Three Carleton University professors in the Department of Biology have been named to Canadian Geographic’s list of the 100 Greatest Modern Explorers in Canada. Stewart Peck, who has likely collected more insects throughout the world than any other living person; Natalia Rybczynski, who discovered that camels lived in the High Arctic; and Kathleen Conlan, a marine biologist and deep-sea diver with more than 20 field expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic.
“There are a lot of interesting people on this list,” said Peck, who has now retired from Carleton. “I am happy to be counted among them. Part of my job as a biology professor at Carleton was research, and I travelled all over the world and discovered new places to help unravel the mysteries of evolutionary biology.”
“Stewart Peck and the late Henry Howden were my professors at Carleton and an inspiration to me when it came to exploring, “ said Conlan. “Exploration has produced an incredibly varied and interesting career to put it mildly. Currently, I work a great deal in Antarctic policy where exploration plays a large role.”
These modern explorers are also resident scientists at the Canadian Museum of Nature and the three are among illustrious company, including Roberta Bondar, Chris Hadfield, James Cameron and David Suzuki.
“Truly, it is a tremendous privilege to have the opportunity to explore the remote areas of our planet for fossils,” said Rybczynski. “It is an honour to be included on this list and associated with such inspiring people.”
The greatest explorers today are astronauts, deep-sea divers and polar adventurers. But then they’re also paleontologists, historians, conservationists and biologists. With every new expedition, adventure, field-research breakthrough, environmental effort and invention, this living generation is questing to better our geographic and scientific knowledge of Canada, Earth and everything beyond.
“I always preferred being in the field, the jungles, forests and mountains,” said Peck. “I liked the physical adventure, the exploration, the new and the unknown. Yes there are hardships but I view them as part of the process. I was never really upset about being cold in the mountains or wet in the jungle. It is all part of the adventure.”
The beauty of the term explorer is that the people labelled as such are constantly helping to evolve its meaning. Restrictions can’t be put on a word that drives discovery, that constantly reframes the world, introduces new places, peoples and species.
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