Laval St. Germain’s journey to Afghanistan’s highest mountain Today’s conversation with extreme athlete and adventurer Laval St. Germain is fascinating as we journey through Afghanistan to its highest peak, Mt. Noshaq, which stands at 7,492 metres. On the way, St. Germain reveals the current state of a country that was a central focus for Canadians…

I’m thrilled to have Ray Zahab back on Explore. Many of you know Ray as an extreme adventurer, Royal Canadian Geographical Society Explorer-in-Residence and friend of this podcast. Ray joins me to talk about his gruelling solo run across one of the hottest places on earth, Death Valley, California during a record breaking heatwave this summer. The …

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 examp…

There are few greater champions of our trees and forests than Diana Beresford-Kroeger. From her base in her forest reserve in Eastern Ontario, the Irish-born Beresford-Kroeger has led a decades-long campaign to save our planet’s forests and trees, while working in the fields of medical biochemistry, botany and medicine. She is a Fellow of the Royal…

It is definitely hurricane season, so what better time than now to sit down for a conversation with one of the world's leading storm chasers, Jaclyn Whittal. You probably know Whittal as the long-time co-host of Storm Chasers, where you’ll regularly find her reporting from Oklahoma's Tornado Alley, at the leading edge of some of the biggest hurrica…

We're thrilled to welcome Julian Brave Noisecat to Explore to talk about his award winning documentary Sugarcane, the powerful and very personal story of the multi-generational trauma caused to his family and members of the Williams Lake First Nations by the physical and sexual abuse endured for almost a century at St. Joseph's Mission Residential …

“This might be why people go down rivers!” We're back in the Arctic for the last of our 2024 Summer Canoe Series. This time, it's with Dave Greene, who, along with paddling partner Chris Giard, led an RCGS-flagged Akilineq Canoe Expedition from Yellowknife, N.W.T., to Baker Lake, NU, in 2023. During this time, they covered 1400 kilometres, includin…

Musician Sam Polley’s first canoe trip was with his dad, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, his mom and siblings. He doesn’t remember much about it, but he clearly got hooked. All these years later, he’s still an avid canoe tripper with a love of the lakes and rivers in northern Ontario. Sam is best known for his rockabilly band Sam Polley and The Old Tomorro…

"In my mind, when I want to relax, I take myself back to the Wind River." Tetlit Gwich'in means people of the headwaters, and Bobbi Rose Koe is on a mission to live up to her people's name. Born and raised in the Tetlit Gwich'in community of Fort McPherson, on the Peel River north of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories, Koe was lucky to …

Canadian Geographic’s Explore Podcast Canoe series is back for its third year, and we’re thrilled to start with Canadian canoeing legend Mike Ranta. Ranta was not only the first person to canoe solo across Canada in a single paddling season but he's also done it twice! His adventure began with his dog Spitzi and a portage over the Rocky Mountains. …

"Shackleton died on that ship. And he's the only one who died on that ship. Of all his expeditions under his direct command, nobody else died except him, on his own ship. And that's the ship that we found. And it tells that story about his leadership." - David Mearns, world-renowned shipwreck hunter and search director for the RCGS Shackleton-Quest…

"That's it!" exclaimed John Geiger as he caught the first glimpse of Quest, the last ship of legendary polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Now resting 390 metres below the surface off the coast of Labrador, Quest was Shackleton’s last ship and the vessel he died on. Geiger, CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, is our guest on this epis…

"They can't fight if they don't eat." That was the motto of the Farmerettes, the thousands of young women who took the place of male farmers and farmhands who had gone off to fight in the Second World War. While much has been written about the crucial role women played in factories during the war: building tanks, planes, munitions, and weapons of a…

Notorious for their seafaring ways and conquering territories far and wide, the Vikings burst onto the world scene around 800 AD. For hundreds of years, they raided, conquered, settled, and farmed in lands across Europe, Russia, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and across the North Atlantic to Iceland, Greenland, and then to what they called “Vi…

"You can’t look at a canoe or kayak without grounding yourself in the knowledge that this is a water-craft of Indigenous origin. For us, it’s about honouring the stories, honouring the communities." As The Canadian Canoe Museum moves into its stunning new home on the Otonabee River in Peterborough, Ont. on May 11, Carolyn Hyslop and Jeremy Ward, th…

"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…

"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 Canadi…

"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 beli…

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…

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 Inui…

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 a…

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…

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, recreate…

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, …

“The question would be, “Why not?” We love a good journey here on Explore, and Dianne Whelan went on a doozy of one with lots of great stories to share. Whelan became the first person to travel the entire Trans Canada Trail across Canada, the longest hiking trail in the world stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific. Sh…

Today’s guest is Jimmy Ullikatalik, the manager of the Taloyoak Hunters and Trappers Association and project manager for the Aviqtuuq Inuit Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA), a proposed 90,000 square kilometres of marine, terrestrial and fresh-water ecosystems in Nunavut. Jimmy also represented Nunavut at COP26, the UN Climate Change conference i…

Best-selling author Karen Pinchin is our guest on this episode of Explore. Her new book, Kings of their Own Ocean, is the phenomenal tale of an incredible fish, the bluefin tuna, which has gone from being the cornerstone of the Roman Empire to the much sought-after catch brought to near extinction in the past century in our own boom-bust, globalize…

I’m thrilled to have Mark Terry with us today. He’s had a long and interesting career that includes everything from being a newspaper reporter at the Toronto Star to making a documentary about the master of horror Clive Barker to his ongoing work with the UN producing groundbreaking documentaries about the impact of climate change on our polar regi…

In January 2023, Caroline Coté set the record for a solo expedition to the South Pole by a woman, travelling 1,130 kilometres on skis from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole in just 33 days. This is a fun and fascinating conversation. The bulk of it is about her record-breaking trip to the South Pole on her own, dragging everything she needs in a sle…

*Trigger Warning. This episode is about Residential Schools and includes descriptions of abuse. It may only be suitable for some listeners. If you require emotional support, there is a 24-hour Residential School Crisis Line, which you can reach at 1-866-925-4419. Jeannie Ehaloak was just four years old when she was taken away from her parents on Vi…

We're thrilled that Gary and Joanie McGuffin are joining us for this last episode of our 2023 Summer Canoe series. Be sure to check out the previous two, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Adam Shoalts. Arguably no couple has paddled more of Canada's waterways than Gary and Joanie have together, and it all started jus…

"That's what was in my head. If anything went wrong, if I let the paddle slip out of my hand, if it broke, if I had some freak muscle spasm or cramp, I'm going over Niagara falls." It's always great to have RCGS Westaway Explorer-in-Residence Adam Shoalts back on the podcast. And this conversation underlines why. He joins us to talk about his epic,…

We're thrilled to have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as our guest on Explore as we kick off our second annual Summer Canoe series. This is a fun one. As you will hear, he is absolutely passionate about canoeing. It's a past-time he fell in love with early while paddling with his father, the late Prime Minister and fellow canoe enthusiast, Pierre Tr…

“When you have that moment of empowerment — when someone believes in you — all of a sudden, a switch is thrown in your head, and you believe it’s possible.” James Cameron, ocean explorer and Oscar-winning director of Titanic, Avatar, Aliens and more, is our guest with Dr Joe MacInnis on this episode of Explore. The two friends took part in an intim…

Professional wildlife photographer Ryan Tidman has an up-close view of the damaging impact logging old-growth forests is having on Vancouver Island. The Trebek Initiative Grantee is investigating how cutting down the last remaining giant cedars and redwoods is taking away the dens of the island's black bear population. On that rainy island, caves a…

When Pascale Marceau came up with a name for her latest high Arctic expedition, "Arctic Awe," she thought this would refer to the awe she felt looking at the stark beauty of the land and sea ice she encountered. It wound up being so much more than that, awe born from extreme external challenges and the need to dig deep within herself. We're lucky t…

In her Great Island Expedition, RCGS Explorer-in-Residence Jill Heinerth and her team went to raise the voices of lives, ships and an aircraft lost during the Second World War from the waters in and around Newfoundland. When we last had Jill Heinerth on the podcast, one of the stories she shared as she prepared for this diving expedition was about …

"I've done a lot of hard things. At last count, I think I've done 33 or 34 expeditions, and I would say this was the hardest thing I've ever done. Chemo and the monoclonal therapy that I was doing... I was a mess. I would build myself up (between treatments) over the course of a few weeks, where I'd have a seven or ten-day decent period where I wou…

"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 …

It’s always a special moment when one of the RCGS Explorers-in-Residence drops by the podcast. This conversation with George Kourounis is no exception. George is one of the world’s leading storm chasers, broadcasters, and adventure travellers. His busy schedule has him doing everything from chasing tornados to jumping into volcanoes to surviving ep…

“If you want to understand what it means to be fully human, go to Africa.” Mario Rigby’s claim to fame is an impressive one. The RCGS Fellow was the first person to walk from Cape Town to Cairo solo. A Toronto based eco-adventurer, focused on sustainable travel and transport, Rigby covered 12,000 kilometres over two-and-a-half years and had a lifet…

George Angohiatok grew up as among the last Inuit to live a fully traditional, nomadic life in the Canadian Arctic. As a child in Nunavut in the 1950s and 60s, he lived with his parents, siblings and grandparents on the land, seal hunting on sea ice in the winters, and returning to land to hunt game and fish in the warmer months. That all came to a…

In this second episode of Explore from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, we're passing the mic to two of our star students from our Canadian Geographic Podcast Workshop at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station. Tyler Agligoetok and Sinclair Lyall were among local Inuit youth who took part in five days of podcast training and community open houses. In thi…

"Indigenous People have the knowledge. And if we work together with scientists, we can come up with so much more than what only Inuit know or what scientists know. It's a great tool." - Jeannie Ehaloak, Polar Knowledge Canada, Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. We're thrilled to bring you the first of three episodes from our December visit to Cambridge Bay, N…

"The boreal forest is the largest intact forest left on the planet, it holds a quarter of the world's wetlands. It is a climate regulator." You could argue there is nothing that binds Canada together like our boreal forest. It's defined by vast stands of spruce and seemingly endless lakes and swamps stretching beyond horizons. It runs in an uninter…

For our final episode on board the Polar Prince, sailing Atlantic Canada's Bay of Fundy, we're spending some time under the waves and looking to the skies, as we join a fascinating cross-section of scientists, students and researchers who make up this Students on Ice Ocean conservation expedition. With the team from New Brunswick's Huntsman Marine …

We're still riding the Bay of Fundy waves this episode with the Students on Ice - Ocean Conservation Expedition. Today we're leaving the sea and heading up the Point Wolf River in New Brunswick's Fundy National Park, with the story of a remarkable effort to bring the Fundy Atlantic Salmon back from the brink of extinction. A unique subspecies, unli…

For our 50th episode, Explore is taking to the seas! We join a Students on Ice expedition to the Bay of Fundy aboard the Polar Prince, on an Ocean Conservation Expedition led by RCGS Fellow and SOI President Geoff Green. This is a working expedition with scientists, researchers, commercial fishers, Indigenous youth, students and artists. Over the n…

It's mushroom season, so we happily took up Keith Seifert on his offer to go on a mushroom and fungi walk in the Gatineau Hills. Keith is one of the world's leading experts on fungi, having spent over forty years studying them on five continents, both as a research academic and as the top scientist on the subject for Agriculture Canada. He is the p…

"Many people have said this was genocide. Justice Sinclair says it's genocide. The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has called it genocide. So how do we investigate that? What are the patterns that we see from Residential School to Residential School in relation to the deaths of the children, and who do we hold accountable for that?" Kimbe…