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the source of his charisma and also the thing that made her want to scream at him. If Erica wanted any
part of Paul, she realized that she had to take all of him. She stayed.
Erica was a big influence on Paul. He sought her advice, and she helped to temper his ferocity. If
she had been around on 6 July 1989, Paul would probably still be at the Survey, and would probably
never have heard of the Snowball Earth. But she wasn't. She was away, and when Paul decided to let
fly, there was no one to caution against it.
He had received an essay that enraged him. Ken Babcock, the new head of the Survey, had sent
the essay to all employees. Babcock was a political appointee, and he had no truck with the academic-
style freedoms of the Survey researchers. He criticized everything that had gone before. This isn't a
university, he said, it's a service to our clients in government and industry. Researchers at the Survey
felt that he talked like a bureaucrat, not a scientist. In his essay, he told them to “get back to basics”.
They should focus on the practical needs of government and industry rather than on esoteric academic
research.
The essay, entitled “The Search for Excellence”, infuriated many of the Survey scientists. They
seethed at the implication that their work was deficient in some way because they were driven by aca-
demic curiosity. How dare Babcock suggest that their work was irrelevant just because there wasn't
an immediate payoff? Many of them despised Babcock and his bureaucratic ways. They believed that
turning the Survey into some kind of glorified consultancy would destroy its fine reputation. But they
all held their peace, except Paul. Paul couldn't help himself. He wrote a memo to all his colleagues,
taking issue with Babcock's entire stance. That might have been all right, had his penchant for sarcasm
not prompted him to add a caustic rider at the end of the memo. “The search for excellence at GSC
[the Survey],” Paul declared, “should begin at the top.”
Paul's memo inevitably found its way into the offices of the local newspaper, the
Ottawa Citizen
.
The
Citizen
's report was immediate and gleeful. “Top Survey Scientist Rebukes Boss”, the headline
interview. Babcock, however, did give an interview, in which he pointed out rather sourly that in the
private sector Paul's memo would have been grounds for dismissal. “He is truly one of our outstanding
national earth scientists,” Babcock told the
Citizen
, which then told the rest of Canada. “I suspect that
his knowledge of the world of politics and management is less well developed.”
Privately, Babcock was furious. He had been personally attacked by a subordinate and now the
whole world knew it. His backhanded compliment in the newspaper was a sure sign that he wanted
Paul out, but Babcock didn't sack Paul—he couldn't. Instead, over the next few years, Paul felt that
he was becoming a nonperson. His funding requests were refused, and he was passed over for all priv-
ileges. He was even turned down when he requested unpaid leave to teach for a semester in the United
States. Nobody was
ever
turned down for unpaid leave. Paul had spent many semesters away before
without difficulty. He began to realize that he'd have to leave, but what he didn't realize at first was
that this would also mean leaving the Arctic. Wherever Paul went in Canada, he quickly discovered,
he would be unable to get funding to finish any work he had started under the Survey's umbrella.
Paul's memo cost him more than he'd ever dreamed.
Today he makes light of it. “I left as I arrived,” he declares, “fired with enthusiasm”.
8
But at the
time he was humiliated, bewildered and hurt. And what hurt more than anything else was being barred
from his beloved Arctic. He desperately wanted to finish the work he had started there. He wanted to
be back, mapping the terrain, hiking across the bleak landscape of the barren land, a place that felt
more like home than anywhere else on Earth. For the second time in his life, Paul was walking away
from something precious to him. He'd done it with the chance of Olympic glory, and now he was do-
