E-mail A Friend Tell a friend about the information found on this page by sending them an e-mail.   Your Name: Your E-mail:   Type an e-mail address, then click add: Add a Personal Message: (Optional)

January/February 2010 issue	In this issue Table of Contents IPY: What is IPY? IPY: Kluane research station IPY: Inuit health IPY: Arctic mercury mystery IPY: Arctic scientist IPY: Future Arctic research IPY: Multimedia The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte Mosaic Book Reviews

Etzelmüller co-created CryoEX to give budding scientists both practical and international experience, as well as a solid footing in cryosphere research.
Photo: Robert van Waarden

• PHOTO ESSAY
• VIDEO
• INTERACTIVE

Cryosphere kid: Young Canadian scientist Robert Way travels to Norway to learn more about his home

Turbulent tundra: Global warming’s impact on Arctic tundra

Crossing the line: Observe changes in the tree line and examine its affect on Canada’s Arctic tundra

A couple of days later, with data collection from Jotunheimen complete, the field party packs itself into two compact vans and heads east into the Norwegian interior. Etzelmüller has established a network of air and ground temperature-monitoring stations stretching hundreds of kilometres across the country, all of which have collected numbers in need of downloading — a perfect task for his eager army of researchers.

The convoy makes a brief stop at a station on the summit of Jetta, a moss-covered bump of a mountain. From there, it’s on to a century-old ski lodge at the foot of Tronfjell, the mountain looming over the village of Alvdal. Unlike Jetta’s rounded peak, Tronfjell’s rises high enough — 1,665 metres — to be inhospitable to vegetation and, at times, people. On the team’s first attempt to reach the summit by way of a steep single-track gravel road, it encounters a mist that limits visibility to about two metres. What’s more, there’s a wind powerful enough to make even breathing difficult, let alone standing. The students head back to the lodge, where Etzelmüller puts them to work packaging their Jotunheimen findings into short presentations for that evening.

The results are what you might expect of student work. Line graphs made by Way and the Danes show lichens growing smaller and rocks getting harder nearer the glacier, but a large number of outliers would have seasoned researchers suspecting flaws of technique rather than natural variability. Still, at CryoEX, it’s the experience that matters most.

For Way, that couldn’t be more true. Late that evening, over beer in one of the lodge’s pine-panelled common rooms, he delays preparations for the next day to sit and consider the value of the program, his short dark hair fashionably ruffled and a band of stubble lining his square jaw. “I came out here with the sense that I wanted this to be the thing that helped me decide what I wanted to do in life,” he says. “If I were back in Ottawa, I would have still been trying to figure out those sorts of questions.”

There’s an invariant sense of calm to Way. At 5-foot-10, with 170 pounds packed into a broad, solid build owing to years as both a goalie and a forward in the highest ranks of minor hockey, he moves across a room or a moraine no faster than necessary. He speaks the same way, without excessive enthusiasm, picking his words carefully and deliberately, as if they’re stone steps across a meltwater stream.

But it all adds up to a precocious sense of efficiency. The future can’t come fast enough for Way. With his course requirements satisfied, he resents that his undergraduate degree isn’t considered complete. Only electives remain, like a first-year English course. With palpable derision, he mentions the prospect of studying poetry.

Within two weeks of meeting him, and with the majority of Way’s semester in Norway still ahead on campus in Oslo, Etzelmüller has already recognized Way’s ambition. “He’s only 20 and a fourth-year student — it’s not normal,” says Etzelmüller. “If he has a goal to achieve, he will achieve that. He has both the capabilities and the background. He’s focused.”

With his sights set on a professorship in studies of the terrestrial cryosphere, Way believes he can make a contribution. “It’s not I feel I’m the integral part, that I’m some sort of missing link,” he says, then stresses the point. “I don’t feel that I’m going to be the tipping point, because I think that would be a little presumptuous. But I feel there are a few things I can contribute that other people wouldn’t.”

One of those things derives from his origins. Way comes from a middle-class family in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, which has a population of about 7,500. For years, his mother Brenda, now a newly elected town councillor, ran the hardware store started by her father. Way’s dad, George, is a crash rescue firefighter who passed along his Inuit heritage. Besides acknowledging that as the reason Labrador’s aboriginal Nunatsiavut Government covers his university tuition, Way doesn’t consider it a defining characteristic.

“It wasn’t something that really mattered,” says Way, who grew up playing hockey with Métis, Inuit and Innu kids. “You mixed with everyone, and it was like, ‘Yeah, I’m Inuit,’ but it’s not something that directly symbolizes who you are. Who you are is Labradorian, because you all have that common background whether you’re Métis, Inuit or Innu.”

His tie to Labrador might make Way’s contribution to polar science unique. One day, his studies complete, he’d like to return home. And his pride in the place comes out in his frustration about how little anyone, including him, knows about it. The Torngat Mountains at Labrador’s northern tip are the site of mainland Canada’s only glaciers east of the Rockies, and he’s not convinced they’ve received enough attention. “Here, in Norway, we’re studying glacier geomorphology all throughout the country,” says Way. “I would love to do this sort of stuff back in Labrador. It would be very interesting.” In other words, for this young person looking to leave his mark in the world of northern research, there may, in fact, be no place like home.