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Foxes, Chickens and Fish

Good Move, Minister Prentice!

Today, federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice did the right thing by appointing an independent science panel to review industrial pollution in the Athabasca River and surrounding waterways. This comes on the heels of new scientific research showing that pollution from the tar sands is contaminating water far downstream from the development.

So far, the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP) has been responsible for monitoring water pollution in the tar sands region. This industry-dominated body has continually reported that there are no problems. As internationally renowned biologist Dr. David Schindler has pointed out, “there's no way industry can be belching out hundreds of kilograms of toxins every year and this not be detectable in the environment unless the monitoring program is totally incompetent".

This fox-guarding-the-henhouse situation has led to growing concern from downstream communities about the safety of the water they’re drinking and the fish they’re eating. When several seriously deformed fish were recently displayed, Minister Prentice said he was “disgusted”.

We’re glad to see that Minister Prentice is now taking a step to get to the bottom of the pollution problem in the Athabasca River. By appointing a panel of independent scientists to provide recommendations on monitoring and best practices, he’s recognized that the federal government has a responsibility to protect people and the environment from tar sands pollution.

Chair

Building a chair in nature, constructed from found elements, is a simple idea about accommodating human-kind in the natural world. Just as a primitive hut provides shelter, so too a chair provides a place to rest the body in a landscape that may not necessarily be relied upon to do so.

As a boy I spent my summers canoe-tripping in Northern Ontario. On many occasions we would stop our journey for a little while to rest and play. During such times I often made chairs. Our part of Ontario is located within the pre-Cambrian shield and is formed largely of granite. The chairs where made by stacking loose shards of rock to construct a seat, back and more often than not arms, as they were useful in stabilizing the back. Because the basic building blocks were both large and crude, the chairs tended to have throne-like qualities. Undoubtedly they were situated prominently, with a long view. The purpose of the chairs, to my young imagination, was to provide a place for the ‘hermit’ – the one who had escaped civilization and lived all around us, yet was never seen.

With this in mind, I determined to make a chair in the high Arctic as part of our Cape Farewell journey. Inspired by the hauntingly beautiful constructions made of snow by Peter Clegg and Anthony Gormley during the 2005 Cape Farewell Project, I went shopping in Toronto, prior to my departure, for the tools that I thought I would need; shovel, snow saw and ice saw.

It was a bit of a surprise therefore to arrive at Spitsbergen and discover that the beautiful snow that Peter and Anthony had worked with was available to them because their trip took place in February, whereas we were conducting our expedition at the end of the polar summer, throughout the last three weeks of September. Nature presented us with only a dusting of snow that rarely covered the enormous landscape of solid rock, loose rock, pebbles, and extremely hard glacial ice. So much for the concept of building a throne of carefully cut and assembled slabs of firm polar snow. How naïve I was.

However, after some time it became apparent that I might be able to carve a chair out of icebergs left on the beaches during low tide, adjacent to the glaciers. So, one morning, equipped with ice saw and a borrowed a hatchet from the ship I walked along the beach searching for suitable specimens, Simon was of course close by, rifle in hand, ever vigilant for polar bear.

Unlike the constructions of my childhood, which were made by adding bits of rock to build up a form resembling a chair, ice presented newer and different challenges. The three chairs constructed required cutting into the ice as found in order to create a place to sit. The resulting forms were not therefore instantly recognizable as chairs in the simple sense of the word, but were rather more sculptural. One of the chairs was like a little speed boat while another became a winged chariot, complete with seat, wings, tail and head.

The hat you see in the photos has another meaning. Also when I was a boy, I had a good friend whose father died accidentally when he fell through the ice while Nordic skiing. He was alone and close to shore, where the ice is thinnest, and with skis firmly fixed was unable to get out. With what may have been his final gesture, he threw his hat onto the dock to let his family know where he was.


The hat has become for me a symbol of loss and thin ice. It communicates both the loving selflessness of my old friend’s father’s gesture and the danger to us all of thinning ice; a sign of both love and death.

By late afternoon high tide had rolled in and the chairs carried out to sea, already beginning to melt beyond recognition. The hat is in my luggage awaiting another day.

Ancient Ground

III

I walk on ancient ground
soft above permafrost
absorbing
what drifts from the south

to the archipelago
cadmium and mercury
bio-diversity

footprints
polar bear, arctic fox, Svalbard reindeer
carbon
remain for years

there are beds of pebbles
on bedrock
- a table top

smoothed by ice
finished
and free under foot

like a filter
exhorbitant
depository of industrial detritus

II

I witness ice absorbed by the sea
feeding her body
of water

warming
current events
on a bed

she curtsies
with the wind
- swoons

by the moon
she rises and falls
over again

she resists -
giving only
on her own terms

no idle tide

Hoefhalveys I

I

Who would have thought that such colour
would grace the cliffs at Hoelfhalveys

not white

but of steel left year ‘round in the yard
leaves left to rust
to mulch in March

I could never have imagined rivules of scree
like the veins of a leaf in autumn
of no particular tree

zinc and iron ochre and copper
tracing contours
of isolation


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Follow the Cape Farewell voyage on the 2010 Expedition blog.

First Watch

David Buckland and I awoke at 3:45 this morning to join first mate, Renske Ritzema, on the morning watch. We hoisted anchor at Sorgfiorden on the island of Friedland to head south through Hinlopenstretet. Our hope was to get through the polar ice that had been drifting northward through the straight, and dogging us for the past several days. The very same ice that nearly trapped us yesterday. To the disappointment of the polar bears, we got away. Full news on other reports.

There was the dimmest light in the sky, as indeed there is all through the night at this time of year. Looking across the horizon, Renske pointed out, one can see where the ice is located, not from seeing the ice itself but by detecting the white reflective band it makes on the skyline.

Within a half an hour I was at the controls of the ship with the entire Cape Farewell team, unawares, slumbering below. It was blissfull; silent and calm. There’s a lot of life on board this boat and it was really wonderful to be in the vastness of the arctic morn with the gang asleep.

She is sweet to control, this vessel. One needs to feel the turnings and compensations of the wheel as she moves about the course, mildly rolling in the morning swell. Finding the way through the broken ice pack adds to the joy, especially when successful.

And successful we were, to a point. The ice pack arrived, first on the horizon, then up close. Soon we were within. Renske took over the controls. Simon, our brilliant and friendly scientist, explains that loose polar ice is moved by a combination of wind and rotation of the earth, the latter causing the pack to drift to the east. The ship’s radar and Renske’s skill guide us through to open water.

But not for long as events turn. Two hours south we encounter the second wave of ice blocking our progress. I learn the patience of polar sailing, as we head back north to the fjord from which we came. Seems we will spend another night at Sorgfiorden with the hope that the disappearing polar ice pack will float past us, thereby allowing our passage tomorrow to future adventures.

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Follow the Cape Farewell voyage on the 2010 Expedition blog.