One of my favourite pass times, which usually gets
accomplished at the expense of something I need to get done not getting
accomplished, is to browse Google Maps.
I love checking out far-flung places, mysterious little blips of colour
splotches dotting the oceans in all corners of the vastness of the Earth. Some of them I know, or recognize at very
least. Most I just notice while skimming
over the map, shifting in and out in scale to locate the really tiny ones—the ones
no one ever notices or even cares to discover.
Those are the ones that carry the most appeal. Anyone can explore Paris or New York or
Tokyo. But have you ever heard of Gough
Island? How about the Orkneys? Sark, anyone?
One of the best parts of teaching Grade 4, at least for me,
is the social studies unit about exploration.
Since we can scarcely afford to explore our own back yards, doing any
real traveling is of course out of the question. However, a few years back, the government saw
fit to invest in SmartBoards, which are interactive projection screens you
conjure up with your laptop. They were a
great investment, if a little pricey and temperamental if not installed
properly. And lord help you if the bulbs
burn out. But when they work, you can do
everything except cook breakfast with them.
Math sure can be a lot of fun when you manipulate virtual shapes and
stuff. Morning messages are chalk-dust
free now (except when I use my actual chalk board, which I do almost daily
anyway). Atlases and globes—objects of
my fascination when I was a child in Grade 4—are all but obsolete now, but who
cares. These interactive applications
are a marvel to see, especially when you get Google Earth up and running. Locating a place on the world map is like
watching a super-fancy weather forecast—the ones where the Earth zooms in from
space to the exact location. Talk about
exciting! If you find this kind of thing
boring, I can’t think of any better way to make it less so for you, but I’ll
try my best.
I decided that rather than read books and copy notes, that I
would take my class on a classroom exploration of some of the farthest-flung
places in the world. What appears to be
uninteresting, uninhabited wastelands on the Google Map have turned out to be really
neat places after all. I mentioned the
remote places interest me the most, and it turns out they interest my students
as well, possibly due to my irrational enthusiasm for the material, but also
because I decided to show them something different. Last year, my group and my Grade 3 teammate
explored Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Most Maritimers know where Sable is, and its
unique geography and history. In short,
it’s a large crescent-shaped sand dune in the Atlantic Ocean, and wild horses
live there unhindered by humans. I even
went as far as to explore how much it would cost to go there. Turns out I don’t have the $6000 you need to
visit, but you never know.
I chose to bring my kids on a trip to one of the harshest
settlements on the face of the earth.
Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, belonging to Norway, and
roughly equidistant to the North Pole as the northernmost reaches of Canada’s
Ellesmere Island (the one way up there; the little place called Resolute that
you see on national weather forecasts is where I’m talking about). It is semi-famous for having one of the world’s
most comprehensive seed vaults. They
store seed samples from all over the world in a climate-controlled bunker below
ground in the event of some great catastrophe, so in the future we can
re-introduce crops, sort of like Noah’s Ark without the noisy animals and Noah’s
fighting in-laws. The islands of
Svalbard are very remote, and are mostly ice-covered, save for the capital of
Longyearsbyen and the surrounding countryside, which has some breathtaking landscape
and a surprising amount of tourist-friendly destinations. I found a news clip on YouTube about a Thai
family who moved to Longyearsbyen a while back (many long years ago—sorry, couldn’t
resist), who loved it so much they stayed. That would be some kind of culture shock I
would think. I was getting cold just
looking at the pictures. At any rate,
Google Maps provided links to dozens of pictures submitted from both the land
and sea surrounding it, and the students were thrilled to see sunsets, whales,
snowmobiles, and even polar bear warning signs.
I never even got to tell them about the seed vault, which is what
brought me there in the first place. I could
have spent hours with them, and they would have been glued to the SmartBoard
the whole time, but unfortunately, I have other subject matter to teach. So over to the virtual shapes we went…
After a few weeks, I decided to introduce them to another
far-reaching destination. This time, I
chose a place with which I am somewhat familiar from my early atlas-navigating
days. Tristan da Cunha is a small
volcanic island in the South Atlantic.
It is a British dependency, administered from St. Helena, which is some 2000km
to the north and famous in its own right as being the detention center for
Napoleon for a while. Tristan is known
as being the most remote permanent settlement on earth, which is to say it is
further away from its nearest town than anywhere else. Now that sounds fantastic. Think of how much writing I could get done
there! With average highs of 22 C and
lows around 12, the climate sounds perfect.
And the only way in or out is by boat.
Forget the tropics, this sounds like heaven to me.
Tristan is a remarkable little island. During the Influenza Pandemic of the 1910s,
only Tristan got by with zero reported cases.
It is somewhat famous among stamp collectors for its unique and rare
stamps and other sundries, which you can order from their website. There is exactly one police officer,
overseeing a population of under 300.
They use British sterling, and don’t issue their own coinage. Internet is available, but if you think your
Rogers coverage is bad, forget trying to Skype Tristanians anytime soon. The capital ‘city’ is called Edinburgh of the
Seven Seas. I like that name even more
than Longyearsbyen. In photos, it looks
kind of like St. John’s, if St.John’s was made of only cottages. In the 1960s, the whole island was evacuated
because of a volcanic eruption. The
entire population was housed in England for a couple years, but when the ordeal
was over, they all elected to return home.
They sound like my kind of people.
Everyone on Tristan has one of only a handful of last
names. The first person to settle it was
reportedly a man named William Glass, a Sargeant of the British Royal Marines. To this day, the surname Glass is prominent
on Tristan. Others include Repetto,
Hagan, and Green among others. When I
was researching this quaint little island, I couldn’t help but imagine myself
as Sgt. Glass, setting foot on that remarkable island for the very first time
ever. Today, we can thank Neil Armstrong
for stepping on the Moon for the first time, imagining who one day might first
tread on Mars, or even beyond. As kids
we explore whenever and whatever we can.
Rarely, if ever, can we find something original, but it’s that innate
wonder within us that keeps that light of our imaginations bright. Imagination of course is where all of our
innovations are conjured, and to be sure, all the scary ones as well. But once in a while, one of us stumbles upon
something new, something invigorating, something special. It might me a discovery, a work of art, an
idea, or maybe just a clearing in the woods near a small stream. There aren’t any more Tristans out there, but
there is no telling how many Sgt. Glass’ there are. If you don’t believe me, come visit my
students; there were 23 of us in one room the other day.
