Explore: A Canadian Geographic podcast

More than military conquest: Manitoba's historic Dawson Trail with Pierrette Sherwood and Mimi Lamontagne

We do love history here on the Explore podcast, and one of the reasons is that the more you poke around, the more you dig, and the wider you cast your research net, the richer the story that gets revealed. Our guests today are the perfect example of that.

Pierrette Sherwood is the founder, artistic and creative director of Manitoba’s Dawson Trail Commemorative Project, and Mimi Lamontagne is the project researcher. If any of you out there have heard of the Dawson Trail, it’s probably best known as the route that British and Canadian troops used in 1870 to get to Manitoba and put down the Red River Resistance led by Louis Riel. It then became the pre-railroad overland route from Eastern Canada into the west.

Starting in 2019, the Dawson Trail Commemorative Project aims to illuminate a richer story beyond just conquest and migration. It's a story focused on the First Nations, Métis and French Canadian people who lived along the route for hundreds and thousands of years and what that reveals about our history and who we are as a people, including some remarkable characters. The route is 150 kilometres long, mostly just off of the Trans-Canada Highway. It features historical markers illuminating the extensive research into the history of the trail done by Lamontagne, Sherwood and their team. Along with being the Dawson Trail Project founder Pierrette Sherwood is a proud French Canadian Métis and award-winning arts and cultural professional. She makes her living as the artist-owner of Papillon Creations along the historic Dawson Trail.

Mimi Lamontagne is a career heritage specialist, researcher, and educator in Manitoba. She is a proud Franco-Manitoban and ally to Indigenous Peoples. She has worked with the Manitoba Museum, Parks Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

To learn more about the Dawson Trail visit dawsontrailtreasures.ca.

"So, does Christmas eliminate distance?"

Happy holidays from Explore! For this Yuletide episode, we’re dipping into our Canadian Geographic files for the reading of a story written by RCGS founding President and Arctic explorer Charles Camsell who recalls a memorable Christmas he had on the trail to the Klondike in 1897.

In the early 1900s, travelling by canoe and horseback, Camsell mapped hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Canada’s north for the Geological Survey of Canada.

Born at Fort Liard, N.W.T., in 1876, his father Julian was an English fur trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company. His mother, Sarah Foulds, was Metis, with deep roots in the Red River. After graduating from the University of Manitoba, Camsell returned to the Northwest Territories just in time to get swept into the Klondike gold rush. Like thousands of young men and women at the time, he and his friend Arthur Pelly set off for the Yukon to seek their fortune.

Lynne McGuffin, Camsell's granddaughter, found the following story in his personal files. It was dated 1937, around the time he was writing his memoir, Son of the North. For the past two decades, it's been a tradition of host David McGuffin to read this to his wife and children on Christmas Eve as they moved from continent to continent, country to country, often celebrating the holidays far from family and home.

So, pour yourself a favourite drink, settle into a comfy chair by the fire and enjoy this reading of Christmas at Devil’s Portage.

To learn more about the Camsell family and their role in the fur trade, check out Season 2 of Explore, which features fascinating full archival recordings of Charles Camsell and his brother Philip Scott Camsell looking back on their Arctic childhoods.

I am thrilled to have Laval St. Germain as our guest for this episode of Explore. An avid adventurer, Laval has rowed solo across the North Atlantic Ocean and is the only Canadian to have summited Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. He has also climbed the tallest peaks on all seven continents, including Antarctica and many more of the world's most remote and challenging mountains — not to mention that he is also a commercial pilot, flying in the Canadian Arctic and was one of our RCGS Polar Plungers in Calgary.

As everyone who follows me or Canadian Geographic knows, we held our third Annual RCGS Polar Plunge last week to support another season of Explore.

Thank you to all of our amazing plungers and donors. We not only hit our goal of $35,000, we crushed it, topping $50,000 — our most successful polar plunge ever. This was mostly done in the best grass-roots way possible, with many smaller donations from many of you.

We did get five significant donations, and I want to thank those donors.

Dr. Ian Hammond’s donation helped compel RCGS CEO John Geiger to jump into a freezing Lake Ontario.

Connor Fitzgerald’s donation persuaded RCGS Fellow and polar filmmaker Mark Terry to jump into that same great lake. And Nancy Love’s generous donation got RCGS Vice President Sarah Legault to follow John and Mark into Lake Ontario too.

I also had two donors who got me to lead the plunge into a chilly Meech Lake in the Gatineau hills. One is my mother, Lynne McGuffin, an RCGS Camsell award winner, and my big cousin, Lynne Evenson.

Thank you all so much!

I also want to single out our top three fundraisers, all of whom won a fantastic Danish cold-water swim coat from Sitting Suits. Congratulations to RCGS Fellows James Raffan, Susan Eaton, and Mark Terry, all of whom, fittingly, spend a lot of time working in our polar regions.

Thank you as well to the dozens of RCGS Fellows and friends of Canadian Geographic who took part from coast to coast (there were 11 plunge sites in all) and, of course, to all of you who donated.

I’m humbled to be a part of this incredible RCGS community and to be bringing you another season of Explore.

Perry Bellegarde is the new Honorary President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society — a ceremonial role previously held by the late Alex Trebek. You likely also know Bellegarde from his time as a transformational National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations from 2014 to 2021, where he helped push key legislation through Parliament, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and the Indigenous Languages Act. He is a proud member of the Little Black Bear First Nation in Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. Last year he was named Nation Builder of the Year by the Empire Club for his “record of achievement built over 35 years in First Nations leadership and advocacy for Indigenous rights, human rights, and building bridges within Canada and globally."

In this lively and fascinating episode, Bellegarde discusses growing up in Little Black Bear, his time in First Nations politics, the importance of Indigenous languages, culture and ceremony, and his new role with RCGS.

"On our way back out, we hit all the volcanic gases. It was like the volcano had burped. We had hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. We were hoping to not find sulphur dioxide because that's one of those gases that is more indicative of an active magma chamber."

RCGS Fellow Christian Stenner joins Explore to talk about his adventures inside Canada's most active volcano. Last year, the Calgary native and one of the world's leading cave explorers was part of the first RCGS Trebek Initiative grantees. That grant helped fund his expedition into the Mt Meager volcano, just north of Vancouver on the BC coast. There he and his team made some amazing discoveries about a very active volcanic range that last erupted 2400 years ago. Stenner's expedition into the glacial ice caves leading to the volcano's vents was partly to see how close Mount Meager is to erupting again. He also teamed up with NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists to test out space probes that could be used in the search for life on one of Saturn's moons, Encelados, which has a similar landscape to Meagers fire and ice combination.

*** Please note: Christian misspoke in this interview saying the first ascent of Mt Rainier was in the 1980's. He meant to say 1870.

To learn more on this fascinating expedition, join Christian Stenner and his caving partner Kathleen Graham in their CanGeo Talks event at the RCGS headquarters at 50 Sussex Drive in Ottawa on May 4th at 7 p.m. To register, visit cangeo.ca./volcano