Can Geo Talks is a dynamic speaker series featuring some of the most fascinating individuals working in the fields of geography, exploration, environmental science, journalism, history and more.
Past presenters include world-renowned cave diver and Royal Canadian Geographical Society Explorer-in-Residence Jill Heinerth, actor and comedian Sir Michael Palin, award-winning photographer Michelle Valberg, marine archaeologist Mensun Bound, journalist and author Whit Fraser, and bestselling author and RCGS Westaway Explorer-in-Residence Adam Shoalts.
Talks are held monthly from February to June and September to November. Unless otherwise specified, all talks take place in person at Canada’s Centre for Geography and Exploration, the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society located at 50 Sussex Drive in Ottawa. Information about upcoming talks will be posted here. Admission for the talks is free; please consider supporting future events by donating to the Society.
Upcoming talks
Trina Moyles – January 29, 2025
Join Canadian Geographic as journalist and author Trina Moyles shares a moving story of siblinghood, survival and coexistence.
When Trina Moyles was five years old, her father — a wildlife biologist in northwestern Alberta known as “the bear guy” — brought home an orphaned black bear cub for one night before sending it to the Calgary Zoo. The encounter sparked Moyles’ lifelong fascination with Ursus americanus, or the black bear — oft considered one of the less important (and more problematic) species of bear. As a child exploring the Peace River with her older brother, Moyles sensed bears as invisible yet ever-present beings, deserving of respect. But growing up amid the oil boom of the 1990s, the true dangers proved human, fracturing the siblings’ reverence for the land, wildlife, and for each other.
Years later, after working in human rights, Moyles returned north as a fire tower lookout, while her brother laboured in the oil sands, struggling through addiction and economic uncertainty. Black bears roamed just metres away from Moyles’ tower in a wildlife corridor. Over four summers, she learned to move beyond fear and recognize their essential nature as a bear that’s evolved to live closely with humans. Black Bear is her eloquent story of loss, kinship, and coexistence — between species, siblings, and a land under pressure.
ABOUT TRINA MOYLES
Trina Moyles is a Yukon-based environmental journalist, author, and filmmaker. The daughter of a wildlife biologist in northwestern Alberta, she learned early to coexist with black bears, wolves, lynx, moose, and woodland caribou. A former fire tower lookout, Moyles draws deeply from her lived experiences in the northern wilderness.
Her non-fiction debut, Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism, and the Fight to Feed the World, explored global connections between gender and food sovereignty. A finalist for the High Plains Literary Awards, it has been adapted into a forthcoming 2026 documentary.
Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest, a memoir recounting seven seasons in Alberta’s fire towers, won the National Outdoor Book Award (2021) and Alberta Memoir Award (2022).
Moyles’s most recent book, Black Bear, offers an intimate portrait of human-bear coexistence and the shifting ethics of wildlife management, drawing from Indigenous knowledge. Interwoven is a reflection on the Alberta oil sands and their toll on people and ecosystems — including her brother, whom she lost to suicide in 2022.
Admission for these events is pay-what-you-can. Your donations help the Royal Canadian Geographical Society put on more insightful programming like this.
In case you missed it
Watch a recording of our Can Geo Talk with Ian MacLaren.
