From George Simpson to Arctic Sovereignty: Confessions of a professional geographer

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, magazines, film, radio and television that have been his good fortune over his career so far.  The talk provides a context and framework for attendees to consider their own career path in the broad terrain that is the discipline of Geography.  Similar content has been organized into other talks called hands-on-earth, which is all about working to understand and interpret earthly phenomena for a job, and Writing Earth, which covers some of the same ground only focussing more on the perspective of a geographer who is also a writer.