Upon embarking on my PhD programme in 1984 at the University of Alberta I was aware that I was entering into an arena of exploration science. For I had joined the research team of Professor John England, the pre-eminent and passionate expert on glaciation and sea-level history of the Canadian High Arctic. I had to quickly adapt to the style of field research that had been undertaken by generations of Quaternary geologists in northern Canada, which involved long summer seasons, small teams living frugally in tents, the foot-traversing of vast areas of unexplored terrain with occasional camp moves facilitated by helicopters. My field area was the north-west coast of Ellesmere Island on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, an area visited by less than a handful of scientists in the 1950s and 1960s, getting around by dog sled teams, skis or walking in between their drop off and pick up by a small Piper Cub plane on skis or balloon tyres.