In March 2007, Dianne Whelan accompanied seven Canadian Forces and Inuit Rangers in a 2,000 km trip through Canada's far north. They covered ground by snowmobiles from Resolute to the Canadian Forces Station in Alert. This Arctic terrain, coming within 400 km of the North Pole, has very harsh winter conditions, with -50C temperatures and fierce blizzards combined with labyrinths of crushed sea ice and near-impassable glaciers. The exercise, called Nunalivut (Inuktitut for 'land that is ours'), was carried out to raise Canadian sovereignty on the far north. Whelan, the only woman ever to complete such a trip, will describe this epic adventure by showing a 35-minute documentary This Land is Ours at the next meeting of the Sunshine Coast Natural History Society on Friday, Feb. 4.
The meeting will be held at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre at 7:30 p.m.
Whelan is an adventurer, filmmaker and author living in Roberts Creek. She has published,This Vanishing Land: A Woman's Journey to the Canadian Arctic(Caitlin Press, 2009), and produced This Land, an award-winning National Film Board documentary that screened at the 2010 Vancouver International Film Festival. She is currently working on a documentary film and book: Mount Everest Base Camp in Nepal.
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