Eye on the Arctic brings you stories and newsmakers from around the North. As global players ramp up interest in the Arctic, the organization representing the world’s Inuit wrapped up their general assembly in Alaska in July with a pledge to amplify their voice on the international stage. The Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) represents the approximately 160,000 Inuit from Canada, Greenland, Russia and the United States. The Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) represents the approximately 160,000 Inui...
Aug 04, 2018
Eye on the Arctic brings you stories and newsmakers from around the North. Sometimes it's seals with amputated flippers. Or even a sea lion snatched seemingly out of thin air. But for at least 10 years, subsistence harvesters in Alaska's coastal communities have occasionally encountered mysterious injuries on the marine mammals they rely on for food. The wound patterns suggest shark attacks. And community members, researchers, biologists and veterinarians are monitoring the situation to find out...
Jul 28, 2018
Eye on the Arctic brings you stories and newsmakers from around the North. Arctic glaciers are shrinking at an alarming rate and show no signs of regeneration, says a recent study conducted in Canada. The research looked at glaciers between 1999 and 2015 and focused on Ellesmere Island, the most northern region of the country. During that sixteen-year period, researchers noted over 1700 square kilometres of ice lost - a change in area of six per cent. "That shows that over 75 per cent of glacier...
Jul 21, 2018
A photographer renowned for his images documenting the human face of seal hunting in Quebec and Newfoundland will spend at least another two years chronicling the Inuit seal hunt in Arctic Canada. "I've been hunting there and became passionate about the North," said Yoanas Menge. Since 2012, Menge's photography project Hakapik took him to chronicle the life of commercial sealers in the Atlantic Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec's Magdalen Islands; and to Nunavik in northe...
Jun 09, 2018
Each week, Eye on the Arctic brings you news and views from around the North A book showcasing the recipes of Indigenous peoples from across the Arctic took the day at the Gourmand International Cookbook Awards in Yantai, China. EALLU –Food, Knowledge and How We Have Thrived on the Margins won in the Best Food Book of the Year category, beating out 15 other finalists from places like Canada, the U.S., Japan, Germany, Colombia, China and South Africa. "I got tears in my eyes," Maret Ravdna Buljo,...
Jun 02, 2018
Canada's department of Fisheries and Oceans has announced it will give $1,261,890 over 5 years to help solve the mystery of dwindling char numbers near the Arctic Canadian community of Kugluktuk. The money will go to a University of Waterloo research project created after hearing the community's concerns about the changes they were seeing in fish species in their area. The Kugluktuk Hunters and Trappers Organization said chair Larry Adjun wasn't available for an interview when reached by Eye on ...
May 12, 2018
(commenting open on all RCI stories - scroll to bottom) Hockey is just, well, so Canadian. Sure the Russians, Czechs, Swedes, Germans, even Americans are pretty darn good internationally, and many do end up in the National Hockey League, but the NHL is still considered rightly or wrongly as Canada’s league. (Though now headquartered in the U.S the “national” in NHL originally meant Canada, as the NHL grew out of the National Hockey Association- a Canadian league prior to 1917). Canadian Senator ...
May 05, 2018
One out of ten children fleeing a vicious flare up of fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) say they were raped during their journey to Uganda, according to a new assessment by Save the Children. More 73,000 refugees have fled the gruesome and escalating conflict in DRC to Uganda, including nearly 2,800 unaccompanied or separated children since the beginning of this year, according to the charity. An overwhelming majority - some 77.5 per cent - are women and children. “The c...
Apr 20, 2018
Their exact location is a jealously guarded secret but a set of mysterious petroglyphs in the Eastern Canadian Arctic feature among Ottawa’s latest submission to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for consideration as a new World Heritage Site. The so-called Qajartalik petroglyphs, highly stylized human faces carved into soapstone, are unique manifestations of Dorset Era artistic expression, said Louis Gagnon, a curator with the Avataq Cultural Institut...
Mar 17, 2018
Nearly a year after a concerted humanitarian effort staved off a famine in South Sudan, the country is once again teetering on the brink of another catastrophic food crisis, the United Nations warns. Almost two-thirds of the population will need food aid this year to stave off starvation and malnutrition as aid groups prepare for the “toughest year on record”, according to the estimates of a working group that includes South Sudanese and UN officials. “The situation is extremely fragile, and we ...
Mar 03, 2018
Eye on the Arctic brings you stories and newsmakers from across the North The Canadian province of Ontario may be a southern province, but this week it pledged $96,844 towards the Inuit Art Foundation's update to the Igloo Tag Trademark. The money was part of a series of funding announcements made on Thursday by David Zimmer, Ontario's Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. “These grants are part of Ontario’s commitment to work closely with Indigenous partners so they can fully dev...
Feb 17, 2018
New research suggests that people who are obese or severely obese may be fit and, if they are, they have the same or possibly better health benefits from their fitness than do other people. Many studies link obesity with diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer and other health problems. But the recent study from York University suggests that people who are obese or very obese get the same or better reduction in health risk by doing as little as 150 minutes per week of an activity like walking. Y...
Feb 17, 2018
The federal government has found no “conclusive” evidence Canadian-made armoured vehicles were used to commit human-rights violations in Saudi Arabia’s restive Eastern Province last summer, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told a parliamentary committee Thursday. That was the result of a “full and thorough” investigation by Global Affairs officials after videos and photos surfaced last July of Saudi special police and security forces using Canadian-made armoured vehicles in a crackdown...
Feb 09, 2018
Eye on the Arctic brings you stories and newsmakers from across the North. Weak national leadership in the North American Arctic is hindering northern development compared to the thriving polar regions of Russia and the Nordics, says a Canadian think tank in a new report. "Canada has a romantic, folkloric ideal of the Arctic which is not in close accord with reality," John Higginbotham, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), told Eye on the Arctic in a tele...
Feb 03, 2018•7 min
Your hosts, Lynn, Marie-Claude, Levon, Marc **. (video of show at bottom) ListenEN_Interview_2-20180119-WIE20 Myanmar’s brutal campaign against Rohingya’s refugees is one example of how violence escalates when no one speaks out against it, says Human Rights Watch. Photo credit Manish Swarup/AP Photo. Human Rights Watch has issued their annual report. It looks at the human and civil rights situation in some 90 countries. This year the report notes the rise of authoritarian and populist regimes in...
Jan 19, 2018•30 min
"Down Inside": A career in Canada’s federal prisons Suicides, violent beatings, horrific murders, guards who cared, guards who didn’t, bureaucratic indifference, political meddling, Robert Clark saw all of that and much more. Robet Clarks intimate look at his long career in the Correctional Service Canada, working with some of the country’s most horrific and violent criminals, and in a sometimes contradictory system. © Goose Lane Editions Now retired, Robert Clark's new book "Down Inside" ( Goos...
Jan 13, 2018
The United Nations and humanitarian agencies working in war-torn Yemen are sounding the alarm over the continuing blockade of much of the country's air, sea and land entry points by the Western-supported coalition of Gulf states, calling on them to allow lifesaving humanitarian supplies to pass to alleviate “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” “While the Saudi-led military coalition has partially lifted the recent blockade of Yemen, closure of much of the country's air, sea and land por...
Nov 18, 2017
South Sudanese refugees in northern parts of the country are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance before the rainy season sets in, making it even harder to reach the already isolated areas, says a Canadian photographer who just returned from Unity State near the border with Sudan. Speaking to Radio Canada International from capital Juba, Renaud Philippe said nothing in his career of covering strife and humanitarian disasters compares to the desperate situation he witnessed in South Sudan...
May 13, 2017
U.S. cruise missile attacks against Syrian military targets believed to have been behind a deadly chemical weapons attack in northern Syria mark a new and unpredictable phase in the six-year-old war, says a Canadian expert. The U.S. Navy launched 59 cruise missiles on Thursday in response to the attack in the northern Idlib province that killed at least 80 civilians, including 20 children in what President Donald Trump had called "a disgrace to humanity." Kyle Matthews, Senior Deputy Director of...
Apr 08, 2017
The last thing I remember before my German colleague Volker Handloik died in a hail of bullets was a feverish but a very methodical mental calculation: should I stay or should I follow him and jump? Muzzle flashes from at least half-a-dozen AK-47 assault rifles and a heavier PK machine gun, spewing hundreds of rounds at us, illuminated the velvet Afghan night barely 25 meters to our right. Several of the Northern Alliance soldiers accompanying us also jumped or fell as the infantry fighting vehi...
Nov 19, 2016
Freedom of religion is one of the fundamental guarantees in Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government of Canada says it is "committed to religious pluralism." And more and more members elected to Parliament reflect the growing religious diversity in Canada. Still the separation of church and state is also a founding principle of Canada's political system. As Amanda Pfeffer reports, sometimes the political role of the politician can conflict with his or her religious beliefs. Naviga...
May 12, 2016
An annual intelligence assessment, which in large part focuses on Russia's actions in the Arctic, released by Norway's foreign intelligence service last week is drawing a lot of interest among defence and security experts in circumpolar countries, including Canada. The report entitled Fokus 2016 was presented to the public on Wednesday by the head of the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) Lt. Gen. Morten Haga Lunde. “Russia shows increased willingness and ability to use a wide range of instrum...
Feb 28, 2016
