AMUNDSEN GULF, NWT -- Next time you sit in a long line at the U.S. border after a weekend shopping trip, be thankful you don't have to declare a $250,000 laser.
A four-hour grilling at Canada Customs was just one of the trials and tribulations experienced by York University physicist Jeff Seabrook during a cross-continental adventure that saw him shuttle between Toronto, Northwest Territories and Montana in a frenzied effort to fix a laser used to measure ozone in the Arctic.
Jeff Seabrook, with laser equipment that is directed through the roof of the lab on the icebreaker Amundsen to measure ozone in the atmosphere.
In just 12 days, the 32-year-old PhD student travelled 18,280 kilometres on the road and in the air -- almost half the circumference of the planet -- in an effort to salvage a key component of an atmospheric research project aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen.
Seabrook's not-so-excellent adventure began on Feb. 20, when he flew from Toronto to Inuvik, N.W.T. to await transport to the research vessel, which is spending the entire winter in the Arctic.
But the very same day, his colleagues on board discovered the laser, which can measure ozone levels in the atmosphere as high as 10 kilometres above the ship, had completely stopped working.
When Seabrook arrived on the ship, he stayed up all night trying to get the device working again, even though he was still fatigued from the 5,143-kilometre trip from Toronto.
By morning, he was forced to concede defeat and disembarked from the Amundsen with the unilluminating laser in tow.
He flew to Inuvik and then down to Calgary, where he got in a car and drove to the city where the laser was manufactured, which luckily happened to be Bozeman, Montana -- only a 1,608-kilometre drive through Alberta's plains and Montana's Big Belt Mountains.
"They told me it would take two weeks to fix. I told them we didn't have that long," he recalls.
So instead of waiting around in Montana, he drove back to Calgary and boarded a flight to Toronto, arriving home Feb. 27.
The next day, the laser-repair crew in Bozeman called: They managed to fix the problem, which turned out to be a corroded interior component Seabrook and his colleagues never would have been able to find.
Weary but determined, Seabrook flew back to Calgary, drove back down to Bozeman to grab the laser and then started driving back to Canada with the complex device, which has the potential to blind anyone who views its greenish light, if they don't wear protective goggles.
But in his haste to return to Montana, he didn't completely fill out the paperwork a scientist needs to cross the border with a repaired laser.
Canada Customs was not amused.
"Going to the U.S. with the laser was fine. They basically said, 'come on down'," he recalls. "Going back to Canada, they didn't like the fact we had work done on the laser, which they said increased its value." Seabrook was forced to spend four hours at the busy Coutts, Alta. border crossing while the customs people quibbled over the high-tech device.
He was starting to get nervous, as he feared he would miss the window to get back on board the Amundsen, which sails in the waters of Amundsen Gulf, a stretch of water between the Northwest Territories mainland and Banks Island.
But he made it back to Calgary in time to fly to Inuvik and then catch a scheduled charter to the tiny Inuit village of Sachs Harbour, where he was picked up by the Amundsen's helicopter.
He finally arrived on the boat on March 3, with a working laser in tow, having flown and driven enough kilometres to take him to Antarctica -- with a few thousand clicks to spare.
"It had to be done, given the amount of money that's already done into this research," he says.
"I'm only a first-year PhD student, and I've spent a lot of that on the road. Good thing I'm only taking one course right now."
bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca
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