Project Canada exhibition in Limburg (Germany)

Dear Friends,

Project Canada's first photo exhibition is a fact! Not in Canada, unfortunately, nor in my home country the Netherlands, but in neighbouring Germany. The address:

 

 

   
    Cafe Galerie
    Brückengasse 5
    65549 Limburg an der Lahn
    Germany

 

 

The exhibition will be there to view until November 2008. If you would just happen to be in that neighbourhood, please go take a look! It's a wonderful café with the best coffees, breakfasts and lunches. Yummie!!

 

16 June 2008

About the greatest changes to the basic being of Project Canada so far; about a new blog, about a big makeover of this website and another whole new website and about the upcoming fieldwork period

Dear Friends,

Growing Pains
Once more, here is an update that is way overdue. Once more too, fortunately, that is a sign of huge developments in the project. If you have read the last news post, you might remember that I was struggling at that time with the question of how it would be possible to keep focussing on such a broad range of subjects as the 'natural values of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and surroundings, as well as the role humans play in this natural system'. Let me tell you that this is not an easy question.

If you would ask me where Project Canada is standing now, I’d have to say that it is experiencing fierce growing pains. It has been growing quite a lot since its birth in 2005, but never as fast as now.

Until about now, the project was a child: a child with a goal for sure, but childish in lacking focus and direction. The goal is one that makes many people grin or frown knowingly, thinking that the sweet child will soon learn that it is naïve and well out of reach: to save the world. Nothing less!

I have been told that I am naïve quite a few times as a wee lad. I have also heard it about Project Canada. The danger is that words like this can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell a child often enough that its dreams of a changed world are naïve and impossible, and most of the time the child will start believing it and then gives up the dreams and will never even try to work them out. The worst thing is that eventually he or she will pass on the message to the next generation. Realizing this, one would almost grin or frown knowingly at our culture, which makes so much of being innovating and always striving for more development, while we really are terrified of truly big changes! Have you ever considered the possibility that a desperate tendency to develop into a certain direction can actually be a very rigid state?

Back to the growing pains. A considerable part of them are caused by my breaking with the self-fulfilling prophecy that Project Canada is naïve and bound to fail. However, this really is no more than a strengthening of the resolve I already had. The real big change lies in the fact that I am starting to see the path ahead ever clearer. I am finding direction and focus, only not in the way that a good number of people hoped.

Quite often I have been urged to choose a certain main subject. After all, targeting the whole Canadian Rocky Mountains, all species present and any kind of issue connected with natural values seems like a very good way of losing perspective and overview. I have, for the sake of argument, considered only focusing on bears, or only on the effects of hydro-electrical dams, or on the differences between the ways in which North American Natives and our modern culture look at natural values. All those and many other subjects I have weighed and there is no doubt that all are interesting and complex and important enough to fill whole bookshelves with. But despite that, each subject on its own feels only like a part of the bigger picture, or like a piece of an enormous puzzle. As such, focusing on just one piece will not make me reach my goal of raising awareness of the natural values of the Canadian Rockies. Therefore, I have decided with conviction that my story will not be one out of many, but one of many! It is the story of the bigger picture; of how pieces of a puzzle fit together and the story of connections. Each story is just a piece of an enormous puzzle. The bigger picture will remain hidden if you stare yourself blind on that one piece. Unfortunately, our culture seems to be doing exactly that.

New website and Blog
If you want to understand more about all this, I am afraid you will have to wait a bit longer. This update is but a small one because it will be followed as soon as possible by a completely new version of the website. This new version will have a much improved layout and will make it much clearer that www.project-canada.com is not just a photography portfolio with a bit of information, but a site with a big story to tell. A site with a true goal! Unfortunately, this is a LOT of work. I will do my best to get it done as fast as I can. For now that unfortunately means that not much work will go into this old website anymore.

Another nice bit of development is that I have created a blog! This allows me to provide you with some quick updates, with relevant information about the subjects I cover, with new articles etc. Check it out at www.project-canada.blogspot.com. You can leave comments to the subjects posted there and if you have anything to say about them I hope that you will use this option!

Upcoming Fieldwork Period
This fieldwork period may just become the most exciting one so far. Unfortunately lack of money will probably mean that it will last no longer than five weeks, but the plans for these weeks are huge! Barring unforeseen developments, I will visit Katmai National Park and Preserve in Southern Alaska (thus farther broadening the area covered by the project) to photograph the famous grizzly bears there. But rather than this just being a nice photo opportunity, it will serve a big purpose. The photographs are just to illustrate a story that I will work on about a very unsustainable development in the area: the hunt for grizzly bears in part of the park and in the preserve. This is a huge issue that exactly fits the idea of a larger picture that I mentioned earlier. For a better explanation of this, I am afraid I will have to make you wait again too. I will certainly make it clear as soon as I can. In the meantime, if you want to know more about this issue, here is a good place to start reading and to see a video that explains it all... 

That's it for now folks...
...But if you want to get a bit of an idea about why I am developing Project Canada towards an even broader thing, I suggest that you read at least one, but preferably at least five books by Daniel Quinn. Start by reading (or listening to) "Ishmael" and if that gets you hooked (and my thinking that this book should be read on schools all around the world means that I would be much surprised if it doesn't), then please do continue with "The Story of B", "My Ishmael", "Beyond Civilization" and "If they give you lined paper, write sideways". These are not just books. They are Books with a capital B. They are guaranteed to answer many of the questions you have about life, the world around us, our culture, and why many things are not working the way we want them to. It will explain why our culture is on the way to its own destruction. Can you handle it? You could at least start listening to the recorded version of Ishmael, right? You could do it while you work, or while you sit down and relax. Please, do yourself a favour and listen and/or read!

Please enjoy ten new photographs here.

 

1 January 2008

Dear friends,

A new year has started today. I have been working feverishly to get at least one more update done before 2008, but could not manage to put the last tiny things right before the clock hit midnight. So a few hours late, here it finally is: 32 new photos and six new articles.

By scrolling down to the previous update, you will see that it was published on 7 August of 2007, just about three weeks before the start of the third fieldwork period, which lasted from 31 August until 30 September. It was a relatively short fieldwork period, but I met many new and interesting people, saw many new places and got many new ideas for subjects to work on. Most important of all: I learned a lot more about this area, it's natural inhabitants, it's native people and the people who moved in during the past three centuries.

Sadly, I failed to publish an update during the fieldwork period because it was so filled with travelling (from Calgary to Alaska and back) and shooting that there was hardly time left for work on the computer. When I came home again, I hoped to catch up and finish an update very quickly, but several things made that entirely impossible. First of all, the two fieldwork periods of this year depleted my financial reserves so completely that I was forced to do everything possible to earn some money again. During this period I really found out how hard that is for a freelance photographer. Getting my tax papers organised for the past two years was another daunting task. On top of all that, there were a number of serious family- and friend-related things that demanded a great deal of time.

Another thing I need to do is start looking back on what I have achieved with all the work on Project Canada since 2005 and to make some decisions about how to carry on from here. I intend to do that very thoroughly, but will need more time to do that. I will give a little overview of some thoughts so far below.

Achievements so far
In 2005 I managed to stay in Canada for two months to initiate this project. Because I was not too familiar with the area yet, it consisted mostly of reconnaissance. I made many photos and got to know Banff National Park a lot better. Also I met a few important people that proved to become the basis of a network that has grown considerably since then. In 2006 my financial reserves were so low because of the 2005 trip that it was impossible to visit Canada again. Instead I managed to get this website up and running well, publish the first two articles resulting from the project and think about subjects I wanted to cover during the next fieldwork period in the coming year. 2007 promised to become a big year for the project and so I prepared for it as well as possible. Part of the preparation was trying to get funding for the project, but unfortunately my plans apparently were still too vague to make investors grab for their wallets. This did not surprise me that much, because the project's goal is rather ambitious and I did not have much to show for it yet. It was disappointing though, because by then I had noticed how hard it is to finance fieldwork periods all by myself without having a well-paid job.

Even though 2006 seemed a very long and -at times- a relatively unproductive year, eventually 2007 did draw closer and plans to fill the year were developing. Throughout 2006 I saved every cent I could so I would be able to travel to Canada again and continue the work there. When I was finally able to book a ticket to Calgary again for March 2007, I felt like the happiest man on earth! I would rent a room in a friend's house in Canmore, just outside Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country and work from there for just over three months. It proved to be a marvellous period. I managed to work on the subjects that I had prepared during the past year and learned a lot from all the travelling and the interviews with many different people. One of the more enervating things during that trip was meeting Marilyn James and Bob Campbell and his family; members of the Sinixt, a Native tribe that lived along the Columbia River for thousands of years. Being able to talk with them and learn about their views on the natural world and the changes brought by the European settlers was invaluable. By the end of my stay I managed to interest two galleries -one in Canmore and one in Banff- in my work, where photos are still sold.

I came back from that fieldwork period elated and with a great sense of purpose, knowing that I had enough photographs and information to produce a good number of articles about issues like mountain caribou and the development of the Columbia River. But... as soon as I came home I caught in a maelstrom of work and other things unrelated to the project. Not much came of all the ideas, simply because I could not find time!! Just like these past few months, I had to work very hard to get some finances in again, which was extremely frustrating! But then an unexpected thing happened: my mother and most important sponsor, who has visited Canada several times as well, treated me to a month-long trek together from Calgary to Alaska and back: my third fieldwork period. Fortunately I was able to pay at least my own flight and some other costs, but I most certainly could not have done this trip without mom's help.

This journey started in Calgary where we picked up a rental motorhome and then led us through Canmore, Banff, Nelson and Kamloops and then into unknown territory, towards Whitehorse in the Yukon Territories. At that time, Whitehorse did sound impossibly far. It took many full days of driving with painfully little time for photography to reach it, but we finally made it. Our daily schedule was to get up between 5 and 6 am, start driving after breakfast, drive on almost until evening and then go to bed between 9 and 10 pm. Even though we did not have time to go off the road and explore, we did see quite a lot from that road. For the first time I really got an idea about how big the effect of the pine beetle is on the endless forests of British Columbia: often more than half of the trees are read, which is a clear sign that they are killed by beetles. Within three or four years, the red needles will fall and there will be nothing left but grey dead trunks. It is one thing to read that, but quite another to drive hour after hour, day after day and actually see it right before your eyes all the time. Where this out of hand infestation will lead to is unknown, but it is dramatic already and it only just began.

Fortunately we saw many great things too. Caribou were high on my wish list and I finally saw and photographed them during this trip. It was an even bigger surprise to suddenly see a small heard of buffalo peacefully walking along the Alaska Highway! Two completely new species for the list on the way up north was quite good!

We finally reached Whitehorse, completely exhausted after nine days of almost non stop driving. Just 200 kilometers (a mere trifle after the whole journey) west of Whitehorse was a lovely and quiet campsite that we made into our base camp for a few days. From here we made a few trips into Alaska, which was relatively nearby. During these trips we saw bears, including mom's first ever grizzly, and during a boat trip between Skagway, Haines and Juneau we even saw Dall's porpoises and humpback whales!!

Well, if I allow myself to get carried away, I will give a full account of the whole fieldwork period, but that would take too much time now. I hope to finish my diary from the journey sometime soon though and will publish it on the site. Suffice it to say that the few days spent near Whitehorse and on the edge of Alaska made me hungry for more and I will take more time next year to explore the area.

Unfortunately we only had a few days to spend near Whitehorse, because the whole journey south had to be made in time to catch our plane back and we were a bit afraid that snow might start falling and block the roads. We took the Alaska Highway up to Whitehorse, but decided to take Highway 37 back down instead. We found the most beautiful campsite ever along that narrow bumpy road on the edge of Boya Lake. If you'd ever find yourself in that area, do not hesitate to spend some time there (more info here). Interestingly enough, the best part of the whole fieldwork period happened unexpected on that way back. We took a wrong turn somewhere and eventually that made us end up in Hyder; a tiny little village in Alaska. By the time we noticed we were headed in the wrong direction, we saw a sign that Hyder offers something really spectacular: the chance of seeing grizzly bears fishing for salmon in the wild! Of course we had to see that and it proved to be spectacular. A fair number of photos made near Hyder made it into this update, so take a look for yourself! Along with the photos, you will find two articles about bears, inspired on the experiences there.

After this, the trip back to Calgary was relatively uneventful, unless you count the feeling of dread when we got ever closer to the developed world again! The trip down from Whitehorse roughly until Hyder was so quiet... we saw maybe seven cars while we drove all day. By the time we got to Smithers, we saw that many cars in a single second again. Also we found we had to get used to seeing fences and electricity wires along the road again. Here the land belonged to humans again and not to nature... Frankly, I hated that thought.

Well, the whole trip ended in Canmore and Banff National Park, which felt strange. On one hand it felt a bit like coming home, because I have spent quite some time there over the last years. On the other hand though, Banff National Park had seemed like a natural stronghold in 2005, but after seeing Northern British Columbia, the Yukon Territories and South eastern Alaska, it seemed like an anthill with human ants crowding the area on foot and in their cars. And that for a national park...

The fieldwork period ended with a lovely dinner with friends living in Canmore and the next day we took the plane back to the Netherlands. And if Banff and Canmore were a shock after our journey through the high North, coming back home was endlessly worse. I look forward so much to going back to Canada again as soon as possible!

This third fieldwork period did lead to a fair number of new ideas for articles. Six ideas have already been made into small articles on this website, but I hope to get many more done soon and to get them published in magazines, as soon as I will be able to make time for that. In addition, the journey was good for reconnaissance as well. I will indeed return there next year and with the knowledge from this trip, I will be able to prepare for it and also for working on a number of specific stories.

So, in short, I must conclude that I have learned a lot more in these past three years than I thought possible. I was able to explore a fair part of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and their surroundings and had a chance to talk with many people about a wide array of relevant topics and thus managed to build up a good network to work with in the future. So far, so good! However, on the negative side is the fact that I have not managed to get much published yet. Two articles in Dutch magazines, one in a Canadian newspaper and a few photographs here and there is definitely less than I had hoped for after about three years of work. However, when I get too frustrated about that, I try to keep in mind that I can't eat air and that, as the project progresses, I will be able to spend more and more time working on it. If anything, my enthusiasm for the project is still growing and I intend to work on it for a long time still!

Where to go from here?
To start "to the point", there is at least one fieldwork period planned already for 2008. Late in August I will go to Whitehorse again and spend at least five weeks in that general area, exploring it much more thoroughly than I managed so far. I do hope to spend much more time than that in Canada next year though, including in the Banff area, but it depends completely on my finances if that will be possible. Hopefully I will be able to pay a visit in spring and to extend the stay in September. In total I hope to spend at least six months in Canada. Financial developments in the coming two or three months will make clear what will be possible!

One of the most difficult things about "Project Canada' is that its goal is so broad and that there is not one well-defined subject, making it easy to lose the overview. I know that several people who follow the developments of the project experience this and I must confess I feel it too sometimes. Some people suggested that it might not be a good idea to try and tackle such a huge area as the Canadian Rocky Mountains all at once and such a wide array of subjects at the same time. However, the trouble is that it is the express goal of "Project Canada" to try and make people see the natural world as one whole, rather than as a number of disconnected issues in relatively small areas. I have ideas about how to achieve this, but I will need to think more about it and will share my thoughts on this website as soon as I have them written down.

Hopefully at least I will be able to make time the coming few months to work on publications of articles. It is my goal to submit articles and photographs to at least four magazines, both in North America and Western Europe before May. Hopefully I will manage more than that though. Before the end of 2008 I want to achieve becoming a regular contributor to a modest number of magazines.

I would love to write more here and now, but it is a frightfully long stretch of text already and I am running out of time today. I leave with the promise to work hard on more frequent smaller updates again. There is a tremendous amount of photographs and information from the past two fieldwork periods still waiting to be published here!

All the best wishes for 2008!

 

7 August 2007

Dear friends,

I thank you for checking these pages again. After yet again a long silence, there is news again. And again, the long silence most certainly does not mean that nothing happened.

The second fieldwork period ended on the tenth of June of this year. I managed to stay ten days longer than initially planned so that I could pursue one more story in the Southeast of British Columbia. This was made possible by the donations of a few friends and... it was worth it!

From my base in Canmore I went to Nelson, where I had already spent a few days to work on a story about mountain caribou. During those days I met a native man, Bob Campbell, more or less by chance. We talked about caribou, the watershed and other environmental subjects and that was quite an experience. I had been hoping for a meeting with First Nation's people for a long time, because if there is any proven knowledge about being sustainable, it is in their culture. They have lived off the land for thousands of years with an almost negligible impact on the natural system if compared to that of the European settlers, who managed to change much of the land beyond recognition in the blink of an eye... Unfortunately there was not much time to talk with Bob back then and that is why I hoped so hard to be able to make that second trip.

This trip was intended to interview more people about mountain caribou, but also specifically to learn more about Bob Campbell's people: the Sinixt. We met again and I also met Marilyn James, the spokesperson of the Sinixt, with whom I have spent a few days. In all honesty, I have never felt particularly ashamed or proud for being white (I was born that way and didn't choose my colour), but I did feel real shame while I listened to the story of their people. That story will be told on this website and other publications during the coming months and years. The start of it can already be found here. It will become clear that their story is very closely linked to the natural values of the area.

Thanks to my sponsors for making it possible to work on this story! You will certainly hear more about it.

So, on the 11th of June I arrived back home in the Netherlands, full of ideas and energy and with an actual sense of purpose... only to get caught up completely in daily life and all its chores. Taxes, trying to find work to be able to stay alive, a few small assignments, family business, two trips (UK and Spain) for marriages and things like that made it impossible to spend much time on my Project. It even took me almost three months to make this update!! All that has unfortunately reduced the energy that I felt when I came home, but...

The ideas are still strong and that sense of purpose most certainly is still there and once the tedious things are taken care of, work will start in full again. And that time is near, because... thanks to my main sponsor Carla Stadhouder, THE THIRD FIELDWORK PERIOD WILL START IN ABOUT THREE WEEKS!

This will be a relatively short fieldwork period, lasting from the 31st of August until the 30th of September 2007. The goal is to travel from Calgary as far north through the Rocky Mountains as possible, hopefully reaching the Yukon Territories. During the trip, I want to learn more about the Columbia basin and the Sinixt, but also hope to find many new subjects along the way.

Even though it seems that I will have to let go of the goal to update this website at least once every two weeks (there's just one me to do all this work), I will present more news about the upcoming plans. I will also post important news about a plan for even more dams in the Columbia basin, so please keep an eye on this site, or sign up for the newsletter in the high right corner of this page. Now, unfortunately, it is high time for more tedious stuff to arrange.

Please enjoy this update with 30 new photos and 2 articles, all to be found here.