Ed Struzik

Ed Struzik is a writer/photographer who has focused on Arctic issues for the past 28 years. During his tenure as the 2006-2007 holder of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, Mr. Struzik spent the better part of a year in the Canadian North investigating the impact that climate change is having on the environment, Inuit, and First Nations cultures, and the threats it poses to security and sovereignty. “The Big Thaw” (to be published by John Wiley and Sons in 2009) describes what Mr. Struzik found and what these and other findings mean for the future of Canada.

Over the years, Mr. Struzik has received dozens of awards and honors for his work. These include the Knight Science Fellowship at Harvard/MIT, the Southam Fellowship at the University of Toronto, and the Sir Sandford Fleming Medal, which goes to one Canadian each year who has made an outstanding contribution to the understanding of science in Canada. He is also a three-time winner of the Yves Fortier Award (Geological Association of Canada,) a seven-time winner of the Canadian Science Writers Association Award, and a multiple winner of national magazine and national newspaper awards. Canada’s Governor General has honoured Mr. Struzik three times with Citations of Merit for his work (Roland Michener Award for Meritorious Public Service in Journalism).

Mr. Struzik is the author of two previous books, Northwest Passage (published by the Canadian Geographic Society) and Ten Rivers (published by CanWest Books).

Keynote Address:

This Hour has Fifty-Five Million Years

Six-foot tall beavers, three-toed horses, scimitar cats, and western camels. Over the past three decades, the discovery of these and other now extinct animals has proven that the Arctic was, at various times, a much warmer place than it has been for more than a million years. Join writer/photographer Ed Struzik as he takes you on a 55 million year-long journey into the Arctic past. Discover what this past tells us about the future for wildlife, the environment, and for people living within and south of the Arctic Circle now that the world is heating up again.

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