About Géographica

Géographica

Géographica is the French-language magazine of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS), published in Ottawa, Ontario, under the Society's French name, the Société géographique royale du Canada. Introduced in 1997, it is the French counterpart to the Society's English-language flagship, Canadian Geographic, and it is not a stand-alone newsstand publication: it is distributed as an irregular supplement, most recently in collaboration with the Montreal daily La Presse, having previously appeared as a quarterly supplement to the news magazine L'actualité.

Overview

Géographica exists to bring French-speaking Canadians the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's mandate — making Canada better known to Canadians and to the world — in their own language. As the Society's French-language magazine, it covers the human and physical geography of Canada: exploration, science, environment, wildlife, Indigenous cultures, and the country's regions and landscapes. Its publishing model distinguishes it from most Canadian magazines: rather than selling subscriptions or newsstand copies on its own, Géographica is inserted as a supplement into partner publications, which gives it wide distribution among francophone readers.

The magazine is published by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, a Canadian non-profit educational organization founded in 1929, and its editorial direction is tied to the Society's broader publishing program, which also includes Canadian Geographic (published continuously since 1930, when it was called the Canadian Geographical Journal) and the quarterly Canadian Geographic Travel. The Society's headquarters are at 50 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, on the banks of the Ottawa River beside Rideau Falls, in the former Canada and the World pavilion — a building the Society moved into fully in 2018 after a decade in an Overbrook strip mall.

History

Géographica was introduced in 1997, nearly seven decades after the Society's founding, as the French-language expression of a publishing program that had until then been English-only. For its first decade-plus, it appeared as a quarterly supplement to L'actualité, Quebec's leading French-language news magazine — a partnership announced in the Society's own communications, including a 2007 RCGS note celebrating a "double-digit géographica" milestone. Later, the magazine's distribution shifted to an irregular supplement model with La Presse, the Montreal daily, a change that reflected both the Society's evolving partnerships and the transformation of Quebec's media landscape as La Presse moved to a digital-first model.

The Society behind the magazine has its own long history. Founded in 1929 by a group of eminent Canadians including geographer Charles Camsell, the RCGS was formed, in Camsell's words, "purely for patriotic purposes" — to be a unifying influence on the life of Canada. Its first mandate, articulated by acting secretary E.S. Martindale, was to make the resources and geographic factors of each part of the Dominion more widely known and clearly understood, an educational service "that cannot be rendered except through a geographic organization animated by a broad national purpose." The Society's magazines are the principal vehicle for that mandate, and Géographica's creation in 1997 extended it to francophone Canada.

Over the decades, the Society has funded expeditions, research, and lecture programs — notably as a partner in the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition that located HMS Erebus, one of the two ships lost on Sir John Franklin's British Arctic Expedition — and its magazines have documented that work. More recently it has run grant programs with partners, including the Trebek Initiative, a joint program with the National Geographic Society that funds exploration research and storytelling, which announced its 2025 grant recipients in July 2025. In 2002 the Society's English-language magazine established the Canadian Environment Awards program with government and corporate partners; the program was replaced by the 3M Environmental Innovation Award in 2009. The Society's College of Fellows, whose members have included writer Margaret Atwood, actor Paul Gross, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, artist Robert Bateman, ethnobotanist Wade Davis, explorer Michael Palin, and paleontologist Phil Currie, provides the intellectual community behind the publications. The Society awards the Massey Medal for outstanding personal achievement in the exploration, development, or description of the geography of Canada, the Gold Medal for achievement in geography or a significant national or international event, the Camsell Medal for volunteer service to the Society, and the Canadian Environmental Innovation Award.

Content

Géographica's editorial content mirrors the preoccupations of its English-language sibling: the geography of Canada in the broadest sense. Issues have covered Arctic exploration, wildlife and conservation, climate and environment, Indigenous peoples and cultures, Canadian cities and regions, and the science of mapping and geographic discovery. Photography is central to the magazine's appeal — the Society's magazines are known for high-quality visual storytelling — and articles are written to be accessible to a general readership while grounded in genuine geographic and scientific knowledge.

Because the magazine is produced as a supplement rather than a full newsstand title, its issues are curated as self-contained editorial packages: feature stories, photo essays, and shorter items that introduce francophone readers to the Society's work and to Canadian geography. The irregular publication schedule means there is no fixed monthly or quarterly rhythm in its current form; issues appear when the Society and its distribution partner arrange them, and archived issues — including runs from 2010 through 2021 — have been made available through the magazine's web presence.

Coverage & Audience

Géographica serves French-speaking readers across Canada, with its natural heartland in Quebec, francophone Ontario, New Brunswick's Acadian communities, and francophone minorities elsewhere in the country. Distributed through La Presse — a publication with deep roots in Quebec — it reaches a broad general audience of readers interested in science, nature, travel, and Canadian identity, rather than a specialist geographic community. Its audience overlaps with the readers of Canadian Geographic — the Society's flagship claims roughly 140,000 subscribers — and benefits from the same editorial standards.

The magazine also functions as a public face of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society for francophones, introducing readers to the Society's expeditions, research grants, education programs, and public events such as the annual College of Fellows dinner. Through this role, it contributes to the Society's mission of geographic literacy — a mission it shares with initiatives like the Canadian Council for Geographic Education, the joint RCGS–National Geographic Society program established in 1993 to strengthen geography teaching in schools.

Ownership

Géographica is owned and published by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (Société géographique royale du Canada), a non-profit educational organization headquartered at 50 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario. The Society is financed principally by the dues of its members and by donations. It is governed by a Board of Governors and program committees made up entirely of volunteers drawn from its College of Fellows, and its chief executive in recent years has been John Geiger. The magazine is produced in collaboration with its distribution partner, currently La Presse, which carries it as a supplement.

Digital Presence

The magazine's web presence has been maintained at geographica.ca, where archived issues and Society information have been available. In recent years, the Society's digital strategy has increasingly centred on its main English-language platforms — canadiangeographic.ca and rcgs.org — alongside its exhibitions and public programming at the 50 Sussex Drive headquarters, which opened to the public with exhibitions such as Chris Cran's Explore and Lessons From the Arctic: How Roald Amundsen Won the Race to the South Pole. The official opening of the headquarters in May 2019 was attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, underscoring the Society's national profile.

Géographica's history and publishing model are documented in its Wikipedia entry, in the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's own records, and in press coverage of the Society's activities — sources that together trace the story of how Canada's geographic society extended its flagship publishing program to the country's French-speaking readers in 1997 and has sustained it through changing media partnerships ever since.