Happy New Year from all of us at Maple Leaf Adventures.

We hope you enjoy these short articles about the coast and Maple Leaf.

If you are planning to travel in 2008, we look forward to welcoming you aboard.

Our British Columbia and Alaska trips are filling up, with 70% of spaces booked and several trips totally sold out.

If this is your year to explore the Great Bear Rainforest, see the glaciers of Alaska, or try our new Tall Sails & Ales tour, do get in touch to check availability.

Click here to view the 2008 schedule.

(All links open in a separate window.)

May your 2008 be filled with great adventures.

New at Maple Leaf

Announcing Maple Leaf's New Web Site

Larger photos, more trip planning information, slide shows and videos were some of the items requested by people who participated in our web site user survey last year. In a major project just completed, Maureen managed the update of Maple Leaf Adventures' web site. She took the requests of survey participants into consideration in the redesign -- as well as pleas not to get rid of the wealth of information that the site already included. There are more great things to come later this year. In the meantime, check out the new site! Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in our web site survey last spring! Click to view: New Home Page    Example of Slide Shows (Gulf Islands) New Information Request Form    Example of Videos (Haida Gwaii) - click to select the segment to view (All links open in a new browser window.)

Spring Learning Holidays

Tasting Tour by Sail - Tall Sails and Ales, Gulf Islands Spring flowers, birds and sunshine come early in the Gulf Islands. Great food, craft brews, and beautiful scenery are inherant all year. Join historian and beer expert Greg Evans and Maple Leaf's Captain Kevin Smith for this trip that combines the best of our Spring in the Gulf Islands tour with food pairing, local history and exclusive tastings with some of Canada's most award-winning brewers. Apr. 1-7, 6 nights, 7 days, C $2550 includes all meals, tastings, shore excursions and use of gear on board including kayaks.    Read More    View a Slide Show of Past Trips    Ask for More Info    Reserve Your Spot (All links open in a new browser window.)

Painting Holiday with Mark Hobson - Art at Sea, Gulf Islands Mark Hobson is one of Canada's finest coastal artists, a popular Maple Leaf naturalist and a gifted and generous teacher. Join Mark aboard the Maple Leaf for a one-time opportunity to improve your painting techniques, and learn from a master -- about both art and nature! The trip includes a modified version of our Spring in the Gulf Islands trip, with painting workshops every morning and optional instruction in the afternoons, too. There is ample opportunity for one-on-one instruction. Maple Leaf's great crew and fantastic chef will be on board and shore excursions will allow up-close appreciation of the hidden Gulf Islands in spring: wildflower meadows crammed with sea blush and lillies, migrating seabirds and sea mammals. Space permitting, your spouse is welcome, too. Maple Leaf's expedition crew will arrange extra activities for the non-painters in the family. Apr. 9-14, 5 nights, 6 days, C $1950 includes all meals, instruction, shore excursions and use of gear on board including kayaks.    Read More    View a Slide Show of the Gulf Islands    Ask for More Info    Reserve Your Spot (All links open in a new browser window.)

Spring in the Gulf Islands - The Hidden Islands of the National Park Reserve Ever heard of D'Arcy Island? How about Cabbage or Tumbo? The Belle Chains? These are some of the special "unknown" or "hidden" Gulf Islands you'll see this spring aboard the Maple Leaf. Bursting with new life before the rest of the continent emerges from winter, these mediterranean islands in the protected sea between Vancouver Island and Vancouver, B.C., offer some of the world's best cruising. Maple Leaf's expert naturalists and crew take you to explore Garry Oak meadows, wildlflower meadows and beaches few know about -- or will ever have the opportunity to visit. Plus, watch a sea lion "soap opera", multitudes of migrating sea birds and probably a group of Dalls porpoises in some very special wildlife areas. Spring breezes provide excellent opportunities to set the sails on the schooner Maple Leaf. This bioregion is home to many of Maple Leaf's naturalists -- and with good reason. Whether the Gulf Islands seem to be in your back yard or the back of beyond, this will be a chance to discover the secrets of this natural paradise in the height of spring. Apr. 16-21, 5 nights, 6 days, C $1950 includes all meals, shore excursions and use of gear on board including kayaks.    Read More    View a Slide Show of the Gulf Islands    Ask for More Info    Reserve Your Spot (All links open in a new browser window.)

Photo of the Month

Got a great photo from a trip on the Maple Leaf? Then you might like to have it published in Photo of the Month on the Maple Leaf web site. Each month, we'll post a photo, along with a photo credit and a note about where and when the picture was taken. Check out this month's photo, taken on a Haida Gwaii trip in May 2007 by Anne Usher. Like to submit a photo for consideration? Email a digital photo that is at least 650 pixels wide to us at photo@MapleLeafAdventures.com with an explanation of where and when it was taken. Please note: We cannot guarantee that we will be able to publish the photos you email to us. Considerations such as photo quality, subject, location and what other photos we have already planned play a factor in our decision. We'll let you know if your photo will be published. If your photo is to be published, we'll send you an agreement outlining where the photo will be published (Photo of the Month) and that you still retain rights for publication anywhere else.

Crew News

2007 Staff and Crew Awards At Maple Leaf's end of year party for our staff and crew, we handed out some annual awards. Here are this year's recipients: 2007 Shipwright Award: Terese Ayre 2007 Ducks in a Row Award: Paula Hingley 2007 All Systems Go Award: Maureen Gordon 2007 Calm Under Pressure Award: Louise Fitzpatrick 2007 Song of the Year Award: Andy MacKinnon And in 2006, the awards went to: 2006 Shipwright Award: Terese Ayre 2006 Ducks in a Row Award: Louise Fitzpatrick 2006 All Systems Go Award: James Warburton 2006 Calm Under Pressure Award: Neil Shearar 2006 Song of the Year Award: Jenny Kingsley

Nature Tourism & Fishing Businesses Speak Out on Farmed BC Salmon

We and other businesses affected by the health of wild salmon populations in B.C. joined forces this fall to communicate an important message: In the discussion of jobs that inevitably arises in debates about farmed salmon, nobody has considered the thousands of jobs in the tourism and fishing industries that will be lost if wild salmon are wiped out. We formed a loose association of business owners. Our aim in participating is to inform our governments of wild BC salmon's value to wilderness, wildlife and BC tourism businesses. Check out the full page ad run in November in the Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper. Here is the media release about why we ran the ad. Please consider taking a minute to sign the petition at: www.SaveBCSalmon.ca, the web site we set up. At Maple Leaf, we charge a sustainability fee for our trips (similar to a fuel surcharge or hotel tax). The money collected goes to green initiatives, local economies, conservation work and other costs that are unqiue to socially responsible businesses, like ours. Maple Leaf Adventures contributed to the cost of the attached Globe and Mail ad with money from 2007's sustainability fees. Also, following our actions, a study in the prestigious, peer-reviewed Science magazine showed unequivocably that sea lice from salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago may cause the extinction of wild salmon runs there. Why should we care? Because on the coast, whales, bears, wolves, birds, seals, sea lions, and other small mammals, plus a wilderness tourism industry worth over $1 billion, rely on those salmon for survival. Read a mainstream, general interest article about the report in the Vancouver Sun. Read the actual Science magazine abstract and article. What If We Don't Live in B.C.? You're very important! Much of farmed BC salmon is exported. A large amount is sold in California. And, chances are, if your restaurant or fish vendor is not advertising fish as "wild", then it's likely not. The most important thing you can do to help may be to ask your server whether the salmon is wild or farmed, and choose to order salmon only if it's wild.

Improved Email Service

This summer and fall, we regrettably experienced some loss or delay in emails sent to or from Maple Leaf Adventures. We've switched to a new service provider for web and email hosting and have a greatly improved service. If you sent us a message and did not get a reply, please do contact us again. We regret any frustration these service outages may have caused you. Rest assured, it is our policy to answer every inquiry promptly!

Thoughts on Wilderness, from BBC's "Planet Earth" Series

We've been watching BBC's Planet Earth series and were struck by what some of the participants said about wilderness, quoted below. We thought you'd appreciate it, too. (Incidentally, a BBC camera crew shared one of our favourite places with us in 2007. They are filming a new series on the planet's greatest spectacles and visited the Great Bear Rainforest for it. They were guided while there by Maple Leaf's Captain Stephen Anstee and naturalist/first mate Heidi Krajewsky, operating in one of their other roles, as crew for Raincoast Conservation Foundation. Watch for the new show in the coming years.) "There's a lot of evidence that human beings need life. That they are attracted to life forms, to diversity. A lot of their culture is drawn from the emotional response they have to living forms in nature." - Dr. Edward O. Wilson on the concept of biophilia (innate human love of nature) "You can feel terribly small, with the scale of everything. In a sense it makes man very much back in their place; their role in nature is put right by being in [wilderness]." - Alastair Fothergill, series producer, Planet Earth "I think that one of the things wilderness says to us is that nature is not just there for us to be comfortable in. There's an element of the world around us, a profound element and an extensive element, that is just there. It's there for its own sake. It is what it is. And in that sense I think wilderness always speaks to human beings of transcendence in the widest possible sense. It says, you as a human being are part of a system which is not just about your needs and your concerns. Like it or not, you're part of something immense and very mysterious." - Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury "There is a very interesting relationship between wilderness and sacredness. All the great monastic traditions, whether that's Christianity, Buddhism, or Taoist, all find their roots in an experience of their founders going into the desert, into the wilderness, onto the mountains, and finding there something that civilization cannot give them, a realization about themselves, about nature, about the divine. …It's that sense that you are in front of something greater than yourself." - Martin Palmer, Chief Executive, Alliance of Religions and Conservation And, we would like to add this thought, from our friend, Cecil Paul, speaking about the Kitlope: "The rivers are like the arteries of mother earth, connecting the land to the sea." - Cecil Paul, elder and teacher, Henaaksiala people (Great Bear Rainforest)

Great Bear Rainforest and Kitlope Supervoyage, Apr. 24-May 6

There is still a chance to join this, our grandest British Columbia trip, before the word gets out about it in two major national magazines this spring. In spring, wildlife converges at the sea's edge, providing excellent viewing opportunities: grizzly and black bears hungrily eat sedges at river mouths; migrating seabirds stop in the estuaries; it's even possible to see an elusive coastal wolf foraging on the beach. This is one of the peak wildlife viewing times in the Great Bear. On this trip, we'll explore virtually the full length of the Great Bear from the offshore islands in the south, to the villages and great fjords of the north. We then travel down the longest fjord on the coast, the Gardner Canal, into the Kitlope, the largest intact temperate rainforest on the planet. We've been fortunate to be guided to the Kitlope each year by Henaaksiala elder Cecil Paul, who was raised there and learned his people's stories and traditions from his family. This is a rare opportunity to travel with a wise master storyteller into a part of the planet that still retains the power of spectacular, intact natural places. Our grandest British Columbia trip. We expect all Great Bear trips to fill as soon as the spring magazine articles come out, so if you are thinking of taking this amazing journey, please let us know soon.    Read More    View a Slide Show of the Great Bear Rainforest    View a Video of the Great Bear Rainforest    Ask for More Info    Reserve Your Spot (All links open in a new browser window.)

About The Photos in This Newsletter

All photos in this newsletter were taken by Maple Leaf guests or crew on journeys aboard the Maple Leaf. Photo credits are: Community banner: Beach on Haida Gwaii, by Chantelle Tucker (orcagirl.com) Newsletter banner: Orcas with Maple Leaf in the Great Bear Rainforest, by Brian Falconer Capt. Kevin Smith and Maureen Gordon: In Alaska, by Mark Hobson Beer: Tall Sails and Ales tasting dinner, by Kevin Smith Mark Hobson painting: by Paulette Laurendeau Painting: Gulf Islands scene, by Mark Hobson Gulf Islands view: From October trip in the Gulf Islands, by Thomas Kerr Guests: With spring wildflowers, Gulf Islands, by Kevin Smith Whale tail: With Maple Leaf in Haida Gwaii, by Anne Usher View over the sea: Gulf Islands trip, by Kevin Smith Crew awards: By Kevin Smith Orcas: Broughton Archipelago, by Kevin Smith Grizzly: In the Great Bear Rainforest, by Kevin Smith Maple Leaf: In a narrow channel, Gulf Islands, by Thomas Kerr Eagle: Gulf Islands, by Kevin Smith Rainforest: In the Great Bear Rainforest, by Kevin Smith Sea Otters: A raft in Alaska, by Kevin Smith Maple Leaves: In the Gulf Islands, October, by Thomas Kerr Maple Leaf under sail: In the Great Bear Rainforest (spring supervoyage), by Kevin Smith Grizzly bear: In spring, by Kevin Smith Cecil Paul: In the Kitlope (spring supervoyage), by Kevin Smith Guests in zodiac: In the Great Bear Rainforest, by Kevin Smith

Fair winds and following seas, - The Maple Leaf Adventures Crew