Articles    

Photos of the 2008 World Cup cross country ski  races held in Canmore in late January are found in the first four articles.

The following articles, except for the articles on Devil's Crater, cross country skiing and the two about photography, appeared in the Boundary Waters Journal, a magazine devoted to articles and photographs about the Boundary Waters area. This world-renowned canoeing area encompasses Quetico Park in Ontario and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.

The first article is about Bob and Leone Hayes, a couple who met forty six years ago when Bob was a young man working on Basswood Lake as a Quetico Park Ranger and Leone was working for her family's fishing camp on the Minnesota side of the lake. Theirs is a memorable story of a remarkable couple that still live close to where they met. The second article, "Here's to You, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson" is about the family business that makes Souris River Canoes in Atikokan, Ontario.  The third article, "Devil's Crater: Portal to the Past" appeared in an abreviated form in On Nature Magazine this past winter.  It concerns an unusual, but litle known, section of landscape north of Thunder Bay that was dramatically altered by the overflow of Lake Agassiz about 11,000 years ago.  I was fortunate to be able to to write this article with my son, Leif Nelson.  Since he is a graduate student in Geology, he wrote the sections pertaining to the geology and geological history of the site.   

The fourth article, "2006 Canadian National Championships" contains photos of the Canadian national championships in cross country skiing. This event, held at the Lappe Nordic Centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario from March 5-12, 2006, features the best cross country skiers in Canada, including many skiers returning from the Olympics. 

The next article, "Paddling to the McNiece Lake Pines" chronicles a canoe trip to see the what is probably Ontario's largest stand of old-growth white pine and red pine.  The next article "Canmore World Cup", is about the recent World Cup in cross country skiing that was held from December 15-18, 2005 in Canmore, Alberta.  The article, "Lichens; Unusual Partners", is about the important, but easily overlooked, organisms that are made up of a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and a photosynthetic partner.  The next article, "Return of the XY Company" is about a small, but extremely innovative and inflential company that makes canoe paddles.  This family business, owned and operated by Don, Spencer and Samantha Meany is located on the northern edge of Quetico Park in Atikokan, Ontario.

The next two articles, "Ice Age Legacy" and "Quetico's First Explorers", are about the first people to inhabit Quetico Park and the environment and wildlife they encountered when they entered this area about 10,000 years ago.  Two other articles, "Pukak" and "Life Under the Ice", are about winter ecology in the north.

Even though most of the articles I've written are about the natural history of Northwestern Ontario and the surrounding area, I have included  five articles about extraordinary people who are associated with Quetico Park. Shirley Peruniak has worked as a naturalist and historian in Quetico Park for many decades and has had an enormous impact on generations of Quetico Park visitors.  Joe and Vera Meany were Park Rangers for twenty -four years at the Lac la Croix Ranger Station.  Betty Powell-Skoog grew up on a homestead that is now part of Quetico Park and has written a terrific book, A Life in Two Worlds, about her life.  Bill Muir, featured in "Boundary Waters Botanist", taught at a college in Minnesota and also led students on canoe trips when he was blind. I was fortunate to encounter Charles Farnum, "Bushwacker Extraordinaire", recently as he was beginning a canoe trip in Quetico Park with members of his extended family. Stuart Osthoff, the editor of the Boundary Waters Journal, said, "Of the hundreds of stories I've published in the past thirteen years, nothing has impressed me more than the ambition, energy and resilience of Chuck Farnum." At eighty-six, Chuck Farnum is still blazing new trails.