"Canada's claim to the Arctic derives from the Franklin expedition and the search that evolved out of it." We’ve touched on the Franklin expedition in several other Explore podcast episodes, so we're excited to be taking the first proper deep dive into the story now with Ken McGoogan, an author who has been passionately writing about this topic for decades. We also discuss Ken’s latest book, Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery, which examines Franklin’s legacy from a contemporary perspective.  In the 1800s, Sir John Franklin led two Arctic expeditions 20 year ..read more

"Polar Exploration is not for the faint of heart." We're absolutely thrilled to welcome RCGS Fellow Susan R. Eaton to this episode of Explore. Eaton is a well-known polar explorer, geoscientist, educator, and the founder and leader of Sea Women Expeditions. In 2015, she was named one of Canada’s greatest 100 modern-day explorers by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and a year later, she was selected by Canadian Geographic as one of Canada's greatest modern women explorers. She was also inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2020. For the past decade, her organization Sea Women ..read more

"Polar Exploration is not for the faint of heart." We're absolutely thrilled to welcome RCGS Fellow Susan Eaton to this episode of Explore. Eaton is a well-known polar explorer, geoscientist, educator, and the founder and leader of Sea Women Expeditions. In 2015, she was named one of Canada’s greatest 100 modern-day explorers by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and a year later, she was selected by Canadian Geographic as one of Canada's greatest modern women explorers. She was also inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2020. For the past decade, her organization Sea Women Exp ..read more

"I took one step further and we were looking into the eyes of four lionesses and two cubs. The fourth lioness with the cubs exited down the ravine like a shot. The other three lionesses jumped up at us. We ran backwards, yelling at the top of our lungs. The lions came up after us. Their teeth were pulled back in a grimace. The noise was beyond belief." I'm thrilled to have one of Canada's leading naturalists, Brian Keating, join us today. As you can tell from that quote, Brian has had some amazing adventures in some of our planet's most wild and beautiful places.  This conversation is a ..read more

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 ..read more

Over the past two years, Canadian Geographic has been running “Passing the Mic,” a podcast training program in remote Nunavut communities. This week, we are pleased to showcase the third episode of this year’s series, which features stories produced by the students at the Netsilik School in Taloyoak, Nunavut.  The aim of this program is to give Inuit youth the tools to share their stories with the world in their own voices, using their words. I think you’ll agree that these stories provide a wonderful window into a unique and welcoming Inuit community.  Taloqroq is mainland Canada ..read more

In this episode, we're back in Taloyoak, Nunavut, mainland Canada’s most northerly community, to talk with Joyce Ashevak, Martha Neeveacheak and Roger Oleekatalik. They are three of the students who took part in Canadian Geographic’s Passing the Mic program, which aims to give Inuit youth the tools to share their own stories with the world. Joyce and Martha are both throat singers, a unique and incredibly powerful Inuit vocal art form. And Roger is one of the leading young hunters in this community, which sits on a peninsula jutting out into the Arctic Ocean, west of Hudson Bay. I got to spe ..read more

We are thrilled to be taking you back to Taloyoak, Nunavut, the northernmost community in mainland Canada. In this exciting episode, we sit down with Lenny Panigayak, Taloyoak’s mayor and viral TikTok star (@aqigiaq), who shares moments from his life and Inuit culture with his tens of thousands of followers. The Explore Podcast team met Mayor Lenny when we went to Taloyoak to spend a week teaching podcasting to the amazing students at the Netsilik School in a program called “Passing the Mic,” which is supported by Polar Knowledge Canada. Taloyoak is a lovely little community nestled on Spenc ..read more

The pack-ice 'round us cracks and groans; The old St. Roch, she creaks and moans.  - Stan Rogers  In 1940, the wooden-hulled St. Roch became the second ship to successfully sail the Northwest Passage and the first to do it from west to east, captained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Henry Larsen. Our guest on this episode, Ken Burton, recreated that voyage 60 years later on another RCMP ship, the St. Roch II. A new RCGS Fellow, veteran sailor and polar explorer, Burton shares the incredible story of Larsen and the St. Roch's two-and-a-half-year journey through the Arctic ice ..read more

For this holiday episode of Explore, we’re dipping into our Royal Canadian Geographical Society files for the reading of a story written by RCGS founding President and Arctic explorer Charles Camsell, recalling a memorable Christmas he had on the trail to the Klondike in the late 19th century. In the early 1900s, travelling by canoe and horseback, Charles Camsell mapped hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Canada’s north for the Geological Survey of Canada.  Born at Fort Liard in the Northwest Territories in 1876, his father Julian was an English fur trader with the Hudson’s Ba ..read more