PRESS RELEASE

Inuit martial arts enthusiast joins Mount Everest expedition

On March 25th 2005, a party of Canadian climbers and hikers set off on an assault on the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, led by Dr Sean Egan, an accomplished mountaineer and professor in the School of Human Kinetics at University of Ottawa.

Accompanying the expedition is Lisa Koperqualuk, a communications officer for the Makivik Corporation in ville St Laurent.  Born in Puvirnituq, Quebec, on the eastern shores of the Hudson Bay, Lisa was raised by her grandparents Lydia and Aisa Koperqualuk. Raised with traditional Inuit values, Lisa is tri-lingual and considers her position as an important medium for Inuit to express themselves to the non-Inuit world. Lisa joins a party of hikers that includes senior IT executives from private and public Canadian organizations and leaders from the Ryerson University Business School. They will trek through Nepal to the Everest Base Camp, starting from the exotic city of Kathmandu.

The expedition is sponsored by Kanatek Technologies, an independent storage systems integrator based in Ottawa, which has developed a unique architecture to store and back up the research data remotely, via satellite, at Kanatek in Kanata, which will act as a disaster recovery site. Kanatek president, Terry Kell says, “We want to put Canadian IT solutions on top of the world. We will be using the latest in communications technology to demonstrate data recovery in a hostile environment.” The expedition is co-sponsored by ProCurve Networking by HP, a supplier of enterprise networking solutions, and SkyWave Mobile Communications, a world leader in satellite-based asset tracking, monitoring, and control.

Ms Koperqualuk says, “It’s long been a dream of mine to get to Everest base camp and I am very excited about the expedition.”

University of Ottawa and Ryerson University have prepared research plans on coping with hypoxia (an absence of oxygen reaching living tissues), the relationships between fitness and ageing, and sport tourism in the context of extreme adventure.

This is Dr Egan’s third trip to the mountain, and it will be his first summit attempt. If he his successful in his bid, he will be the oldest Canadian, at 63, to summit Mount Everest. In preparation for his Everest expedition, Dr Egan recently climbed Mount Aconcagua in Argentina (22,841 feet). Mount Everest is 29,028 feet.

The expedition is organising a game of shinny hockey on the Khumbu Glacier at Everest Base Camp. They have Team Canada jerseys, signed by Ron Ellis and Paul Henderson, and are hoping to meet up with a Russian expedition and challenge them to “The Real Summit Series”.

More information

For more information on the Everest expedition please go to: www.kanatek.com/everest.

Tim Redpath
Train of Thoughts
Office: (613) 836 9516
Cell: (613) 293 9310
Email: tim@trainofthoughts.ca