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After the recent tragic crash of First Air Flight 6560, which resulted in the deaths of 12 people, much of the media attention was focused on the cause of the crash, or "What went wrong?" Little attention has been granted to "What went right?"

"What went right" was the extremely fortuitous presence of the Canadian Forces and Coast Guard in Resolute Bay at the time of the crash as they prepared for - of all things - responding to the simulating downing of an aircraft in the area.

Exactly the kind of people with exactly the kind of equipment preparing for exactly this sort of emer

The Arctic Council—an intergovernmental forum on Arctic affairs—met recently in Nuuk, Greenland. At this meeting, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkak and the foreign ministers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden put their signatures on an agreement for Arctic search and rescue.

A new poll asked Canadians and citizens of seven other Arctic countries, “From what you know or have heard, is the Northwest Passage within Canadian waters, an international waterway or in dispute?” Seventy-eight per cent of Canadians living in the three territories and 74 per cent of Canadians living in the provinces said within our waters. A majority of respondents in the other countries – the United States, Russia, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland – said they didn’t know.

Did you know that Canada is the only one of eight “circumpolar” countries – nations that circle the North Pole – not to have its own circumpolar university? I didn’t, until very recently. Actually, I wasn’t really aware of most of the far-north universities that do exist. Sure, some ring a bell: the University of Alaska at Anchorage, the University of Bergen in Norway, and Reykjavik University in Iceland.