The film maker and the minister united by the love of the Arctic

The film maker and the minister united by the love of the Arctic

9 January 2013

A CHANCE meeting between two local people with a passion for the Arctic has led to a talk tonight in the St Patrick Centre, Downpatrick.

Local sailor Brian Black from Kilclief, with eight Arctic expeditions in his wake, is to team up with the Right Rev. Darren McCartney, recently of the diocese of Down and Dromore and now about to take up his post as Suffragan (assistant) Bishop of the Diocese of the Arctic on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic.

Their talk, with slides and videos, will look at issues affecting the region, ranging from climate change and melting glaciers to the social and spiritual challenges that lie ahead for Bishop McCartney.

Darren, formerly rector of Knocknamuckley in County Armagh, was ordained in the Diocese of the Arctic in 2003 where he and his wife Karen served as associate missionaries with Crosslinks in Pangnirtung, Baffin Island. He then returned to Northern Ireland in 2006 before being elected as Suffragan Bishop in the diocese.

It was through Brian’s association with the Church of Ireland at Kilclief that he heard about Darren.

“This was an amazing coincidence,” said Brian. “Every time I go to the High Arctic I am struck by the speed of change — the way the glaciers are melting, the pack ice disappearing, the animals, especially polar bears, finding it increasingly difficult to get food.

“However, for me, the missing link was a connection with the local people and here, right on my own doorstep, was a man who knows about the human issues at first hand.”

When he asked Darren to put him in the picture, Brian admits to a heightened sense of alarm. “In our latitudes we are just starting to come to terms with climate change but for the Inuit peoples of the Arctic, their way of life is changing season by season,” he said.

It was Darren who put it into words. “An Inuit hunter might set off over a stretch of solidly frozen sea that was perfectly safe last year but because of the melt, he could fall though thin ice and into the water this season.”

Many challenges will face Darren as he takes up his ministry at the end of January. “For instance, among the Inuit people, suicide is a major problem,’ he says. “It is far above far above the Canadian average so that is something we need to address as a matter of urgency.”

There is also domestic violence, drug abuse, anti-social behaviour — all issues we are familiar with at home, but in a society that is experiencing change at the rate it is happening in the Arctic, these are major concerns.

The native people of the Arctic have moved from the nomadic, self-sufficient traditional way of life that they were accustomed to over the centuries to what is now a more settled and ordered lifestyle in a dramatically short space of time.

“The outside world only gets a glimpse of the Arctic through the likes of David Attenborough’s television programmes,” Darren says. “People are simply not aware of the struggle of day-to-day living and, faced with all that, we have to make the Gospel relevant.”

In his post as Suffragan Bishop, Darren will cover a diocese that is one and a half million square miles. He will be based in the capital of the eastern Arctic territory, Iqaluit, and from there he will move around on skidoos and in twin engine aircraft to minister to the fifty thousand Anglicans that make up the Diocese of the Arctic.

Brian, in his yacht Séafra, was back in East Greenland last summer. “The melt is getting faster,” he said. “We sailed up fjords that previously would have been blocked with big ice concentrations. It was noticeably warmer, partly due to the sun’s rays being absorbed by bare mountain sides that until recently were covered with snow.”

The voyage, which covered over three thousand miles and lasted for two months, received the Irish Cruising Club’s Rockabill Trophy for ‘outstanding seamanship and navigation.’

The talk being given tonight by Brian and Darren is called ‘Soul of the Arctic’. Admission is free and the talk will start at 7.30pm in the St Patrick Centre.