Working in pairs, divers from Parks Canada’s Canada Goose

How Jim Balsillie plans on selling the North

Jim Balsillie, the founder of BlackBerry, has a curiosity that evolved into an obsession and his Arctic Research Foundation. (Photo Illustration by KC Armstrong and Richard Redditt; Hair and make up by GianLuca Orienti/Judy Inc; Prop styling by Rachel Wine)From a few hundred metres in the air, the 28 person military cheap Canada Goose camp pitched on the frozen Queen Maud Gulf looks like pepper grains spilled on a white tablecloth. The view at sea level only heightens the Arctic isolation. Snow covered ice stretches to the horizon in all directions; a stiff wind whips the canvas tents and gnaws at exposed skin. The temperature is 31 C with wind chill, but somehow it feels colder.

Inside one of the tents, a triangular hole has been cut into the two metre thick sea ice. Next to it, a brown cocoa mat has been laid along each side to prevent slips. Working in pairs, divers from Parks Canada’s Canada Goose Parka underwater archaeology unit and the Royal Canadian Navy plunge 10 m below the surface to explore the wreck of HMS Erebus, one of two Victorian era bomb ships that British naval explorer Sir John Franklin and his 128 men sailed into the Northwest Passage in 1845, never to be seen by European eyes again.

The quiet is broken by the crackle of a radio, followed by the hollow rasp of a diver sucking in a breath. He asks whether anyone has measured a table leg found lying amid the ship’s well preserved wooden timbers. “That likely came from Franklin’s cabin,” explains Marc Andr Bernier, the avuncular head of canada goose deals the Parks Canada underwater archaeology team, as he stares at live video feeds of the dive on a monitor. Other artifacts spotted include “six pounder” cannons and rivets that once held copper sheathing to the hull.

More from MacleanThe hard math of Alberta’s electionEyewitness to disaster on EverestWhy it’s time to say bye bye to buybacksWalking the fiscal talk: Was the Ontario budget credible?New allegations surface against ballet photographer Bruce MonkProfessional divers aren’t the only ones swimming here. One day earlier, a shivering Jim Balsillie, the former co CEO of Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, stripped to his underwear and jumped into the freezing water and back out again part of a Navy Arctic ritual. Balsillie has been a key player in the Franklin hunt through his Arctic Research Foundation. He provided the underfunded Parks Canada team with a research vessel and used his Ottawa connections to secure support of other government departments, including the Navy, Canadian Coast Guard, Canadian Hydrographic Service and even the Prime Minister’s Office.

Balsillie is the first to admit canada goose coats he’s no “Franklinophile.” Rather, he sees the search, and the considerable public attention it has generated, as a springboard to achieve broader Arctic goals: securing Canadian sovereignty in a vast and relatively uninhabited land. His vision involves forging a series of ad hoc partnerships between governments, industry and scientists not unlike the ones that found Erebus all aimed at increasing Canada’s presence above the Arctic Circle, drawing more canada goose visitors and jobs. “I’m interested in a co op idea in the North,” says Balsillie, dressed head to toe in a naval uniform, gold bars on his shoulders. (He’s an honorary Navy captain.) Canada is a big country with limited government resources, he says, “so you have to canada goose replica find another way to move canada goose clearance sale the ball forward.”

As fate would have it, Balsillie’s efforts to change how business is done in the Far North comes just as the Arctic’s national and strategic importance is raised to a level not seen in years. Warming global temperatures and receding sea ice have resurrected centuries old talk about the Northwest Passage, with the Danish bulk carrier Nordic Orion completing the first commercial transit two years ago. Russia’s newly bellicose attitude, meanwhile, has put Arctic security back on the agenda and Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made his “northern strategy,” complete with summer tours heavy with photo ops, a political priority. More importantly, Balsillie has forged a close relationship with Rear Admiral John Newton, the commander of the Navy’s Atlantic fleet, who is in the process of plotting the service’s return to the Arctic, once $3.5 billion worth of Arctic offshore patrol ships begin arriving in 2018.

Canadians’ initial reaction may be to write off canadian goose jacket the whole exercise as a misguided legacy project on Balsillie’s part. It’s a gargantuan undertaking that’s normally laid at the feet of governments, and there are no guarantees it will work. At the same time, Balsillie’s reputation Canada Goose online as one of the country’s greatest entrepreneurs has been tarnished by BlackBerry’s collapse, as well as his failed bids to buy a NHL hockey team. But in the High Arctic none canada goose clearance of that matters much. Here, locals are far more interested in Balsillie’s unusual drive canada goose black friday sale and seemingly Canada Goose Online genuine interest in the North and its people so much so that one of his nagging concerns during the logistically challenging ice dives was whether a free community dinner hosted Followers us by his foundation in the tiny hamlet of Cambridge Bay (population 1,400) would get people out on a Friday night. He needn’t have worried. The elders honoured him with a name in the local dialect: Ayuittuk, or “Man who gets things done.”

View of the dive site in the eastern Queen Mud Gulf as seen from helicopter. (Photograph by Chris Sorensen)Sitting across the aisle from one another, Balsillie and Newton are swapping stories as Balsillie’s chartered Falcon 10 jet zooms through the clouds toward Cambridge Bay, on the southern coast of Victoria Island. After touching down, the two men are whisked to a nearby Cold War era DEW (distant early warning) Line facility where military planners are coordinating this year’s Operation Nunalivut, an Arctic military exercise held annually since 2007, which is providing the heavy lifting behind the ice dives on Erebus. That includes a massive airlift of equipment everything from tents and diving gear to rations and frozen blocks of potable water to the campsite, where a makeshift runway has been built on the ice. The next day, Balsillie and Newton would be flown by helicopter Canada Goose Outlet to the dive camp, about an hour’s flight due east across the frozen gulf, and Balsillie would become one of very few civilians, other than the Parks Canada divers, to witness the event first hand.

The scene at the camp is something to behold a true feat of man over nature. Planes and helicopters come and go on the makeshift ice runway. Generators provide electricity and power Internet connections. Support staff heat bagged rations in huge pots of water to turn them into something resembling food. Underwater, divers carefully manoeuvre around the wreck, illuminated by lights hung underneath the ice, and measure debris and artifacts with folding rulers. There are plans, time permitting, to take a 360 degree image of Erebus’s interior using a laser scanner. If human remains are found, there’s a strict protocol that requires work to stop until the British, who own the ship, are notified. Bernier, for one, says he got a Canada Goose Jackets chill when he saw a sailor’s old leather boot. “When you can link objects to human beings, that’s when it really hits home it’s not about the ship, it’s about the people on the ship.”

For the Parks Canada archaeologists, it’s a rare opportunity to dive on an immaculately preserved shipwreck canada goose outlet store locations at a time of year when simply surviving on the ice would be tricky. They hope to glean clues ideally paper journals or early photographs, known as daguerreotypes that will help explain what, exactly, happened to Franklin and his men. More than a century of searches have revealed little. Erebus and Terror were beset in ice off the northwest coast of King William Island in 1846. Franklin and several crewmen died the following year. The rest of the sailors later abandoned the ship in a desperate bid to walk south to the mainland, with subsequent expeditions turning up bits nd pieces of the ill fated march, including human bones that showed signs of cannibalism.

Communicating with diver and monitoring progress, air supply, helmet cam, etc. (Royal Canadian Navy)Ryan Harris, who has led the search for Parks Canada, says swimming around the wreck and peering inside offered sobering insights into what Franklin’s men must have gone through. “They must have just been crawling over one another particularly during these long, harrowing winter months, with the winds howling outside and perpetual darkness. The ship would have been chock a block full of sailors, with their perspiration and condensation, and they would have been on half rations. It would have been a difficult time.”

Balsillie, who spent a night at the camp, says he’s often struck by the similarities between Franklin’s day and our own. While technologies have improved, the Northwest Passage remains relatively uncharted compared to other areas of the planet. Indeed, one of the rationales for committing so many government resources to last year’s search, the full cost Canada Goose Coats On Sale of which has never been disclosed, but no doubt runs in the tens of millions, was using the data about the sea floor to update navigational charts. It’s also clear, based on a cursory glance of the surroundings, that the chasm between the resourceful Inuit and technology dependent outsiders remains nearly as wide as it was in 1845.

qamutiik, the heavy wooden sled pulled behind a canada goose store snowmobile or dog team, using nothing more than his hands and thin piece of blue nylon rope. “I have to change the ropes every two weeks or so,” he says, referring to the unique construction method that’s designed to spare the sleds from being rattled to pieces as they bounce across the ice. He was among the first to arrive at the dive site after travelling by snowmobile for about nine hours across the sea ice from Gjoa Haven, a community of 1,200 on the southeastern tip of King William Island. As he works, another ranger whips up a fresh batch of bannock, a type of flat quick bread that he cuts into small chunks and serves with lunch in the mess tent. Jackie Ameralik, for example, is repairing aqamutiik, the heavy wooden sled pulled behind a snowmobile or dog team, using nothing more than his hands and thin piece of blue nylon rope. “I have to change the ropes every two weeks or so,” he says, referring to the unique construction method that’s designed to spare the sleds from being rattled to pieces as they bounce across the ice. He was among the first to arrive at the dive site after travelling by snowmobile for about nine hours across the sea ice from Gjoa Haven, a community of 1,200 on the southeastern tip of King William Island. As he works, another ranger whips up a fresh batch of bannock, a type of flat quick bread that he cuts into small chunks and serves with lunch in the mess tent. Still warm and studded with raisins, it is the only freshly prepared food on the menu.

The skills gap isn’t lost on Newton, who sees the dive on Erebus as a highly publicized training exercise for his sailors. “This is what killed Franklin,” he says. “It’s hard for us. It’s an abandoned area of the Canadian North and an ice dive through very thick ice. And, unlike [past Arctic exercises], this one shows far more collaboration that leads to more effectiveness, should something actually happen.”

Removing ice block for the dive site (Royal Canadian Navy)Balsillie was first bitten by the Arctic bug in 2008, back when he was still co CEO of RIM (which was renamed BlackBerry in 2013), one of the most powerful tech companies on the planet. At the urging of Peter Mansbridge, another Arctic buff, Balsillie and friend Tim MacDonald flew around the Arctic archipelago and dropped in on remote communities and scientific research facilities. “I wanted to see the science camps,” Balsillie says, ever the tech nerd. Yet, like so many others, he was also swept off his feet by the Arctic’s austere beauty. Asked to explain what canada goose coats on sale he found so compelling, Balsillie waxes poetic about the “infinite colours” of an Arctic summer, when lichens crawl across the rocky landscape, and the “existential signals of beauty and force” of a frigid Arctic winter, when ocean and land are rendered indistinguishable. Senses are further heightened, he says, by the knowledge that, in such an inhospitable environment, “death is right around the corner.”

What started as a trip of curiosity quickly became an obsession. While other millionaire CEOs might prefer sailboats and tropical climates, Balsillie says he’s 2018 canada goose outlet comfortable tramping around the permafrost in a fur trimmed parka. He even calls the Arctic buy canada goose jacket “my Florida.” The vast region no doubt stirs his patriotic side buy canada goose jacket cheap as well. This, after all, is a man who wasn’t content to simply buy a hockey team. He wanted to move it back to Canada. He’s also someone whose philanthropy has a distinct public policy focus, having helped to found both the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Balsillie School for International Affairs.

Though Franklin was always playing in the background on these early trips “It’s part of the legend of the whole area,” says MacDonald, who runs the electrical and auto parts supply company Ideal Supply in Listowel, Ont., it took a chance sighting in 2009 to really get Balsillie’s competitive juices flowing. He recalls flying in a helicopter, low and fast, over the western coast of King William Island when he spotted an icebreaker with Russian markings near Victory Point, where Franklin’s two ships rst became trapped and were ultimately abandoned. Later, on that same trip, while standing on the bow of the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St Laurent, he mused that Canada should be the one to find Erebus and Terror not some deep pocketed foreign explorers. He would have to hurry.

In 2010, the luxury “yacht” Octopus, owned by Microsoft co founder Paul Allen, turned heads when it glided into the waters of Pond Inlet, a small village on the northern shore of Bafn Island. The 126 m ship boasts seven decks with room for 22 guests and 50 crew, as well as a glass bottom pool that transforms into a dance floor handy when you’re a billionaire who likes to throw an exclusive Hollywood bash every year at the Cannes International Film Festival. More than a party boat, however, the Octopus is also a sophisticated research and exploration vessel outfitted with two helicopter pads (and helicopters), a submarine and a remotely operated underwater vehicle. Back in March, Allen made headlines when he discovered the Japanese canada goose outlet toronto factory battleship Musashi, which sank off the coast of the Philippines in 1944.

It’s not clear whether Allen or his family had an interest in searching for Franklin’s ships, although Octopus has apparently made several trips through the Northwest Passage over the past few years. A spokesperson for the reclusive billionaire said that, while “the technology needs are varied based on the parameters of expeditions and search, the same research based approach Mr. Allen and his team of researchers used with the Musashi can be https://www.canadagoosejacket-outlet.ca applied to other expeditions, such as the Franklin.” Others note that just about everyone who braves the ice floes of the central Arctic ends up ruminating about the lost Franklin vessels, if not jumping into a Zodiac and going ashore to walk the flat beaches Canada Goose sale in search of Franklin artifacts. At any rate, the point is: there was another tech tycoon with a taste for underwater archaeology in the area.