Unlocking Mount Meager‘s volcanic secrets

A team of experts went on a mission to uncover the hazards of one of Canada’s northernmost volcanoes of the Cascade Arc

About 150 kilometres north of Vancouver, a series of jagged peaks bounded by glaciers form the Mount Meager volcanic complex. This massif’s forbidding history includes the largest eruption in Canada in the last 10,000 years. The Lil’wat people call it Qw̓̓elqw̓̓elústen, the “cooked face place.” If it erupted now, volcanic debris flows could reach the nearby town of Pemberton, and smoke and ash could be sent across Western Canada.

And yet, we know very little about it. In 2016, large cave openings were observed on Job Glacier, billowing steam. The long-dormant volcano, it seemed, had reawakened. This “glacio-volcanic cave” is one of few known in the world. To learn more meant going into a place that no human had ever entered, with hazards we barely comprehend and have no playbook for.

I’m thrilled to have Mark Terry with us today. He’s had a long and interesting career that includes everything from being a newspaper reporter at the Toronto Star to making a documentary about the master of horror Clive Barker to his ongoing work with the UN producing groundbreaking documentaries about the impact of climate change on our polar regions. This is a fun and interesting conversation with a true innovator. We get into everything from swimming with penguins to how he wound up on the back of the Canadian 50 dollar bill (look at the tiny figure on the top deck of the icebreaker) to his documentary work and how he has shifted that into geo-docs, a new way of making climate documentaries and information more accessible, “google maps with documentaries” as he puts it. Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Canada and is an Adjunct Professor at York University and Wilfred Laurier.

Capable of diving at speeds of up to 300 kilometres per hour, the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on the planet. And according to new research out of Simon Fraser University in B.C., these birds are as fast in thought as they are in flight.

Long theorized but hard to prove in practice, the Wolf-Mangel model suggests that prey must prioritize safety over food foraging when they feel the threatening presence of a predator. As a result, predators could use false attacks to tactically tire out prey or force them to take bigger risks, then strike when they are most vulnerable.

Scientists observing peregrine falcons have now found evidence that these cunning raptors purposefully take advantage of this prey behaviour by using low-cost false attacks to advertise their presence to Pacific dunlins in Boundary Bay, B.C.

Enjoy boat trips along the Amalfi Coast and to the island of Capri, see the romantic coastal towns of Amalfi, Positano and Ravello, visit both Herculaneum and Pompeii, and enjoy Italian hospitality at family-run Hotel Due Torri.