Benjamin.

The arctic wolves of Ellesmere Island were never hunted by people. They don't run when someone comes near. They don't attack. They're just there. Biologist David Mech spent parts of twenty-four summers living alongside a pack six hundred miles from the North Pole. The pups untied his bootlaces.

Benjamin works the same way. He trusts by default. Not because he's naive, but because he has no history of bad experiences that taught him not to. It's a quality people notice right away and that makes him easy to work with: he collaborates without ego, yields control when someone else knows more, doesn't need credit for already having had the answer. At the Eureka station, when a generator failed, a younger technician had the right idea. Benjamin said "go ahead" and held the flashlight. Not calculated generosity. Just the fastest solution.

That frictionless teamwork shows outside work too. He calls his mother every two days without anyone asking him to. The supply plane pilots keep coffee for him knowing he'll fix their radio if it fails. He starts the generator before the others wake up so there's hot coffee when they climb out of their sleeping bags. He leaves the best portion for the last one to arrive. He sends paper postcards to his mother when he passes through Resolute, even though they take weeks to reach Igloolik. Siku keeps every one. These are acts, not statements. Benjamin cares that way, as naturally as he breathes in the cold.

Benjamin always dresses in silver, gray, and white. No exceptions. It's not a conscious aesthetic decision — or at least he doesn't describe it that way. It's deep comfort, the kind of preference that needs no justification because it's never been questioned.

A coworker once gave him a red t-shirt. He folded it carefully, put it in a drawer, and never wore it. He said nothing. He didn't return the gift. The t-shirt is still there, in his Iqaluit apartment, next to the workbench tools and the white sheets and the gray towels. In the whole apartment, the only point of contrast is a photo of his mother and his uncle Thomas on the windowsill and a topographic map of the archipelago on the wall. Everything else: functional and monochrome.

The metallic puffer jacket he wears in the portrait was bought with his first steady paycheck. Shiny nylon with a silver finish, high collar, zip usually open. The inner lining has a motor grease stain that doesn't show from the outside. He hasn't tried to clean it.