Guelph’s famous son

On the Speed River in Guelph, Ont., is a small cottage called McCrae House, named for doctor, soldier and poet John McCrae, author of the beloved poem “In Flanders Fields.” McCrae was born there 150 years ago in 1872.

Appropriately, the son of a Scot who immigrated to Canada as a child, McCrae was born on St. Andrew’s Day (November 30), the feast day of the patron saint of Scotland. He grew up in the small city about 160 kilometres west of Toronto, living an idyllic childhood close to nature and farm animals, and surrounded by stories of the fighting among clans of Highland Scots.

A good student, disciplined army cadet and, later, a militia member, McCrae was accepted at the University of Toronto and, while there, contributed poems and sketches to various university publications. Early on, he developed a passion for medicine and enrolled in medical school at McGill University in Montreal.

Eagle Plains in northern Yukon is home to some of the most magnificent environments in the country. Lined with soft mat floors of moss and lichen, the area is home to forests of scraggly black spruce trees with snow-peaked mountains towering above rolling landscapes in the distance. And in the winter, if you have timed your visit right, you might even see the Porcupine caribou herd passing through, eating those lichens.

A few kilometres north, the landscape changes dramatically as you pass through stands that burned in 2005. A few trees still stand in these forests, resembling burnt matchsticks rather than green conifers. But on the ground, the new generation of trees is flourishing. At 17 years old, they are no bigger than knee-to-waist height and are surrounded by grasses, small shrubs, and fireweed. With time, a healthy black spruce forest will dominate, and caribou herds will once again pass through to feast on lichen. This is the boreal forest’s natural circle of life: disturbance and regeneration.

Will “yogurt” be the cure-all that saves little brown bats, which have been decimated by white-nose disease for more than a decade?

The deadly fungal disease affects hibernating bats, growing on their skin while they’re hibernating. As it grows, the fungus causes changes in bats that make them become active more than usual, which, in turn leads them to burn up the fat stores they need to survive the winter.

The disease already has a foothold in the northeastern United States and Canada, but it has only very recently jumped to the west coast, where Wildlife Conservation Society scientists in Washington State are setting up a pilot project (it launches next spring), spraying bat roosts with a probiotic supplement.

Let us take you away on a week jam-packed with the very best that Newfoundland has to offer. We have designed our Consummate Explorer Package to give visitors a true Newfoundland experience. This package has been created by our very own Royal Canadian Geographical Society Ambassadors, Rick and Johnny, in partnership with Canadian Geographic Adventures.

Details:

From here we enjoy an excellent choice of routes with the opportunity to relax in comfort at the end of a day’s walking.

We venture into the Fanes-Sennes and Dolomiti di Sesto National Parks for great views of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. Along the way we also visit numerous open-air museums, reflecting the status of these imposing mountains as the frontline of the fighting between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WWI.

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Check out these other upcoming trips:

- Highlights of Bolivia with George Kourounis
- Ultimate British Columbia with Brian Hodgson
- Wildlife of the Zambezi Valley with Travis Steffens