The program that gave Canada’s northern scientists their start
A CHANGING ARCTIC MEANS THE NORTHERN SCIENTIFIC TRAINING PROGRAM HAS NEVER BEEN MORE CRUCIAL
IN THE 1950s, Canada faced an urgent need for northern scientists, as rapid change, driven by world events and domestic pressures for development, swept across the Arctic. With the Cold War in full swing, the new Distant Early Warning Line stations were scanning the Arctic skies for Soviet bombers, and the Canadian military was learning how to defend the North. New mines were springing up and government administration was moving north. Northern science was considered crucial to these activities, but it was in short supply and astronomically expensive. One of the federal public servants working on the problem was Arctic expert Graham Rowley, a former explorer and archeologist who had developed a lifelong passion for the North and close friendships with Inuit. Rowley knew that part of the solution lay in motivating students to build their careers around the North. To encourage this, Rowley and his colleagues launched the Northern Scientific Training Program in 1962, under the wing of what was then the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. The program helps graduate students in the physical, social and life sciences with Arctic or Subarctic travel and living expenses. Among those assisted by the NSTP in its first few years was Donat Savoie, an anthropology student at Université de Montréal. In 1967, he travelled to Kangiqsualujjuaq, Nunavik, where he lived with an Inuit family who welcomed him into their household and community. He went on to a distinguished career in northern affairs and played an instrumental role in the development of Inuit self-government in Nunavik. Pippa Seccombe-hett, a University of British Columbia botany student, went north for the first time in 1995 on an NSTP grant. “That northern experience shaped my career choice entirely,” says Seccombe-Hett, now vice president of research at Aurora College, in Inuvik, N.W.T. By assisting more than 12,000 students, the NSTP (now administered by Polar Knowledge Canada) helped turn Canada into a powerhouse of northern research. Nearly all of Canada’s northern scientists, and many others working in northern fields for governments and Indigenous or other organizations, got their first northern experience through an NSTP grant. Today, with climate change and other pressing issues affecting the North, the need for new knowledge is as urgent as it was six decades ago. Each year, with the NSTP’S help, students from across the country, including the North, fan out across Arctic Canada to help build that knowledge. It’s a safe bet that tomorrow’s northern science superstars are among them.