Entries by Clayton Anderson

Our 2008 brochure will arrive at a mailbox near you within the next week. Keep a look out for it! If you would like a sneak peek, please visit our web site for details on our programming in Canada and the North. Online users will have a head start and the opportunity to book their first choice cabin selection for their 2008 dream trip.

For more information, click below on our Arctic Series:
Baffin Expedition
Walrus Expedition
High Arctic

For more information on our East Coast Series:

Wild Labrador
Newfoundland Circumnavigation


Or Download the whole brochure

Much
has been written about the early exploration of the Northwest Passage
and some of the overland routes used to map and explore the northern
reaches of Canada. But the central travel corridor into the heart of
Canada's northern wilderness-the old way north-remains shrouded in
mystery and uncelebrated, its natural and cultural history largely
unknown. Long before the arrival of the first whites, the Chipewyan
(Dene) used the old way north to follow the herds of migrating caribou.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this travel
corridor, which stretches from Reindeer Lake in Manitoba and north to
the barren-lands in what is today Nunavut, was an important access
route for those intrepid travellers who opened the North.  In the
spring of 1912, Ernest Oberholtzer-largely responsible for the creation
of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Ontario and
Minnesota-and Billy Magee, an Anishinaabe companion, set off on a five-
month canoe expedition following the old way north, a route that was
still largely unmapped. Oberholtzer's observations provide us with a
window into the way it was, before the changes that came shortly after
his passage.
Using Oberholtzer's journals as a narrative thread,
author David Pelly transports readers through the history of this
wilderness and introduces them to the mapmakers, fur traders and
trappers, missionaries, and Native peoples who relied on this corridor
for trade and travel. Among the many surprises he explores is the
contact, unique to this region, between the Dene and Inuit, who both
lived and travelled here. Through journals, historical records,
personal interviews with Dene and Inuit, and present-day canoeing
accounts, Pelly reconstructs the many tales heretofore hidden in this
land. David Pelly has been travelling and living in the Arctic since
the late 1970s. He is the author of several articles and books on the
land and its people, including Thelon: A River Sanctuary and Sacred
Hunt: A Portrait of the Relationship between Seal and Inuit.

Join David this September on our Walrus Expedition:  September 12-24, 2008. For more information please click here.

There is new availability on the Walrus Expedition - please call our office for details!

To order a copy of The Old Way North please visit:
www.borealisbooks.org
 For more information on Jean's book, please click here.

If you're in the UK and have questions about our Adventures, you can call us toll free at 0-808-101-0935 from 1pm to 9pm! Talk to you soon!

Long-time Adventure Canada resource staffer John Houston recently received news of his appointment as Adjunct Professor [Department of Communications, Faculty of the Arts] at the University of Ottawa. Adventure Canada is a key partner in Professor Houston's 'ARCTICA - a virtual learning environment' project, along with Adventure Canada resource team members Ree Brennin, Marc St. Onge, Senator Charlie Watt and Mike Beedell (with help at the get go from Aaju Peter). Other team members include educator David Serkoak of Nunavut Sivuniksavut and Evan Potter of the University of Ottawa.

The whole idea for 'ARCTICA - a virtual learning environment' was hatched on board our 'little red ship' the Explorer, in response to a query from passenger Lesley Strutt, PhD, at the University of Ottawa, Office of the Vice Dean Research, at University of Ottawa's Faculty of Arts. After seeing John present his most recent film; 'Kiviuq,' Lesley asked John if there was anything she and the University of Ottawa could do to help with his ongoing work...

Watch for more news of this exciting, multi-year, multi-part project in future issues of our newsletter.

For more information on John Houston please visit our staff page.

Take in Passage, the new hotdoc based on the book Fatal Passage by award winning author and Adventure Canada resource team member, Ken McGoogan. Veteran documentarian John Walker takes us on an epic historical adventure that involves cannibalism, a vengeful woman and an historical cover-up by British authorities that credited the wrong man with the discovery of the Northwest Passage. Based on the lives of Dr. John Rae, explorer for the Hudson's Bay Company, and Sir John Franklin, British Royal Navy officer and leader of an ill-fated 1840s Arctic expedition. Stunningly cinematic, the film follows a trail from London to the Orkney Islands to Nunavut, elegantly slipping between past and present, drama and documentary, observational and self-reflexive cinema, to present the forces that made Franklin a hero and banished Rae to the margins of history. A cast of characters, including respected Inuit stateman Tagak Curley and the great great grandson of Charles Dickens, join the director as he unravels a historic fraud and sets the record straight.

Passage is screening in Toronto at the following locations:

Royal Cinema 608 College St. on April 20th at 21:30

ROM Theater 100 Queens Park April 23 at 16:30

For more information on passage please click here.

Ken McGoogan is joining the Adventure Canada team on our High Arctic Adventure: Sept 18-30, 2008 as featured historian.


Click here for more info on our High Arctic Adventures

Adventure Canada traveller Rosemary Clewes, who fell in love with the Arctic starting on our 1994 Project Arctic Coast, still treasures memories of a full moon over Disco Bay's icebergs, Mike Beedell, preparing to fly off the top of an erratic over the river canyon at Pangnurtung. The 'family' feel she had after ten days on the Alla Tarasova (now the Clipper Adventurer) brought me back on another trip on the 'Little Red Ship' for "Explorers and Adventurers" in 2005.

As poet and a writer of non-fiction, she has just published a book entitled, Thule Explorer: Kayaking North of 77 Degrees.

She believes this book's message is an important one, written after a two week kayaking/camping trip, beginning and ending in Qaanaaq on the northwest coast of Greenland in 2002. The Arctic, as the northern frontier of Canada and beyond, is little known or understood, but is receiving considerable attention now due to global warming and rumbles about sovereignty.

The book is written in prose and poetry, encompassing history, (Canadian and Greenlandic), Inuit stories and her fleeting but significant contact with local hunters in their summer camps. The reader will join this 'outsider' in hiking and paddling in a landscape, stripped to the essentials of sky, water, rock and ice. He or she will travel with her on the cusp of her personal frontiers where she seek to understand her place in the larger order.


Click here to visit our store

Tim Rast is an archaeologist who has surveyed, excavated and published on
archaeological sites in Nunavut, Labrador, Newfoundland and Alberta. Tim is an accomplished flintknapper with 12 years experience in making and using stone tools. He handcrafts museum quality artifact reproductions and archeology-themed jewelry through his business, Elfshot. His reproductions from Northeastern and Arctic cultures are sought by museums, universities, and collectors from across North America. Tim lives in St. John's and is the current Chair of the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador (2007/08).

This September Tim will help us understand the cultural and historical sites we visit on our High Arctic Adventure. His onsite and animated interpretation will help us understand the lifeways of the varying groups that have inhabited the Northern Landscape. Onboard the Akademic Ioffe Tim will share his knowledge as a flintknapper with demonstrations and by running hands on workshops!

For more information on the Akademic Ioffe please click here


For more information on our High Arctic Adventure, please click here

Shannon Fowler: Biologist, Baffin Expedition
Growing up in a small inland town in northern California, Shannon easily became fascinated by the ocean. She spent summers in San Diego with her grandfather, who was an oceanographer. Together, they watched migrating grey whales, explored tidepools, and shuffled their feet in the sand to avoid stingrays. She to studied biology at the University of California at San Diego. After graduating, Shannon wanted to explore the world outside California. She was a SCUBA instructor in Ireland, Panama, Galapagos, and the Caribbean. She taught marine ecology to teenagers in the Bahamas and Ecuador. And in between, Shannon travelled—singing songs with Berbers in the Zagora Desert, eating lemon ants in the Amazon, making a wish at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and hiking among proboscis monkeys in Borneo. Eventually, Shannon returned to the world of academia and completed a Ph.D. in Biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. For her thesis research, she examined the development of diving in the threatened Australian sea lion.

Since completing her Ph.D., Shannon has worked as the Marine Mammal Biologist in Antarctica, as a science writer at National Public Radio in Washington D.C., and has taught killer whale biology to college students in the San Juan Islands. She spends the rest of her time based in London writing scientific manuscripts and nonfiction.

Shannon joins the Adventure Canada team on our Baffin Expedition Sept 2-12, 2008. When she is not out on deck helping spot and identify marine mammals or driving a zodiac we can expect to hear lectures on the adaptations of warm-blooded animals that allow them to live in Polar seas and the inside line on diving physiology & behaviour at the edge.


Click here for more info on this adventure

Adventure Canada is pleased to announce our partnership with Sierra Designs, renowned as one of the world's leading outdoor brands; a company that is filled with authenticity, experience and passion for the outdoors. Many of Sierra Designs products are made in Canada and they are industry leaders in going green. A few key implementations made are the use of PVC-free tape on waterproof jackets and the Polartech recycled fleece is made from recycled pop and water bottles.

We are offering two quality packages to Adventure Canada clients to gear you up for your upcoming adventure. Each package includes a base layer, waterproof breathable pants and jacket as well as polartec fleece at a savings of more than 25% off retail prices. Explore this year in style and comfort with your new Adventure Canada outdoor gear.


Download a PDF of the offer here

Canadian Inuit art has created a niche for itself in the world of collecting. Attracting knowledgeable buyers from across North America this art form has risen rapidly in value and profile. Collectors are passionate - traveling to Toronto, Canada, twice a year to congregate at Waddington's auctions of Inuit art, where in 2007 some 1500 pieces totaling over $2.7 million were sold.

Each auction sees new price levels set and Inuit art finds new homes in museums, art galleries, corporate and private collections around the world. Waddington's next auction of fine Inuit art is being held on April 14 - 15th with details and highlights available at the Waddington's Website