About me
Fascinating Arctic
I clearly remember my first visit to Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park on the outskirts of Iqaluit in October 1996. The icy wind swirled up snow that covered rocks, moss and lichen. The Sylvia Grinnell River was starting to freeze up. As far as I could see there was nothing to indicate that this area has ever been touched by humans. The loneliness and silence, interrupted only by the noise of the wind, were fascinating.
The Arctic is first and foremost the home of people, particularly of the Inuit and of other indigenous peoples of the North. We should never forget that in all the debates about climate change, resources, shipping routes and sovereignty.“
A few hours later in Iqaluit I met John Amagoalik, who many call “Father of Nunavut“. John Amagoalik had been in charge of building the administration of the new territory that was scheduled to become a reality on April 1, 1999. He told me about his hopes and aspirations and that his people, the Inuit, would finally have a voice in decisions affecting their lives and territory.
This first visit sparked my interest in the Arctic, and this interest has never diminished. Since then I have visited Iqaluit several times. I have been to Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet, Arctic Bay, Resolute and Devon Island. I also cruised through parts of the Northwest Passage on board the ice breaker Louis S. St. Laurent, visited an iron ore deposit on Baffin Island, and travelled throughout the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Alaska.
Today, the Arctic is no longer the remote issue that it was a decade ago for many people in the South. The Arctic is now the focal point for a multitude of interests: debates revolve around climate change, the loss of species due to the melting of sea ice and the thawing of the perma-frost, the economic development of natural resources, new shipping routes – and first and foremost the consequences for the people of the Arctic. I am following these issues with my news stories and feature reports for newspapers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg and now also through my website www.arctic-report.net.
About me: I was born in Toronto and have dual German and Canadian citizenship. I grew up in Germany, where I went to school and university and worked as a journalist. After learning journalism at the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz and studying Political Sciences and Law at the University of Trier, I joined the news agency Associated Press as a correspondent, with responsibility for the two Bundeslaender Hessen and Rhineland-Palatinate. Later I worked as an editor at the news desk of the Frankfurter Rundschau in Frankfurt. Since 1997 I have been based in Ottawa, Canada as a freelance correspondent for several newspapers, among them Handelsblatt, Kölner Stadtanzeiger, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Tagesspiegel, Weser-Kurier, Rheinpfalz, Die Presse/Vienna, Basler Zeitung and Luxemburger Wort. I am member of the global correspondents network Weltreporter (www.weltreporter.net) and the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa.