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Dr. James Raffan was named in 2020 by Canadian Geographic as one of Canada's most influential explorers of all time with a citation that reads:
"World backcountry explorer, author and authority on the North and canoeing. He put a human face on climate change by traversing more that 17,000 km along the Arctic Circle, uncovering circumpolar stories of changing societies and landscapes."
Last spring, James traded his parka for a full-body sun suit and joined a small research team for a month aboard a Polynesian sailing canoe, gathering data for the first comprehensive atlas of the Marshall Islands. With his wife, Gail Simmons, James divides home time between the Rideau Lakes of Eastern Ontario, on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenesaune, and the Gulf Shore of Nova Scotia, on traditional M'iqmaq ground.
Blasted into public consciousness by the post-WWII US nuclear testing, the Republic of the Marshall Islands is now one of the places on earth most affected by global warming. What was once ground zero in the Pacific Proving Ground is now ground zero for climate change with no respite in site for the people of these atolls in the Central Pacific. Sea level rise, changing ocean chemistry, extreme weather vulnerabilities and climate driven relocations have compelled RMI citizens to cry out on the world stage, adding their voices to those of other dwellers of Small Island States.
Commissioned by the President and Department of Education of the Marshall Islands, Mapping Ground Zero was a 30-day expedition aboard a 51' Polynesian sailing canoe to document the remote northern atolls of RMI, part of a five-year project to gather data for the first comprehensive atlas of this threatened and disappearing place and its peoples. James Raffan was the cultural geographer and documentarian on the atlas team led by fellow Canadian, Dr. Danko Taborosi.
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