Internal Parks Canada emails show how the final days of the search for HMS Terror last September — ending in a discovery that should have been pure triumph — degenerated into secrecy and recrimination.
The team hunting for the wreck of Sir John Franklin’s ship — lost in the 1840s while searching for the Northwest Passage — was a mix of federal government ships and one private vessel, MV Martin Bergmann of the Arctic Research Foundation (ARF). It’s an operation of Jim Balsillie, better known as a former co-president of Research in Motion.
The search was limited by Arctic weather to August and September. On Sept. 3, ARF, operating alone, found the wreck of Terror far to the south of where everyone else was searching, in a place coincidentally called Terror Bay. It sat on the news and examined the wreck until it told the Prime Minister’s Office on Sept. 11. Parks Canada found out by reading a newspaper the next morning.
Now emails obtained through an access to information request show how ARF’s vague communications with Parks Canada kept its fellow searchers in the dark for a week.
They also show that Parks Canada (the lead federal agency) reacted to news of the find with public enthusiasm, while behind the scenes it was trying to figure out if ARF had broken the law.
ARF found the wreck sitting quietly upright in fairly shallow water. The group has acknowledged it didn’t tell any government people for eight days, arguing there was no protocol in place for informing Parks Canada.
Now the emails show that ARF let Parks Canada believe its ship was sitting in port much of this time.
“We will plan on meeting you in the Northern Search Area for Thursday,” someone at ARF wrote to Parks Canada on Sept. 6. (Thursday was Sept. 8). Parks Canada inferred that the Bergmann would be rejoining the search. In fact, the Bergmann wouldn’t be searching for anything up north because it had already discovered the wreck to the south. It spent most of that week examining the wreck.
On Sept. 8 ARF sent another email: It said the Bergmann was delayed by the need to install a new starter. Parks Canada figured the Bergmann was in Cambridge Bay — more than 200 kilometres from the wreck site.
There was more delay on Sept. 9; ARF wrote that Bergmann had been directed (by someone whose name is blacked out in the email) “to support another priority for one day.” Parks Canada later said the Bergmann was “pursuing a priority for Jim Balsillie.”
On Sept. 11 Parks Canada noted “The Martin Bergmann still has not joined the search yet.” In a timeline later it wrote “No word from Bergmann. Location unknown.”
A day later, on Sept. 12, blindsided Parks Canada staffers read in a British newspaper that ARF had found HMS Terror. ARF’s president had talked extensively to the Guardian.
Parks Canada wasn’t happy. Its flow chart on how to manage the news if someone found the Terror has 17 little boxes and nine arrows linking them. The boxes represent ships, committee members, the minister for Parks Canada, right up to the Prime Minister’s Office.
“All public communication CONFIDENTIAL until MinO (minister’s office) approval is received. No media contact to be granted until AFTER the official announcement,” it says.
It didn’t work that way.
Sept. 12, in the morning, a startled communications officer from Ottawa wrote to her colleagues: “The Guardian (US) is claiming the Martin Bergmann has discovered the Terror. Do we have info on this, or is this inaccurate?”
As congratulations from outsiders rolled in to Parks Canada, the mood inside the department didn’t show any celebrations. Instead, emails show tight message-control, and some resentment.
From the Canadian Hydrographic Service, a partner in the search: “Was anyone from Parks on Bergmann? Hope so, but WOW! Surprised to read that ARF was so intrusive on the site already.” (ARF has said it sent down a remote-controlled camera but didn’t touch the wreck.)
From Parks Canada communications: “It would appear that ARF has discovered HMS Terror, we are currently working through the details. In the meantime, these are our holding lines (below) that we will be providing to media and posting on social media.” The “holding lines” are the department’s public position, saying that it is “excited about the preliminary reports” and will work with its partners to confirm them.
A later version credits local Inuit knowledge.
And there was a scramble right away to find out what ARF’s permit allowed it to do. The emails are curiously quiet on the subject of HMS Terror herself; they focus more on possible breaches of the law by the privately-sponsored searchers.
“Note the exclusion of Terror Bay in the (search permit) conditions,” one of Parks Canada’s archeologists wrote. Terror Bay is where ARF found the wreck.
There’s also a mass email summarizing a call with Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna in which they discussed the memorandum of understanding with ARF. Details are mainly blacked out, but they show Park’s Canada’s top management supplied McKenna with the memorandum of understanding, and also with details on the $150,000 fee that Parks Canada paid ARF for its search work a year earlier, in 2015.
As well, the telephones were busy. Parks Canada’s senior vice-president of operations, Pham Thao, wrote to a person whose name is blacked out, but who appears to be an Arctic Research Foundation member: “Can you call me urgently on my cell re: Terror?”
By evening, Parks Canada was setting up a conference call for the following morning with Jim Balsillie, Parks Canada and Government of Nunavut staff (Nunavut was the government that gave permission to search the area). Topics for discussion were “information about the discovery” and “ARF’s celebration in Gjoa Haven.”
The celebration, ARF now says, was a big party that Parks Canada missed. ARF’s CEO, Adrian Schimnowski, said Monday that the community of Gjoa Haven was excited by the find near their home and “wanted to celebrate right away. ARF supported the celebration and invited the government partners, Parks Canada specifically, to be part of it. It just didn’t happen on their side.”
The party went on without the federal staffers.
ARF’s lawyer, William McDowell, noted Monday that Internet service and email for ships in the Arctic are spotty.
“Those on the Bergmann did not know with reasonable certainty that they had found the Terror until September 9 — shortly thereafter, they advised the PMO to ensure knowledge of the find at the highest levels of the federal government,” he wrote. “Having reviewed the emails with some care I do not see that Parks Canada (PC) was misled in any way.” He said ARF did its best to stick with the original plan.
Schimnowski said the confusion over where and when the Bergmann planned to meet other search ships came about because of last-minute changes of plans. He said ARF hoped to meet the other ships and go with them to Terror Bay, the wreck site, but instead the other ships moved farther north. Then the Bergmann ran into mechanical trouble and needed repairs.
“There were a lot of things happening at that time that were not the original plan.” He also said there was no protocol in place for reporting a find to Parks Canada, so his group reported it to the PMO.
Planning for next summer’s exploration of Terror and sister ship Erebus will get under way this month, Schimnowski said, and “I hope that the dust settles and we shake hands and continue working. That was always the intention.”
“We will be working in the Arctic regardless of what happens with Parks Canada.”
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/emails-from-discovery-of-hms-terror-reveal-the-bad-blood-secrecy-and-message-control-behind-the-scenes/ar-BBy5Gtm?li=AAggFp5&ocid=mailsignout
