Don Charles Foote (1931-1969)

In the tragic death at the age of thirty-seven of Don Foote, the Institute has lost one of its more recent active Fellows, the polar world has lost a vital force in geographical research, and his friends have lost a well-loved man. One is agonised by the stroke of fate which permits a man to live life dangerously in the Arctic, travelling by dog team, tossing in small boats, walking through sub-zero blizzards, and then allows him to be struck down by that modern civilised killer, the automobile. ... Don was a product of Dartmouth College, which above all institutions in the United States has given so much to northern enterprise, including the first Executive Director of the Institute, and many subsequent Governors and Fellows. From there, we know, come not only well-trained and intelligent graduates, such as other American Universities produce, but above all real men. Don was such a man, powerful physically, a well-rounded human person, a leader who led by his personality rather than by his intellectual status which was indeed high. His early research work, stimulated by Dr. Trevor Lloyd, was in far northern Europe. He was a Summer Scholar at the University of Oslo and spent two further years travelling and working in high subarctic Scandinavia and Spitsbergen. Then he came to McGill University, where as a student taking higher degrees, and later as a member of staff, he spent the best part of ten years, and became, despite his youth, the doyen of arctic studies in the field of Human Geography. During this time his areas of research lay in Alaska and later Baffin Island. In Alaska his prime concern was with the economic base of the Eskimo hunter, caribou, whales, bears and seals. As a dedicated conservationist he was appointed in 1966 by the Canadian Government to head an Area Economic Survey of Baffin Island, and two years later under the International Biological Programme to study the 'adaptability' of the Igloolik people. Then came a sabbatical leave to join the University of Alaska's social research programme; an assignment tragically cut short. We at McGill University had missed him badly during his absence, and were looking forward to his return in 1969 to rejuvenate, as he could so well do, the basic elementary course in geography. In these days of sometimes difficult student-staff relationships Don, with his immensely sympathetic personality, was a force for mutual respect and a generator of enthusiasm. The Fellows of the Arctic Institute offer their profound sympathy to his artist wife Berit and their young son, whose father was such a fine and friendly man

D.B. MacMillan (1874-1970)

D.B. MacMillan, "Captain Mac", is no longer with us. As an Arctic sailor and oldtime sled driver he ranked with the greats of northern skippers. ... An iron body, conditioned by early gymnastic effort and sustained until the age of fourscore by conning his ship through the ice, kept him hale and mentally active until the end of 95 years. ... He was teaching school, inspiring his pupils in the Maine woods with a love of botany and geology, when Peary asked him to join his assault on the Pole in 1908. ... From [then] on the Arctic was his life. He started planning a new expedition with his Roosevelt cabin mate Borup in 1911, but Borup died, and it was 1913 before he got away on the "Crockerland Expedition". His "Four Years in the Frozen North" tells the tale of this project. ... In 1920 MacMillan commissioned the famous vessel Bowdoin named after his Maine college, a 60-ton auxiliary wooden schooner designed to buck ice in arctic waters. First he took a scientific party to southwest Baffin Island, then to Northwest Greenland, wintering on both occasions. ... The war years saw Bowdoin taken over by the U.S. Navy. At first MacMillan was her skipper, but later he was moved to a consultative desk job with the Hydrographer while others, less competent, did their best to ruin his stout schooner. But he was able to reclaim her and refit her after the war, and at the age of eighty was still sailing north. ..

Glaciological Research in the Canadian Arctic

The "glacierized" highland rim of the Eastern Arctic extends north for 1,600 miles from southern Baffin Island to northernmost Ellesmere. Ice forms include glacier caps, highland, transection, valley, cirque, and piedmont glaciers, and shelf ice on the north coast of Ellesmere. Incidental ice observations prior to, and glaciological work after 1945 are reviewed, and some results given of the latter: Baffin Island Expeditions of the Arctic Institute in 1950 to the Clyde area and Barnes Icecap; in 1953 to Penny Highland Icecap on Cumberland Peninsula; Ellesmere Ice Shelf Expeditions of Hattersley-Smith and others in 1953 and 1954; and investigations by J. Mercer on Grinnell and Terra Nivea Icecaps in southern Baffin, 1952 and 1953. General appearance and budgetary state of Canadian Arctic glaciers are noted, with suggestions of future glaciological, geomorphological, and bathymetrical problems

Frank Debenham (1884-1965)

The Polar community has suffered a great loss in the death in November 1965 of Frank Debenham. Debenham was a powerful inspiration to many polar workers, being at the same time a disciplinarian professor of geography and a warm hearted individual who, around his hospitable fireside, could inspire young men to take up a career, or a voluntary immolation into polar exploration. He was definitely the founder of what must be considered the senior Polar Research body of the world, the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge. Many of us have thought out fanciful or practical schemes when confined to tent or igloo in a blizzard. But the idea of a repository of polar information and a centre from which future expeditions could draw their nourishment came to Frank Debenham on the slopes of Mt. Erebus in 1912. At that time he was a member of Capt. Scott's last Antarctic expedition, which ended triumphantly but tragically for the leader and his four companions. Britain and the world were profoundly moved by the death of these brave men and the public subscription to take care of their widows and children exceeded the funds required by a wide margin. It was from this surplus that Debenham's scheme for a Polar Institute was achieved, supported as he was by (Sir) James Wordie and (Sir) Raymond Priestly, two other great Antarctic men. From its inception in 1920-26 until 1946, Debenham was the Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, and from 1930 Professor of Geography at Cambridge University. Debenham, Griffith Taylor, and Priestly were all three geologists on Scott's last expedition. The first two, Australians by birth, were distinguished founders or chairmen of University Geography Departments; the latter went on to be Vice-Chancellor of two universities and President of the Royal Geographical Society. Scott and Shackleton both knew how to pick men, and Debenham likewise attracted and then stimulated the very best. In these material modern days when a graduate student assistant expects a fat salary, it is of interest to record that until 1930 neither the Director nor his secretary nor any of the other workers at the Scott Polar Research Institute received a cent of pay, and thereafter only the secretary, who, at times, assisted Debenham in scrubbing the floor. Ill health plagued Professor Debenham for a time, at and after his retirement. But somehow a new lease on life arrived with his postwar researches in Africa and his scholarly writings, if anything, increased now that he no longer had to devote his leisure to housecleaning in the Polar Institute. In skull cap and smoking jacket he became the friend and mentor of a new generation of British polar enthusiasts. Although never an associate of the Arctic Institute of North America, we on this continent have felt his inspiration and join the rest of the world and his large family in mourning the loss of a great and lovable polar enthusiast

Glaciology

Glaciological research, mainly since World War II, is reviewed by the first author; and specific aspects outlined by the second: velocity relations, and structures in glaciers, phase relations in glacier ice, oxygen isotope studies in snow, firn and glacier ice, micro-meteorology and the regime of glaciers