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| Bad weather in Resolute during late winter. |
Bad weather can be frustrating when your excitement to begin
summer research is at a high. You have all your personal gear packed. You have
spent two days organizing everything you need for the next month. All of your scientific equipment is ready to
be installed. But the weather keeps changing. Snow keeps falling. Visibility is
poor. And planes remain grounded. This can be trying. But then an opportunity
to visit the community and participate in the science fair at the school is
presented to you. You forget about the fact that there are delays in getting to
the field and you remember that outreach opportunities like this are one of the
reasons we are involved in Arctic research.
For the last four years, the Polar Continental Shelf Program
(PCSP), Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), have sponsored a
science fair for Grades 1-11 at the Qarmartalik School in Resolute Bay. This
year, students presented their research on which form of renewable energy would
have the greatest benefit for Resolute, how to better insulate housing in the
community, the best toothpaste to use to protect their teeth, the best compost to
use in this environment, and many other topics that the students were either
passionate about or that were directly relevant to their day-to-day lives in
the Arctic.
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| Researcher Neal Scott with several students at the Qarmartalik School Science Fair. NRCat was also on hand for the festivities! [picture posted with permission of parents and school] |
We were fortunate enough to be invited to judge this year’s science fair along with other community members (e.g., the RCMP) and encourage the students’ scientific curiosities. This opportunity also enabled us to meet and talk with the parents and teachers of this remote community. We were shown traditional tools used to clean and stretch animal hides. We were each given syllabic charts to encourage us to learn how to write our names in Inuktitut, and we were taught a traditional game, where the goal is to be the first person to get the end of their stick into one of the small holes drilled into a caribou antler. But for the children (and ourselves if we are being honest), the best part of the day was a visit from the Natural Resources Cat (NRCat) – for which it didn’t take long for the kids to “de-tail” the costume (3 minutes to be exact).
It was a great day to share the excitement of science with the children of Resolute!
