Sunday, May 28, 2017

Alpine Club of Canada Gazette articles

The ACC's AGM including a film about the Yukon Alpine Centennial Expedition was in Whitehorse yesterday. The film was fun. The speaker that brought a crucial dimension to the evening was Parks Canada's field superintendent for southern Yukon, Diane, who described the cooperative management practices in the Yukon and NWT with indigenous people and their governments. I knew Kluane was co-managed but had not realized how far that had evolved. From the Canadian government banning First Nations whose traditional lands included Kluane National Park and Reserve from Kluane in the 1940s to cooperative management in the 1990s when First Nations started to conclude their land claim and self-governance agreements, there has been important progress.

I enjoyed meeting board members and section representatives. With a couple I was chatting about writing articles for the ACC, which made put this post together with links to all of them.

My fourth article on the week-long Spectrum Range/Mt Edziza traverse last August appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of the trice yearly ACC Gazette,

My Kluane Icefield Discovery camp story in its Winter 2015 issue. That one made the cover, thanks to my fellow campers great photography (yeah, Charles Stuart!) This one was more of a team effort, with ACCers contributing photos and offering edit suggestions on a draft text.
The Summer 2014 issue details a trip to Bolivia's remote parts of the Cordillera Real and doing a first female ascent to Pico Aguila at about 5,500m.

The Winter 2012 issue features one week of a 3 months Andean adventure focused on the stunning Cochamo valley in the Chilean Lake District in Northern Patagonia.

I make a point in recent articles of referencing the original stewards of the land on which I spend time. To me it is important to acknowledge and situate myself in the proper context as a matter of respect, appreciation and reciprocity. In speaking with an ACC board member I think it could be a significant act of conciliation for the ACC, a club intrinsically linked to the land and stewardship of our natural world, to begin to do so as a matter of policy in its publications both online and in print. Something worth thinking about.