Mothers in a refugee village in northern Uganda near Gulu, have to walk 2 kilometers to get water twice a day from the local bore hole well and carry it back to their village in gerry cans. All the while risking being attacked by marauding rebal fighters in the ongoing civil war in the region along the Uganda - Sudan border. Photo by Greg Locke © 2004.

 
While offshore last week I had never seen the Grand Banks so calm. They were rare days indeed and as bad luck would have it all the sea ice and icebergs had blown east by the time we got there. Well, bad luck for a photographer looking for some dramatic photos of icebergs and oil rigs but a welcome relief for the oilfield operators who had to deal with it disrupting business. I was lucky enough to get this rare shot of all the ships together at the Terra Nova site. The Terra Nova FPSO, the tanker, Vinland, and the attendant supply vessels Atlantic Hawk and the Burin Sea. Thanks to the crew of the Atlantic Eagle for being the shooting platform ...that didn't move that much ...REALLY! Photo by Greg Locke © 2008

 Writer, playright and actor, Joel Thomas Hynes is the Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Council 2007 Artist of The Year award winner.
His first novel, Down To The Dirt was critically acclaimed and won him the Percy Janes First Novel Award, was shortlisted for the Winterset Award and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It has been made into a movie that will be screened at this years Cannes Film Festival.

Last year you saw him in Mary Walsh's TV series, Hatching, Matching and Dispatching. His second novel is Right Away Monday from HarperCollins.

 Neil Butler and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings were the hosts of the 2007 Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Awards last light at the Reid Theatre in St. John's.

We set up a mini studio backstage and did portraits (like the one at left) of winners, presenters, performers ...and anyone who wandered past our backdrop for a future magazine story.

Look for a selection of these photos on the NLAC website soon  ...and we'll have a gallery up here too 

...when I get a chance.

 The Canadian National Magazine Awards nominations are out and a major package I worked on with Zena Olijnyk, Alex Mlynek and Tim Davin at Canadian Business magazine has been nominated in the Words and Pictures Category.

Where Canada Meets The World was a collection of stories and photos about Canada border towns, businesses, security and international trade. It spanned from the port in Vancouver to the 200 mile limit on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. My contributions came from my cross Canada drive in September making stops along the Canada-US border. The photo at left is the international boundary marker on the 49Th parallel in North Portal, SK, where the final hole on the local golf course is in North Dakota, USA.

Another Newfoundlander with a nomination is Kathleen Winter for You Can Keep One Thing in the New Quarterly

 ...but not for seals this time.

From the window of the patrol aircraft, the ice floes off the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland this year are pretty spectacular. Satellite images show the pack stretching from the Labrador Sea to Cape Bauld on the tip of the Great Northern Peninsula and on to Fogo, Cape Freels, Cape Bonavista and out on to the Grand Banks as far as the offshore oil fields and beyond to the south east. The pack is 300km wide in places and the USCG's International Ice Patrol latest report for today shows the extent of the sea ice and a lot of icebergs!

If all goes right with logistics I'll be out on the ice for the rest of the week. ...nothing like a sea cruise in the North Atlantic.
Photo by Greg Locke © 2008

Geir Haarde, Prime Minister of Iceland, gave the John Kenneth Galbraith Lecture in public policy at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland on April 15th. His outline of how Iceland went from poverty to prosperity in less than two generations is an inspiration to the ambitions of small nations. In Newfoundland, the "Iceland Model" is a Holy Grail for politicians but they have a mental block when it comes to the reality that Newfoundland does not have control over certain economic policy that Iceland, as sovereign state, has and can make "top-level" policy to direct their economy. Fisheries management is only one example.  While on the surface, Newfoundland and Iceland may appear to have a lot in common, in reality, they are two different planets. The nationalist minded in Newfoundland eye Iceland doe-eyed as the future Newfoundland never had. Of course, that's assuming Newfoundland politicians were altruistic and smart enough to make intelligent decisions. If Iceland is a success story and Newfoundland is not, then I guess the evidence is that they were not. This is the subject of my column in this weeks Sunday edition of the Halifax Chronicle Herald. 
Photo by Greg Locke © 2008