Canada’s biggest Arctic research entity is 10 years ‘young’
Polar Knowledge Canada reaches decade milestone of teaching Canadians about the Arctic
The Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay is celebrating a 10-year milestone as Canada’s largest Arctic research hub. (Photo by Janice Lang, DRDC-DND)
One of North America’s leading Arctic research entities just turned 10 years old.
Or 10 years “young,” as one of its scientists says.
“We’re still growing as an organization,” said David Hik, chief scientist and vice-president of research at Polar Knowledge Canada.
The federal agency was created in 2015 to advance Canada’s knowledge of the Arctic. It was tasked with creating and managing the country’s biggest northern scientific research hub, the Canadian High Arctic Research Station, or CHARS, in Cambridge Bay.
The station was officially completed in 2019, after several years of construction and a North of North-like competition between Cambridge Bay, Pond Inlet and Resolute Bay to be the host community.
Cambridge Bay won out over the two other contenders thanks to good transportation access, said Jeannie Ehaloak, Polar Knowledge Canada’s director of strategic communications. She was a Cambridge Bay hamlet councillor back when the station was first proposed.
The roughly $35-million-a-year operation now employs 57 people, about half of whom are Inuit.
The station has created “economic opportunities” for the hamlet, Ehaloak said, with more restaurants opened and private housing built.
As Arctic sovereignty and security have become the talk of the times in national politics, interest is growing in the work the station does.
“In that context, I think people are increasingly aware that we’re here,” Hik said, adding that Arctic infrastructure projects cannot be implemented without the knowledge that can only be gained through long-term research.
And CHARS’ work in the past decade can be helpful to meet this moment.
On boats or snowmobiles or through satellite research, the station’s staff examines the condition of the permafrost, sea and freshwater ice to determine how it will impact roads and large infrastructure.
That information could be used in planning what Prime Minister Mark Carney has called “nation-building” infrastructure projects like Grays Bay road and port and the Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link in Nunavut.
They also monitor the environment and the population of different Arctic animals, making Cambridge Bay a place with the best-documented diversity of Arctic species, Hik said.
Polar Knowledge Canada “is the organization that could help to ensure that we have a long-term commitment to providing the relevant information to inform our decisions,” he said.
But the Arctic region is huge, and scientific research cannot happen in just one place. So as part of its work, Polar Knowledge Canada helps bring in researchers from different corners of Canada and the world.
In recent years, it has collaborated with scientists from the U.K. and across North American research stations. Its annual $7-million grant program helps fund Arctic guardian programs and smaller Inuit-led climate initiatives across Canada.
“That’s really at the heart of what we’re trying to do — prioritizing the work that’s important to people in the North, to communities and Indigenous organizations,” Hik said.
“So we’re really looking forward to the next 10 years and beyond.”
I think it is great that we have this, and it is nice to see some employment numbers in here (would’ve have been nice to see a regional breakdown). However, after six years of operation, what has been done? How many scientists come up and use it? How does it compare to other polar research stations across the Global North (are there others?)? It’s easy to say what the budget is for operations and programming. What CHARS is accomplishing is a different story. I’d like to believe CHARS has tremendous potential. This article doesn’t tell that story.
This place makes the average GN office look like a model of efficiency. Tens of millions of dollars wasted annually on academic vanity projects of a handful of scientists who have figured out how easy it is to access money when Canada’s North is your area of research.
Polar Knowledge. Weren’t they the geniuses busy studying how to generate electricity from food scraps while the north has the highest electricity costs in the country – let alone the highest food costs?
CHARS is a white elephant that, like Ottawa, is entirely ignorant and dismissive of the north’s real needs in favour of politically motivated photo-ops designed for a southern audience.
WHAT a waste of tax dollars this place has become, everything in it sits idle, supposed to have great learning equipment for students, how is it utilized? the over turn of staff is crazy, when they nut bars whom shouldn’t even been in charge of anyone running the place. And some current jobs are just for show, we know who has those jobs are. (Token townies) you who you are! shut it down and turn it into a healing facility, you have the housing next to it, that can be temp housing for families to heal together and learn from other families. make real use of it for NUNAVUT!!
I couldn’t agree more. All the best of equipment and facilities, just sitting mostly empty and unused. As for the local employment, I was amazed at seeing the names of some of the people hired considering their previous work history. But it’s all about your last name and who you’re related to who is, or was, considered powerful. Seriously some of the guides entrusted to keep the science folks safe are hard core stoners who can’t go an hour without a fix.
LOL, one of their last community rep was to a “token” drunk kid, with absolutely no job experience running a community rep program, Like really that whom you choose!
LOL, CBC just did a story on this place, and it looked pretty empty?
It is easy to criticize something that got off to a rocky start mostly due to the pandemic.
The Federal government researched things up here long before they opened this facility. They have had PCSP going since the 50’s. And, they spent serious coin too – $150M on International Polar Year alone. In years past, all this work happened with hardly a local involved, with next to no local knowledge of what they were studying, why and what they found out. The improvements PKC has made in this area can and should be celebrated.
The idea about conducting basic scientific research is that a larger body of general knowledge will support further discoveries and work that will over time improve the human condition. Nobody should be under any illusions that basic scientific research conducted Canada is going to immediately result in some great public benefit for us up here. That is completely unrealistic.
It can also tell you what not to do. If someone in Ottawa has the bright idea to fund biomass plants in the Arctic, it is very helpful to know that they tried it and it either didn’t work, or didn’t work well enough. Not wasting money on biomass reactors might save us all tens of millions sometime in the future.
What is realistic, and what does indeed regularly happen in the research world is that 10 or 20 years from now, someone is going to point to a research paper written today at PKC and say that it was foundational in helping them do something cheaper and better up here, or realizing that they could do this or that.
Ottawa and Gatineau’s loss is Cambridge Bay’s gain. If PKC could dislodge even one egghead or bureaucrat living and working down there to live up here, it is welcome progress.
While the criticism is valid, insofar as there’s any justification at all for a northern university, this should be the start of it. It should be oriented toward northern needs such as geology and engineering and absolutely not for time and money-wasting social crap studies.
Well there goes my dream of getting a PHD in “Sovereignty” at the new ITK university in Iqaluit
Wondering if the biggest door have been used yet if I remember I think it was like 40 foot long, that is pretty huge door now I wonder if it has been used yet. I’ve explored the inside before back in 2020 I also wonder if Cambridge bay students use it for like some activities to learn about that place or is there any local people working there.