He’s a Fellow of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Explorers Club, a former chair of the Arctic Institute, and a recipient of the RCGS’ Camsell Medal and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. 

“If I were ever reborn — and I think I probably was — it was through an awareness that the canoe is a vessel of discovery,” says Raffan. 

He’s just returned from a month spent sailing around the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific Ocean in Micronesian canoes — long, twin-hulled vessels with triangular sails. The journey was part of a mapping expedition for a planned atlas of the Marshall Islands, led by Canadian geographer Danko Taboroši. Raffan’s role, in part, was a mapping of the cultural impacts of climate change on these low-lying coral islands. 

Raffan was struck by the parallels between the sparsely-populated Marshall Islands, which comprise about one per cent of a vast area of surrounding ocean, and Nunavut, with its 26 permanently inhabited communities spread across almost a million square kilometres of land. The peoples of both regions suffered tremendously under colonialism, and are now looking for ways to reclaim their cultures, languages and traditions, particularly among youth. In the Marshall Islands, those efforts largely centre around the canoe. 

“It’s not really about canoes; it’s about getting young people to appreciate who they are in the face of the juggernaut of an American culture that comes to them in so many different ways,” says Raffan.