The Explorers
Colin Angus
Angus wrote about his 43,000-kilometre human-powered circumnavigation of the world in his book Beyond the Horizon. Currently, he and his wife, Julie, are on a 6,500-kilometre self-propelled boat and bike expedition from his ancestral Scotland to her homeland of Syria.
rowedtrip.com
Julie Angus
A molecular biologist and filmmaker, Angus is also the only woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean from mainland to mainland. Rowboat in a Hurricane, her book recounting that 145-day trip and looking at the future of our oceans, is due out this fall.
angusadventures.com
Bruce Kirkby
This engineer-turned-photographer-and-writer has ridden a camel through Arabia’s southern desert, motorbiked across Mongolia, and hiked across Patagonia with his seven-month-old son. Kirkby, who hosted CBC Television’s No Opportunity Wasted, is the author of The Dolphin’s Tooth: A Decade in Search of Adventure.
brucekirkby.com
Wade Davis
Ethnographer, writer and National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence Wade Davis appeared with Robert Kennedy Jr. in the recent documentary Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk. Just back from Colombia, Davis is currently making a film about that country’s Arhuaco tribe. He is also editorial director of the online magazine Cultures on the Edge.
culturesontheedge.com
Meagan McGrath
An aerospace engineer with the Canadian Air Force, this mountaineer is the youngest Canadian woman to climb all Seven Summits. Just back from the Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert, McGrath will be leading a bush camping safari and climb of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania this August.
meaganmcgrathadventurer.com
Jean Lemire
Filmmaker and marine biologist Jean Lemire spent 15 months in Antarctica for his film The Last Continent. (Look for his three-part series "Antarctic Mission" on The Nature of Things, June 28, July 5 and July 12 on CBC Television.) Lemire won a Canadian Environment Awards Citation of Lifetime Achievement in 2007. His next mission: promoting global access to safe drinking water.
sedna.tv, lederniercontinentlefilm.com
How is exploration different today?
Colin Expeditions of the past were a different ball game. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean the way Julie and I do – self-powered – wouldn’t previously have been within our capacity. Now, with technology at our fingertips, it’s possible. It’s lucky that we’ve had these adventurous desires in the present era.
Meagan It’s more accessible now. An Everest trip nowadays is completely different from an Everest trip in the 1990s. It’s far more affordable and commercially available now.
Bruce In the last 20 years, most of the uncertainty or danger with trips to remote places has been removed. I was just in Patagonia. It was a strange experience to stand on the main street of El Calafate and realize that, 20 years ago, this small village was considered the most out-of-the-way place. Now there is busload after busload of tourists.
Wade The travel industry didn’t exist on this kind of scale in our youth. Now it’s one-stop shopping. You can buy your way into virtually any corner of the planet; it’s just a matter of making a toll-free call. A good litmus test of this is to consider where your parents went, where you’ve gone and where your children are going. What I find so astonishing and positive is the ease with which my children’s generation moves around the world. I have two teenage daughters, and they’ve been virtually everywhere. It’s a kind of new world culture.
What are the benefits of having remote regions of the world made so accessible?
Bruce I’m a strong believer that the salvation of wild places lies in not hiding them. I see it when I’m guiding in the North. We get 10 or 15 folks who leave a hectic life and are plunked down on the Yukon River. Within about five days, which is half the trip, they get a sense of their place in the landscape – not just of the North but also the landscape they inhabit at home.
Jean I tell people that if we could bring 50 percent of the population to Antarctica, we could solve 50 percent of our problems. Of course, we shouldn’t actually bring that many people to Antarctica, but we are so far from nature in our daily life that just seeing these places can change our way of seeing the world.
Julie People have become increasingly aware of the impact of their travel and their purchasing power, whether it’s bringing dollars to a community or working with a company that supports sustainable practices. People care that where they go has a positive impact.
But hasn’t exploration always offered up these kinds of benefits?
Wade Sure. If you look at countries such as Peru, there’s been a re-examination of the relationship between the nation-state and the indigenous peoples, partly facilitated by the thousands of young backpackers and travellers who went down to Cuzco in the 1970s. They weren’t interested in the bourgeois luxuries of Lima; they were fascinated by the remnants of the Incas. That profoundly influenced an entire generation of young Peruvians. The awareness and insight that a new generation acquires by being exposed to different cultures will be a tremendous source of strength.
Jean In the early 1980s, we brought the first real tourists to watch the whales in Tadoussac. Then, it was an expedition just to get there. Maybe in some places we’ve created a monster, but there are certainly benefits to bringing the whales to the public.
Wade Jean, you’re being too modest! If it hadn’t been for your work, the whales would be dead. It’s literally that kind of expedition that has kept those species alive.
Are there drawbacks to exploration being more accessible?
Wade Of course. The easier travel is, the less engaged people tend to be. I was once in the Arctic, and a woman recited a litany of places she’d been. She mentioned Sarawak in Borneo, so I politely said, “I lived there for a while. What did you like about it?” And she said, “Actually, I don’t remember, but it was all very interesting.” Apparently not interesting enough to remember.
Bruce That brings back a memory of a photography trip that I once led in Bhutan. “Hello” in Bhutanese is kuzu zangpo la – it’s not that difficult. But we had 17 people in our group, and over 12 days I couldn’t convince one of them to say hello, which is what you should know before you even step off the airplane.
