Robert Gordon Blackadar (1928–2017)

Few Southerners seasonally active in the North immerse themselves in the local language and culture to the degree that Bob Blackadar did.In less than 10 years after his first summer as a geologist in the Arctic Islands, Bob became fluent in Inuktitut.He traveled extensively with the Inuit in the 1950s, often using traditional means, such as dog sledges, pack dogs, and small boats.Clearly captivated by the Arctic, Bob continued working there until the mid-1960s and maintained ties with northern folk and communities for many more years.Although Bob's death in June 2017 came more than 50 years after his last Arctic field season, his name will forever be linked with the Arctic.Robert Gordon Blackadar was born on 18 March 1928 in Ottawa, the son of E. Gordon and Myrtle (Norman) Blackadar.He attended Lisgar Collegiate in Ottawa, then went to Trinity College, University of Toronto, where he obtained an Honours BA in Science in 1950.He continued his studies in Geology and Geophysics at the University of Toronto and was awarded an MA in 1951 and a PhD in 1954.His dissertation dealt with the Logan diabase sills of the Thunder Bay-Lake Nipigon area of Ontario and was supervised by W.W. Moorhouse.Bob was to spend his entire career with the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), but he began his association with the GSC as a camp cook in the Yukon.In the spring of 1947, Hugh S. Bostock, doyen of Yukon field geologists and a neighbour of the Blackadars in Ottawa, was about to leave for the field but had not been able to engage a cook for the summer (Bostock, 1979).After ascertaining that Bob had not yet found a summer job, he told him the job of bush cook was his if he could learn to make bread, hot cakes, and desserts within the next four days.Bob accepted the challenge and was hired.He returned to the Yukon as cook on Hugh Bostock's field party in 1948.Bob first worked for the GSC as a geological field assistant in the Arctic in the summer of 1951, but he did not join the permanent staff until 1953.His first field assignment was to join Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith of the Defence Research Board, who was initiating a study of the ice shelves off the northern coast of Ellesmere Island.Bob was charged with conducting a reconnaissance of the geology, which was known only from scattered observations made by British and American explorers since the 1870s.Bob and Hattersley-Smith worked out of what was then a weather station at Alert and were logistically supported by the United States Air Force from Thule air base in Greenland.From April to June, they used two dog sledges driven by two Inughuit from Greenland.Their first sortie took them along the coast as far west as Markham Fiord.Bob was among the first Canadians to set foot on Canada's northernmost land, Cape Columbia, preceded only by a few Newfoundlander crew members of Robert E. Peary's expedition ship, the Roosevelt, in the early 20th century and possibly by Thule culture Inuit.

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