IQALUIT – A dedicated scientist who loved the North, Markus Dyck spoke his mind and strove to include Inuit in northern research.
That’s how friends and colleagues are remembering Dyck, a polar bear biologist with the Nunavut government, who died in a helicopter crash near Resolute Bay on Sunday. Two crew members also died.
Harvey Lemelin, a professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., and a close friend of Dyck, said he’s still processing the news of his death.
“I was in complete denial. I was hoping they were wrong,” he said in an interview.
Dyck, who was in his early 50s, was surveying polar bear populations in Lancaster Sound for the Nunavut government on the day of the crash.