Benjamin.

At twenty-two, on his first long circuit through the Queen Elizabeths, a storm left Benjamin stuck at the Isachsen station on Ellef Ringnes Island. One of the most remote abandoned bases in the Canadian Arctic. A dot on the map with nothing but measuring instruments and a prefab hut with a generator. The pickup flight was delayed. He had no satellite coverage for the first forty-eight hours because the communications antenna was wind-damaged. Food for three days. Outside temperature: minus forty-seven.

The station's generator had an intermittent fault that could leave him without heat. Benjamin fixed it with improvised parts. He soldered connections, purged fuel lines, heated gaskets with a handheld torch. There was no manual for that specific repair. There was accumulated experience going back to age fourteen, when his uncle Thomas would put a wrench in his hand and point at the bolt without explaining anything.

He stretched three days of food into five. Slept in blocks of work and rest, no clock, no screens, no schedule. Just the wind against the hut, the instruments still logging data, and his ability to keep things running. The instant coffee ran out on day two. The bannock on day three. After that, dried caribou and focus.

When the plane arrived on day five, the pilot asked if he was okay. Benjamin said: "Perfectly." It was true, but not entirely. Because he'd also discovered something uncomfortable: that he hadn't felt any urgency to get back. That total solitude didn't hurt. That bothered him more than the storm. He called his mother that night and talked for twenty minutes — twice as long as usual.

That experience defined him as a technician. More stations followed, longer circuits, responsibility for juniors arriving from the south without knowing you have to sleep with your socks on at minus forty. A junior tech freshly arrived from Montreal once adjusted the generator regulator without following protocol. The fuel tank froze. Benjamin said nothing. He dismantled the tank, heated the lines, purged the system. Three hours of quiet work while the rookie watched. When he finished: "Next time, ask." The rookie nodded. Never skipped a step again.