 



Many thanks to the crew of the Polar Prince, and to the staff of Students on Ice for making this voyage possible.

It's mushroom season, so we happily took up Keith Seifert on his offer to go on a mushroom and fungi walk in the Gatineau Hills.  

Keith is one of the world's leading experts on fungi, having spent over forty years studying them on five continents, both as a research academic and as the top scientist on the subject for Agriculture Canada. He is the past president of the International Mycological Association.

Keith is also the author of the new book, "The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi -Exploring the Microscopic World in Our Forests, Homes, and Bodies."

So join us on our walk, where we spot mushrooms, both delicious and deadly, and talk about the rich and complex relationship that fungi have with trees and the forest, and why understanding fungi is key to a better future for all of us.

"They can't fight if they don't eat."

That was the motto of the Farmerettes, the thousands of young women who took the place of male farmers and farmhands who had gone off to fight in the Second World War. While much has been written about the crucial role women played in factories during the war: building tanks, planes, munitions, and weapons of all kinds, etc., the story of Canadian farms, the breadbaskets of the war effort, remains largely untold. 

In this episode of Explore, we’ll rectify that by diving into the story of the Farmerettes, the mostly high school-aged women who kept Canadian farms running at a critical time.

Alison Lawrence’s newest play tells that story at the Fourth Line Theatre and Blyth Festival this summer. Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz is based on personal interviews with Farmerettes as well as letters, memoirs and oral histories. Her play is an intimate look at how that experience was not only transformative for the war effort but for these young women as well. 

Among the many hats she wears, Lawrence is currently a regular cast member on the Amazon Prime series The Lake and a familiar face on stages right across the country. She’s also the co-author of Bittergirl, the play that became a book, which became a musical, playing off-Broadway, across Canada and in the UK. She’s also a MacDowell Fellow and an alumna of the Banff Playwrights Lab.

Notorious for their seafaring ways and conquering territories far and wide, the Vikings burst onto the world scene around 800 AD. For hundreds of years, they raided, conquered, settled, and farmed in lands across Europe, Russia, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and across the North Atlantic to Iceland, Greenland, and then to what they called “Vinland,” our present-day Newfoundland. They did all this in longboats, effectively 60-foot open row boats with sails and virtually no navigation tools. 

Whatever their legacy of terror (our guest today has some thoughts on that), they were remarkable explorers who left an indelible legacy wherever they went.

Vancouver-based author Bill Arnott spent a decade tracing the voyages of the Vikings around the world for his award-winning Gone Viking series. 

In the best tradition of travel writers like Bill Bryson, Gone Viking takes you to where history happened, full of legends, lore, interesting characters and plenty of humour.

The most recent of the Trilogy, Gone Viking III: The Holy Grail, was released in the fall of 2023. 

Bill Arnott’s writing frequently appears in Canadian Geographic magazine, including recently an excerpt from his newest book, A Perfect Day for a Walk: The History, Cultures, and Communities of Vancouver, on Foot, which will be released this fall. He is also a Fellow of the RCGS sister organization, the Royal Geographical Society.

"You can’t look at a canoe or kayak without grounding yourself in the knowledge that this is a water-craft of Indigenous origin. For us, it’s about honouring the stories, honouring the communities."

As The Canadian Canoe Museum moves into its stunning new home on the Otonabee River in Peterborough, Ont. on May 11, Carolyn Hyslop and Jeremy Ward, the museum's executive director and curator, drop by Explore to talk canoes.

For Hyslop and Ward, every canoe and kayak is special, each has a story worth telling, and a heritage worth preserving. They have devoted decades to building up the world’s premier collection of canoes and kayaks at The

Canadian Canoe Museum and are ready to celebrate the opening of a new home for the museum, a building worthy of the 600-plus water-

craft it houses.

On this episode of Explore, we take another fascinating dive into the Hudson’s Bay Company Collection at the Manitoba Museum.

It contains over 27,000 items, far too many for us to pour through on our podcast, so we asked curator Amelia Fay to take us down into the vaults and talk about some of her favourite items, as well as items that speak to the long 350-year history of the HBC and its impact on Canada.

Amelia discusses the design of the iconic Hudson’s Bay Company point blanket, and what’s behind that colour scheme. She explains why moccasins have a strong case for being as important a First Nations tool in the fur trade as the birch bark canoe. We also look at some items that point to the HBC’s shift in the late 19th century from fur trading company to Canadian retail giant (HBC coffee anyone?).