This web-documentary takes place near Resolute Bay, on Cornwallis Island, Nunavut. The landscape around here is a polar desert. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
The Polar Continental Shelf Program is one of the largest and most important research stations and logistics centres in the Canadian high Arctic. (Evan Hall / Canadian Polar Commission)
Situated along the Northwest Passage, the Polar Continental Shelf Program is often a jumping off point for researcher who fly out to more remote field camps throughout the Arctic archipelago. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
In the summer of 2013, the bay was still covered with sea ice until very late in July. This worried the team of marine researchers who had to catch sharks and deploy equipment, for which they needed open water. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
Candle ice floats on a lake near the Polar Continental Shelf program. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
The 24-hour summer sunlight lights up the tundra. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
Purple saxifrage struggles to flower between the rocks. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
Arctic willow, the only tree in the high Arctic, doesn’t grow higher than a few centimetres off the ground. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
An arctic fox takes a nap after running around near the Polar Continental Shelf Program. (Evan Hall / Canadian Polar Commission)
Ken van Rees, a soil scientist and painter from the University of Saskatchewan, collects soil and rock samples to make pigments for painting. (Evan Hall / Canadian Polar Commission)
Steve Kessel, from the University of Windsor, and his team prepare to perform fish surgery along the coast near Resolute Bay. (Evan Hall / Canadian Polar Commission)
Residents from Resolute Bay play at the Polar Continental Shelf Program’s Open House event, an annual event where the research station invites residents from the town to come and learn about what is done here. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
Catherine Girard, a PhD student at Université de Montréal, studies contaminants in country food (fish, caribou, seal, and other foods that are hunted) and how these contaminants are digested by the human body. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
Warwick Vincent, professor at Université de Laval, is a veteran to Arctic research. He is a limnologist, which means he studies lakes. (Katriina O’Kane / Canadian Polar Commission)
Katriina O’Kane visited the Polar Continental Shelf Program in July 2013, to profile scientists and other people involved in the Arctic research community. (Evan Hall / Canadian Polar Commission)
Ever wondered how noise affects marine mammals in the Arctic? Or what glacial ice really looks like?
Profiles from the Arctic is a new web documentary that answers these, and other questions, by giving site visitors a front row seat to the science and scientists working in Canada’s Far North.
The project was put together by Katriina O’Kane and inspired by her experience at the 2012 International Polar Year conference in Montreal.
Conference speakers frequently said that Arctic science needed to be better communicated to the public.
That message was something that stayed with O’Kane long after the conference was over.
“Having worked with scientists I saw how interesting and cool what they were doing was and I really wanted more people to be able to see that,” she said.
Feature Interview
Eye on the Arctic’s Eilís Quinn spoke with Katriina O’Kane to find out more about her web documentary Profiles from the Arctic:
Showcasing the creativity of science
O’Kane travelled to Canada’s High Arctic herself and interviewed 25 different people conducting polar research.
The web documentary went live on March 31st with three profiles. A different one will be added every few weeks until the series is completed.
Site visitors can click on the scientist profile they choose and then can scroll down to discover everything from interviews on research and unexpected encounters with polar bears, to interactive animation and graphic content.
“With scientific work itself you’re always poking around and seeing what happens,” O’Kane says. “And I think I kind of wanted to imitate that a little bit (on the site). It’s up to (site visitors) to discover what they want to discover.
“Science can be very creative too and hopefully that comes across and little bit in the web documentary.”
In the end, O’Kane hopes visitors will come away with a better appreciation of northern issues.
“There’s huge changes going on in terms of the environment but also in terms of development and I think there’s a lot of questions that remain unanswered,” O’Kane says.
“We really need to find answers for (them) before it’s too late.”
To receive an email alert when a new profile is posted to the web documentary, click here
Eilís Quinn is an award-winning journalist and manages Radio Canada International’s Eye on the Arctic news cooperation project. Eilís has reported from the Arctic regions of all eight circumpolar countries and has produced numerous documentary and multimedia series about climate change and the issues facing Indigenous peoples in the North.
Her investigative report "Death in the Arctic: A community grieves, a father fights for change," about the murder of Robert Adams, a 19-year-old Inuk man from Arctic Quebec, received the silver medal for “Best Investigative Article or Series” at the 2019 Canadian Online Publishing Awards. The project also received an honourable mention for excellence in reporting on trauma at the 2019 Dart Awards in New York City.
Her report “The Arctic Railway: Building a future or destroying a culture?” on the impact a multi-billion euro infrastructure project would have on Indigenous communities in Arctic Europe was a finalist at the 2019 Canadian Association of Journalists award in the online investigative category.
Her multimedia project on the health challenges in the Canadian Arctic, "Bridging the Divide," was a finalist at the 2012 Webby Awards.
Her work on climate change in the Arctic has also been featured on the TV science program Découverte, as well as Le Téléjournal, the French-Language CBC’s flagship news cast.
Eilís has worked for media organizations in Canada and the United States and as a TV host for the Discovery/BBC Worldwide series "Best in China."
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this is one of the insightful documentaries on the environment.