Candace Cochrane - Director QLF Culture and Heritage Programs
Candace has been involved with QLF since 1967 when she first served as a summer volunteer in Newfoundland. Since those days, she has worked in community development and education in northern Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Quebec Lower North Shore. For the last 8 years Candace has been involved with community-based heritage tourism and preservation programs in the Northern Gulf area.
Candace holds an Ed.D.from Harvard University where she focused her research on aboriginal perspectives of teaching and learning history. For the past several years she has been working with Inuit and Innu communities on projects using historical photographs of northern Labrador as both a window to times past and a mirror for discussion about cultural change.
Candace’s classic portrait of a Newfoundland community, Outport, first published in 1981 returned to print in the summer 2008. Candace lives in both Essex County, Massachusetts and Conche, Newfoundland, where she spends her summers.
Stephen Engle - Director, Community Mapping
Stephen Engle directs the Center for Community GIS (Geographic Information Systems), QLF’s dedicated mapping support program based in western Maine. Working with QLF since 2000, Stephen has had over 13 years experience as a GIS Specialist working both in the Atlantic Region and internationally. Stephen earned a B.A. in Geography and Environmental Studies from Middlebury College in 1995. In 1999, he traveled to New Zealand on a scholarship from Rotary International where he completed a Masters degree in Development Studies from Victoria University of Wellington.
Currently, Stephen’s work focuses on the operations and management of the Center for Community GIS. Stephen especially enjoys the opportunities to develop and lead trainings that focus on the use of Participatory GIS for landscape values assessment, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for local area inventories, and Community Mapping approaches for engaging local youth in service learning projects. Stephen makes his home in Maine.
Serena Etheridge - Director, Culture and Heritage Program Canada
With a background in economic development and an Honors Bachelor of Administration from Memorial University, Newfoundland, Serena Etheridge has been part of the QLF team since 2001. Through her work as Director of QLF’s Traditional Skills Network, Serena works with community partners, businesses and residents in Newfoundland, Labrador and along the Quebec Lower North Shore, to help preserve and promote valued aspects of local culture. This work enables her to bring generations together through employment opportunities, craft demonstrations, workshops, school activities and community events in attempt to preserve knowledge of local traditions and skills, and to then share that knowledge with the rest of the world through heritage tourism initiatives.
Serena also works on various other tourism and heritage related projects throughout the Quebec and Labrador region. Together, these experiences allow Serena to work with others for the betterment of the region, and provide her with an opportunity to see meaningful development in an area that she both works and lives. Serena and her family make their home in L’anse au Clair, Labrador.
Simone Hélène Hanchet - Director QLF Canada Office
With an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science and a Masters degree in Public Policy from McGill and Concordia Universities respectively, Simone Hanchet’s academic interest is in education policy that supports a shift toward ecologically sustainable living. Simone began working with the QLF team in 2004 when she served as an intern on a Heritage Rivers initiative. She was soon hired on as staff, and worked as QLF’s Leadership Program Coordinator for four years. In that role, she enjoyed helping interns and volunteers to develop skills, knowledge, and perspectives relevant to community-based conservation work.
After returning to Canada from Rwanda, where she worked at Tubahumurize, an Association assisting Rwandan women victims of violence, Simone was hired as Director of QLF’s Canadian Headquarters. In this role, she continues to pursue her interests in communications, environmental policy and education, taking great interest in working cross-culturally.
In her spare time, Simone is a yoga instructor, editor, amateur ballerina, and hiker. She is also a co-founder of the Bottled Cities Project, an alternative tourism initiative. And although she lives in Montreal, she continues to support Tubahumurize’s important work with women in Rwanda. At present, she is helping the Association’s Director to write her life story and hopes to find a publisher for the book in the near future.
Patricia (Trish) Nash - Director, Biodiversity Conservation
Trish first worked with QLF as an intern in the late 1980’s. Her career as a biologist then led her across Canada from the Northwest Territories to southern Ontario. Trish has a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Zoology from the University of Guelph and has done graduate work in Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo.
Six years ago Trish returned to QLF as the Senior Biologist based in Lourdes-de-Blanc-Sablon on the remote lower north shore of Quebec. Trish is responsible for managing QLF’s Biodiversity Conservation program which encompasses a wide range of community-based projects including marine animal monitoring, seabird conservation, climate change education and sustainable fisheries management. Her favorite times at QLF are those spent on the wharf, on a fishing boat or in a trapper’s shed learning from local people about the natural environment.