George Calef | |
---|---|
Occupation | biologist, writer |
Nationality | Canadian |
Period | 1970s-1990s |
Notable works | Caribou and the Barren-Lands |
George Calef is a Canadian wildlife biologist, author and photographer, [1] who won the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 1981 Governor General's Awards for his nature book Caribou and the Barren-Lands. [1]
Born in Los Angeles, California and educated at the University of British Columbia, [2] Calef worked as a wildlife biology researcher in the Canadian Arctic, studying caribou for the governments of Canada and the Northwest Territories. [2] In 1977, he testified before the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry on the potential impact of the pipeline development on caribou habitat. [2]
In the 1990s, he was a co-owner of Oldsquaw Lodge, a wilderness lodge off the Canol Road near the Northwest Territories-Yukon border. [3]
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or Arctic Refuge is a national wildlife refuge in northeastern Alaska, United States, on traditional Iñupiaq and Gwich'in lands. The refuge is 19,286,722 acres (78,050.59 km2) of the Alaska North Slope region, with a northern coastline and vast inland forest, taiga, and tundra regions. ANWR is the largest national wildlife refuge in the country, slightly larger than the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is administered from offices in Fairbanks. ANWR is home to a diverse range of endemic mammal species; notably, it is one of the few North American locations with all three endemic American bears—the polar bear, grizzly bear, and American black bear, each of which resides predominantly in its own ecological niche. Besides the bears, other mammal species include the moose, caribou, wolves, red and Arctic fox, Canada lynx, wolverine, pine marten, American beaver, and North American river otter. Further inland, mountain goats may be seen near the slope. Hundreds of species of migratory birds visit the refuge yearly, and it is a vital, protected breeding location for them. Snow geese, eiders and snowy owls may be observed as well.
Jeffrey Carl Simpson, OC, is a Canadian journalist. Simpson was The Globe and Mail's national affairs columnist for almost three decades. He has won all three of Canada's leading literary prizes—the Governor General's Award for non-fiction book writing, the National Magazine Award for political writing, and the National Newspaper Award for column writing. He has also won the Hyman Solomon Award for excellence in public policy journalism and the Donner Prize for the best public policy book by a Canadian. In January 2000, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Farley McGill Mowat, was a Canadian writer and environmentalist. His works were translated into 52 languages, and he sold more than 17 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Canadian north, such as People of the Deer (1952) and Never Cry Wolf (1963). The latter, an account of his experiences with wolves in the Arctic, was made into a film of the same name released in 1983. For his body of work as a writer he won the annual Vicky Metcalf Award for Children's Literature in 1970.
Brian Brett was a Canadian poet, journalist, editor and novelist. Brett wrote and published extensively, starting in the late 1960s, and he worked as an editor for several publishing firms, including the Governor-General's Award-winning Blackfish Press. He also wrote a three-part memoir of his life in British Columbia.
Never Cry Wolf is a fictional account of the author's subjective experience observing wolves in subarctic Canada by Farley Mowat, first published in 1963 by McClelland and Stewart. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1983. It has been credited for dramatically improving the public image of the wolf.
Stephen Kakfwi is a Canadian politician, who was the ninth premier of the Northwest Territories. His sixteen-year tenure in the cabinet of the Northwest Territories is the longest in the Territories' history.
The Gwichʼin are an Athabaskan-speaking First Nations people of Canada and an Alaska Native people. They live in the northwestern part of North America, mostly north of the Arctic Circle.
The District of Keewatin was a territory of Canada and later an administrative district of the Northwest Territories. It was created in 1876 by the Keewatin Act, and originally it covered a large area west of Hudson Bay. In 1905, it became a part of the Northwest Territories and in 1912, its southern parts were adjoined to the provinces of Manitoba and Ontario, leaving the remainder, now called the Keewatin Region, with a population of a few thousand people. On April 1, 1999, the Keewatin Region was formally dissolved, as Nunavut was created from eastern parts of the Northwest Territories, including all of Keewatin.
The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, also known as the Berger Inquiry after its head Justice Thomas Berger, was commissioned by the Government of Canada on March 21, 1974, to investigate the social, environmental, and economic impact of a proposed gas pipeline that would run through the Yukon and the Mackenzie River Valley of the Northwest Territories. This proposed pipeline became known as the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline.
The Governor General's Award for English-language fiction is a Canadian literary award that annually recognizes one Canadian writer for a fiction book written in English. It is one of fourteen Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit, seven each for creators of English- and French-language books. The awards was created by the Canadian Authors Association in partnership with Lord Tweedsmuir in 1936. In 1959, the award became part of the Governor General's Awards program at the Canada Council for the Arts in 1959. The age requirement is 18 and up.
The Porcupine caribou is a herd or ecotype of barren-ground caribou, the subspecies of the reindeer or caribou found in Alaska, United States, and Yukon and the Northwest Territories, Canada.
Bathurst Inlet, is a small Inuit community located in Bathurst Inlet in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada.
John Allen Livingston was a Canadian naturalist, broadcaster, author, and teacher. He was most known as the voice-over of the Hinterland Who's Who series of television zoological shorts in the 1960s.
Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park is located in the northern portion of British Columbia, Canada, approximately 698, 659 hectares and encompasses the Spatsizi River and Gladys Lake Ecological Reserve. The park is a designated protected area that is intended for the conservation and research on caribou, grizzly bears, fish, and other wildlife species populations. Before the provincial park's establishment in 1975, the area was a historical hunting ground for local Indigenous communities like the Tahltan First Nations. It is the second largest provincial park in British Columbia.
The Thelon Wildlife Sanctuary, at 52,000 square kilometres (20,077 sq mi), over twice the area of Belgium, is the largest wildlife refuge in Canada. It is located in northern Canada's Arctic region, north of the tree line, straddling the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, halfway between Baker Lake and Yellowknife, and bordered on the north between the Baillie River on the west and the Consul River at the east by the Back River. It is the namesake of the Thelon River, whose river valley is resplendent with boreal forest biological diversity, hence its identification as a "Biological Site of Universal Importance" by the International Biological Program (IBP) in the 1960s.
Kananginak Pootoogook was an Inuk sculptor and printmaker who lived in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, in Canada. He died as a result of complications related to surgery for lung cancer.
The Muskwa-Slave Lake Taiga ecoregion covers Canadian taiga in northwestern Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and a large portion of the southwestern Northwest Territories around the Mackenzie River valley and the Great Slave Lake.
The boreal woodland caribou, also known as Eastern woodland caribou, boreal forest caribou and forest-dwelling caribou, is a North American subspecies of reindeer found primarily in Canada with small populations in the United States. Unlike the Porcupine caribou and barren-ground caribou, boreal woodland caribou are primarily sedentary.
Don Gillmor is a Canadian journalist, novelist, historian, and writer of children's books; he is the recipient of many awards for his journalism and fiction.
Tainna:The Unseen Ones is a book written by Inuk Canadian writer Norma Dunning. It is a collection of six short stories based on the tales and experiences of modern day Inuit characters living outside their home territories in Southern Canada. Published in 2021 by the independent publisher Douglas & McIntyre of Vancouver, British Columbia, the book won the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction.