Announcing the winners of the 2023 Canadian Wildlife Photography of the Year competition

An Arctic fox in its summer coat trots nimbly across the tundra under the midnight sun. A northern gannet returns to its crowded colony with nesting material. A raft of curious sea otters bobs in the Pacific waters off western Vancouver Island, their attention caught by a group of sea kayakers. The winning images of Canadian Geographic’s 2023 Canadian Wildlife Photography of the Year competition showcase both the awe-inspiring biodiversity of this country and the talent of our photography community. For this edition of our most popular photography competition, we are pleased to recognize one photographer whose work stood out among the more than 14,000 entries: Jean-Christophe Lemay is our Canadian Wildlife Photographer of the Year and wins the grand prize of $5,000.

Read on to learn more about Lemay and see the photos that most impressed our judges: wildlife photographers Michelle Valberg and Ryan Tidman, Canadian Geographic director of brand and creative Javier Frutos, and the editorial staff of Canadian Geographic.

Christian Stenner walked across British Columbia’s Job Glacier and came to a hard stop. At his feet, the icy ground ended at a precipice. On the other side, he could see a cave.

Stenner was looking into a seven-metre-wide chasm. Across it, toxic steam gushed from a tunnel, obscuring what lay behind. The air reeked of rotten eggs — a warning sign of hydrogen sulfide gurgling up from somewhere inside.

Over there, Stenner thought, is where I need to be.

He decided to swing himself across the pit by a rope anchored to the cave’s entrance. Stenner checked his rope and jumped as far as he could. He didn’t quite make it across, and as he swung back and forth like a pendulum over the pit, he pumped his legs to gather momentum. His breath echoed loudly through the respirator covering his face. Each inhale ate away at the supply of compressed air held in a tank on his back.

Then, a crunch: his crampon stuck into the ice on the other side of the chasm. He pulled himself onto the ledge and into a space where no human had been before.

The push to rehabilitate a remarkable ecosystem at the edge of Ottawa, the little known remnants of an ancient sea
By Gavin Charles

Just 20 minutes from Parliament Hill, a quiet forest trail wends its way to what looks for all the world like a land-locked beach. There’s no water in sight, just a series of dunes that seem to have been randomly dumped in the woods. These are the Pinhey sand dunes.

This was seashore once, but only the dunes remember. Some 10,000 years ago, all this fine white sand was submerged under the Champlain Sea, a landlocked body of salt water left after the retreat of glaciers that covered North America. The dunes serve as a reminder of the ancient landscape that once was — and just how quickly humans can transform the landscape.

Today, four scattered dunes are vestiges of a single, much larger dune that swept over the area before city planners in the 1950s launched a tree planting program, introducing the tolerant and lumber-ready landscape. As the trees thrived, the organic matter they deposited on the sand began to transform the dunes into a pine forest.

around Peninsula Valdes, while further south one can find king, gentoo and Magellanic penguins in the straits of Tierra del Fuego. As many species of penguins can be found here as one can hope to see on an average Antarctic journey, and even leopard seals are a possibility!

Further inland, we find the best puma (or mountain lion) viewing on the planet. With the impressive Torres del Paine as towering backdrops, we’ll be guaranteed to observe and photograph guanacos, rheas, and condors roaming free in their natural settings, and with some patience, we hope to see puma up close. It’s springtime in Patagonia and all of the breeding birds will be showing their best. These include austral parakeet, Chilean flamingo, chocolate-vented tyrant, flightless steamer-duck and perhaps the endangered Magellanic plover.

Meet your ambassadors: Kim Gray and David Gray

Check out these other upcoming trips:
- Essential Peru with Jill Heinerth
- Patagonia Birds and Wildlife with Kim Gray
- Saskatchewan Whooping Cranes with Carol Patterson