Backgrounder - International Polar Year: Logistics, Training and Communications Projects

As part of its International Polar Year (IPY) program, the Government of Canada has allocated more than $1.25 million to fund logistics, training and communications projects.

These projects will enhance northern research facilities through support for researchers, promote IPY and raise awareness about the benefits of conducting research for Northern communities and foster greater understanding of the importance of the polar regions within Canada and abroad.

The projects listed below include training, communication and outreach initiatives, as well as funding for new logistics projects in support of Arctic research and emergency preparedness.

Logistics, Search and Rescue Projects

Nunavut Research Institute

The Nunavut Research Institute (NRI) provides logistical support to licensed researchers who use Iqaluit as the base for their research. There has been a rise in the number of researchers using Iqaluit as a staging point for their research during IPY 2007-2008. To accommodate the high demand, NRI has received $223,000 to upgrade laboratories, purchase mobile equipment supplies and health and safety equipment.

Government of Nunavut Emergency Measures Office

The Government of Nunavut has been allocated $287,000 to purchase nine Argo Avengers. The Avenger is an all terrain vehicle that can be fitted with a track for use in snow or muskeg. The Avenger is amphibious, allowing it to cross the many small lakes and streams on the tundra. These vehicles will be stationed at various locations throughout Nunavut to place and monitor fuel caches and support members of local Search and Rescue teams.

Sirmilik National Park

A significant safety issue for researchers in Sirmilik National Park and the surrounding area is the presence of polar bears and the hazards associated with working in their habitat. To help protect the safety of the researchers, $164,000 has been allocated to Parks Canada to increase local availability of equipment, integrate traditional knowledge and technological expertise into a training program and build the capacity of local people to assist in all aspects of polar bear safety including polar bear monitoring, fence installation and education.

Training and Capacity Building Projects

Yukon College Field Course to North Slope

Renewable Resource Management Program, Yukon College
This is a 14-day field course for Yukon College students to visit an IPY research project investigating the impacts of climate change on birds and mammals on the Yukon North Slope. The students will help collect data for this project.

Cowley Lake Studies

Yukon Department of Education
This project involves a field study program for high school students in the Yukon. It will engage students in a scientific monitoring project on Cowley Lake near Whitehorse.

Students on Ice – IPY Arctic Youth Expeditions 2008-2010

Students on Ice Foundation
IPY is funding 10 students per year for three years to take part in the highly successful Students on Ice program. The program provides youth aged 14 to 17 with a greater understanding and appreciation for the Arctic, while inspiring them to continue their studies of the Polar Regions.

The Inuit Cohort: A community of research practice across Canada

University of Ottawa
This project will expand upon the successful Winter Institute funded by Nassivik and Health Canada this past year.  In 2009 and 2010 IPY funding will support the travel of Inuit participants nominated by regional governments and Inuit organizations to attend health research sessions, providing training and new research and graduate training opportunities.

Opening Paradigms for Education – Innu Nation

St. Mary’s University
A training program in Labrador where Innu students in an Environmental Guardians program will receive certification from St. Mary's University, Memorial University and the University of the Arctic.

Northern Village Data Collection System (NVDCS)

Nunavik Research Center, Makivik Corporation
The Northern Village Data Collection System will bring together representatives from 15 communities in Nunavik for training on a web-based data collection system. This will allow users to record their plant and animal species-related observations and improve data management in the region.

Organization of Nunavik Research Centre

Nunavik Research Center, Makivik Corporation
The Nunavik Research Centre holds a wealth of important research materials related to the Nunavik region. This project will involve training staff and organizing the research centre’s resources.

Building local capacity to address climate change in the Great Bear Lake Watershed

Déline Renewable Resource Council
This project will provide training to 24 students from Déline in a multifaceted environmental monitoring training program.  The central goals of this project include increasing the role that Sahtu organizations and residents play in Northern scientific research, integrating scientific and traditional climate change knowledge and enhancing general awareness about the Great Bear Lake and the Sahtu people.

 Healthy Foods North NWT – Training, Communication and Outreach

Government of Northwest Territories, Health and Social Services
Community outreach workers in three communities in the NWT will be trained to complete data collection in their home communities on healthy food choices, skills for cooking and preparing food and knowledge about what constitutes a healthy diet. 

Nunavut Arctic College

The Government of Canada has allocated $200,000 for a Learning Materials Centre in Igloolik. The Centre will prepare and distribute information on Traditional Inuit Knowledge and IPY research products that are culturally relevant and useful to the people of Nunavut in Inuktitut and English.

Circumpolar Young Leaders Program

$100,000 will go toward this leadership development program that provides opportunities for post-secondary students to help promote sustainable development in the North.

Communications Projects

Dempster Highway Natural History Event Series

Friends of Dempster Country Society
The Friends of Dempster Country Society in the Yukon will host six events along the Dempster Highway, Canada’s northernmost highway. Each event will focus on a different aspect of the area’s natural history, connecting this to current IPY scientific research and environmental concerns.

Aquatic Ecology of the Canadian Arctic

Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Aquatic Ecology of the Canadian Arctic will be a comprehensive book, with an accompanying website, that describes the fascinating and important field of Arctic freshwater and marine ecosystems, including the species that inhabit them and the research methods used to study them.

Gwich'in Settlement Regional Atlas: Mapping a Path through Change

Gwich’in Land Use Planning Board
Gwich’in Settlement Regional Atlas:  Mapping a Path through Change will be a regional atlas, a hardcover book that will include important geographic information about the Gwich’in region. It will feature maps, photos, easy to understand scientific information and traditional knowledge.

Arctic Seabirds as Insiders on Climate Change

Meltwater Media
Seabirds have become harbingers of environmental change in the Arctic. This film will document the work by IPY researchers to study these important Arctic birds, as well as the insights of Inuit seabird hunters.

2008 Alianait! Arts Festival – Premiere Performance by Oatiaroi

Iqaluit Music Society and Alianait Arts Festival
Nunavut’s Artcirq will perform Oatiaroi (Wait), a 60-minute theatre production portraying global warming and its impact on the Arctic from an Inuit perspective. The performance incorporates theatre, circus arts and traditional Inuit storytelling.

Arctic Odyssey – Journey to the Top of the World

Science North
Science North is creating Arctic Odyssey – Journey to the Top of the World, an IMAX film that will feature the impacts of climate change on the Arctic. It will also show how Canadians are carrying out world-class science during IPY. It is a celebration of the North as it exists today, reminding us all of the importance of Canada’s polar regions.

Formation of Labrador: Two Windows on the Planet

Memorial University
Formation of Labrador:  Two Windows on the Planet is a project to create a book for children aged 9 to 12, telling the fascinating story of the creation of the polar regions through the world of geology and traditional folklore, with an emphasis on Labrador.

Pan-Arctic Interactive Communications Health Project (TV Series)

National Aboriginal Health Organization and Inuit Tuttarvingat
This project will create a series of TV call-in shows, accompanied by youth web casts, broadcast on Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). The project will involve Dr. Grace Egeland of McGill University, the lead of the IPY Inuit Health Survey Project. The shows will focus on key themes for Aboriginal health and related IPY research.

Arctic Shadows: The Arctic Journeys of RM Anderson (film)

Greyhound Information Services
This documentary film will capture the early 19th century Arctic journeys of Dr. R.M. Anderson, a former chief biologist with the National Museum of Canada and a world renowned expert on mammals of the North. Long overshadowed by his dramatic colleague Vilhajalmur Stefansson, Dr. Anderson’s story is another exciting glimpse into Arctic history.

Long Ago Found Person (Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi) Symposium and Publication

Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi Management Committee/BC Museum
This project will highlight the results of the discovery of ancient human remains at the edge of a melting glacier in British Columbia’s Tatshenshini-Alsek Park. The general public and scientific communities will hear the results of nine years of research, partly funded by IPY, involving experts at eight universities and cultural institutions in Canada and five other countries.

IPY Polar Innovation Week and Canada-Wide Science Fair

Youth Science Fondation
Students will have the opportunity to apply for a $500 research grant through the YSF to create an innovative polar science project and to display their project at regional science fairs in 2010. Polar Innovation Week from March 21-28, 2009 will launch the IPY Canada-Wide Science contest. One student from each province and territory will travel to the Arctic to observe and to conduct their own their own supervised studies. 

IPY Film Festival

The IPY Film Festival will feature the films funded as part of the IPY Program. Following the IPY Film Festival, the IPY films will be taken to Northern communities and across Canada using standardized film format (DVD).

Global TV IPY Video vignettes

Global TV
The project is designed to share knowledge from the North with the rest of Canada and among northern communities by reporting on specific topics on IPY research to be featured in the vignettes.

Contrast between the Poles

A total of $80,000 is being provided for this project which will have two students from Grise Fiord travel with a glaciologist to sample ice cores at the North and South Poles. The students will take part in the Students on Ice voyage to the Antarctic and document their learning experience in a film to be shared with other students across Canada.

Learning in Nunavut through our Earth

The project will receive $200,000 to develop a cyber atlas for Nunavut. The cyber atlas is a catalogued and digitized oral history compilation that will be used to provide an interactive digital means to access spatially referenced data and create new community and web-based learning resources for Nunavut schools. This project is being developed in partnership with Carleton University.