Winner of the Rob Stewart Award for Best Science or Nature Documentary Program or Series, Canadian Screen Awards
"You can't look away, like you can't look away from a train wreck." — George Divoky
For 49 summers running, George Divoky has returned alone to a remote Arctic seabird colony to look after its residents: black guillemots, striking birds with bright red mouths, black-and-white wings, and a lot of personality. He builds them nests from salvaged junk and keeps meticulous records of their hatchings, pairings and lives, all while standing between them and the hungry bears of a rapidly thawing world.
Now 78, George has given up comfort, money, status and a conventional home life for the sake of the colony. In return, he's built an unmatched understanding of these birds, and of the extraordinary changes overtaking their icy, isolated corner of the world.
In the decades since his first season there, he's spent winters trying to get anyone who'll listen to understand just how dramatically — and how intricately — the Arctic ecosystem is unraveling, and spent summers watching the colony he loves grow smaller.
It's the kind of story that might break someone else, but George — easily the chattiest, funniest hermit you could hope to meet — isn't the type to despair. A lifelong outsider, he's carried by sheer stubborn spirit, an insatiable curiosity, and an unshakeable belief in the value of science.
