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The Current

What this award-winning picture says about climate change, and the loss of Arctic ice

Photojournalist Dustin Patar travelled to the Milne Fiord last summer, to document the work of scientists investigating the effects of the collapse.

Photojournalist Dustin Patar documented impact of Milne Ice Shelf collapse

CBC Radio ·
Two men stand on a large ice shelf, bent down to peer into a crack.
Grise Fiord resident Joseph Shoapik and researcher Alex Forrest peer into a crack in the ice on Milne Fiord, Ellesmere Island. Dustin Patar was named winner of the inaugural CJF-Edward Burtynsky Award for Climate Photojournalism for this image. (Dustin Patar)
The Current12:57A crack in the ice, and a changing climate

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On the Milne Fiord last summer, photojournalist Dustin Patar captured an image of two people peering into a deep crack in the ice, as they studied the impact of climate change on the Arctic.

"What they're actually doing in that photo is looking to see if that crack goes all the way through into the water, below the ice," said Patar, who took the image as a freelance journalist, but now works with CBC North. 

"Beneath the surface, something else was happening that essentially says that this climate, this environment, this ecosystem is very limited in time," he told The Current's Matt Galloway.

The Milne Ice Shelf on northern Ellesmere Island collapsed in 2020. Considered to be Canada's last fully intact ice shelf, it was almost 4,000 years old. Patar travelled to the Milne Fiord last summer, to document the work of scientists investigating the effects of the collapse. 

WATCH | Reverberations of the Milne Ice Shelf collapse: 

Reverberations of the Milne Ice Shelf collapse

2 years ago
Duration 3:44
After the Milne Ice Shelf on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island collapsed in 2020, a lake it was supporting disappeared. Scientists returned north this summer to try to understand what that could mean for the island's glaciers.

That work, originally published in The Narwhal in Sept. 2022, won a Digital Publishing Award two weeks ago. This week, one particular image — showing an Ellesmere Island resident and a researcher peering into a large crack in the ice — won the inaugural CJF-Edward Burtynsky Award for Climate Photojournalism.

Here are some of Patar's images from "the very top of the world."

Three figures cross an Arctic landscape
A small team crosses a glacier, in an attempt to find a path to a weather station located farther up the Fiord. (Dustin Patar)
Backpacks sitting on an ice shelf, as a man walks away in the background. There are glaciers and water to the left.
Scientists travelled to the location to study the effect of the collapse of the Milne Ice Shelf in 2020. (Dustin Patar)
Two people stand in the entrance of a building, beside an air strip. They are in silhouette, a plane is visible in the distance.
Reaching the northwestern coast of Ellesmere Island requires multiple flights, and is heavily dependent on the weather. (Dustin Patar)
Three small figures cross an arctic landscape.
Considered to be Canada's last fully intact ice shelf, the Milne Ice Shelf was almost 4,000 years old. (Dustin Patar)
A frozen Arctic landscape
'Milne Fiord is about as far from Toronto as Canada is wide, it is at the very top of the world,' Patar said. (Dustin Patar)

Audio produced by Samantha Lui.