Donate Now Through CanadaHelps.org!

Science & Nature Speaker Series
 2010

Max Finkelstein
(author, canoeist, photographer)

 

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 7:00 pm
Cornwall public library

Title: Thelon Wildlife Sanctuary: Northern Canada’s Wilderness Jewel

 The Thelon River in Nunavut and the northwest Territories cuts across one of the last regions of Canada to be explored and mapped, and it remains one of the most pristine wilderness areas in the world. Here, musk-ox, caribou, wolves, grizzly bears, wolverine, moose and other large wildlife roam year-round. In the brief summer, untold numbers of waterfowl and shorebirds nest in the ponds and on the barrens. No wonder much of the Thelon area has been protected as a Game Sanctuary since 1927, and the river designated as a Canadian Heritage River. This is quintessential

 Arctic wilderness.

 It is not only the richness of its wildlife, but the human history of the Thelon gives the area a value beyond the intrinsic value of wilderness.  From David Hanbury, the first European to travel through this area, to the tragedy and triumph of John Hornby, who advocated for the area to be set aside as a game sanctuary, and ironically starved to death there, to more

 modern adventurers like W.H.B.Hoare, the first game warden of the  sanctuary (and whose daughter still lives in Ottawa), historian, author  Eric Morse, the first 'modern tourist' to paddle through the Sanctuary,  and a plethora of Canada's most famous wildlife biologists learned their  craft living and studying in the Thelon Game Sanctuary. The Thelon Game

 Sanctuary has extraterrestrial connections as well. It was here that the  Cosmos 954 Satellite crashed in 1978.

 But there is trouble in paradise. In recent years, the Beverley Caribou herd, which numbered over 300,000 in the early 1990s, has crashed. Musk ox, which was commonly seen by the hundreds along the river, is now a rare sight. Mining interests loom on the horizon, threatening the pristine and remote nature of the Thelon. What will the future bring to one of the world’s last great wilderness areas?

In this presentation, the natural and human history of the Thelon is shown through images and stories, and some of the issues affecting the future of this special place are explored.


Click to download - Winter2010 Speaker flyer (in pdf)

Call the River Institute to reserve
613-936-6620 ext 0

Thank you to all our past speakers for making this speaker series a success!

   
March 23,2010

Michael Runtz, Carleton University

November 2009 Dr. Ariel Fenster,  McGill University
October 21st,2009 Dr. Gabriel Blouin-Demers, Conserving Freshwater Turtles in the St. Lawrence Ecosystem
September 23rd, 2009

Jean Lauriault, Canadian Museum of Nature The Amazing Monarch Butterfly: a Phenomenon of Nature

May 20th, 2009 Wayne Grady, The Great Lakes: A Troubled Future
 
April 22,2009

Mike Runtz, Carlton University -The Forest - a story of life and death, sex and deceit
 

March 18th Dr. Michael Twiss, Clarkson University Great Rivers Centre. “The Effect of Road Salt on Adirondack Mountain Lakes”
February 25th -  Dr. Brian Hickey, Research Scientist River Institute “Wonderful Wetlands”
January 2009 Marie-France Noel,  Eastern Ontario’s Model Forest
November 2008 Dr. Jerome Marty, River Institute Research Scientist
October 2008

Dr. Joe Schwartz, McGill University

September 2008 Dr.Joan Marshall, McGill University
March 2008 Dr. Michael Runtz, Naturalist “Natural History of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Region”
Feb 2008 Dr. Oliver Coomes, Department of Geography, McGill University People of the Great River: life along the Amazon
   
January 2008 Dr Vance Trudeau, Fish, frogs and pharmaceuticals:
A dangerous environmental mixer
November 2007 John St-Marseille, P.Eng. Thompson Rosemount Group
October 2007 Dr. Brian Hickey, Research Scientist, River Institute
September 2007 Dr. David Bird, Professor of Wildlife Biology and Director of the Avian Science and Conservation Centre of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec
June 2007 Dr. Kevan Kevan, University of Guelph "Plight of the Bee: The Buzz on Pollination and Conservation"
May 2007 Dr. Stuart Bunn, Griffith University, Australia
April 2007 Adrienne Fowlie, Graduate of the University of Ottawa
March 2007 Bruce Doran, Biologist, River Institute
February 2007 Dr. Michaell Runtz, Naturalist

The Speaker Series was made possible from a start up grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, an agency of the Ministry of Culture,
receives $100 million annually from Ontario’s charity casino initiative.

 

 

 
 
2 Belmont Street, Cornwall (Ontario) Canada K6H 4Z1
Tel: (613) 936-6620 | Fax: (613) 936-1803 | info@riverinstitute.ca