Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

AUSUITTUQ/GRISE FIORD
Grise Fiord's seasonal European neighbours are wintering just fine aboard their bright red, steel-hulled sailboat, doing research on ice and ocean currents and enjoying being part of the community.

"We call them our boat people," said Marty Kuluguqtuq, the senior administrative officer for the hamlet of Grise Fiord about the "french dude with his family" living in their sailboat. "This year they decided to pull their boat out onto the beach here for the winter."

For the second year, Eric Brossier, wife France and daughters Leonie, 6, and Aurora, 3, from France have settled in for the long winter on Ellesmere Island aboard the 15-metre Vagabond. The family of four spent last winter nearly 50 km out locked in sea ice at the mouth of South Cape Fiord, west of Grise Fiord.

"We had a very good winter," said Eric. "It is a little different social life with going to school and enjoying having a lot of other kids to play with."

The family now has wireless Internet which it picks up from a neighbour and has access to a few friendly neighbours' hot showers and laundry facilities once in a while.

Eric, a geophysicist, said his scientific research is focused on three elements: air and weather patterns, ice and snow formation and ocean currents including salinity. Doing oceanographic and geophysical research for clients based in Victoria and Toronto, Eric's value is in longer-term field measurements.

"What (southern research institutes) are happy with is having someone all year long," he said, adding many scientists do mainly spring field trips. Eric has spent the last 13 years sailing the circumpolar North, and says because the climate scale is typically many, many years, he hasn't been able to compare ice conditions of some specific locations because the Vagabond has moved around so much.

"What we are sure, there are places we didn't dream of going there before by boat and now we're able to reach with a small boat," he said.

The Brossier family will be docked until the ice breaks in mid-July. They will then travel to Greenland to spend the summer doing more research.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.