Canada

The 10-year-old country girl in me has wondered for the past year, “Why in the world do I live in Toronto?” The city is vibrant, deep, wondrous – yet it is still a city. And no matter how hard I try to fully embrace that home, my veins still race with dreams of greenery and fresh breezes and a pure sense of stillness. As we sat on shore amidst mist-grazed grass and crumbled rocky slopes hugging our perimeter, overlooking Douglas Bay, that feeling was once-again revived.

The excitement was palpable in Ottawa’s beautifully restored Museum of Nature. Eighty university and high school students from 5 countries grinned through a “speed dating” session with the 35 authors, artists, elders, media celebrities, polar scientists, educators and researchers accompanying them on an adventure of a lifetime.

WWF is supporting a group of seven young people from the Arctic as they paddle a traditional canoe along the west coast of North America from Vancouver, Canada, to Neah Bay in the United States. As they progress along the coast, they are stopping in communities along the way to share their stories of the impacts of climate change in the homelands.

To call the last 14 days eventful for the Catlin Arctic Survey Explorer Team would be the grossest sort of understatement. Two weeks of both the weird and wonderful culminated in a rude awakening on Thursday morning when the ice pan on which they were camped started to break up.

Brownie, a 5 year old husky cross, can boast to be the dog who’s on top of the world. Well, furthest north at any rate. She’s on polar bear alert guarding the scientists and support team of the Catlin Arctic Survey way out on the floating sea ice of the Arctic ocean.

It’s no picnic surviving on an arctic expedition in the depths of winter and early spring. But if you are doing a scientific survey at the same time, it is a lot more challenging. For the explorers in the Catlin Arctic Survey team trekking across the floating sea ice of the Arctic ocean, a picnic cool box is a vital piece of kit.

Based on first year sea ice approximately 1.5 m thick and about 10 km from the rugged coastline of Isachsen on Ellef Rignes Island the location of the Catlin Arctic Survey 2010 Ice Base site is stunning. It’s quite surreal here, like being on a different planet and it’s not as flat as you might think. The ice we’re camped on is flat but to the north and south of camp there are regions of multi-year ice which have ridged up over time and created a bizarre but beautiful rubbled ice landscape.

Early on Wednesday 3rd March I headed to Aberdeen Airport to begin my journey to the sea ice of Deer Bay off the coast of Isachsen, Ellef Rignes Island, Canada. I was finally on my way to carry out some novel and exciting fieldwork attempting to answer questions on the topic of ocean acidification.

Clive Tesar, Head of Communications for the Arctic Programme, attended the ‘2030 North’ conference in Ottawa, Canada. The challenge of the conference was to try to imagine what life in Canada’s North will be like in 2030, and to devise a plan to deal with that new reality. By Clive Tesar WWF’s contribution to the […]

Clive Tesar, Head of Communications for the Arctic Programme, attended the ‘2030 North’ conference in Ottawa, Canada. The challenge of the conference was to try to imagine what life in Canada’s North will be like in 2030, and to devise a plan to deal with that new reality. By Clive Tesar There have been lots […]