Adventure on Saltspring Island
Part I: Pat and Rosemarie Keough hosts extraordinaire

Saltspring Island was the perfect place for a band of explorers to gather for a weekend retreat. Rosemarie and Pat Keough hosted the third annual meeting of the British Columbia/Yukon Chapter of The Explorers Club at their home on this island two ferries from Vancouver, British Columbia. Linda and I had been invited to attend, and given the excitement of any Explorers' gathering, we flew to Seattle, rented a car, and headed north into Canada in September.

Nestled among the Southern Gulf Islands between Vancouver Island and the City of Vancouver on the British Columbia mainland is 75 square-mile Saltspring Island. Ten thousand artists, fishermen, and regular folks live on the island with several thousand sheep, hundreds of deer, and an occasional bear.

Rosemarie and Pat, former corporate executives from Ottawa, now make their living photographing and publishing huge, expensive, luscious books on nature. Their first book, The Ottawa Valley Portfolio , was a best seller in Canada in 1986. It was followed by a book on the Niagara Escarpment, a book on an island off Nova Scotia, several TV documentaries, then another book on elephants in India.

Glen Keough passes time in Antarctica mountain climbing.

Their latest, Antarctica (Nahanni Productions, 339 pages) sells for $2,900 plus $100 shipping. The book was launched at a Save the Albatross reception hosted by Britain's Prince Charles in his own castle.

The Keoughs got 31 polar celebrities to sign five books and auctioned them off for charity. One was bought by Brian Hanson, an Explorer Club official who was in Columbia for the local chapter's 30th Anniversary Celebration this week, for $20,000. Others went for around $15,000.

In order to photograph wildlife at the southern pole, the Keoughs headed due south and rented an icebreaker. For 14 months over two years, Pat, Rosemarie, and their seven-year-old son Glen lived in the ice flows alongside the albatrosses, whales, seals, and penguins soaking in the memories of earlier explorers: Shackleton, Byrd, Scott, and Amundsen. (Teenage daughter Rebekka stayed behind in boarding school.)

Pat and Rosemarie Keough in Antarctica

To get the right photos, they crawled on the ice, waded through snowbanks, climbed treacherous hills, and waited up to five hours for the animal to strike the right pose.

Antarctica has reaped 23 awards, including: Outstanding Book of the Year and Best Book Arts Craftsmanship in the Independent Publisher Book Awards; the Benjamin Franklin Award for the Best Book of the Year, which is considered the Oscar of the printing and graphic arts world; and Best Photography Book from the inaugural International Photography Awards, which also honored the Keoughs as Nature Photographer of the Year.

Next week: Sunrise on Saltspring Island

A photo of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica by Pat and Rosemarie Keough