This summer, while most people have been tending gardens or soaking up the sun, UFV’s Lauren Erland has spent time in a colder climate — the Arctic.
The director of UFV’s Berry Environmental Resilience Research and Innovation (BERRI) Lab recently took a cruise with Adventure Canada. Serving as the ship’s botanist, she helped travellers see a side of the north that few expect: vibrant, diverse plant life thriving in the cold.
“I gave presentations explaining what plants are in the region we’re in and how climate change is affecting them,” Erland said. “When people think of the Arctic, they don’t think about plants. They picture polar bears, icebergs, and rocks, but there’s actually very diverse and cool (no pun intended) plant life up there.”
Adventure Canada is a women-led company with Indigenous ownership. They run small expedition cruises — 200 passengers max — designed for people who want to learn about the environments and cultures they’re travelling to.
Erland joined them for the first time last year and recalls visiting Beechey Island, where the Franklin expedition gravesites are. Even in such an inhospitable environment, she was delighted by the biodiversity, and she marvelled at the knowledge and resourcefulness of the Inuit peoples who’ve inhabited the land and used its resources since time immemorial.
“There was quite a bit of plant life there, similar to what we find in our high alpine areas, and I had a few people come up to me afterwards saying it changed their view of the region,” she said. “It’s not a barren landscape, and it’s interesting to see people who’ve never been there before have their perspectives shaken and reframed.
“The people. The culture. The landscape. If you have the chance, I’d recommend for anyone to go.”
Erland first visited the region for a research project at Resolute Bay (Qausuittuq) in 2019, and she still has plants from that trip in the BERRI Lab.
Last summer’s route went from Greenland to Resolute Bay and back down again, crossing the Davis Strait twice. This year’s route again started at Greenland but took a southern course above northern Quebec that included Iqaluit, and Cape Dorset (Kinngait).
“That’s a berry highway through there,” she enthused.
Erland said there’s a fascinating group of people on these expeditions. She loves interacting with Inuit knowledge keepers and learns a lot speaking with geologists and photographers. She finds the discussions inspiring.
“I got to walk across the Arctic tundra with writer Margaret Atwood,” Erland said with a grin. “It’s just a really cool group of people.”
The expedition was an abrupt departure from Lauren’s day-to-day during the UFV academic year. Most of her time is spent in the cozy confines of the BERRI Lab on the Chilliwack campus, focusing on grading papers, filling out student progress reports, and putting together funding requests.
The contrast of being on a boat in the wide-open ocean, exploring arctic plant life — she described that as a kind of botanist heaven.
“While I love what I do, it’s nice to take a break from my day job while getting inspiration back for the research that we do at the BERRI Lab,” she said. “It’s a good refresh and reset to generate new ideas and come back to UFV excited and ready to get going again.”
