Personal Beginnings - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 6

Our two sons, Dáithí and Scellig, were born in Vancouver. After many years living and
working in Nova Scotia, the Arctic and Ottawa, we now have a home in retirement on a
small island in the Salish Sea. On a clear day, from the windows of our house, we can see
Vancouver and the forest that surrounds the university. Hidden in those trees is the little
church in which we were married.
KnightInletisnottheArctic, butmyresearch inevitably ledmenorthoncethedoctor-
ate wascompleted in1977.Ispentthenextthree yearsasabiological oceanographer work-
ing mainly between Greenland, Baffin and Ellesmere islands and Lancaster Sound. That
was the end of my experience as “a bench and field scientist”. For the rest of my career, I
worked as a manager of Arctic environmental science programmes. Initially, the scope was
restricted to the Canadian Arctic. However, Arctic science is incredibly expensive and the
topics of interest have no respect for international boundaries. Therefore, as time passed,
the work took on ever-growing levels of circumpolar cooperation and I was soon also in-
volved in intergovernmental actions to protect the Arctic and global environments.
Those of us given these roles are very fortunate. We could gaze at the landscape of
interdisciplinary Arctic environmental knowledge as it evolved over the past 35 years. We
could see emerging issues on the Arctic's overall health and do our best to set up interna-
tional cooperation andfundingtomovethescience frontiersforward.Perhapsmostimport-
antly, we were placed in the privileged positions of bringing knowledge on the deteriorat-
ing Arctic environmental situation to circumpolar and global political levels and to argue
for governmental mitigation.
Despite the huge expansion of Arctic environmental knowledge, very little has penet-
rated beyond the small circle of Arctic specialists. At science planning meetings over the
last few years, the challenge has been thrown out many times to the dwindling band that
can trace a history back to the 1970s: “You people should write a topic.” Well, this is one
response.
This topic is not an intellectual review of the last 40 years of Arctic environmental
science. Neither is it a summary of Arctic international environmental cooperation. What
it contains is a very personal selection (almost a memoir) of some key developments and