IN THIS EMAIL:
 

- Learn why Aluk Kotierk, president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., wants Inuktut to be recognized as an official language in Canada 

- Read an excerpt from Points of Interest: In Search of the Places, People, and Stories of BC, a new anthology from The Tyee featuring work by Canadian Geographic associate editor Abi Hayward 

- Discover more about conservation translocation and what experts are doing to help endangered plants recover 

- Looking for your next adventure? Learn more about B.C.'s Klahoose Wilderness Resort and the incredible trips being offered in 2024 

Languages of the land: Aluki Kotierk on Inunnguiniq, parenting

In the fourth part of the “Languages of the Land” digital series, the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and recently elected vice-chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, speaks to Canadian Geographic on learning to be a good human and the importance of recognizing Inuktut as an official language

As told to Abi Hayward

For the soldiers and civilians who battled the elements to build the Alaska Highway at a breakneck pace during the Second World War, creature comforts were few and far between. When they reached the warm and inviting waters of the Liard River Hot Springs in northeastern British Columbia after months of hard labour, they must have thought they were in heaven. Recognizing the value of the hot springs as a place for its personnel to rest and relax, in 1942 the U.S. military set up a rough boardwalk and changing huts near the area’s largest thermal pool. 

Excerpt from Points of Interest: In Search of the Places, People, and Stories of BC

Canadian Geographic associate editor Abi Hayward's "A Beachcomber's Love Story" appears in The Tyee's 20th anniversary anthology, which celebrates the stories of British Columbia

By Abi Hayward

When I reach Anne Clemence on the phone, her accent is unmistakeably English and she speaks with a smile in her voice. I’ve called her because I am collecting stories about the heyday of log salvaging in British Columbia.
 

Log salvagers also go by the name of beachcombers, or log salvors. They scour the waters and beaches for loose logs, most of which have escaped while being towed from point to point, and sell them to brokers who resell them to be milled.
 

Decades ago, log salvaging provided enough money and adventure to attract Anne Clemence and many others, even spawning a hit CBC television show, The Beachcombers. Though scarcer today, log salvagers still ply B.C.’s coast. Some forty scavenge along the Fraser River, one expert told me. But the best days are over, I keep hearing.
 

I ask Anne, who is eighty-six when we speak, when she first started log salvaging.
 

“Oh, when I met Sam Lamont!” she says instantly.

Conservation translocation: helping endangered plants recover

When the only habitat left is in isolated patches, plants might need a little help spreading their seeds -  but concerns about ecological integrity are holding us back

By Jenny McCune

Growing up in southern Ontario during the 1980s, I accepted the open landscapes of crop fields and pastures interspersed with small patches of forest as normal. My sister and I would venture through the fields to the little 10-acre forest at the back of our farm in Dufferin County, playing for hours in the wilderness of trilliums, jack-in-the-pulpits, and ferns. It was a revelation when I learned that once upon a time, forests dominated this landscape before they were decimated by “an army of axe-wielding settlers and woodsmen,” as described by  David Wood in his book, Making Ontario.

Since the height of deforestation in the early 1920s, when total forest cover was reduced from at least 70 per cent to only 10 per cent of the land area, some forests have recovered, but only back to about 20 per cent. Nevertheless, the forests are irrevocably changed. Species like the American chestnut have gone extinct, a victim of the introduced chestnut blight (a parasitic fungus), and new, exotic plant species like eastern helleborine and garlic mustard have colonized. 

Canadian Geographic Adventures
 

Featured partner: Klahoose Wilderness Resort 

Canadian Geographic Adventures Discover Klahoose: Transformational Immersion with spring bear viewing and waterfalls Klahoose Territory, British Columbia, Canada

​May 19 to 23, 2024 with RCGS Ambassador Javier Frutos 

Canadian Geographic Adventures Discover Klahoose: Transformational Immersion with spring bear viewing and waterfalls Klahoose Territory, British Columbia, Canada
June 2 to 6, 2024 with RCGS Ambassador Carol Patterson

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