He loved Nunavut: Polar bear biologist who died in helicopter crash remembered - Canada News castanet.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from castanet.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Posted: Apr 30, 2021 2:19 PM CT | Last Updated: April 30
Benton Davie, 30, is being remembered for his love of the North and his job with Great Slave Helicopters. He was one of three people who died when a AS350-B2 crashed naer Resolute Bay, Nunavut, last weekend.(Submitted by Jeff Davie)
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.
ABOVE: COURTESY OF LILY PEACOCK
While out in the field tracking Lancaster Sound polar bear movements, preeminent polar bear researcher Markus Dyck died in a helicopter crash near Resolute Bay in Canada’s Nunavut territory on Sunday (April 25),
Nunatsiaq News reports. Dyck had worked for Nunavut’s Department of the Environment studying polar bears for the last decade but had more than 25 years’ experience in the field. The two crew members piloting the helicopter also died in the accident. Friends tell
The Toronto Star that Dyck was in his early 50s.
Born in Riedlingen, Germany, Dyck first became acquainted with polar bears when his military service brought him to Manitoba, Canada. From there, friends tell