The Ice-Melt Canary

'There's the midnight sun, the incredible ice formations, the purity and colour of the water, there's a seal swimming off the boat right now'.

'There are narwhals, beluga whales, musk ox, all these mythical creatures.  Then there are these amazing visual effects like the northern lights, Fata Morgana, all sorts of crazy sunbows, rainbows of white light ... It's like you entered a parallel universe'.  Nicolas Peissel of Montreal

Montreal, however, is not where Mr. Peissel is viewing all these exotic frigid-atmosphere phenomena.  He embarked on an expedition through the Northwest Passage with his cousin from the U.S. Mogan Peissel and their colleague and friend, Swede Edvin Buegren, to prove something.  In their 31-foot fibreglass boat they have navigated through the Northwest Passage, accomplishing a feat that many before them for the last several hundred years have attempted, to little avail.

They set out three months ago, starting in Newfoundland, through to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic to prove, through their experiences, that Climate Change is real.  Routes like the McClure Strait have opened, a historical anomaly in a traditionally frozen landscape.  In the winter of the mid-1880s, Robert McClure himself had no such luck.  He decided to enter the Arctic waters in yet another search for John Franklin undertaken by the British Admiralty.

'Away he went, into the grinding confusion of the pack.  A tongue of ice, solid as granite, blocked their way.  With a strong following breeze blowing, McClure ordered every shred of canvas up and then boldly turned the ship's prow toward the very centre of the obstacle.  The Investigator shuddered to a near standstill, the masts trembling so violently they seemed about to shake the ship to pieces.  Then, suddenly, the ice split under the impact and they were through into open water.

'It required forty men in five boats to tow the Investigator around Point Barrow, an exhausting haul.  Now they entered uncharted waters.  Soon McClure could see the permanent polar pack ninety miles to the north, a stupendous, glittering wall of white, the growth of ages.  He had never seen anything like it in Baffin Bay or in the straits of the eastern Arctic.'*

Robert McClure was a determined man.  He had served under other well-known Arctic explorers on various expeditions and he was a seasoned seafarer.  He had luck where others had not and became convinced that he was being sheltered by a higher power; Providence, at the very least.  He brought his men and his ship through the main channel northeast of Banks Island, that would later be named for him as McClure Strait.

The three modern-day Arctic adventurers crossed the northernmost route of the Northwestern Passage, connecting Baffin Bay to the Arctic Ocean.  'There's no reason why we should have been able to do that' said Nicolas Peissel over a satellite telephone connection.  At any other time in the history of the Arctic that would have been impossible.  The McClure Strait representing the last stretch of land-bound water before the Beaufort Sea would have been iced in completely.

'If we get hit by a piece of ice, it will put a gaping hole into the boat', he said, speaking of navigating the boat through 55-kilometre-an-hour winds and waves cresting at four metres.  The waves, said Peissel, were packed with sharp pieces of ice.  On reaching McClure Strait they received an advisory from the Canadian Ice Service, an updated ice map and a warning not to 'attempt to cross because ice from north was pushing down on the strait.'

'But it was our only window.  So we made the decision to push through.  We wrote them back and said, 'Thank you, we understand the risks.  Please provide us with updates for the next 48 hours.'  The crew of three in fact had no sleep for the next 48 hours, the passage they sailed was narrow and dangerous, with rock on one side, ice on the other which threatened to trap them as it did Robert McClure, in his day, forcing him and his men to over-winter where they were.

Their mission, to prove that climate change is occurring, that millions on millions of gallons of fresh water is melting from the ice caps into the ocean, changing everything about us.  'The Arctic is the canary in the cage that tells us what's happening to the rest of the world', cautioned Peissel.

 *The Arctic Grail, The quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909, Pierre Berton