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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

Arcticology Science research in the North is inextricably tied to economic development, environmental protection, security and sovereignty.
Photo: Janice Lang, PCSP/NRCan

• PHOTO ESSAY
• VIDEO
• INTERACTIVE

Tools of the trade: See the unique tools Arctic scientists use in the field

Ice research: An insider’s look at Arctic ice research, part 1 and part 2

IPY by the Numbers: Learn more about Canada’s Arctic IPY projects

Grant was also not surprised to learn that Harington was running low on funding. In the recession of the early 1990s, then finance Minister Paul Martin had called for up to 30 percent cuts across the board to balance the federal budget. The cuts had forced the Polar Continental Shelf Program, the government project that paid Grant to fly scientists like Harington in and out of remote field camps, to shut down its western Arctic base at Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T. And renowned scientists, including muskox biologist David Gray, one of Harington’s colleagues at the museum, suddenly found themselves out of a job. Others moved on to less expensive research because they could no longer afford the high cost of travel in the North.

Nearly an entire generation of young northern scientists was lost to Canada in those years. Among the promising prospects, biologist Andrew Derocher moved to Norway, where he became one of the world’s leading polar bear experts. Badly needed upgrades to aging research facilities, including the Kluane Lake Research Station in the Yukon and the Churchill Northern Studies Centre on Hudson Bay in Manitoba, were deferred. Federal funding for research on endangered Arctic animals, such as the Peary caribou, disappeared.

As the millennium drew to an end, the situation hit rock bottom. The Haughton Crater research site on Devon Island was taken over by nasa and the Mars Society, with an operating budget that made most Canadian scientists look like beggars. In 1999, a University of Pennsylvania archaeology team received permission to conduct research at the fossilforest site on Axel Heiberg Island that Canadian James Basinger had been carefully excavating for more than 15 years. As innocent as the gesture may have been, when the better-financed Americans raised a skull and crossbones alongside the Stars and Stripes to mark their camp that summer, it rubbed salt into Basinger’s wounds.

“It tears at the soul to see this happening,” he said as we witnessed the scene that summer. “This puts an end to my work here. But what really worries me is what this is doing to the fossil forest. And what message does it send to other Canadian scientists who have been doing long-term polar research?”