Adventure-writer and explorer Robert Twigger has more than a few idiosyncratic pastimes known to his readers: searching for exotic creatures, floating down rivers in inflatable rafts and making perfect omelettes. But if he had to choose one activity that ranks above all others, it would be walking. Non-stop walking. Across great, interminable, distances. He identifies […]
Author: John Zada
As a few readers may know, I’ve been working diligently for years on a non-fiction book about the Sasquatch phenomenon. The travel memoir entitled, In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch, chronicles my wanderings through the British Columbia coastal communities of the Great Bear Rainforest, to hear about eyewitness encounters with […]
In 1951, British explorer Eric Shipton and his climbing team came across a set of mysterious snow tracks on Menlung Glacier, along the Nepal-Tibet border near Mount Everest. Shipton’s Sherpa colleague, Shen Tensing, told him that the tracks, which resembled a human footprint with a very large toe, belonged to a “Yeti” – a hair-covered […]
In August of 2018 I went on a weeklong camping trip with a few others to Cape Scott Provincial Park on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island. The backcountry park encapsulates a pristine and wild stretch of coastal temperate rainforest known for its beautiful trails and stunning campsites on the beach. We spent much of […]
A rise in the popularity of outdoor activities in North America, fueled by social media, has resulted in more people venturing into the backcountry to hike, ski and snowshoe. As a result, the city of Vancouver has seen a spike in the number of emergency calls from the adjacent Coast Mountains. The most common cases […]
In 2015 I attended a talk at a North Vancouver library entitled “The First Crossing of the Star Mountains of Papua New Guinea.” A geologist, David Cook, gave the lecture describing an obscure journey half a century earlier, in 1965, in which himself, five other Australians and 13 local porters made the crossing of the […]
A little over a year ago I travelled to the community of Moose Factory, near James Bay in northern Ontario, for a magazine assignment. While there I was introduced to Arthur “Archie” Hester, a 72 year-old member of Mocreebec First Nation. Archie had an amazing story: while in his youth, he had survived almost two weeks […]
Canadian journalist, and friend, Adnan Khan, has been covering South Asia and Middle East for over a decade. When not traipsing around Turkey, his home turf, the Maclean’s correspondent can usually be found in Pakistan or Afghanistan working on his next feature story. In 2012, Khan took a much needed break from his reporting duties and embarked […]
Last spring I spent a week with a group of mountaineers at a remote glacier camp in Yukon’s St. Elias Range near the base of Mount Logan, Canada’s highest peak. Sometimes referred to as “Canada’s Himalayas”, the St. Elias Mountains (the highest in North America) sit within the largest glaciated region outside of Greenland and the […]
On a recent trip to England I had the opportunity to meet with psychologists Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell – the originators of the Human Givens school of psychotherapy. At the core of their approach is the idea that human beings, like all organic life, come into this world with a set of needs. If […]
