Three weeks on a snowmobile
Benjamin works as a maintenance technician for remote weather stations at Environment and Climate Change Canada. His circuit covers the Queen Elizabeth archipelago, in the Canadian High Arctic. Two thirds of each month he spends away from Iqaluit: traveling by Twin Otter or snowmobile between automated stations scattered across the tundra, calibrating sensors, repairing antennas, replacing batteries.
What he carries on the road fits in a small space. Dried caribou, bannock — the flatbread you make in a pan that keeps for days without spoiling — instant coffee packets. A hand-crank flashlight for when the batteries fail, which at minus forty they often do. Hand tools: wrenches, portable soldering iron, electrical tape. Benjamin doesn't improvise with packing. Every thing he takes has proven useful; what hasn't proved anything stays in Iqaluit.
When Marc, the junior tech fresh from Montréal, went out on his first long circuit, Benjamin gave him a packet of tea, a hand-crank flashlight, and one piece of advice: "Sleep with your socks on. The rest you'll learn." That's Benjamin's teaching style: the minimum needed, delivered without a speech. Marc kept the tea and the lesson. Benjamin also taught him, without realizing it, that when someone adjusts a regulator without following protocol and the fuel tank freezes, what you do is disassemble, heat, purge. Three hours. No comment. Just: "Next time, ask."







