CANADA’S ‘GREATEST LIVING EXPLORER’
At 94, Fred Roots is back from another Arctic expedition, this time with Students on Ice, an organization he helped found 16 years ago. Roots, who’s been called Canada’s greatest living explorer, was the chief geologist on an international expedition to A
Q How many times have you been to Antarctica?
A I must count them sometime. All I can say is that it’s been dozens.
Q What was the purpose of the 1949-52 Norwegian-British-Swedish expedition?
A I was hired as chief geologist to go into the mountains and look at the geology which has basically never been visited before. The underlying question was, did glaciers in Antarctica show the same climate fluctuations that researchers had seen in Europe and I’d seen in Yukon and B.C.? There was no question. We picked up evidence that the glaciers had been bigger. This was the first solid evidence that scientists had that climate change was affecting the glaciers in Antarctica. It wasn’t just local, it was global. The idea has been called global warming and climate change, and it’s now become very political. But it was a completely strange idea at that time. Our purpose for going there was to find what we now call climate change and we found it.
Q Did you have any idea about the significance of the discovery?
A There are people who still think things are not changing. But it’s changing faster now than we ever could have thought possible. With the evidence that we had at that time, we felt that the atmosphere and oceanic system was so massive that it would only change slowly. But you and I know that it’s changing a lot faster than we ever thought possible.
We didn’t know that it would be taken as such an important thing by the politicians and the economists. We were looking at it purely as scientists, for the curiosity aspect. It has significance far beyond what we thought it would.
Q How did you get involved with Students on Ice?
A At the time there were about a dozen Canadian scientists working in Antarctica. But the Treasury Board cut funding for all research taking place outside Canadian territorial waters. At the same time, there were tourism companies that were starting to operate in Antarctica. One was a keen young schoolteacher who had taken his holidays to take tourists to polar regions. So we invited him to one of our meetings and asked, ‘Do you think it’s possible to have the tourism industry to support our scientists’ work in Antarctica?’ This guy turned out to be (Students on Ice founder) Geoff Green. As soon as he heard what we were promoting, he turned the tables on us. He said, ‘No. You’re doing the wrong thing. You’re talking about taking rich, old people who won’t do anything. Why don’t you take high school students? Get young people.’ Geoff turned our committee on its head.
Q Tourism has become such a big industry in the Antarctic. What are your thoughts on that?
A My thoughts are mixed. Certainly, some of the main damage in Antarctica — and even parts of the Arctic — is from tourism. There’s no question about that. One reason is that the places where there is the most wildlife to be seen are also the places where tourists want to go. In some ways we’ve been effective (at controlling the negative effects of tourism), but we can’t stop the juggernaut. There’s lots of money involved.
Q You said you had mixed feelings. What about the positive ones? Are there benefits to tourism?
A There must be, but I can’t think of any (laughs). Clearly, it adds to upgrading our information about the polar regions. There are spectacular pictures that have added to our knowledge. It can do good, but it can also have mixed results because a lot of people want to go there.
Q You were honoured this year with the Explorers Club Medal. You’re in some pretty good company there. What does that mean to you?
A I really don’t know how to answer that. After we came back from our first three years in Antarctica in 1952, I was invited to an annual dinner of the Explorers Club and I had to give a talk. It went OK, and then they asked me if I wanted to join. I had to say no, I’m not a club joiner. It seemed to be rather social. It was all worthwhile, but they like to talk about it. They like to bask in it. I was not interested. Then, somehow, I did one thing after another and finally I got a phone call from New York asking me if I would accept the medal. It wasn’t for any one thing, it was for 50 or 60 years being in a number of untravelled places and having a few ideas.