Squamish’s Andrew Prossin has done a lot of unique things in his life, but stepping onto Sable Island last week was one of the best, he said.
“It was almost unanimously a moment of a lifetime,” he said.
Prossin was one of the first visitors of the year to the small sandy, tree-less island about 300 kilometres southeast of Halifax that officially became a national park in 2013. Permission from the Canadian Coast Guard is needed to go ashore on the island and only a couple hundred people have ever visited, Possin said.
“Imagine standing on a 100-foot sand dune in the middle of the ocean,” Prossin said of one of his favourite moments on the island, where several hundred thousand grey seals live, as well as the 500 wild Sable Island horses. More than 350 shipwrecks have been recorded on the island.
Prossin, managing director of Squamish-based One Ocean Expeditions, and the company’s ship One Ocean Voyager were part of the discovery of remains of the legendary Franklin Expedition in Canada’s Arctic last summer. Prossin received a medal from Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his role in the expedition in March.
On July 10, aboard the Ocean One vessel after it left Sable Island, the Erebus Medal was presented by Canadian Senators Don Plett and Michael MacDonald to three crew members for their role in the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition, which led to the discovery of HMS Erebus, the exploration ship led by Sir John Franklin and lost during his failed 1845-48 expedition.
Last week, controversy swirled around which organizations and people were given credit for the Franklin discovery that Harper has said strengthened Canada's Arctic sovereignty. A Toronto journalist quit his job, saying he was prevented from publishing a story that showed the CBC’s Nature of Things documentary about the discovery was influenced by private interests to give undue credit to the Royal Canadian Geographic Society.
Prossin said the whole confusing controversy is a tempest in a teapot.
“I just don’t think there is much to it,” he said, adding the documentary got some minor details wrong, but nothing that was of concern to him in terms of who got credit.
“On the inside, to be quite frank, it was a complicated project – for many people involved the most complicated thing they ever did with the layers of government and private sector, etc., and the public scrutiny of it – so there were difficult moments, no question, but we were a team and everybody should get credit when teams get a victory.”
“Right from the beginning I have been saying I feel like I got the assist on the Stanley Cup winning goal… and I am quite happy with that.”
