North of Latitude Eighty

"I was given this slim book shortly before I was about to head out for my first field season to northern Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. I was excited to go, but still didn’t know much about where I was headed, and this book was just what I needed. It’s basically a history of the activities of the Canadian Defense Research Board on Northern Ellesmere and the surrounding coasts – all north of 80 degrees. The CDRB had been tasked with providing knowledge about the Canadian Arctic – its climate, weather, biology, oceanography and geology. The writing is pretty dry in places and some of it seems more like a technical report. But that didn’t matter to me, because it was only after reading the book that I started to understand how field science in the north is actually done. Here were the exploits of some of the giants in Arctic science in the 1950s and 1960s, flying around in DC-3 and Twin Otter airplanes, traveling over land in early-generation snow machines, living in tents and Parcolls and wearing dark sunglasses, all with the goal of collecting scientific data. It sounded so cool and the idea that I was headed up to this fascinating part of the world to conduct some of the same sort of work and perhaps actually meet some of those scientist was inspiring. Of course when I got there I played the part to the hilt, right up to the heavy woollen sweater, scraggly beard and, of course, dark sunglasses."