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magazine / jun09
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June 2009 issue |
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| Photo: John Burridge |
RESEARCH
Northern exposures
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| (Photo: Ellen McDermott) |
Before last summer, Brittany Shuwera had never been to the North. Growing
up in Vita, Man., 100 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, she had listened
to her father, who worked for the federal government, tell stories of his
travels to places as far away as Resolute, Eureka and Alert, in Nunavut.
She had learned about aboriginal traditions from him and admired the bone
and stone carvings he brought home. Later, as a geography student at the
University of Winnipeg, she also learned about Yellowknife from her adviser
Patricia Fitzpatrick, who had lived there for two years. So when Shuwera
chose to pursue her undergraduate thesis fieldwork in Yellowknife — funded,
in part, by The Royal Canadian
Geographical Society — she was fulfilling a lifelong dream of visiting
Canada’s North.
During her three-month stay in the Northwest Territories capital last
summer, Shuwera explored Yellow
knifers’ sense of their city through “participant
employed photography,” a method that, she explains, “puts a
camera in the hands of participants so that they may photograph elements
of their community they feel adequately represent their sense of place.” By
asking her new friends to record their emotional attachment to the city
in images, she saw Yellowknife through the eyes of its residents.
When she distributed digital cameras to the subjects of her study — residents
who were not raised in the North but have lived there for 20 or more consecutive
years — “people were mostly concerned about what kinds of pictures
they should be taking,” says Shuwera, whose instructions were intentionally
vague. Among the 10 participants were a teacher, a writer, artists and
a government official, all of whom have witnessed the city’s changing
economic landscape over the past two decades.
The results were as varied as they were revealing and included urban scenes,
people, animals and landscapes. Shuwera asked the participants to describe
what appealed to them about each picture and inquired whether the photos
held any symbolic meaning. The only trend, she says, is evident in the
many landscape photographs that seem to celebrate “just being able
to spend time outside and being so close to nature.”
Shuwera has presented her research at the University of Winnipeg and at
the Canadian Association of Geographers’ annual conference and plans
to publish it. Afterward, the young geographer intends to live and work
in Yellowknife for a year or two, exploring her own deep emotional ties
to the North.
— Samia Madwar
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EDUCATION
Classroom currents
Teachers will be blown away by the diversity and creativity of 26 new
lesson
plans on wind energy in Canada, prepared by the Canadian
Council for Geographic Education, in partnership with the Canadian
Wind Energy Association.
Topics and classroom activities range from the construction of an anemometer
for measuring wind speeds to an examination of how wind, among other forces
of nature, has helped forge the Canadian identity. Aimed at middle- and
secondary-school students in every province and territory, the lesson plans
will be available at the Canadian
Atlas Online in June.
The lesson plans are a complement to the wind-energy poster map included
with this issue of Canadian Geographic and to a new comprehensive
thematic on this renewable resource available at the Canadian
Atlas Online.
RESEARCH
Cancer in the woods?
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| Photo: Mary McQuaid |
Emissions from a pulp mill, a tire-manufacturing facility and a provincially
operated coal plant all contribute to the chemical soup in Nova Scotia’s
Pictou County, about 160 kilometres northeast of Halifax. The rate of prostate
cancer among the county’s 46,500 residents is 24 percent higher than
the provincial average.
Nicole d’Entremont, a recent graduate in physics at Mount Allison
University, in Sackville, N.B., is studying tree rings to determine whether
the region’s trees also show cancerlike symptoms — such as
an increased replication of cells — given that they are exposed to
the same environmental conditions as humans.
With funding from The Royal
Canadian Geographical Society, d’Entremont (above) ventured
into the woods of Pictou County last summer to extract
core samples from trees at various distances from the factories. She then applied a process
called flow cytometry, typically used in oncology, but rarely applied
to plants.
In flow cytometry, a stream of liquid containing biological cells flows
through two pressurized containers. The stream is so thin that a laser
can illuminate a single cell, allowing scientists to examine each one individually
and to monitor how many times a cell duplicates. Excessive duplications
may indicate cancer.
But flow cytometers are expensive and are designed to accommodate the
cells of animals, not plants. “It’s proving very difficult
to get tree cells to suspend in a liquid,” says d’Entremont.
Undeterred, she has built her own flow cytometer with the help of one of
her professors. Results of her study are pending as she develops a method
of analysis that works with various species of trees.
— Marielle Picher
AWARDS
Calling all eco-innovators
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, in partnership with 3M
Canada,
has launched a new award to recognize individuals in business, government,
academia or community organizations who are making groundbreaking contributions
to preserving and protecting Canada’s environment.
The Canadian Award for Environmental Innovation will be presented annually.
The inaugural winner will be honoured at the Society’s College
of Fellows Dinner in Ottawa on Nov. 5, 2009.
“3M is proud to be a partner in such a progressive program,” says
Charles Allan, vice-president of corporate sales and marketing at 3M Canada. “It
is our hope that this award will be a catalyst for change and help create
healthy communities nationwide.”
The public is invited to submit nominations online at www.rcgs.org/environment by
June 30, 2009. Three finalists will be announced in September.
80TH ANNIVERSARY
Arctic retrospective
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| Photo: Paul Nicklen/National
Geographic Image Collection |
A pair of walruses (RIGHT) rests on an ice floe in Foxe Basin, Nunavut, in
this Paul
Nicklen photograph published in the March/April
2002 issue of Canadian Geographic. In celebration of its 80th
anniversary, The Royal Canadian
Geographical Society, in partnership with the Canadian
Museum of Nature,
is launching a travelling photography exhibit on the Canadian Arctic. It’s
a retrospective of some of the best photography of the landscapes, wildlife
and people of the North to have been featured in the magazine over the past
eight decades. The exhibit opens June 4 at Canada House in London, England,
and runs until Nov. 13. It will travel to other locations until 2011.
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