Tentative Symposium Dates:
Fri. Feb. 13 & Sat. Feb. 14
   


PROGRAM : SPEAKERS, TOPICS & SHORT BIOS

 

2008 Wilderness and Canoeing Symposium
February 8 & 9, 2008

Schedule of Speakers and Topics
(Posted Feb 4, 2008)

 

Feb 8

 

Friday evening

 

7:20 p.m.

 

40 minutes each on Friday

 

1

Ed Labenski

Chicago, IL

Arctic Reflections: Travel and
Filmmaking on the Horton River

2

Paul vanPeenen

Vancouver, BC

Pining for the Fiords: 

a Trip from Clyde River to Pond Inlet

3

Robert McGhee

Ottawa, ON

The Last Imaginary Place :
Southern Images of an Arctic World

 

 

 

 

Feb 9

Saturday

9:00 a.m.

 

25 – 30 minutes each on Saturday

 

4

Jonathan Berger & Tom Terry

Philadelphia, PA; Sioux Lookout, ON

Canoe Atlas – of the Little North

5

Glen Hooper

Thunder Bay, ON

Saving Our Wilderness Canoe Routes – 
It’s all About Land Use Planning

6

Chris Mayne

North Bay, ON

La Vase Portages - History at Risk

 

 

 

 

 

 

11:10 a.m.

 

7

Dawne Robinson & Partners

Guelph, ON

Mouchalagane River Perspectives

8

Gilles Fortin & Pierre Charest

Quebec City, PQ

Our Paddling in Quebec - beat the bug.....

9

Stewart Coffin

Andover, MA

Black Spruce Journal

 

 

 

 

 

 

2:20 p.m.

 

10

Andy Breckenridge

Erie, PA

Canoeing Geology

11

Jeremy Harrison

Southport, MA

Trans Arctic Canoe Expedition

12

Jim McNamara

Boise, ID

80-day Barrenland Sojourn in 1991

 

 

 

 

 

 

4:30 p.m.

 

13

Jim & Sue Waddington

Hamilton, ON

Quest of Group of Seven Painting Sites

14

Jay Bailey

Simcoe, ON

61-day Historic Birch Bark Canoe Voyage

15

Kevin Callan

Peterborough, ON

Kopka River Adventures

 

 

 

 

 

 

7:30 p.m.

 

16

Margaret Vokes

Oakville, ON

My Father’s 1928 Discovery of the Hornby
Tragedy
on the Thelon River

17

Ian MacLaren

Edmonton, AB

Hornby's Cabin in 1967

18

Chris Norment

Brockport, NY

Return to Warden’s Grove : Science, Desire
And the Lives of Animals


 

 

 

 

 
     
 
Biographical Sketches of Speakers
 

 

     
 
Short Bios of the Presenters at the
2008 Wilderness and Canoeing Symposium
February 8 & 9, 2008

  

Jay BAILEY – semi-retired after 28 years of teaching French, Jay was bitten by the voyageur bug, impressed with their skill, endurance and joie de vivre, when taking students to the Festival du Voyageur in Winnipeg back in the 1980s. Since 1990, he has staged more than 120 voyageur presentations for students at schools from Chatham to Belleville. Finally, this summer, he was baptized as a voyageur in the traditional manner at Pointe au Baptême, while dressing, eating, sleeping and paddling 1500 km as a voyageur from 1800. He is currently writing a novel about a young teen caught up in the trip west with voyageurs, ca. 1780. http://voyerr.spaces.live.com/[Seat – C40 ]

 

Jonathan BERGER -  has been paddling, sketching, and mapping the Little North for the past five decades. Summer 2008 will be his 50th on the water. His book Canoe Atlas of the Little North is on sale at the book table on Saturday.  [Seat – C24 ]   

 

Andy BRECKENRIDGE - is an assistant professor of geology at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania and an avid canoe tripper. He is an expert on the glacial history of Lake Superior, and does research in Canada on the greatest lake that ever existed, Lake Agassiz. He believes paddlers who have spent time on the land, moving along Canada’s great waterways, are particularly well prepared to appreciate the wonderful stories geologists tell us about the rocks and landscapes. [Seat – A32 ] 

 

Kevin CALLAN - is the author of eleven books, including the best selling The Happy Camper and the incredibly popular series of  paddling guides. On a regular basis he presents across North America and has been a key speaker at all the major canoe events for over 20 years. Callan is also a frequent quest on radio and television, field editor for Explore, and writes on a regular basis for ON Nature, Kanawa and Canoeroots Magazine. He is a winner of three National Magazine Awards and four film awards’ including “best of” in the prestigious Waterwalker Film Festival. For the last 17 years he has taught Environmental Issues and Sciences at Sir Sandford Fleming College and lives in Peterborough, the birthplace of the modern day canoe. [Seat – A28 ]   

 

Pierre CHAREST  and Gilles Fortin  - started their serious out door activities as fishing guides in the nineteen-sixties, than later learned to paddle a canoe – and so made wilderness  journeys up to 40 days long in the Northern rivers of Québec and Labrador. Gilles worked as education supervisor and school principal in Kuujuak and Scheffferville for almost 15 years. His partner, Pierre, was a physician in Quebec city for 33 years. [Seats – A26 and A25 ]

 

Stewart COFFIN -  now spends less time paddling and more time writing about past adventures.  His most recent book is Black Spruce Journals, an annotated photo album covering a half century of canoe-tripping in the North Woods .  He lives with his companion Mary Dow in Andover, Massachusetts. [Seat – C22 ]

 

Jeremy HARRISON -  is an art teacher, painter, and photographer living in Massachusetts.He gained his canoeing experience at Camp Kooch-i-ching in MN where he hascanoed rivers in Ontario and Manitoba including the Alanwater, English, Bloodvein,Seal, and Winisk. His twin sons, Alex and Sam accompanied him along with threeother Kooch-i-ching men on the Trans-Arctic Canoe Expedition. [Seat -  A31]

 

 

Glen HOOPER –  has been solo canoe tripping for over 3 decades now, with many solo 30-40 day trips done in the Barrens and Boreal forest.   Glen has deep concerns about the loss of our wilderness/back country canoe route heritage, as one by one they are continually lost and converted by roads access and other developments into a more motorized front country.   As a career professional wildlife and landscape ecologist experienced in land use planning, he has applied this experience to advance the cause for canoe route protection, which he also wrote about in the WCA’s journal Nastawgan. [Seat -  C29]

 

 

Ed LABENSKI – first went canoeing with his dad on the lakes and rivers close to his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and later moved to the Western U.S. and Canada where he consequently expanded his range. Canoeing has always been an important part of his life. He is currently a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago, and has done many different things over the years: curriculum development, oral history research, ranger for the National Park Service, research consultant for Saskatchewan First Nations, and teaching. The Horton is his third major northern trip. [Seat – B22 ]

 

 

George LUSTE – still dreams of more long trips deep into the arctic landscape and is ever so grateful for the many fond memories of past wilderness trips with Linda, with  daughter Tija, with son Tait, with friends and by himself on solo trips. A physicist by training, at present he is president of the University of Toronto Faculty Association. [Seat -  A10]   

 

Ian MacLAREN  -  teaches History and English at the University of Alberta. His outdoor interests have shifted over the years from principally canoeing to chiefly hiking. He dates his interest in wilderness as a realm for recreation and a subject for research from his canoe trip on the Hanbury and Thelon rivers in 1967. Author/editor of several books and many articles about exploration and travel, he published Culturing Wilderness in Jasper National Park in December to commemorate the centenary of that mountain park. [Seat – B27 ]   

 

Chris MAYNE -  is a canoeist first, having paddled Northern Ontario extensively and Nahanni most recently, and a Councilor for the City of North Bay second. Three years ago following an aggregate companies application to mine the banks of La Vase portages, he and a small group of friends, following the earlier work of Restore the Link, formed the Friends of La Vase Portages. Today’s presentation is a summary of what the issues are and what is being done. [Seat – C42 ]

 

Robert McGHEE's -  research has focused on the archaeology of Arctic Canada and related regions.  He has undertaken fieldwork from Labrador to the Mackenzie Delta and northwards to the High Arctic islands, as well as in Svalbard and Chukotka.  His work has addressed the first peopling of the New World Arctic; the origins and development of Inuit culture in Arctic Canada; reactions of prehistoric populations to episodes of climatic and environmental change; and European exploration of the Arctic regions. His most recent book is The Last Imaginary Place, a Human History of the Arctic World.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Arctic Institute of North America,  past-president of the Canadian Archaeological Association, and has been awarded the Massey Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He is currently a Curator of Archaeology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. [Seat – B26 ]

Jim McNAMARA – is a professor of hydrology in the Department of Geosciences at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, USA. He has been away from the north-country for about a decade so his recent paddling has been in kayaks or rafts on big western rivers. Now that his sons can paddle their own boats and carry their own packs he plans on reviving his long-time passion for canoe country.   [Seat – A30 ]

Chris NORMENT - is a professor of environmental science and biology at SUNY College at Brockport, where he specializes in the ecology and conservation of migratory birds. In addition to numerous scientific articles, he is the author of In the North of Our Lives, an account of a year-long expedition across the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in 1977-1978. [Seat – A27 ]

 

Paul van PEENEN -  is a frequent visitor of remote landscapes. When not paddling or dragging a canoe, Paul spends his time writing and taking photographs, usually about paddling or dragging a canoe. He lives with his partner Janice in Vancouver. Paul's canoe trips are sponsored by Clipper Canoes of Abbotsford, BC. [Seat – B24 ]

 

 

Dawne ROBINSON and Dave and Andy - every summer for the past decade, Dawne, Dave and Andy have been reclaiming their sanity by escaping 'into the wild'.  Dawne and Andy finance their play time by teaching and Dave by working at the Ontario Vet College.  All agree that they prefer the wildlife on the river to that in the classroom. [Seats –P15, P16, P17, P18 ]

 

 

Margaret VOKES -  is an international business consultant.  She and her husband, Michael, are avid wilderness canoeists and back country campers, although they have not explored the Far North.  More recently, Margaret and Mike have acquired a 36 foot power boat which they use to explore the 30,000 islands of eastern Georgian Bay. [Seat – B29 ]

 

 

Sue and Jim WADDINGTON -  have combined their love of canoe tripping with their appreciation of the art of the Group of Seven painters. On their canoe trips they try to locate the places that the Group used as the inspiration for their paintings and, if successful, they record what the scene looks like now. She is a retired nurse and he an almost retired physicist and now they have plenty of time to go canoeing with their grandchildren. [Seats – C20, C21 ]



 
     

 

 

 
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