Canadian Explorer Authors & Visual Artists

An inspiring collection of thrilling personal adventures and stunning photographs sharing the incredible diversity and profound beauty of Canada's national parks. Distributed across the second-largest country in the world, the Canadian national parks can be challenging to get to. Many of them are so remote that they have no road access or infrastructure of any kind, but they are not impossible to visit. Although much of the vast Canadian wilderness is fraught with challenging terrain, unpredictable weather, and sometimes threatening wildlife, there are also pleasant beaches, waterfalls, and places to kick back and relax in. Explorer Marlis Butcher has "bagged" all of the Canadian national parks. In her quest to visit and get to know the parks, Marlis canoed, kayaked, mountain biked, backpacked, hiked, snowshoed, snorkelled, and trekked by whatever means of travel she could devise. During her park explorations she's encountered grizzly and black bears, polar bears, wolves, and wolverines. She's survived incredible storms, falls off mountainsides, and sinking boats. Marlis has investigated uncharted lands and travelled down quaint country roads. In Park Bagger, she shares her adventures, with the objective to encourage others to explore the national parks and to protect Canada's vast wilderness.

Taking you to places no one has ever gone before, and blending memoir, adventure, and science, Into the Planet is a riveting account of one of the most dangerous yet exhilarating pursuits in the world: diving to the center of the Earth. "If I die, it will be in the most glorious place that nobody has ever seen." As one of the most celebrated cave divers in the world, Jill Heinerth has seen the planet in a way almost no one has. In a workday, she might swim below your home, through conduits in volcanoes or cracks in the world's largest iceberg. She's an explorer, a scientist's eyes and hands underwater - discovering new species and examining our finite freshwater reserves - and a filmmaker documenting the wonders of underwater life. Often the lone woman in a male-dominated domain, she tests the limits of human endurance at every tight turn, risking her life with each mission. To not only survive in this world but excel, Jill has had to learn how to master self-doubt like no other. With gripping storytelling that radiates intimacy, Into the Planet will transport you deep into the most exquisite, untouched corners of the Earth, where fear must be reconciled and the innermost parts of the human condition are revealed.

In the second half of the twentieth century, an artistic tradition arose in the Wahgi Valley of the highlands of Papua New Guinea of painting traditional war shields with the image of the comic book superhero The Phantom. This derived from some seemingly inexplicable intersection of the age-old bellicose traditions of one of the most culturally remote areas of the world and twentieth-century comic book illustration, if not pop art—a phenomenon that art historian N. F. Karlins has referred to as pop tribal. The frequent text in English or in Tok Pisin on other examples—man ino save dai (man who cannot die) or man bilong pait (man of war)—only adds to the multicultural depth. Though these appear to be curiously syncretic objects to the Western eye, to the people of the Wahgi Valley they held deep meaning to the martial power of moral rectitude and the guidance of ancestral spirits. A new book published in February 2021 by art dealers Chris Boylan of Sydney, Australia, and Jessica Lindsay Phillips of Toronto, Canada, is an exhaustive study of this tradition. Titled Man Who Cannot Die: Phantom Shields of the New Guinea Highlands, it features essays by a number of experts in the field, placing the shields within their historical, cultural, and cosmological contexts. A catalog section illustrates 105 examples from museum and private collections in North America, Europe, and the Antipodes, drawn from a research group of some 150 shields, which represent the majority of known examples.

“Hearts In The Ice” – An adventure filled historic account of the first women to overwinter in Svalbard is out now. Read about Hilde and Sunniva’s epic expedition to inspire and engage action around climate change.

With this book, Ken McGoogan caps a quintet of works about Arctic exploration. Orthodox history celebrates such naval figures as John Franklin, Edward Parry and James Clark Ross. Dead Reckoning tells their stories but also encompasses such forgotten heroes as Thanadelthur, Akaitcho, Tattanoeuck, Ouligbuck, Tookoolito and Ebierbing, to name just a few. Without the assistance of the Inuit, Franklin’s recently discovered ships, Erebus and Terror, would still be lying undiscovered at the bottom of the polar sea.

The migratory waterbirds of the Pacific Flyway convert food, air, and water into a mileage plan that has few equals in the animal world. Set against a backdrop of stunning images from more than 120 internationally acclaimed photographers, this book shares the amazing stories of these migrants–a cast of characters that includes shorebirds, seabirds, and waterfowl. Winner of a Silver medal from Nautilus Book Awards.

This true narrative is an account of twenty-eight occasions during my life where I faced death. Each chapter chronicles a series of events in which I encountered near death situations, or was involved in something that could have easily led to my demise. After surviving each of these twenty-eight incidents, I felt as if I had been given another chance to live. Therefore, I have concluded that I must now be in my twenty-ninth life. Many of these experiences occurred during excursions into some of the most remote locations on earth while studying endangered cultures and ethnic groups in an effort to collect as much information about them as possible. While studying those threatened peoples, I attempted to live as they did, often for months on end. Included in some of the chapters are pertinent historical, anthropological and sociological information.

Jett Britnell FI'16 is an underwater, wildlife & expedition photographer, internationally published writer, explorer, scuba diver and speaker. His images and editorial are published worldwide in print and online media. He is a Fellow of The Explorers Club, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society, and is presently serving a two-year term as Canadian Chapter Chair in The Explorers Club’s Canadian Chapter. Jett is also an Ambassador for the League of Underwater Explorers.

Kathryn Britnell FI'19 is an underwater, wildlife & expedition photographer, internationally published writer, explorer, scuba diver and speaker. His images and editorial are published worldwide in print and online media. He is a Fellow of The Explorers Club, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society, and an Ambassador for the League of Underwater Explorers.

Todd is an accomplished Explorer and international award-winning underwater photographer from Canada that has dove under the Arctic ice and icebergs and, nearly been run over by a Bowhead whales and Grizzly bears. He is a Fellow of the Explorers Club and the Royal Canadian Geographic Society. He is also a member of the Ocean Artists Society.

JILL HEINERTH FN'10 is an underwater explorer, writer, photographer, speaker, and filmmaker. Jill was a lead diver on a ground-breaking US Deep Caving Team project piloting the first accurate, 3D cave mapping device - technology bound for space. A pioneer of technical rebreather diving, she led the first dives into underwater caves inside Antarctica's massive B-15 iceberg. From desert oases of the Sahara to Baffin Bay's cold waters, Jill Heinerth becomes the hands and eyes for climatologists, archaeologists, and engineers. Jill is the first Explorer-in-Residence of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and a presenter on radio and TV broadcasts worldwide.