To say John England has a passion for the North would seriously understate the case.

The U of A professor has undertaken more than 30 field seasons in the Arctic, the first when he was just 18. He has followed the footsteps of great explorers, finding notes and artifacts, including a message dating from the first International Polar Year left by Lockwood and Greely when they established Fort Conger, on Ellesmere Island in 1882.

As a tribute to such early exploration, England once poured scotch on the grave of explorer Francis Hall, who died in 1871 at Thank God Harbour, Greenland.

Every summer, England leads undergraduate and graduate students in a number of Arctic research projects, looking at indicators of the Arctic's climate and environmental history. They investigate glacial landforms and sediments, as well as raised marine shorelines containing whalebone and driftwood that collectively record the nature of past glaciation, crustal adjustments to transient ice sheets, and related events such as changing sea ice and ocean currents.

Since 1965, England has also recorded a way of life through breathtaking photos of a people and landscape that are quintessentially Canadian, yet so often removed from public attention.

Many of those photos are now on display at the Sugar Bowl, a popular restaurant in Garneau, just off campus, to celebrate the U of A's long-established research presence in the North and the current International Polar Year.

"Photography and writing are definitely an inseparable interest of mine vis a vis the overwhelming beauty and spiritual significance of the Arctic, and as a way to express a part of our Canadian heritage that has been left sadly on the perimeter of our collective experience and identity as a northern nation," said England. "For at least 20 of my field seasons, I have kept a diary to record the stories and reflections from an isolated tent camp that serve to capture both the immediate experiences as well as the evolution of a way of life if not gradually disappearing, certainly in transformation. These stories need to be told to a public that rarely hears them."

Through his photos, England hopes to convey more than visual information about the Arctic.

"People need to know that the Arctic is also a place whose silence invites us to experience personal renewal and a realization of what truly matters in life, commonly drowned in the south by the endless distractions and rush of daily duties. In this way, the Arctic is like a gigantic outdoor monastery . . . a place where encumbering non-essential 'cares' are radically discarded for a much deeper freedom," he said.

"The Arctic is an enormously sacred space still preserving remnants of what I call 'the original Earth.' This resource is far more important to our future than our current colonial obsessions with economic wealth and growth. Like vast parts of the Earth, including endangered cultures and species, we are close to losing this for the shallowest of reasons."