Ce Trimestre chez Trebek
Numero 7
| 18 mars 2026
TREBEK OBSERVE
LE NORD
Across Canada’s North, environmental conditions are shifting in ways that affect travel, harvest, and daily decision-making. Trebek Grantees are working alongside northern and Indigenous partners to monitor these changes, pairing scientific tools with Indigenous and local knowledge to support community decision-making.
IN THIS ISSUE:
TREBEK MONITORS THE NORTH: Bruno Tremblay works with communities to measure sea ice conditions that shape travel and safety. Malcolm Boothroyd tracks caribou migration. Susan Kutz monitors muskox health in Arctic ecosystems. Patrick Kane documents food insecurity and traditional harvests in northern communities facing rising costs.
EXPANDING INDIGENOUS-LED FIRE STEWARDSHIP: After initial Trebek support, 2023 Grantee Kira Hoffman’s collaboration with the Gitanyow Nation continued through new federal funding. In 2025, the Gitanyow Nation partnered with additional First Nations to share cultural burning practices and strengthen local capacity.
REVEALED BY THE THAW: 2024 Trebek Grantee Taylor Roades photographs artefacts emerging from melting Yukon ice patches. In partnership with the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, she documents ancient tools, and other cultural materials as they surface and supports Indigenous-led recovery of items preserved in alpine ice for millennia.
GRANTEE AWARDS + RECOGNITION: Recent honours for Trebek Grantees, reflecting how their fieldwork and storytelling are gaining visibility on national and international stages.
Photo Credit: Patrick Kane. .
TREBEK MONITORS
THE NORTH
Tracking environmental shifts shaping travel, harvest, and daily life across Canada’s North.
In many northern communities, change is felt first on the land. Freeze-up arrives at different times. Ice that once held steady can no longer be assumed. Herds shift their paths. Access to country food depends on conditions that are harder to read than a generation ago.
The projects in this issue follow those realities closely. They work with Indigenous knowledge holders and community observers who spend long days on the land and ice. The focus is simple: to understand what is happening and document it carefully so communities have clearer information when decisions must be made.
How Changing Sea Ice Shapes Travel and Safety
2022 Trebek Grantee
Bruno Tremblay
Bruno Tremblay - Early Sea Ice Thickness Monitoring
In many Arctic communities, winter travel depends on knowing when ice can be trusted. Increasing variability in sea ice thickness and stability has narrowed the window for safe movement across landfast ice. Warming air temperatures and changing snow depth, which insulates the ice and slows growth, are contributing to this uncertainty.
Bruno Tremblay worked with northern communities to design and test a low-cost, rechargeable ice-thickness buoy that can be deployed before freeze-up. After a successful prototype trial in winter 2024–2025, deployments are expanding to support local decisions about winter travel. By pairing on-ice experience with durable measurement tools, the project improves access to real-time ice thickness information and strengthens community-led monitoring.
Following Caribou Pathways Across a Changing Landscape
2023 Trebek Grantee
Malkolm Boothroyd
Malkolm Boothroyd · Walking with Caribou
Caribou migrations continue to guide seasonal decisions across the North, even as access to herds becomes more constrained. Development pressures, land-use planning, and climate-driven change are reshaping where and how caribou move on the land.
Malkolm Boothroyd worked with Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in partners to document the Fortymile caribou herd through photography and community storytelling. The project documents how shifting caribou routes are influencing land-use planning in the Yukon. His reporting for The Narwhal, including Yukon’s Fortymile caribou and the future of land-use planning, connects the herd’s movements to ongoing habitat and development decisions in the Yukon.
What Muskox Health Reveals About A Warming Arctic
2023 Trebek Grantee
Susan Kutz
Susan Kutz · Combatting Trace Element Deficiencies in Muskoxen in a Changing Arctic
Changes in muskox health can signal broader environmental stress. Warming conditions are altering forage quality, parasite exposure, and nutrient availability, with consequences for animals and for the communities that rely on muskox harvests.
Susan Kutz and her team, worked with northern partners to assess muskox health through field sampling and community-based monitoring. Her research confirmed very low selenium levels across Somerset Island herds and expanded a growing Arctic wildlife health database, linking trace-element status to population trends. This work has contributed to public awareness, including coverage in Canadian Geographic’s Muskoxen: the tundra’s ultimate survivors.
Food Security and the Future of Traditional Harvests
2021 Trebek Grantee
Patrick Kane
Patrick Kane · The Fight for Healthy Food in Canada’s North
In many northern communities, food access is shaped by more than price alone. Changing wildlife patterns, rising costs, and limited availability of culturally appropriate foods affect what households can rely on each day.
Patrick Kane documented food security in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut through photography and reporting, focusing on how people navigate the cost and availability of both store-bought and harvested foods. His work was published by Canadian Geographic in Nunavut’s Hunt for Healthy Food, highlighting how northern households manage food access and traditional harvests in daily life.
Photo Credit: Malkolm Boothroyd
REVEALED BY THE THAW
As alpine ice patches across the Yukon retreat, they expose tools, clothing, and hunting equipment that have remained frozen for thousands of years. During late summer melt, these objects surface in fragile condition and can deteriorate quickly once exposed to air and sunlight.
Working in partnership with Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Kwanlin Dün First Nation, and Ta'an Kwäch'än Council, the Ice Patch Project documents, recovers, and conserves these materials before they are lost.
Taylor Roades photographed the Ice Patch work in the field and in the lab, capturing both the artefacts and the people involved in their care. The discoveries span more than 8,000 years and reveal sophisticated hunting technologies, preserved adhesives and pigments, and long-distance exchange networks extending beyond the Yukon. Organic materials such as feathers, sinew, and leather offer rare insight into technical knowledge seldom preserved in the archaeological record. View the photo essay.
FEATURED PROJECT | Taylor Roades - The Ice Patch Project
Taylor Roades
Project Outcomes:
• Radiocarbon dates spanning more than 8,000 years
• Oldest intact feather fletching recovered from an ice patch site
• Materials linked to long-distance trade networks
• Exceptional preservation of organic artefacts
• Recovery and conservation led in partnership with First Nations
More than 8,100 years ago, hunters in the traditional territories of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations fitted thin stone microblades into this slotted antler dart point, securing them with spruce resin to create a durable hunting tool suited to alpine conditions.
In the traditional territories of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, craftspeople shaped delicate microblades from a prepared stone core, producing multiple cutting inserts from a single piece of stone. Set into antler points and stabilized with feather fletching, they reflect a highly developed hunting technology refined over generations.
High-elevation ice patches in the Yukon long preserved organic materials within the traditional territories of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations. As warming temperatures accelerate melt, tools once held in frozen storage for millennia are emerging into the light.
In late summer, researchers move carefully across thinning alpine snowfields on ancestral hunting grounds to document artifacts emerging from retreating ice, under the direction and guidance of the Nations whose territories hold these histories.
This 6,000-year-old hunting dart retains its stone point and split feather fletching, preserved in alpine ice within the overlapping traditional territories of the Carcross/Tagish and Kwanlin Dün First Nations. Its survival offers rare insight into materials that usually decay.
Recovered near Gladstone Lakes in the traditional territories of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, this arrow features a native copper end-blade secured with tightly wrapped babiche. Copper does not occur locally in this alpine region, indicating that materials were moving across considerable distances through established trade networks.
Careful stitching and hide construction define this 1,400-year-old moccasin, reflecting Dene design traditions within the traditional territories of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations. It speaks to the long presence of people who travelled these alpine routes.
Stone hunting blinds still mark caribou routes used for generations by ancestors of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations. Ice patch recoveries connect these enduring landscapes to tools and materials preserved for thousands of years.
EXPANDING INDIGENOUS-LED FIRE STEWARDSHIP
IMPACT BEYOND THE TREBEK GRANT | Kira Hoffman - Fighting Fire with Food
In northwestern British Columbia, cultural burning shaped forest ecosystems for generations. Applying intentional fire renewed berry patches while supporting an abundance of food and medicinal plants. These practices were suppressed for more than a century, contributing to the wildfire risk many communities and ecosystems face.
Through her Trebek-supported project, Fighting Fire with Food, Dr. Kira Hoffman partnered with the Gitanyow Huwilp to return cultural fire practices to their Lax’yip (territory). The work brought together ecological field research and Indigenous fire knowledge to understand how intentional burning supports forest health and enhances community food security. Explore the full story.
Building on initial support from Trebek, Kira Hoffman’s partnership with the Gitanyow Nation has grown into a broader model of Indigenous-led fire stewardship.
Dr. Kira Hoffman and Elder Darlene Vegh are weaving Western science and Indigenous knowledge to better understand how to return cultural fire to the Gitanyow Lax’yip.
Project Outcomes:
• Cultural burns carried out across more than 200 hectares on the Gitanyow Lax’yip
• Gitanyow Lax’yip Guardians co-led burn monitoring and evaluation, using indicators aligned with their stewardship priorities and values
• In 2025, the Gitanyow team became a certified Type 2 wildland firefighter crew, strengthening their capacity for wildfire response and cultural burning
• Engagement with provincial agencies has created changes to implement cultural fire within the timber harvesting land base
• A timber harvesting area near the community is now being managed with fire to promote huckleberries, increasing food security while reducing wildfire risk
• Knowledge and methods from the Trebek-supported project are now being shared with three neighbouring First Nations
GRANTEE AWARDS + RECOGNITION
2023 TREBEK GRANTEE | ANDREW BUDZIAK | Under the Ice
Andrew Budziak has been named to the Explorers Club 50 Class of 2026, recognizing field scientists shaping the future of exploration and discovery.
His work focuses on winter freshwater ecosystems, when lakes appear dormant but remain biologically active beneath the ice. Through sustained field research and visual storytelling, he reveals how these under-ice systems function and what is at stake as ice cover declines. His initiative, Freeze the Future, brings scientists and trained volunteers together through ice-diving research to advance understanding of freshwater ecosystems in a warming climate. Learn more.
2024 TREBEK GRANTEE | ISABELLE GROC | Shorebirds: Sentinels Of The Mudflats
Isabelle Groc has received the 2025 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Silver Award for her Canadian Geographic feature, The Magic in the Mud. The Kavli Awards are among the highest international honours in science journalism, and Isabelle was the only Canadian recognized this year.
Her reporting explores the critical role of biofilm in fueling sandpiper migration, bringing attention to the ecological complexity of mudflats along the Pacific Flyway. Through rigorous, science-based storytelling, she illuminates a fragile system that sustains one of the world’s great migratory journeys.
2025 TREBEK GRANTEE | NICOLE HOLMAN | Deep-Sea Guardians
Nicole Holman presented her project, Deep-Sea Guardians: Protecting Our Planet's Last Frontier at the 2026 National Geographic Storytellers Summit as part of the Works in Progress series, an invitation-only forum where Explorers share developing work with the global National Geographic community.
Supported by the Trebek Initiative, her short film explores Canada’s deep sea and the scientists working to study and safeguard these largely unseen ecosystems. Presenting on a National Geographic stage marked an important milestone, bringing early field insights to leaders in exploration and storytelling.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Don’t miss the chance to engage with National Geographic Explorers through events across Canada, offering unique opportunities to connect and discover the impact of their work.
March 22-24, 2026 | Toronto, ON
National Geographic Live - Nalini Nadkarni: From Roots to Canopy
Climb into the clouds with tree canopy ecologist Nalini Nadkarni to experience the world's hidden in the treetops above our heads.
May 31, June 1-2, 2026 | Toronto, ON
National Geographic Live - Alizé A. Carrère: Adaptation
National Geographic Explorer Alizé Carrère explores how communities are responding to climate disruption through local knowledge and ecological design. From floating agriculture in Bangladesh to high-altitude ice reservoirs in India, her work shows that durable solutions take shape when human ingenuity aligns with natural systems.
April 19-20, 2026 | Calgary, AB
National Geographic Live - Heather Joan Lynch: Penguins of Antarctica
At the far southern edge of the planet, life persists against extraordinary odds. Quantitative ecologist and National Geographic Explorer Heather Lynch tracks Antarctica’s penguin colonies across sea ice and open water, revealing a continent that is anything but empty, alive with seabirds and marine life shaped by rapid environmental change.
May 31, June 1, 2026 | Calgary, AB
National Geographic Live - Lee R. Berger: Cave of Bones
In South Africa’s Rising Star cave system, paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer Lee Berger is revising the human story. Fossils of a previously unknown hominin suggest that a small-brained species may have made tools, left markings, and buried its dead, challenging assumptions about who shaped our earliest chapters.
April 21, 2026 | Vancouver, BC
National Geographic Live - Steve Ramirez: Untangling the Mind
Join neuroscientist and National Geographic Explorer Steve Ramirez as he uncovers how memories form, fade, and shape who we are. His cutting-edge research with mice reveals how targeted memory work could one day help reduce the impact of PTSD and depression.
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THANK YOU
Your commitment fuels our Trebek Grantees’ efforts to make a meaningful impact across Canada, whether they’re uncovering solutions to urgent challenges, preserving cultural heritage, or inspiring the next generation of scientists, storytellers, and educators.
Together, we’re igniting a passion to preserve across Canada.
