Becoming a geographical scientist: oral histories of Arctic fieldwork

Trans Inst Br Geogr

NS 33 548–565 2008ISSN 0020-2754 © 2008 The Author.Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2008

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Becoming a geographical scientist: oral histories of Arctic fieldwork

Richard C Powell

This paper examines the development of a geographical sensibility amongst field scientists involved in the Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP) during the late 1950s and early 1960s. This is achieved by using oral histories collected from scientists and other field personnel. These oral testimonies reveal a number of important issues for historians of geography. These include the interrelation of scientific practices in the field and the association of an interdisciplinary stance towards Arctic science with a particular understanding of geographical identity. It appears that the community of actors taking vocational and professional meaning from the practice of geography is much larger than is usually considered to be the case. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for debates about disciplinary identity and belonging in geography.

key words

Arctic-Canada history of geography oral histories

fieldwork geographical science Polar Continental Shelf Project

Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZTemail: [email protected]

revised manuscript received 6 March 2008

In those days everybody was a geographer. You know,even the people who weren’t. They all thought likethat. (Interview with Bea Alt 2002)

I seldom admit to being a geographer nowadays.(Eyles 2001, 41)

Introduction

There has never been general acceptance as tothe process of becoming a geographer. Unlike somedisciplinary training structures, geography has neveragreed upon coalescing paradigms or intellectualboundaries. Of course, many geographers will defendcommon themes, such as an appreciation for theimportance of spatiality or human–environmentinteractions, as somehow holding together anotherwise disparate community of practitioners.For others, initiation into geography is simply aby-product of the development of professional andinstitutional affiliations. If geography is anythingfor such scholars, it is a discipline that toleratesinvestigations into particular research questions.But was it always thus? Have there been episodes

in the contested histories of our discipline whendifferent conceptions of geographical skills andimaginaries have existed? These questions lie at theheart of the concerns of this essay.

In recent discussions amongst historians of thediscipline, there have been attempts to recover pastactivities and bygone practitioners. Chris Philo, forexample, has confessed to his fascination for the‘musings of past and often relatively forgottengeographers’ (2001, 45). Similarly, Charles Withershas investigated the connections between biographyand memory, stating that there ‘is considerablepotential to consider . . . how and why certain figuresin geography’s past have been remembered andnot others’ (2004, 332). In this paper, I argue thatrecovering the voices of these unremembered geo-graphers can reveal important dimensions of theshape and meaning of previous geographical practices.

In what follows, I consider issues of disciplinaryidentity by using oral histories conducted withpost-war geographical scientists in Canada. DuringCanadian Arctic fieldwork in the 1950s and 1960s,many of these scientists developed or otherwisemaintained a sense of geographical identity that

Becoming a geographical scientist

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NS 33 548–565 2008ISSN 0020-2754 © 2008 The Author.

Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2008

many commentators today would not acknowledgeor perhaps even recognise. But as Withers argues

What geography was – and is – at certain times andparticular locations derives its meaning from the way itbelongs to discourses and practices

that are taken to begeographical

. (Withers 2006a, 725, my emphases)

A systematic investigation is undertaken here ofthe connections between field science in the Arcticand a developing geographical imagination inCanada. Relatively little has been written aboutthe histories of the discipline in Canada, althoughTrevor Barnes (2007) has provided a recent accountthat stresses the importance of the role of Federalagencies. This neglect of past geographical practicesin Canada is surprising, given the central role ofgeography in the national imagination (Powell2005). This paper seeks to show that the com-munity of those who conceptualised themselvesto be geographers could be far bigger than is con-ventionally assumed to be the case. I argue thatdebates about the membership of the ‘communitiesof practice’ involved in geographical scienceexpanded during the post-1945 period.

1

The con-tributions of geographical scientists who did notpursue conventional university careers, but whocontinued to practise ‘geography’, are frequentlyforgotten through the retrospective delineation ofdisciplinary cartographies.

2

But it would appearthat a number of scientists undertaking fieldworkin the Canadian Arctic still established vocationalmeaning through, what

they

understood as, thepractice of geography.

The biographical stories will be outlined of indi-viduals trained as geographical and environmentalscientists who participated in fieldwork with theGovernment of Canada’s Polar Continental ShelfProject during the late 1950s and 1960s. The historiesthat are detailed help expand the membership ofthe community of practitioners that constituted thegeographical sciences during this period. Althoughmany of these individuals retained close links tothe geographical establishment in Canada andBritain, others pursued careers in government andpolicy institutions. That the majority then becamecampaigners for a particular form of geographicalimagination, to be developed

through

fieldwork, isof archival note. Notwithstanding the growth ofinterest in the epistemic peculiarities of fieldworkover the past decade, the techniques, practices andrituals of the geographical sciences have yet toenjoy full historical and philosophical examination.

3

These stories thus contribute to histories of the fieldsciences developed by geographers (Driver 2001;Naylor 2002), by demonstrating the importancegranted to previous field experience by practitionersin completely different epistemic registers.

These issues are of further significance becausethey illustrate some of, what Hayden Lorimer hastermed in another context, ‘geography’s “smallstories”‘ (Lorimer 2003b, 197; Withers 2005). Theyreveal important dimensions of geography’s storiesthat circulate outside standard narratives of disciplin-ary development. These instances of the emergenceof a geographical identity amongst individuals lostto disciplinary histories are, moreover, important ontheir own terms. As Lorimer suggests, geographicalpractices can also have profound significance ‘onpersonal and intimate terms’ (Lorimer 2003b, 214).As the oral testimonies will suggest, these fieldpractitioners now reflect upon these practices ashaving important consequences in their individualbiographies. For such scientists, geography became,in some small form, a ‘vocation to life’ (Buttimer1983, 16).

Before introducing this material, however, it isnecessary to discuss biographical approaches to thehistory of geography and the potential contributionof oral history therein.

Remembering geographies – biographies of small stories

Sometime when I was in my thirties my former tutorand MA supervisor, Walter Freeman, asked me if I readmuch biography, to which the answer was no. Hisresponse was ‘You will as you get older’ – and he wasright! Biography is now a staple in my reading matter.( Johnston 2001, 371)

In the short essay drawn from above, Ron Johnstonbemoans the slow death of geographical biography.At the turn of the twenty-first century, according toJohnston, there were

few full biographies of important scholars, [and] evenfewer autobiographies[.] . . . Fewer obituaries are beingpublished in the major journals (indeed, some editorsare opposed to them), and the future history of our dis-cipline is being impoverished. ( Johnston 2001, 372)

From our vantage point a few years later, it wouldseem that Johnston’s fears were unfounded. Withinthe past half decade or so, there has been a ‘bio-graphical’ turn in histories of geography (Withers2006b; Thomas 2004).

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Anne Buttimer (1983), in the collection entitled

The practice of geography

, first drew the attention ofgeographers to

auto

biographical stories. Buttimerpresented ‘stories about the practice of geography– individuals telling about their own experiencesand the contexts in which their life journeysunfolded’ (1983, 2). For Buttimer, autobiographyboth supplemented conventional archival appro-aches and revealed a number of commonalities inthe development of a ‘geographical sense’ (1983, 4).Drawing from time-geography and humanist geo-graphy, Buttimer outlined this geographical sensi-bility as involving sensory perception, imaginativeengagement with maps and books, and affectivebonds with places and people.

This inspired accounts that understood geographyas both a field of inquiry and an intellectual vocation(e.g. Mead 1983; Gould 1985). A growing numberof geographers have thus begun to provide theirown autobiographical commentaries. Pamela Mosshas brought together a collection containing essaysby a diverse set of geographers including AnneButtimer, John Eyles and Ian Cook (Moss 2001a2001b; Buttimer 2001; Eyles 2001; Cook 2001). Thelate Peter Gould compiled a set of reflections on hislife, career and ‘sense of calling’ to geography(Gould 1999, 209). Johnston (2007a) himself tookthe opportunity of a symposium around his classic

Geography and geographers

to make a number of bio-graphical reflections. A number of autobiographicalinterviews have recently appeared with leadinggeographers such as Doreen Massey, Michael Storperand Denis Cosgrove on the occasion of the Hettner-Lectures (Freytag and Hoyler 1999; Hoyler

et al.

2004;Freytag and Jöns 2006). Still other geographers, suchas Richard Symanski, have used autobiography toexpress iconoclastic attitudes and settle scores withthe geographical mainstream (Symanski 2002).

Perhaps the growth of interest in biographicalwritings reflects the twilight of the careers of anumber of distinguished geographers, many ofwhom came of age, in disciplinary terms, duringthe university expansions across the UK and NorthAmerica in the 1960s. And these individuals are noweager to have their stories told. Moreover, historianshave become interested in the biographies of geo-graphical practitioners as part of a wider need toremember personal narratives of the discipline. AsDavid Livingstone avers, an ‘intellectual communitywith no awareness of its own story is . . . like a personsuffering the loss of memory’ (2007, 43).

5

In anotherrecent essay, Johnston examined the biographies

contained in the

Oxford dictionary of national biography

(

ODNB

) to discover ‘a small number of pioneers’who impacted on the history of UK geography(Johnston 2005a, 652). Many disciplinary narrativesare told, but ‘those grand stories are amalgams ofmany smaller ones’ (Johnston 2005a, 662).

This flowering of debate around geographicalbiographies has opened up a host of political ques-tions. The majority of these writings remain verymuch focused on life experiences derived from‘the accounts of senior scholars’ (Buttimer 1983, 9).Driver and Baigent argue that it ‘is equally import-ant to tell the life stories of the apparently moreconventional and indeed low-profile men and womenwho contributed’ (2007, 102).

6

Johnston defendshimself against the charge of neglecting those whomay also have contributed to geographical know-ledge, such as surveyors and explorers, arguingthat instead his ‘concern was the biography of

theacademic discipline

, as illuminated by the

ODNB

biographies of academic geographers’ (Johnston2007c, 108, original emphases). For geographicalbiographies, these politics of selection reveal manyassumptions about disciplinary boundaries.

But what about those who we might term geo-graphical scientists – meteorologists, glaciologists,geomorphologists – who felt that they

became

geo-graphers during fieldwork? This paper investigatesthese geographical yearnings amongst a set of fieldscientists based in Canada. As the oral historiespresented will indicate, through field experiencesmany scientists developed desires to be seen asgeographers and maintained this sensibility in arange of later pursuits. Of course, as we will see,this notion of geographical identity involved aparticular definition of geographical practice. Itremains the case, however, that these small storiesof geography’s past should not be lost. Furthermore,these hidden biographies only become apparentthrough the use of oral historical methods. Histo-rian Elizabeth Higgins Gladfelter, in her collectionof biographical testimonies from environmental andbiological scientists, states that oral narratives facilitatethe demonstration of ‘the vital importance of fieldexperience in the lives and careers of natural scientists’(2002, viii). In short, there is something about theexperiential conduct of fieldwork that, for fieldscientists, becomes important in the development ofepistemic authority in a range of

other

registers, suchas decisionmaking in institutional or policy arenas.

7

However, the existence of this thinking only becomesevident in biographical reflections.


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Oral histories of the geographical sciences

Recent work by historians of the discipline hasillustrated just ‘how much there is still to know interms of geography’s histories, in regard to themethodologies by which we may recover themand, for whom, now as then, such histories hadwhat meaning’ (Withers 2006a, 712). Oral history,I argue, is a critical method for recovering pastpractices undertaken by geographers.

The use of oral historical method is usually datedto the work of Allan Nevins at Columbia Universityin the late 1940s (MacDonald 1991; Perks andThompson 1998). Nevins collected oral memoirsfrom significant figures in American political life.Oral history was thus construed as a means of sup-plementing traditional sources. From its inception,then, the project has relied on a potentially elitistconception of social life. At the same time, andespecially in the UK, this designation of oral historyhas been resisted, with the late 1970s identified asa key moment (Green 2004; Labelle 2005). PaulThompson (1978) introduced oral historical methodsinto the mainstream of British social history as ameans of collecting life stories beyond the historicalradar. Oral histories help to recover what J.C. Scottwould term ‘hidden transcripts’ (Scott 1990, xii).

8

There has always been hostility to the use of oralhistorical evidence from traditional historians. Oralhistory is ‘predicated upon an active human rela-tionship between historians and their sources’ and,as such, radically recasts conventional historicalmethod (Perks and Thompson 1998, ix). Historianshave thus tended to neglect oral sources given theirrelative status in a Rankean epistemic hierarchythat prioritises written evidence (Prins 1991).

Oral historical approaches in geography have arather longer chronology than is usually acknow-ledged, dating to the Distinguished GeographersFilm Interview Series commissioned by the Associ-ation of American Geographers. The filming for thisseries commenced at the AAG Annual Meetings inSan Francisco (1970) and was originally ‘visualizedas an attempt to preserve for posterity the majorpersonalities of geography’ (Dow 1974, 430). How-ever, methodological discussions of oral history bygeographers have tended to be limited to feministresearch, pedagogy or, latterly, gerontology (Nast1994; Pile 1992; Andrews

et al.

2006). Historicalgeographers have also drawn attention to the ethicalimplications of oral historical research (Cameron2001; Duncan 2001; Winders 2001; McDowell 2003).

More recently, within the general resurgence inbiography, historians of geography have begun toutilise oral history. A number of oral histories ofUniversity Departments of Geography have beenproduced, including Oxford Brookes (Jenkins andWard 2001), Edinburgh (Withers 2002) and Aber-deen (Lorimer and Spedding 2002). Oral narrativeshave been envisaged as ways in which to expandthe available archives for histories of geographicalknowledge (Withers 2002; Philo 1998; Lorimer2003a 2003b; Lorimer and Spedding 2005). TrevorBarnes has collected oral histories from geographersinvolved in the ‘quantitative revolution’ of the1950s and 1960s (Barnes 2001 2004 2006).

9

Otherstudies have been conducted into the history of thedevelopment of ‘Soviet geography’ as a researchspecialty amongst British geographers (Matless

et al.

2007).

10

This paper uses oral historical interviews withArctic field scientists in order to consider thehistory of geographical practices. In what follows,

geographical science

is defined as those practices thatinvolved pursuits such as cartography, topography,geomorphology and glaciology. In order that I amnot misunderstood here, this definition requiresfurther clarification. In a discussion regarding latenineteenth- and early twentieth-century glacialtheory in Sweden, historian Sverker Sörlin hasnoted that ‘it may be possible to speak of a “holistichero” of the Arctic’ whereby fieldworkers in theregion would valorise being ‘scientific omnivoresor generalists’, as well as demonstrating specialistskills, knowledges and capacities (Sörlin 2002, 109).Although historians have begun to investigate theconnections between military strategy, geophysicsand the earth and environmental sciences duringthe Cold War (Oreskes and Fleming 2000; Doel2003), I want to show that a similar notion to thatof the scientific generalist persisted throughoutfield practices conducted in Arctic Canada duringthe 1950s and 1960s.

11

In short, a number of oldertraditions were reformulated through fieldworkundertaken by geographical scientists despite theincreasing interaction with other scientists trainedas physicists. These relationships have not beenfully appreciated in some histories of physicalgeography.

The close imbrications of practitioners of thegeographical sciences with physicists during thelate 1950s are exemplified in a discussion aroundthe future of glaciology held at Bedford College,London in December 1955 (Robin

et al.

1956). These

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discussions included the geographers GordonManley and William Vaughan Lewis, as well asphysicists such as Gordon Robin and J.F. Nye.Lewis was an advocate of field studies in northernNorway and conducted his famous attempts toconstruct an analogue, kaolin model of a glacierat the Physiographic Laboratory in the Departmentof Geography at Cambridge (Lewis and Maynard1955; Lewis 1954).

12

Manley, then Professor ofGeography at Bedford College, was a strong advo-cate of the need for cooperation between thegeographical and geophysical approaches to glacialscience (Robin

et al.

1956). In discussion, Manleystated that ‘[a]s far as I can see future research willbe most productive if it proceeds along the bound-aries or contact zones between the sciences’ (Robin

et al.

1956, 697). Glaciology was to be a contact zonebetween geophysics and the geographical sciences.

In his Vice-Presidential Address before the AnnualConference of the Royal Geographical Society(with the Institute of British Geographers) in 1996,glaciologist and geomorphologist David Sugdenreturned to this argument in relation to the contro-versy regarding the stability of the East AntarcticIce Sheet (Sugden 1996). As Sugden demonstrates,the conflict about stability became a dispute aboutthe interpretation of data sets between glacialgeomorphologists and geophysicists. For Sugden,geomorphology needed to maintain both its analyticaland historical-interpretive scientific traditions.

13

There has been much written in science studiesaround the issue of

boundary work

between cognatefields of epistemic inquiry (Gieryn 1983 1999). His-torians have often assumed, for ease of conveyanceof a complex archive, that contemporary disciplinaryboundaries persisted in relatively recent episodesof geography’s history. I use this broad definitionof geographical science because it allows the en-compassing of practices that would otherwise belost from our histories. As the material derivedfrom oral histories indicates, our contemporaryboundaries and definitions of geography and geo-graphers were complicated by the environment ofpost-war field science.

Recollecting geographical practices in the Canadian Arctic

The following sections draw from oral historicalinterviews with field scientists who undertookresearch in the Canadian Arctic in the 1950s and1960s. Revisiting biographical moments through

oral histories provides for the best possible recov-ery of the ‘fragmentary record’ of field practice(Lorimer 2003b, 199). Although, like all researchsubjects, retired field scientists endure the usualproblems of recollection, bias and memory, at thesame time, they are often aware of what theresearcher might find in the documentary record,and what they will not. In order to provide a furtherdimension to oral testimonies, during the interviewsobjects that had been retrieved from archives, suchas logs of radio communications, photographs andfield notebooks were sometimes provided to facili-tate conversation and reminiscence. The use of theseprompts would often stimulate historiographicaldiscussion as to why certain information might berecorded in the historical archive. As one of mymajor informants put it, in response to an inquiryover some colourful episodes:

I suppose it’s part of the work of a historian to realizethat much of the records are of the eccentrics. That’severywhere. I mean that’s true because that’s what getsrecorded [laughs].

14

By drawing from

both

interviews with the fieldscientists

and

the conventional archival record, Iam able to show the potentialities that are openedup for histories of the field sciences in using oralhistory. In doing so, I also allow these geographicalscientists to memorialise their past practices in theirown voices.

It is important to state that the map of geographicalscience conducted in the post-war Canadian Arcticwas complicated and involved a range of activitiesby different branches of the Canadian Governmentand the US and Canadian militaries.

15

The oral historiesthat will be examined are drawn from a historicalethnography of the Polar Continental Shelf Project(PCSP).

16

Established during May 1958, the PCSPwas created as a branch of the Department of Minesand Technical Surveys (DMTS) of the Governmentof Canada. The PCSP was initially envisaged as anorganisation whose purpose was to conduct scien-tific and cartographic activities in the channels andislands of the High Arctic. As PCSP involved thecooperation of various departments and branchesof the Canadian government, it designated a phaseshift in the understanding of interdisciplinary fieldscience.

17

Beginnings

E.F. (Fred) Roots was appointed as the firstCoordinator of the PCSP (Plate 1). Born in Salmon


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Arm, BC, in July 1923, Roots spent much of hischildhood as a mountaineer, and studied geologyat the University of British Columbia, before takinghis PhD at Princeton University. During his educa-tion, Roots invariably spent the summers as a studentassistant with various field parties of the GeologicalSurvey of Canada (GSC). As his oral testimonyindicates, these experiences proved crucial for thedevelopment of Roots’s career:

Gosh what year is that, when I become StudentAssistant? [19]39 or ‘40 I guess. I was a StudentAssistant. And then, yeah, gosh you’re asking me to goback

way

. . . . I was asked to become an Assistant to atopographical surveyor in the Canadian Rockies. Andat that time Topography was under Geological Survey.But I was not doing Geology, it was the mapping. So Idid that for two years, I became Chief of that party asan underage Chief. I know it’s not allowed these daysbut it was okay [laughs]. And then, yeah, I went backas a Senior Assistant of the Geological Survey in ‘44and I . . . got my own party in ‘47 I guess, NorthernB[ritish] C[olumbia], it might be ‘46. And I’m sorry tobe so vague. And during that time we roamed over alot of high mountains in Southern, in Central, BC, inNorth-Central BC. And I became

known

, I guess, bysome of the British mountaineers who had come thereto find the mountains and we kept very discreet aboutthe fact that they were making ‘first assents’ of peakswhich we’d already got up and taken rocks off the top

of them! But we didn’t tell them that because they, well. . . a couple of them who were Everest climbers didfind that out.

18

These memories are striking in their illustrationof the interrelations between the geographicalsciences in the late 1940s, as well as indicating theconstant epistemic proximity of other pursuits suchas mountaineering. After working for the GSC forsix years, Roots was invited in 1949 by the RoyalGeographical Society to join the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, 1949–1952,as a Commonwealth representative. This oppor-tunity arose because of the very connections withBritish climbers that Roots had fostered during hisgeological fieldwork in Canada:

And so, I got to know them quite well. And so whenthe Royal Geographical Society was planning itsAntarctic expedition together with Norway andSweden after the war, they wanted a Senior Geologistwho could look after himself on mountains and glaciersand things. At that time I was, I’d finished that workI’d been doing in Northern BC. That was in 1949? No,the ‘48 season, for the ‘48/’49 winter. And we wereplanning our, another crazy operation, which wasgoing to cross the mountain range which separatesYukon from the Mackenzie River Delta area. . . . And Ihad a scheme whereby we knew we couldn’t getthrough there in two years. And there were no lakes for

Plate 1 Fred Roots making a presentation, c.1961 [exact date unknown]LAC, Hans W. Pulkkinen collection 1987-049, Copy negative: PA213942 © Unknown

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planes to land and things like that. So we were going toparachute jump in, and then walk out. So we tookjumping courses and things like that [laughs]. And inthe middle of that I got this request from the RoyalGeographical Society saying ‘would you like to goAntarctica for three years?’ And I went to see theDirector of the Geological Survey to whom I was sortof attached to at that stage. I’d just finished my PhD.And so, you know, ‘what about this?’, I said. And hesays, ‘well, you know, some common-sense says youshouldn’t go, you’ve got a job here. But looking at youreyes, I guess you’d better go!’ [laughs]. And he says, ‘IfI was your age I would too!’ But there is no way thatthey could give me secondment because there are rulesand the Civil Service were pretty strict that way. So Ihad to resign – on the expectation that I would havethe job or I could reapply[.] . . . So I went down toAntarctica for those three years, having resigned fromthe Geological Survey. And then picked up thingsagain after I came back in ‘53.

19

This passage begins to suggest the growth ofnetworks between the PCSP and the geographicalestablishment, exemplified in the Commonwealthconnections of the RGS. Barnes (2007) has arguedfor the important influence of state institutions,such as through the creation of Federal mappingagencies, in the development of the discipline ofgeography in Canada. These reflections complicateBarnes’s argument by suggesting the persistence ofother complementary and competing networks ofallegiance within the embodied constitution of theCanadian state and Commonwealth geography.

During his time in Antarctica, Roots earned areputation with his Scandinavian and Britishcolleagues as a quiet, modest and able geologist.He was extremely talented, furthermore, at dealingwith the logistical planning and unforeseen circum-stances that arose during the conduct of sciencein the field. On one occasion, for example, Rootshad to act as surgical assistant in an operation toremove an infected eye from a fellow geologistusing only iron scraps and a welding rod (Beeby1994).

Having had to resign from the GSC to join theAntarctic expedition, Roots went to Cambridge towrite up his results as a research fellow at the ScottPolar Research Institute (SPRI) and the Departmentof Mineralogy and Petrology. Whilst at CambridgeUniversity, Roots developed contacts in the Britishpolar and geographical establishments.

20

He thentaught geology for a year at Princeton in 1953,before returning to Cambridge until January 1955when he accepted a new post with GSC. This

position involved running logistics in the Arctic,during the summer of 1955, for the GSC’s ‘Opera-tion Franklin’ across the Queen Elizabeth Islands.Further developments in logistical techniques werethen facilitated during Roots’s leadership of ‘Opera-tion Stikine’, 1956–58, where the GSC undertookgeological reconnaissance with helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and pack horses in the Cordillera ofnorthern British Columbia. This extensive experi-ence was therefore advantageous to the successfulappointment of Roots in 1958 as Coordinator ofthe PCSP, under W.E. van Steenburgh, Director-General of Scientific Services, DMTS.

Topographies and geomorphologies

After selection of the remaining members of theinitial field team, the PCSP began survey work toestablish a baseline for an operational navigationsystem in 1959. The first full-scale field seasoncommenced in spring 1960, with PCSP being basedfor its early years at the Joint Arctic Weather Sta-tion at Isachsen, Ellef Ringnes Island. This area hadbeen chosen both for the convenience of existingfacilities and the congruence of a number ofchannel entrances amongst the neighbouring islands(Figure 1).

Due to the difficulties of transport and logistics,each member of the PCSP had to have a range ofscientific knowledges and technical skills. Theability to deploy standard geographical techniquesof the post-war period, such as topographicalmapping, was required of all field scientists in theArctic. This led to a number of achievements ingeographical surveying, most notably, the reloca-tion of Meighen Island. This was, according toRoots, a significant achievement in Canadiangeography:

That’s a time when, when we had a Decca station hereon Meighen Island. And Meighen Island was one of the,the islands that became a bit well-known in the‘survey-world’ because the tellurometer traverses that. . . would fix the positions of these before they put theDecca stations in, found that this island was in thewrong position. And it’s the last major change in [the]geography of, the map of, Canada.

21

French-Canadian Denis St-Onge, a geomorpholo-gist and member of the first PCSP field parties,undertook topographical survey and geomorpho-logical mapping on Ellef Ringnes Island:

And for a long time Ellef Ringnes, the maps of EllefRingnes Island, which still exist; it’s one of the few


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islands where you have very detailed maps of 1:50,000.And for a long time the precision of the survey, it’s notresearch but the, the topographic survey was higher onEllef Ringnes Island than practically anywhere else inCanada. It was amazing. Yeah, the tellurometer survey,well they had, you know, they shifted position of theisland because the original Survey would, well posi-tioning of the island, which had been done from,largely from, . . . the first generation of air-photographs,. . . which are not very precise[.] . . . And it’s true thatthe, you know, the topographic survey was certainly moredetailed, or as detailed, as anywhere else. The qualitywas higher. And the amount, the work that I did, totalk about that, was at the same scientific level, says Ivery humbly, as was done anywhere else in Canada, atthat time. There’s no doubt. Or anywhere else in theworld for that matter. The significant contribution, if Iam to choose one, is that, up to that point, the role of

running water in Polar Deserts was underestimated. . . .European geomorphologists . . . assumed that the domi-nant feature would have been, as it’s called, solifluc-tion. I’m sure you know what that means? . . . As it turnsout it’s not true. It does happen of course, but the

domi-nant

process that is active in shaping the landscape inPolar Deserts, like Ellef Ringnes Island, is runningwater.

22

These achievements in topographic survey andthe understanding of geomorphological changemeant that the PCSP changed geographical under-standings of Canada. The project had been createdin the context of anxieties over Canadian sover-eignty. The USSR had produced maps of the HighArctic that located islands in different positions tothose assumed by Canada. This was made manifest

Figure 1 Map of north western Queen Elizabeth Islands, c.1961

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through the discovery by a PCSP survey party of a‘Granite Island’, about 20 miles northwest of EllefRingnes Island in April 1959. This collection ofgranites was floating above the Arctic Ocean,rather than requiring a redefinition of the Cana-dian land map (Plate 2). But the irony was not loston the field parties.

23

What was critical about the PCSP, however, wasits emphasis on sustained, integrated research,rather than traditional expeditionary fieldwork.

24

The PCSP had a number of staff positions thatwere recruited to cover the different scientificdimensions of the project. Denis St-Onge wasemployed in one of the Geography positions:

Now when they created the [PCSP] organization, theyalso created positions. For instance, there were twoGeography positions. And I was recruited in one ofthem and I was very pleased that they had the goodidea of creating this position. And the other one wasoccupied by a glaciologist whose name is Keith Arnold,who has, er, since retired . . . . So I lobbied very hardwhen I first joined the Geographical Branch, which nolonger exists, but existed, to go on the, to be part of thePolar Continental Shelf Project, simply because I hadheard that, after joining the Department, that you coulduse results of your own work for the Department foryour PhD thesis [laughs]. So there was a lot of self

interest involved here. And going to an area like theHigh Arctic, where very few people had done anywork, and certainly none in physical geography, whichwas my field of interest.

25

For St-Onge, his field research was very muchengaged with the latest discussions in geomorpho-logical theory that crossed the international geo-graphical community during the 1960s:

So just to finish my part of the story. I went for threesummers. . . . But the result is that I gathered, I did a . . .a geomorphological map of Ellef Ringnes Island. And avery detailed geomorphological map of the Isachsenarea, which ended up being part of my PhD thesis. Andwhich is one of the first coloured geomorphologicalmaps published, which was very popular in the systemin Geography in the early ‘60s. Mostly as a result of thepush by the Polish geomorphologists, which was partof International Geographical Union – there was aCommission on Geomorphological Mapping.

26

The interrelations, then, of developments in geo-graphical science and Arctic field practices areconstantly recalled in these oral histories.

A geographical sensibility?

Although there were only two initial positionsdevoted to ‘Geography’, a significant

geographical

Plate 2 Photograph of PCSP survey party at ‘hill’ of granitic boulders on Arctic Ocean, 20 km northwest of Cape Isachsen, Ellef Ringnes Island, 24 April 1959

© Unknown Photograph EFR-59-8-1, LAC, RG45, V318, File – Photographs – PCSP


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sensitivity

was developed by the scientists recruitedto PCSP during the conduct of fieldwork. It wasthe stress on interdisciplinary collaboration aroundsubstantive questions of scientific interest that,for Roots, meant Arctic science was returning to atraditional conception of geography. This was a

general trend in the, in science as a whole because wewere moving from let’s say, Geology which is rocksand minerals and

description

, to more questions of itschemistry, its physics, the biological contents. . . . Anduniversities were having this trouble too, you know.When we started in the ‘50s or, certainly in the ‘40s,words like ‘geophysics’, ‘geochemistry’, ‘biochemistry’[laughs], they weren’t there! You were ‘Biology’ or‘Geology’ or ‘Chemistry’! . . . And so the science itselfbegan to get out of that

artificial

disciplinary voice,

getting close back to what Geography really was, which washolding the world in your head

[laughs]. You know,

apicture of the world.

. . . That itself led to a melting, abringing together of different interests, probably moreeasily and more effectively than was happening in mostof Europe and Southern Canada and so on.

27

These attitudes helped foster the developmentof a peculiar form of geographical sensitivity.Bea Alt had support from the PCSP during herdoctoral studies on the microclimate of MeighenIsland. Although she was trained as a meteor-ologist, during fieldwork she developed thissense of geographical identity. Within the PCSP,for Alt, scientists were open to interdisciplinarycommunication:

But most of the people in that group had a

Geographymentality

as opposed to, you know, which is broad,interdisciplinary, as opposed to the narrow. So every-body dabbled in other things as well.

28

This notion of a ‘geography mentality’ of the PCSPscientists involved a stance that avoided narrowresearch questions confined to a single disciplineand instead maintained a wider interest. Thesegeographical scientists, then, appeared to resistdisciplinary specialisation and instead maintainedinterests in multiple processes and possibleresearch questions during fieldwork. And thatresistance of specialisation became construed as a

geographical

mindset by those involved in the PCSPfield programme.

29

A revealing dimension of oral historical testi-monies, then, is that a majority of the PCSP fieldscientists had some form of connection to thediscipline of geography that helped develop a com-munal form of geographical imagination during

fieldwork. Through interviewing field scientistsinvolved in the early years of the PCSP, it emergesthat many of the original field practitioners wereactually trained as geographers. As well as St-Onge,Roy (‘Fritz’) Koerner, a distinguished glaciologist,read geography as an undergraduate at the Univer-sity of Sheffield. Another Sheffield geographer andKoerner’s friend, Peter Adams,

30

enjoyed informallogistical support from the PCSP during glaciologicalfieldwork under Fritz Müller on Axel HeibergIsland.

31

Adams’s recollections also indicate that theBritish geographical and Canadian polar researchcommunities were closely intertwined.

32

I was an undergraduate at Sheffield. I got a CarnegieScholarship to McGill, did my Masters and my PhD atMcGill. . . . By coincidence in the ‘50s, and into the ‘60s,there were Carnegie Scholarships at McGill and McGillwas applying them to Arctic work, essentially. So I gotone of those . . . in glaciology, which was Fritz Müller’sprogramme, which was Geography, Geology, Meteor-ology and Physics. And I was the first graduate of thatprogramme. I came over in ‘59 and, what happenedwas, when I was offered the scholarship, I was alsooffered the job as Fritz Müller’s field assistant for thepreparatory year for the Jacobsen-McGill Expeditions,which became the McGill-Axel Heiberg Expeditions. . . .So I came over in ‘59, came to Montreal, two days laterwent north. We travelled slowly to Resolute, then toAxel Heiberg. . . . Yeah, so what happens is that atSheffield, the Prof. at Sheffield at that time was DavidLinton, who was a Geomorphologist. And the reason Igot the Scholarship was that he and Ken Hare, whowas Dean and various things, and was probably theinitiator of the Axel Heiberg Expedition, as well asmany other things at McGill. He and Ken Hare hadboth been students [in Geography] at Kings College inLondon. . . . But they knew each other. So, Linton was aGeomorphologist with interest in the Polar Regions. Hewasn’t a polar specialist. But the year that I got theScholarship, he had a sabbatical and he, in fact, wrotemy reference from Lima, Peru to McGill on an airmailletter form on his way to the Antarctic. . . . So he sentthis handwritten letter which, I think, it was a flukethat it influenced Ken Hare a lot. Which is why I gotthe Scholarship, I think. . . . I went up as a Geomorpho-logist but came back as somebody working on glaciersbecause of Fritz Müller. So I worked literally

on

theglaciers. I didn’t work on landforms or anything likethat again. I just worked on glaciers.

33

There was also much formal recognition of thePCSP by the geographical establishment in bothBritain and Canada.

34

Roots was awarded thePatron’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society,London, in June 1965.

35

Denis St-Onge was elected

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President of the Canadian Association of Geo-graphers (CAG) in 1979 and served as Presidentof the Royal Canadian Geographical Society(RCGS) in the early 1990s. St-Onge has also beenawarded the Royal Scottish Geographical SocietyMedal (1994) and the CAG Award for Service tothe Profession of Geography (2000). Perhaps theclosely intertwined networks of geography andfield science are revealed most starkly in thiscomment by St-Onge:

Art Collin . . . , he’s here in Ottawa. . . . He is presently;he succeeded me, as President of the Royal Cana-dian Geographical Society.

36

Hydrographer Arthur Collin, deputy leader of thefirst field parties and later Science Advisor to theCabinet of the Canadian Prime Minister, recentlyserved a successful term as President of the RCGS(2003 – 4). Unsurprisingly, Collin argues for thelinks between training in geographical science andthe ability to function effectively in policy circles:

I have argued on occasion that the disciplines ofGeography are an extraordinarily good background forpolicy thinking. I think Geography can exploit that, that

relationship. Because, I think, it’s a natural relationship,which is very strong, very strong. And I think, thedisciplines of Geography, whether or not it’s an under-graduate or graduate, I would say certainly at theMasters level because then you tend to focus, can be,can be presented very convincingly. But again it dependson this question of leadership. . . . The more you see oflife, the more you realize how important it is. . . . Youcan find yourself in the most elaborate, the mostsophisticated, institutional structure, and when it comesto issues of high crunch, high sensitivity, you’ll findthat the leadership of the individual is absolutelyimportant. Absolutely. And that applies in the aca-demic disciplines. It applies certainly in Government.

37

It was not simply the case, however, that indivi-duals with the requisite undergraduate and graduatetraining saw themselves as geographers in thefield. Bea Alt was significant as the first femalescientist to be supported by PCSP (Plate 3).

38

Butfor historians of geographical practice, it is thenarratives of her field experiences that are mostrevealing. For Alt, as the epigraph that opens thepaper suggests, all PCSP field researchers, regard-less of disciplinary background, saw themselves aspossessing some sort of geographical mindset. As

Plate 3 Photograph illustrating Bea Alt’s 1967 field site (near Alert)LAC, Hans W. Pulkkinen collection 1987-049, Copy negative: PA213950 © Unknown

[Note annotation by hand (‘Bea’) marking the camp.]


559

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noted, this geographical view, although not pro-scriptively defined, seemed to involve a combina-tion of the observation of the interconnections ofenvironmental processes together with an excite-ment at exploratory discovery:

And we were discovering. You could go and set foot ona place that nobody had been. I mean you can still dothat in the Arctic but, you know, there were areas thatweren’t mapped. There were, you could go, do dog-team things. It was more of an adventure. It

was

moreexciting. It was hands-on, you didn’t have a bunch ofinstruments, you went out and looked at the thermo-meter. You know? You walked across the tundra andmapped by hand, you picked up rocks. You weren’tspending half your time pouring over satellite pictures.You were discovering things. You could find a fossilforest that nobody else found. You know? It was moreexciting. The research now is far more process-orientated.

It’s not Geography so much any more. In thosedays everybody was a Geographer. You know, even thepeople who weren’t. They all thought like that.

Well nowyou have like the Modeller who never sets foot in theArctic and, yeah models the Arctic, has no idea whatice looks like, you know. And you have the person whogoes up with some incredibly delicate instrument andmeasures in one little spot some really, esoteric thing.Which is very important, I’m not saying it’s any lessimportant. But, it doesn’t, it doesn’t have the, youwon’t spend fifty percent of your time trying to stayalive. You have much better equipment. Most peoplestay, only stay, for a very short time. You don’t go andstay for three months.

39

Alt draws an intriguing distinction here betweendeployments of this geographical mindset duringfieldwork and physical modelling conductedremotely. And, of course, it is this tension thatcontinues to hold legacies for disputes about theprovenance and justifiability of the geographicalsciences (Sugden 1996; Summerfield 2005).

Although some of the field participants main-tained scientific careers, many others continuedinto different public service roles. Roots enjoyed aproductive career in the Canadian civil service,including important posts as Science Advisor toEnvironment Canada and with the CanadianCommittee on Antarctic Research (of the CanadianPolar Commission). By the late 1980s, Art Collinhad attained the position of Science Advisor tothe Government of Canada. Whilst Professor ofGeography at Trent University, Peter Adams waselected as MPP in the Ontario legislature, 1987–90,and served as a national Liberal MP, 1993–2005.

40

Adams was the architect of the Government’s

Canada Research Chairs programme, establishedin 2000 to bring, in the first instance, 2000 researchprofessorships to Canadian universities.

Across these positions, PCSP scientists drew onthe vast knowledge and sensibility that they haddeveloped during fieldwork. It would also seemthat common participation in this project resultedin respect that facilitated successful careers withinthe different branches of the Government ofCanada. Experience with the PCSP created socialnetworks of like-minded science-policy expertswithin government, who held in common a parti-cular geographical imagination. During their recol-lections, almost all of the PCSP field scientistsreflected on the friendships that they had deve-loped through participation in the project. As FredRoots puts it, these friendships were formed notonly amongst scientists, but between all the indi-viduals involved:

But also it meant that a fair number of people fromboth of these, especially the junior people who are notalways on the listing there, came with me on PolarShelf. Because we established long friendships – andwe’re still, well still in touch. Not, not very many ofthem have dropped out.

41

Conclusion

The nature of geographical practices in the fieldhas often been reflected upon but has rarely beensubjected to empirical examination (Powell 2007).It is difficult to recover the quotidian activitiesenacted by past geographers. However, it remainsimportant to attempt to do so. This paper hasargued that a possible way in which these practicesmight be approached is through the deployment oforal histories to recuperate the biographies of oftenforgotten geographers. By their very nature, bio-graphical writings by and about geographers havebeen inevitably drawn towards ‘great white geo-graphers’, such as Smith’s (2003) study of IsaiahBowman or Gould’s (1999) autobiography. Thispaper has demonstrated that an oral historicalapproach allows for a much more sensitiveappreciation of histories of geography. In so doing,I have argued for the importance of hiddengeographies revealed around the boundaries ofgeographical science.

The narratives collected here draw attention tothe importance of geographical scientists who didnot follow the conventional path of the geographer-academic. Against the importance that Johnston

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attributes to those employed by universities, histo-rians need to maintain a much broader sense ofthe identity ‘geographer’. This contradicts thearguments of Barnes (2007) about geographicalactivity in post-war Canada. For Barnes (2007),Canada lacked geographers when compared tothose holding university positions in Britain or theUS. But geographers existed

outside the nascentinstitutionalisation of Canadian academic depart-ments. It is important to remember that many fieldscientists in the 1950s and 1960s felt that they werebecoming geographers during fieldwork in the Cana-dian Arctic. This paper has argued that differentmethodologies can result in differing histories.

What is most interesting is that the model forgeographical science, as evidenced in these oralhistories, involved sensitivity towards the inter-action of environmental processes. In many ways,this view of geography connects with contemporarydebates in the discipline about interdisciplinarity,future relevance and, even, survival (Castree et al.2007). These views regarding the utility of geographywere often pursued during careers throughout theCanadian political and scientific establishment. Byfailing to record such narratives, by unduly focus-ing on the parade of university pioneers, aspectsof the history of geography are lost. Although thelater successes of these individuals means that weare hardly rescuing them from the ‘enormouscondescension of posterity’ (Thompson 1980 [1963],12), it might serve contemporary struggles aboutdisciplinary futures well to remember the myriadpresences of geography in other arenas.

However, beyond the advantages offered tohistorians of geography, these life histories havetheir own pertinence. What is most germane is thatalmost every field worker continued their careerin the public service, usually in advisory roles forscience policy in departments across the Govern-ment of Canada, rather than continuing as activescientists. What becomes obvious, then, is the valueattached to geography in the careers and life choicesof this set of individuals. As Withers reminds us,‘geography itself – as local space, national territory,global connections – matters to how lives have beenlived’ (Withers 2006b, 84). Perhaps more interest-ingly, for many Arctic field scientists the practice ofgeography itself, as an epistemic approach to under-standing environments, became an important partof individual identity. Indeed, what is evident fromthe material presented here is that field science inthe Arctic helped the development of a geographical

sensibility in Canada. This sense of geographicalidentity was based around being able to under-stand the interconnections between human andenvironmental processes. And it is this ability thatmany geographers have portrayed as the reasonfor their own calling to geography in the first place.

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based wassupported financially by an ESRC/NERC Interdis-ciplinary Research Studentship (R42200034029), anESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (PTA-026-27-0112),the Royal Society (London), HGRG and HPGRGof the RGS-IBG, the CAG, the Foundation forCanadian Studies in the UK, the British Associa-tion of Canadian Studies, the International Councilof Canadian Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa, andthe University of Cambridge. I am grateful for thecomments of four anonymous reviewers and theEditors, which helped improve the paper. I mustthank Sandra Mather and Ian Qualtrough forassistance in preparing the map and illustrations.And I am most indebted to all those individualswho were happy to spend hours sharing theirrecollections about the geographical sciences.

Notes

1 I borrow this notion of communities of practice fromLave and Wenger (1991). Drawing together argumentsfrom cognitive psychology and educational theory,they develop a socialised notion of learning as situ-ated activity. Individuals learn how to participate ingroups of practitioners, or communities of practice,through ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ until whichpoint that they are able to become fully-competentmembers of the community (Lave and Wenger 1991,29, original emphases). I adapt the term here to high-light the ways in which histories of geographical fieldtechniques should not be confined to any singulardisciplinary tradition.

2 In a discussion of the growth of ‘scientific’ geographyduring the first decades of the twentieth century,Withers, Finnegan and Higgitt have similarly drawnattention to geographical practices that persistedoutside mainstream British educational institutions(Withers et al. 2006).

3 The vigorous historiography that has developedincludes Fischedick (1995), Hevly (1996), Outram(1999), Kuklick (1997), Schumaker (2001) and Kohler(2002).

4 Neil Smith’s (2003) magisterial study of Isaiah Bow-man, for example, adopts biography to approach

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wider issues in the development of American geo-graphy. As Johnston rhetorically puts it, ‘how manyother geographers are worthy of such an extendedbiographical treatment, let alone for whom a wealthof source material lies untapped?’ (2003, 1520). Inresponse to his own pleas, Johnston facilitated theinstitution of a new series on the ‘Makers of modernhuman geography’ in Progress in Human Geography,whereby a set of biographical essays are commis-sioned to discuss the disciplinary contribution of that‘small number of scholars whose influence is muchgreater than that of the vast majority of their peers’such as Torsten Hägerstrand and Emrys Jones( Johnston 2005b, 327; 2007b). Short biographies ofleading spatial thinkers have also been prepared forteaching histories of geography (Boyle 2005; Hubbardet al. 2005). Daniels and Nash (2004, 450) have intro-duced the term ‘life geographies’ to denote attemptsto understand the spaces that impact upon humanexistence. There has also been recent interest in geo-graphical themes amongst conventional biographers(Fuchs 2002).

5 Livingstone has further argued for a properly ‘geo-graphical biography’, whereby historians appreciatethe different spaces of individual lives (Livingstone2003, 182). Elspeth Graham (2005) makes a similarpoint, arguing that intellectual biographies compiledby geographers should pay particular attention to therole of place.

6 On geographers within the Dictionary of nationalbiography and ODNB, see Baigent (1993 1994 2004).

7 For a set of reflections on the practice of geographicalfieldwork, see the essays collected in DeLyser andStarrs (2001), especially Whitlock (2001), McDowell(2001) and Tuan (2001). For a philosophical discus-sion of the role of fieldwork in geography see Powell(2002). I have provided a historical examination ofthe concept of the Arctic field experiment in Powell(2007).

8 From the very start of this project, however, Thompsonworried about issues of selection and discrimination:‘The voice of the past matters to the present. Butwhose voice – or voices – are to be heard?’ (1978, x).As anthropologist Julie Cruikshank argues, thecrucial questions involve ‘who gets to frame and tellthe story – whose voices are prominent in thesediscussions and whose are marginalized’ (1994, 403).

9 Barnes has conducted related research on geographicalpractice during the Second World War (Barnes 2006;Barnes and Farish 2006).

10 It is also worth noting that Sidaway (1997) used inter-views with geographers to reflect upon the changingcultures of UK higher education during the 1990s.

11 Interests in the history of the polar geographicalsciences have begun to develop, but are still mainlyfocused on Antarctica (e.g. Dodds 1996; Siegert 1999).

12 At the behest of Sir Lawrence Bragg, Nobel Prize

Winner for Physics 1915, there was also discussion of‘the use of cornflour made into the normal blanc-mange mixture’ for glacial analogues (Lewis andMaynard 1955, 533). Unfortunately, the blancmangemodel was only of limited success: ‘This proved satis-factory up to a point and was used for demonstrationpurposes on several occasions ... . It crevassed mostrealistically, it slipped on the bed if the latter weregreased with vaseline, and it bent forward downhill,as it were, but when the point of active shearing wasreached it broke down into lumps, its consistencyand its flow properties changed markedly so that itbore little resemblance to a moving glacier’ (1955, 533).After investigating a succession of other materials,Lewis decided on moistened kaolin as providingthe best imitation of a glacier (Lewis and Maynard1955).

13 Geomorphologist Michael Summerfield (2005) hasalso revisited this question, arguing that greatercommunication and collaboration is needed betweenthe communities of geographical geomorphology andgeophysical geomorphology.

14 Interview with E.F. Roots, Gatineau, 6 May 2002.Scientists would occasionally express reticence aboutdiscussing certain individuals involved with fieldworkif they had been perceived as ‘difficult characters’.

15 This was often revealed during interviews, e.g. Inter-view with Olav Loken, Ottawa, 8 August 2002.

16 Oral historical interviews were conducted with exist-ing and retired PCSP Directors, scientists, base man-agers, mechanics, field technicians, and policymakersacross Canada (e.g. Ottawa, Gatineau, Calgary, Iqaluit,Resolute and Vancouver). In total, 60 semi-structuredinterviews were recorded with 44 individuals. Theseinterviews ran for between two and four hours, occa-sionally longer. As well as extensive archival con-sultation in Canada, this research was extended bytwo field seasons of ethnographic work, not discussedhere, at the PCSP base at Resolute, Nunavut, in theCanadian Arctic. Retired scientists, following thewishes of these participants, have been identified byname in the text.

17 Interview with George Hobson, Ottawa, 30 April2002. For a fuller history of the PCSP, see Powell(2007).

18 Interview with E.F. Roots, Gatineau, 13 May 2002.19 Interview with E.F. Roots, Gatineau, 13 May 2002. As

with any oral history, there is the potential forinaccuracies with the remembrance of certaininformation.

20 The relationship between polar exploration and thedevelopment of twentieth-century British geographyhas been hinted at by Ron Johnston (2005a). There hasbeen little investigation of these links by historiansof geography, perhaps because of the underlyingcolonialist and masculinist legacies of such field prac-tices. In his institutional history of the Department of

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Geography at Cambridge, David Stoddart indicatesthe importance of deep social networks between anumber of polar explorers and scientists developedthrough shared field experience. This had the resultthat ‘from the start physical geography and survey ingeneral, and polar studies in particular exercised adominant role’ in the development of CambridgeGeography (Stoddart 1989, 26). Indeed, the first Pro-fessor of Geography at Cambridge, Frank Debenham,participated in Captain Scott’s Terra Nova expedition(1910–13) to Antarctica and had drafted a proposalfor a new building for the Department to be entitledthe ‘Scott School of Geography’. Although initiallyapproved by the University, this entity was to becomethe Scott Polar Research Institute, inaugurated inMay 1926 with Debenham acting as the first Director(Stoddart 1989). The connection to PCSP camethrough a close personal friendship between Rootsand Debenham that developed in Cambridge, withthe latter acting as ‘Best man’ at Roots’s wedding.

21 Interview with E.F. Roots, Gatineau, 6 May 2002. Atellurometer is a surveying instrument that calculatesdistance by measuring the travel times of microwaves.The Decca company was contracted to provide naviga-tion and positioning systems to the PCSP; Interviewwith George Hobson, Ottawa, 19 April 2002.

22 Interview with Denis St-Onge, Ottawa, 11 April 2002.St-Onge also made a number of interventions intothe understanding of freeze–thaw cycles in polarenvironments.

23 Letter re. ‘Granite Island’, E.F. Roots to W.E. vanSteenburgh, Director-General Scientific Services,Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, 13 July1959, Library and Archives of Canada [LAC], RecordGroup [RG] 45, Volume [V] 300, File 1-1-3.

24 Letter re. ‘Various matters re Polar Continental ShelfProject’, Roots to van Steenburgh, 7 August 1959,LAC, RG45, V300, File 1-1-3; Memorandum re. ‘PolarContinental Shelf Project – 1960 season’, Roots tovan Steenburgh, 1 June 1959, LAC, RG45, V304, File1-12-2.

25 Interview with Denis St-Onge, Ottawa, 11 April 2002.26 Interview with Denis St-Onge, Ottawa, 11 April 2002.27 Interview with E.F. Roots, Gatineau, 17 May 2002.28 Interview with Bea Alt, Ottawa, 15 August 2002.29 It might be postulated, in response to these extracts,

that this appears to be an unstable basis on which tofound a geographical mentality. This is quite likelythe case, and with the growth of scientific specialismsin the decades following the 1950s, it became increas-ingly difficult for the notion of the ‘geographicalmentality’ to be defended within and without academicinstitutions. Indeed, such challenges led to the movefor quantification across the discipline of geographyduring the 1960s (see Barnes 2004). What is striking,however, is the constant resurgence of the argumentsfor a geography mentality during periodic anxieties

about the future of the discipline (e.g. Stoddart1987; Castree et al. 2007).

30 As Koerner states, Adams is ‘an old buddy of mine.We used to run track together back at the Universityof Sheffield’; Interview with Roy (‘Fritz’) Koerner,Ottawa, 9 August 2002.

31 This support included radio contact whereby, accord-ing to Denis St-Onge, constant requests were madefor rum-laden fruit cake: ‘most of the time they wereasking us if we were going anywhere near theircamp, could we bring some food [laughs]. They wereparticularly ravenous, I remember our emergency . . .food supply that we had, which was on airplanesand elsewhere, was a fruit cake which was soaked inrum, and they just adored that’. Interview with DenisSt-Onge, Ottawa, 11 April 2002.

32 These links could be informal. Fred Roots’s wife,whom he met whilst she was studying in Cambridge,had read Geography at Oxford University.

33 Interview with Peter Adams MP, Houses of Parlia-ment, Ottawa, 22 May 2002. These recollections,especially the notation of the shift in interests fromgeomorphology to glaciology during fieldwork, alsobegin to demonstrate the emerging conflict betweenthe geographical sciences and geophysics.

34 In January 1962, for example, Roots attended a SPRISymposium on the ‘Problems of mass balance studies’,presented a lecture on geophysics at Cambridge, andgave a lecture about the PCSP before the RGS. Letterre. ‘Visit to Britain, 4–21 January 1962’, Roots to vanSteenburgh, 20 December 1961, LAC, RG45, V300,File 1-1-3.

35 [Montreal] Gazette 6 April 1965, p. 4. Copy of article atLAC, RG45, V337, File 2-1-7.

36 Interview with Denis St-Onge, Ottawa, 11 April 2002.37 Interview with Art Collin, Ottawa, 12 August 2002.

This was also the view of Trevor Lloyd, Professor ofGeography at McGill University, who was, accordingto Fred Roots, ‘very interested in the success orotherwise of what he called the “idea” of the PolarContinental Shelf Project, which he felt to be someextent unique in a present-day Civil Service organiza-tion’. Letter re. ‘Report to Royal Commission onGovernment Organization’, Roots to van Steenburgh,10 August 1961, LAC, RG45, V300, File 1-1-3.

38 I have developed this discussion of the role ofwomen during PCSP field science in other work.

39 Interview with Bea Alt, Ottawa, 15 August 2002.40 Interview with Peter Adams M.P., Houses of Parlia-

ment, Ottawa, 22 May 2002.41 Interview with E.F. Roots, Gatineau, 13 May 2002.

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Documents

Becoming a geographical scientist: oral histories of Arctic fieldwork