Internationally renowned anthropologist and honorary Vice President of The RCGS, Wade Davis will be joining us onboard our ‘Labrador and Torngat Mountains Explorer’ expedition cruise, following in the footsteps of early settlers. Along the dramatic coast of Labrador, the fascinating traces of Viking seafarers trading routes from centuries ago can still be found. To this day, settlements of European missionaries and Moravian settlers can still be seen in communities along Labrador’s coast.
Newfoundland and Labrador is a fascinating area, geographically and historically speaking. Populated by the people of the Maritime Archaic Tradition more than 9000 years ago, the dramatic cliffs and remote environment still show evidence of how those people might have lived.
“Canadians love the idea of the north, but too few of us actually go there. To sail north is to fill your eyes with wonder as you behold a landscape, unlike anything you have ever known, a land as vast as the sky, where the weight of the winter hovers over the imagination, nurturing and defining the essence of the Canadian soul”, says Wade.
Wade Davis is Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Between 2000 and 2013 he served as Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and is currently a member of the NGS Explorers Council and Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, he has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.”
Wade is the author of 300 scientific and popular articles and 22 books including One River (1996), The Wayfinders (2009), Into the Silence (2011) and River Notes (2012). His photographs have been widely exhibited and have appeared in 30 books and 100 magazines, including National Geographic, Time, Geo, People, Men’s Journal, and Outside. He was the co-curator of The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes, first exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and currently touring Latin America. In 2012 he served as guest curator of No Strangers: Ancient Wisdom in the Modern World, an exhibit at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. Wade Davis: Photographs was published by National Geographic books in 2018.
His many film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, an eight-hour documentary series written and produced for the National Geographic. A professional speaker for 30 years, Davis has lectured at over 200 universities and 250 corporations and professional associations. In 2009 he delivered the CBC Massey Lectures. He has spoken from the main stage at TED five times, and his three posted talks have been viewed by 3 million. His books have appeared in 20 languages and sold approximately one million copies.
You can still join Wade Davis on this RCGS co-branded Labrador and Torngats voyage, July 20th – 30th, 2019.