Comox Valley Naturalists Society

November

Sunday, November 22, 2009
7:00 p.m. at the Florence Filberg Centre
Northern BC Wild Rivers

The regular monthly meeting of the Comox Valley Naturalists Society will be held November 22, 2009, at 7:00 pm at the Florence Filberg Centre, 411 Anderton Avenue, Courtenay. The featured speaker is local canoeist, author, and guide, Laurel Archer. She will present on her experiences canoeing fifteen “Northern B.C. Wild Rivers”.

Laurel Archer has been a canoe guide and instructor for over twenty years, starting her career in 1988 in northern Saskatchewan. She currently lives in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island teaching lake and whitewater canoeing and sea, surf and whitewater kayaking for the Canadian Outdoor Leadership Training Program at Strathcona Park Lodge, as well as guiding commercial canoe and kayak trips. Archer also spends part of the year writing. Northern Saskatchewan Canoe Trips: A Guide to 15 Wilderness Rivers was her first published book. Volume one of Northern British Columbia Canoe Trips was released in 2008 and volume two of the series will be available in 2010. She is a patron of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's Boreal Forest Program and is a member of the International Explorers Club. In her spare time, Archer canoe races competitively, paddling in events and on waterways all over the globe. She has been known to hike, but prefers to use gravity in her favour whenever possible. She learned that from living on the prairie. The North taught her what it means to be free.

Archer’s presentation is a one-hour, multi-media event based on slides from fifteen river routes described in the two-volume guidebook series Northern British Columbia Canoe Trips, published by Rocky Mountain Books. She will speak about the natural and human history of northern BC’s major watersheds lying north of the 55th parallel and showcase through her photography the amazing variety of environments one encounters paddling through the Cassiar, Skeena, Omineca, Coast and northern Rocky mountains and across associated plateaus and plains. She will answer questions and sell and sign books following the presentation.

Click on a link below to view descriptions of previous guest speakers.