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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