The slow dance of words and images that became Arctic Moments began when André and I shared an Arctic sea voyage hosted by Adventure Canada. Under the rubric of the “other duties as assigned” on the journey, besides giving lectures and workshops on our passions for...
I’m so proud to be sharing news of a new book with you: Ice Walker: A Polar Bear’s Journey Through the Fragile Arctic. It’s definitely a departure from the style and tone of earlier books. Ice Walker is still set in the north but heads in a whole new direction. If it...
2014 Sunday, March 23rd—Spur Festival in Winnipeg, in conjunction with CBC Radio’s Ideas, a talk entitled “The North in Seven Years,” at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, which is really the first time out with a set of remarks based on...
A special addition to the Kingston-area launch festivities for the new book, in collaboration with Wayne Morris and David Menard, co-owners of Kingston Frameworks Gallery, James is mounting an exhibition and sale of some of his spectacular photographs taken during his...
Circling the Midnight Sun was released in September, 2014. In Circling the Midnight Sun, James Raffan presents a warm-hearted, engaging portrait of the circumpolar world, but also a deeply affecting story of societies and landscapes in the throes of enormous change....
Every memento has a story At just about every stop along way around the world at the Arctic Circle, people gave to me, as part of their welcome, local crafts and curios, things to wear, and other mementos to help take a piece of each place home. It was only after a...
Dateline: Glasgow, Scotland, on a speaking tour with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Man stays in fancy Strathclyde University Business School residence for final presentation in Airdrie, Scotland. Checks in late in the afternoon with bespoke host and...
Read Policing the Passage online » Read Travels with Louis: Aboard Canada's Largest IceBreaker »
Back around 2002, then editor of Up Here magazine, Cooper Langford, was looking to create an editorial thread that would weave stories about the unpeopled part of the north with regular snapshots of what is going on in the communities and in places where wilderness...
The only real force in the production of newsstand and digital communications for paddlers these days is Scott MacGregor, publisher and CEO of Rapid Media, based on the banks of the Madawaska River in Palmer Rapids, Ontario. Of what is now a family of canoeing...
Several years as an outdoor educator and expedition guide in the 1970s and 80s led me to a hunger for something more than what St. John's Ambulance or Red Cross had to say about first aid. Working with Dr. Bernie Lalonde from the Carleton University Sports Medicine...
Listen now:
CBC Outfront: One Blue Canoe
Back in the early 80s, students in the Outdoor & Experiential Education Program at Queen's University were required to keep a learning journal throughout their studies at university as well—especially—during their internships at experiential learning programs...
James writes: It was always a dream of mine to produce a compilation of some of the great Canadian folk music about canoes. That dream came true when I met record producer and music man, Paul Mills, who joined with me to create a partnership called Portage Productions...
Frontier, Homeland and Sacred Space: A collaborative investigation into cross-cultural perceptions of place in the Thelon Game Sanctuary, Northwest Territories. James writes: Big doctoral thesis ... even longer title. Funny how things work out. My dissertation...
In the mid-1980s, James' colleague in the Outdoor & Experiential Education Unit at Queen's University Faculty 0f Education went on sabbatical to explore innovative and alternative experiential education programs in various locations across the United States. He...
Lyrics and chords for the song. Here is a radio documentary about finding one of the canoes from the Lake Temiskaming Tragedy CBC Outfront: One Blue Canoe
Trailer for The Land Between Inspired Planet »
James writes: When the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society was gearing up to convene ten river trips across the country to raise awareness about the beauty and fragility of the Boreal Forest, I was keen to do what I could to help. Along with a stellar cast of...
The adventure-filled story of the legendary Hudson’s Bay Company is inextricably linked to the formation of a Canadian nation stretching from sea to sea to sea. In an absorbing and lively new book on The Bay, James Raffan explores the forces that moulded a man, a...
On the morning of June 12, 1978, 27 boys and 4 leaders from St. John’s School in Ontario, set out on a canoeing expedition from the wharf at Timiskaming, Quebec, headed for James Bay along an old voyageurs’ route. By evening the same day, all four canoes were...
Of the many spinoffs and reactions to James' writing, Canadian guitarist/composer David Reed read Tumblehome and Summer North of Sixty and decided that what he really needed to do was write a suite of music that would pickup and explore the themes he had found...
A group of paddlers who also taught at Queen's University Faculty of Education were sitting around chatting about their various recent summer trips when the idea was hatched to have a conference which would explore aspects of the canoe in Canadian culture. And so was...
Bark, Skin and Cedar is an intelligent and grand exploration of that great Canadian icon-the canoe. From the graceful birch bark vessels of the Micmac Indians to the wide and sturdy Haida dugouts, from the canvas-covered Chestnut Prospector to the sleek dragon racing...
When Bill Mason set off alone into the wilderness in his red canoe, many people went with him, if only in their imaginations. Now, James Raffan leads us into the heart of the vast landscape that was Bill Masons own brilliant imagination, on a biographical journey that...
James writes: Following the success of Wildwaters, Phyllis Bruce was keen to publish a followup book that would continue with the theme of paddling wilderness rivers. "Is there one trip you've done that had more impact than any other?" she asked. The answer was...
James Writes: Back in the early 1980s, I attended a risk management workshop at Sedburgh College, near Papineauville, Quebec. At lunch on the first day, Bill Mason (who I'd met through a wilderness medicine course I taught at Algonquin College in Ottawa) sat down...
From time to time, people write to me as Executive Director of the Canadian Canoe Museum with questions about the boats in their lives. One of the most lively go-rounds about a mystery craft has happened over the last few weeks. It has been a delightful journey...
The canoe is an enduring symbol of many things in Canada including how to run a successful business. Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company 1820-1850 took the helm of a nearly bankrupt company and turned it back to profitability through what might...
Following the successful completion of Rendezvous with the Wild a national campaign and book to raise awareness about the beauty and fragility of the Boreal Forest centered on ten canoe northern canoe trips, James anchored an evening of stories, slides, and music...
A young man called Angulalik Pedersen, from the western Nunavut Community of Kugluktuk, won a scholarship to attend high school at Upper Canada College in Toronto. A dream that emerged in the south was to one day take a few of his classmates to his home town. James...
A rollicking good canoe story about the 26' voyageur and its crew from the Canadian Canoe Museum who came to represent Canada in the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Flotilla on the Thames River on Sunday, June 3rd, 2012. Going back to the drafting of the British North...
When legendary Canadian solo canoeist Herb Pohl died tragically on Lake Superior in 2007, friends found on his desk a rough memoir about 40 years of wilderness travel that he intended to publish in a book he wanted to call The Lure of Faraway Places. James knew Herb,...
Back in 1909 when educational philosopher Thomas James lamented that the "bracing oxygen of effort" had been surreptitiously removed from education and called for "The Moral Equivalent of War" to compel youth to rise to the challenges of the day with character and...
Sir George Simpson took the reins of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1820, just shortly after it had amalgamated with the Northwest Company, following years of cut-throat corporate competition that had very nearly run both companies into bankruptcy. Simpson first task...
James Raffan first encountered Kirk Wipper and his passion for canoes and collecting at Camp Kandalore as 5-year old camper at Wipper's summer camp for boys called Kandalore. Although their paths diverged for several decades, James got reconnected with Kirk's canoe...
One of the most often quoted poems in the annals of expeditionary learning is Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ulysses wherein an old sailor is looking back on his life and says "All experience is an arch wherethro' gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades forever and...
Many high schools have Career Days which involve inviting people of different occupations and walks of life to do presentations and workshop on their chosen profession. This talk is one James has given many times in many places in Canada and beyond and is often done...
This presentation, developed originally as a keynote for the annual conference of the Canadian Heritage Rivers System, is James's celebration of the river-as-teacher in his own life, growing up on the Speed River in southern Ontario but then moves on to a...
Responding to an invitation from the Geography Department at the University of Guelph to speak about his life as a professional geographer, James prepared this presentation that follows an arc through the teaching, research, speaking, service and writing for books,...
Central to James Raffan's educational philosophy is that "you never learn anything of consequence in the fat comfortable middle of what you know ... it is only on the edges of knowledge that you can cross into new learnings." This talk, designed for adventure leaders...
As a Patron of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's Boreal Program, James participated in the organization and execution of a special project to raise public awareness of the value and fragility of the Boreal Forest. Of ten river trips involving a host of...
After more than thirty years of work and travel in the Arctic, James started heading to Antarctica in with Students on Ice in 2007. This is the story of his venture into the magic and majesty of his first encounter with Austral ice, during a time of great change. ...
Holling Clancy Holling's 1942 classic children's book character, the little carved Indian in a canoe called "Paddle to the Sea," captivated generations of readers, including Canadian filmmaker, Bill Mason, who went on to make a movie about Paddle that became the most...
As James has worked with students of all ages throughout his career—lately with Students on Ice—helping them to build personal knowledge from experience, more and more of those students have expressed a need to develop advocacy skills and this presentation is all...
As a leader in Outdoor and Experiential Education, James has often challenged the status quo, insisting that these forms of education will remain marginal until and unless their proponents willingly and enthusiastically enter the educational main stream. This...
Following his first trip north as a labourer for ESSO in the summer of 1977, building metal buildings in Inuvik, James has spent part of every year somewhere in the Arctic. His recent circumnavigation of the world at the Arctic Circle has added to that experience and...
In 2007 the canoe was named a wonder of Canada in a national poll conducted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Celebrating that development, James created this presentation and took it across the country. Audiences in cities and towns from Halifax to Victoria...
Originally prepared for a series of keynotes and workshops in Cuba for the Foundation for Nature and Humanity in Havana, this presentation is a semi-biographical story about the importance of environmental education in any curriculum and how this end might be achieved...
One of the most remarkable characters in the pantheon of canoeists is unquestionably Bill Mason, subject of James Raffan's acclaimed best-selling biography, Fire in the Bones. As with all of his projects, James dived into the research with abandon, committed to total...
One of James's passions is journal keeping and this is a presentation for anyone involved in travel or expeditionary learning about the hows and whys of processing experience. Making the distinction between public and personal knowledge, and drawing from his own...
James's research into all of his book topics takes him always into the Archive of the Feet, which means onto the ground and into the experiences of whatever or whomever he is writing about. This was particularly the case as he entered the life of Sir George Simpson,...
As a life-long and award winning experiential educator, James Raffan is a powerful advocate for risk as a central driver of effective education. Using the distinction between public knowledge and personal knowledge, in this engaging keynote—originally prepared for...
In 2010, James embarked on a project to travel around the world at the Arctic Circle to put a human face on climate change. Nearly three years of travel, living and travelling with people in Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska and Canada, has produced a...
This is James at his informed, entertaining and irreverent best talking about his favourite two subjects: Canada and canoes. Originally prepared for a lecture tour for the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and since presented in across Canada as well as in various...
This is the remarkable story of a man's journey to retrace the his father's steps in a bark canoe in Northern Saskatchewan. As a young Anglican minister, Bill Buxton's father spent the summers of 1939-40 teaching in the Cree Community of Pelican Narrows during...
Originally prepared in response to an invitation to speak at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival in England's Lake District, this presentation presents three of James's best stories from a lifetime of work and adventure in Canada's north. The first is about an...
Originally prepared for a lecture in the International Polar Year Polar Perspectives Series for at forum for youth from across the Canadian Arctic that was held at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, this is a presentation is a story about climate change as...
A presentation growing out of James's Circling the Midnight Sun documentary and book project dedicated to putting a human face on climate change. Images and stories of people throughout the circumpolar world are are set against the backdrop of causes of and responses...
Developed for a special all-school Earth Day programs at various Ontario high schools, this presentation is essentially a climate change primer wrapped around a series of stories about Arctic adventures. Photographs of ice, large mammals and Arctic scenes are mixed...
This presentation was originally prepared in conjuction with the writing and creation of an exhibit at the Canadian Canoe Museum of the same name that was developed around the appearance, 27 years after the Temiskaming tragedy, of Père Lallemant, one of the four 22'...