The House & other Arctic musings

Shaken

Yesterday was another difficult day for my "other" family, the police family that will always be a part of me. Erik Czapnik, at 51 years old the same age as me, a member of the Ottawa Police Service, was stabbed to death yesterday morning at 5:30 am. He was doing one of those routine tasks, writing up his notes after a matter that took him to an Emergency Room. He had finished and was sitting in his car in the parking lot, writing up his notes, when he was attacked and stabbed. Despite being outside of a hospital Emergency Room he was mortally wounded and died despite the best efforts of those trying to save him.

He was a father, a husband, and immigrant to Canada. He only joined the Ottawa Police Service two years ago, following in the footsteps of his father in Poland, who policed in Poland for many year. It was another senseless death of a police officer, always a difficult pill to swallow.

What makes this incident doubly hard to take, so much so that I have a hard time finding the words to convey how I feel, is that his assailant is a Member of the RCMP, albeit one currently suspended without pay but still. It is hard enough to understand how these things happen at the best of times, but I can't fathom what would compel one policeman to murder another one, no matter how ill they might be.

The indications are that Cst Gregson is an ill man. In 2007, a week before Cst Czapnik was joining the Ottawa PS, Gregson was in a court in Regina, being sentenced for threatening the life of a Mormon Church Bishop with a knife. He was given a Conditional Discharge because he had been diagnosed with brain cysts, undergoing surgery some time later. He has been suspended from the Force since that incident.

If this all sounds apologetic because the man is a Mountie, it isn't meant to be. I can't fathom how Cst Czapnik's family must feel, and I can not fathom how another police officer could do this. Gregson needs to be held responsible for this act, and if he isn't criminally responsible because of some illness then he needs to be held securely to ensure his condition won't result in another death.

This is a tragedy on many levels, I only wish I could frame some words that would help. To help make sense of it all.

I can't.

Facinicus chasdickensii

Its a wonder how organisms travel around the world. The world is a much smaller place these days, and goods and consequently organisms travel far and wide, ending up places we never imagined.

The other day I felt a strange sensation, the sort you get after you've been hiking during tick season, whether you have any on you or not. When it persisted I checked further and was startled to find I had a small insect on me, something we don't see often this time of the year. When I plucked it off, I was really startled when it made a buzzing hum, seemingly a defense mechanism. I saved it and began the long process of trying to figure out what kind of animal it was.

It took awhile but the defensive hum was indeed diagnostic and I found it was a species belonging to a small, relatively little known genus of bugs, with only two species. While commonly known as Hum Beetles, they are actually a True Bug, related to Stink Bugs, Assassin Bugs and the like. The two species apparently make their homes on and in the fur of mammals, feeding on dead skin, parasites and detritus. As one of the species preferred hosts are African antelope, and the other's sheep it is unlikely that they would be found naturally in the Arctic. I have no idea how they would end up here, nor how it came to be crawling on me but as I trying to figure out which particular species it was, I again felt the sensation and found a second one on me.

Although they are very similar species, there are enough distinguishing characteristics to tell the two apart and a little bit further digging on the internet helped to determine that it was the species that prefer sheep, Facinicus chasdickensii. Yes, I have an infestation of Baa Hum Bugs.

Merry Christmas to all of you, and I hope your year is filled with contentment, peace and joy.

Great Award Winning Blogs

Just a quick note to point you in the direction (once again) of the Best NWT Blogs. Voting is over and the winners have been announced.  Head over there to check out who won, but more importantly check out the blogs that were up for the awards, award winners or not. Reading them is worth your time.

The swing

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, and now the sun has begun its journey back to the Arctic. The reality, of course, is the tilt of the earth has now started to swing around to our favour, but the sun beginning a journey sounds, better.

This photo was taken around 1:30 this afternoon. I had to play with the exposure a little, but this is a pretty good approximation of how dark it is at the peak of our sunless period. As you can see we always have a little light, even this on our darkest day.

So now the light will grow, every day. In six short weeks the Sun will peak over the Horizon, above the hills to the South. The journey back to us will be complete.

Baby did a bad bad thing

The Christmas Season, coupled with a pronounced tendency for procrastination that went up another level lately, means I've been remiss about promoting some blogs up for awards lately.  So badly that I appear to have missed the voting round for the Canadian Blog Awards completely.

In addition there is only one day left to vote for the Best NWT Blogs.  NWT Blogging, and the community that has sprung up around it has exploded in the last couple of years. There is a pretty amazing bunch of bloggers up there and if you haven't checked them out you should.  Voting is a little different, you have to email your selections or text them to the administrator but I encourage, nay implore, you to go check out the nominees and get your votes in.  You only have until Tuesday December 22nd to vote!

Back to the Canadian Blog Awards and the final results. There were very few Northern blogs that made the final voting cut, and I'm not sure if that will change, given the structure of the nominations etc. That is the nature of the beast in these things, and perhaps someday someone will start a juried blogging award for Canadian Bloggers.

There were a few northern blogs that did make the final round though, and at least one other blog that you'll find on my side bar (and an excellent science blog) that came out on top.

First off, in Culture and Literature The Book Mine Set finished a very respectable third.  Well done.

One of my favourite blogs, Fawn's Fawnahereo's Place finished fourth in the Best Family Blog category. Last year Fawn finished third, and while it would have been nice for her to finish on top, she well deserves the attention her blog receives.

Continuing on, in the Gay Lesbian Bi Trans category a blog by a friend and former Yellowknifer - Ferry Tales finished in fifth place in the final round.

Dave Brosha, who runs a photography business in the NWT is an incredibly gifted photographer whose blog finished third in Best Photo/Art Blog.  Well deserved, but its a pity he didn't finish on top.

I'm happy to say that a deserving blog that did finish on top of her category, Best Science Blog, while not a Northern blog is one I regularly visit.  Congratulations Scientific Chick.

So there you have it. Make sure you swing around and visit all of these deserving, award winning, blogs. And make sure you vote in the Best NWT Blog Awards, so those deserving blogs will get the accolades, and traffic they deserve.

Struck down by the Flu, Part two.

Continued from page one

When the German Triplanes turned back to search for other targets, McLeod did the unexpected. He turned back and started to chase them. It was so out of character for an observer plane, especially one that had just narrowly escaped being shot down, that they didn't watch for him. McLeod chased them until he had the nearest plane in his sights, and then shot it down. It was such an audacious move, that had an allied balloon observer not witnessed it, they wouldn't have gotten credit for it, no one believed McLeod's and Coomb's story.

McLeod, with another observer followed this up with an equally ambitious attack on a well protected German Observation balloon, well back of the line. That was followed up two days later, with a mission to mark an artillery battery so it could be located and destroyed. As they attempted to circle over it they were harassed by the accurate fire of an anti-aircraft battery. So McLeod turned his attention to that, flying through machine gun fire to drop his bombs on the anti-aircraft battery.  While returning to finish the job they shot up a large column of infantry and then went about their business of directing fire at the artillery battery, until it was destroyed.

Granted two weeks leave in London for his exploits ironically almost killed him. The hotel he was staying at was bombed by a Zeppelin, killing almost fifty people and wounding more than twice that. He escaped unharmed and returned to France.

 McLeod, on his return was again paired with a new observer, this one an experienced, decorated airman, Lt. A.W. Hammond.  Their work was increasingly busy, the Germans had launched Operation Michael, a massive offensive designed to use their freed up troops from the surrender of Russia and the collapse of the eastern front. It was their attempt to finish the war before the arrival of large amounts of American doughboys. 

McLeod's squadron flew as many as three missions in a day, artillery targeting, photographic patrols, and bombing runs. And on March 27th, 1918, three weeks shy of his 19th birthday, McLeod started off on the mission that would earn him the Victoria Cross.

McLeod and Hammond left on a bombing mission with six more aircraft, heavily loaded with bombs and extra ammo, at dawn that morning. They unfortunately had to land at another airfield shortly after because of fog, and in the process damaged their landing gear. It took until noon to repair the damage and by that time the others had left for home, the weather not having improved all that much. McLeod and Hammond took off on their mission anyway, alone.

As they headed for their target a Fokker Triplane came out of the clouds below them. Manouvering in for a shot, Hammond shot it out of the sky, but it wasn't alone, and soon they were being swarmed by seven other Triplanes. They managed to shoot down one more Fokker before luck turned against them, or rather the skill of a German Ace, Lt Hans Kirschstein.

Kirschstein came up from below and his machine gun fire not only wounded McLeod three times, and Hammond six times, but ruptured the fuel tank on the FK8, setting the plane on fire. As one more Fokker came in for the kill, Hammond revived and shot it down with his one good arm. It apparently did not crash but left the fight.

Their plane on fire, McLeod had to climb out on to the wing to avoid the flames, and controlled it so as to fan the flames away. The floor below Hammond burned away (remember these planes were mostly fabric over a wooden frame) forcing him to lie along the cockpit. But even in this conditions the two managed a shot at another Triplane coming in for the kill, putting it out of commission, but not before McLeod was wounded two more times. Lt Kirschstein continued his attack and his bullets took out Hammond's gun.  The plane on fire and headed towards the ground he broke off his attack and went looking for other Allied planes, shooting down a Sopwith Camel later that flight.

McLeod continued to try and make across the front line to a safe haven, side slipping to keep the flames away from them, and finally crashed in No Man's Land. Both survived the crash, but Hammond, badly wounded and burnt was incapable of moving. McLeod got up and dragged Hammond away from the burning plane, until their bombs burst in the fire. McLeod was again wounded, this time with shrapnel from his own bombs.

So close to safety, McLeod was wounded yet again, this time by German Snipers. The two badly hurt men then laid in a shell hole until night fall, when they were rescued by soldiers from the South Africa Scottish Regiment. Both "smelt terribly of burnt flesh".

Both McLeod and Hammond faced a long recovery but in September 1918 McLeod had recovered somewhat and was awarded the Victoria Cross by the King (Hammond received a bar to his Military Cross).  He was too weak to attend a reception in his honour though, and later that month returned to Canada to recuperate.

It is an amazing story, but alas its end is sad, and poignantly ironic. Having survived terrible wounds and against terrific odds he didn't escape the Spanish Influenza. The epidemic was also sweeping Canada by the end of the war and McLeod contracted the virus. Still weak, he was unable to fight the virulent disease and died November 6th 1918, five days before the Great War ended.

I'm grateful to the website Canadian Aces and Heroes from whence this information on Alan McLeod comes from. And I'm grateful for Fawn for showing that I actually had three "from"s in the prior sentence, although I'll keep the first one, because my dictionary says that even though whence means "from what place" from whence has been used by reputable writers since the 14th century and is broadly accepted in standard English.

Struck down by the Flu

One of the reasons I continue to be interested in the Great War is not the greater histories, the battles, the politics, the way it shaped the world in ways that are still felt today. Rather it is the individual stories, at turns tragic,  or heroic, at times funny, many times profoundly sad. The Great War chewed up some 9 million soldier's lives, scarring countless others. Millions of civilians also perished. And on its heels came our last great epidemic, the Spanish Influenza. An epidemic that took another 20 million lives worldwide.  Many young men survived the horrors of the war, only to be struck down by a tiny, but deadly pathogen.

There are many ways to count Canadian Victoria Cross recipients. The world, and our citizenship was different at times. Many soldiers serving with Canada were born elsewhere. We were considered British Subjects, rather than Canadian citizens at the time of the Great War. The Department of National Defence, by way of example, in their excellent brochure on the Canadian Victoria Cross only includes men who served in "Canadian" forces. They include in that list, Thomas Ricketts, who earned his VC with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in 1918, thirty-one years before Newfoundland joined confederation, at a time that it was a separate country in the British Commonwealth.

I like to cast a pretty large net when I think about Canadians that earned the VC. It includes a young man, born in England, who lived a stone's throw from where I grew up (at Shellmouth Manitoba), who moved to Australia shortly before the start of the war. Leonard Keysor earned his VC at Gallipoli with the Australian Expeditionary Force, using his fine baseball skills lobbing live grenades back at the Turkish Forces throwing them at him and his comrades.

Canada's youngest Victoria Cross recipient is not in the DND's brochure. He served in the Royal Flying Corps. Alan Arnett McLeod was born in Stonewall Manitoba and after the war started he tried to enlist, first in the army, then in the Royal Flying Corps.  In both cases he was turned down, he was after all, only 17 years old. But the RFC held out the promise that once he was 18, they would indeed take him. When he turned 18 he quit school, for a different education, how to fly.

He did well, and soon found himself a pilot with the RFC. However once again his age confounded his ambitions, the RFC considered 18 too young for combat. So he was put in an aging plane to help defend Britain against Zeppelin attacks, managing in the process to get shot down by a Zeppelin's gunner.

By late 1917 the war had taken a heavy toll on allied pilots, so they were more than willing to overlook McLeod's youth. His age was changed from 18 to 19 and he was sent to France. Not to become a fighter pilot as he desired though.  Bombers and observers were being chewed up quickly, as they were no match for German fighters. That was were the greatest need for pilots was, and that is where he was sent.

Not content with the important work of observation that he was tasked with, the audacious McLeod took to patrolling behind enemy lines looking for fighters to engage with. Although the FK8 he flew was armed with both a forward machine gun for the pilot and a rear one for the gunner/observor they were no where near as manouverable as the fighter planes, and they frequently got into scrapes. But they also had success to go with their near disasters.

In December 1917, on just his second trip into enemy airspace, they got into a dogfight with 8 Albatross DIII's, sending one down out of control. On another trip they also shot up a large troop concentration, causing considerable damage.

McLeod's reputation for daring do took a major leap forward early in 1918 when he and his gunner at the time, Lt Comber were set upon by three German Triplanes. They managed to keep them at bay as they headed for the front, escaping into Allied territory. The Germans didn't like straying from their side of the line and so they escaped. But then they did the unexpected.

to be continued...

Cannibal!

First off, I believe that climate change is a serious problem, that it is human driven, and that it is having a profound effect on the Arctic.  That said, it annoys me to no end that almost everything is being used to make the arguement that climate change is happening.

Look, I understand that it is a crucial issue, and one that it is difficult to convince some people (the very people who happily point out that the earth was warmer in the past accept the science that tells us that while rejecting the same science that is telling us that it is warming at unprecedented rate).

The problem with ascribing absolutely every problem or perceived problematic behaviour to climate change is that it dilutes the evidence at the end of the day. It has the power to numb, not shock. And what currently has me shaking my head is the cannibalistic Polar Bear photos and news item that is currently making its way around, the media and the internet.

Polar Bears are a touchstone for many people. They are charismatic, beautiful animals, and the ice they depend on is disappearing. Their listing as threatened by the US has done nothing to alleviate the threat to them. The threat to them isn't from hunting, either sport or by Inuit. Fifty bears or fifty thousand, when the ice disappears so will much of their food supply. There are many healthy populations right now that can and do sustain a hunt, the listing notwithstanding.

Because they have suddenly become the iconic messenger for climate change in the Arctic these photos, and the accompanying text (there are media stories as well, in pretty much every market) are being waved as climate change warning flags. "Look! The bears are being forced to eat each other because of their disappearing habitat and food supply!" "They are being forced to eat cubs!" (those are imaginary quotes - illustrative if you will.) But here is a quote for the Reuter's photos that I linked to:

 " Climate change has turned some polar bears into cannibals as global warming melts their Arctic ice hunting grounds, reducing the polar bear population..."

I don't know about you, but I grew up on a steady diet of nature films/docs and practically every one that had Polar Bears had the dramatic part about the mother bear having to keep an eye out for males that will kill her cubs. Not the best evidence you say? That is true, how about this snippet from Polar Bears International

Male polar bears, like males of other ursids, will kill and eat dependent cubs (Hansson and Thomassen 1983; Larsen 1985; Taylor et al. 1985; Derocher and Wiig 1999). Although this activity does not account for a large percentage of the mortality, it is a curious cause of death in young bears. A male bear that kills cubs fathered by another probably confers some survival advantage to cubs he fathered by eliminating possible competitors for resources. Also, female bears undergo a lactational anestrus. By killing her cubs, a male interrupts that anestrus, and theoretically could breed with the female, inducing her to have his cubs rather than the cubs of some other male. Infanticide, therefore, is a mechanism by which males can increase their relative fitness.

and

Polar bears will eat the flesh of their own kind, and often a bear that kills another will eat it. The killing of young cubs is probably not motivated by predatory instincts. Small cubs provide a very limited amount of energy, especially considering the risk of injury to a predatory male imposed by the defending female. Males that kill cubs may not even consume them (Derocher and Wiig 1999; S.C. Amstrup, unpublished data), perhaps due to their limited energy value.

So we have known behaviour from Polar Bears (and other animals, the killing of offspring is often used by males to both eliminate other male's genes from the pool and bring females back into breeding condition) suddenly being trumpeted as evidence of climate change. There's plenty of other evidence, we don't need to make everything evidence of climate change.

Looming

A quick note to let you know that The Nunies are looming large on the horizon.  The annual awards for Nunavut Blogging (Best Blog, Best New Blog - blogs started in 2009, and Best Post) will open for nominations in a couple of weeks.  In the mean time, I encourage you to visit as many blogs by or about Nunavumiut as possible. A list of the Nunavut blogs that I know of can be found on Nunavut Blogs!

So visit the blogs, and think about who you'd like to see as Best Blog and Best New Blog (bloggers will nominate their own posts for Best Post). Secondly, if you know of any bloggers from Nunavut that aren't on Nunavut Blogs! please let me know so I can add them. Thirdly, if you feel like donating a prize for one or all of the categories, drop me a line.  Its mostly about the glory, but prizes always sweeten the deal. I will be putting up a small prize for each category once again this year.

Practice makes...

So, its been frustrating trying to get decent photos of the fish, mostly due to focus issues, with lighting being the other challenge. I just use the built in flash, so reflection would be a problem. Now, to deal with any glass reflection from the aquarium, I hold the lens against the glass. And for a couple of reasons, I found that holding the camera upside down produces better results. The images are easily flipped in Aperture.

And that leaves focus. Because there is little distance involved, the only lens I can really use is my 10-22, but on auto focus it wants to focus on the backdrop of the aquarium.  So I set the focus on manual, find a distance and try to judge when a fish is the right distance from the camera. Needless to say it is a less than perfect set up.  Here are a couple of my better results.

These are the bad boys of the tank.  The dominant male is the fish in the centre. He matured first and rules the tank. The blurred pale male is the main problem in the tank, I believe.  It is by far the most aggressive of the tank, both towards the females and the less dominant males. I think this is the fish responsible for the tank mortalities.

My female with the interesting behaviour is the large in focus female in this photo.

This young, but large male, has a very interesting, subtle, almost iridescent colouring, that unfortunately this photo fails to do justice to. It is also very meek, and has been run roughshod over by the paler male.

And another shot of the dominant male in the tank.