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20 - The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday April 5, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Green lesson in the great white south Oakville man undergoes environmental awakening on Antarctic expedition By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF t a time when some people won't even put their kitchen scraps in the GreenCart to promote environmental sustainability, one Oakville man was willing to undertake a potentially-dangerous excursion to Antarctica to do just that. Delando Hawthorne, a Strategic Sales & Industry Relations Manager for Akzo Nobel Coatings, has just returned after two weeks in the iceencrusted continent where he learned that even in the harshest of environments renewable energy can be harnessed. Hawthorne, along with 11 other members of his company and about 60 members of other companies from around the world, was selected to take part in Leadership on the Edge, an annual expedition, run by British explorer Robert Swan. The expedition is designed to offer participants the opportunity to attend a unique leadership development course while at the same time learn about climate change in the hope that they will take the message of environmental sustainability back to their co-workers. For Hawthorne, who was the only Canadian on the trip, the experience was out of this world. "Antarctica is a phenomenally beautiful place," he said. "The fact that it's untouched, the way the sun hits the horizon, the lack of smog in the air, the way the stars come out at night, the colours of the sky, the purplish hues just make Antarctica such a beautiful place." The journey to this final frontier began March 13, when Hawthorne and the rest of his companions departed their assembling area in Ushuaia, Argentina and sailed for two days across the bottom of the globe to Antarctica. The continent, which has only been visited by around 150,000 people throughout all of human history, had many amazing sights and sensations awaiting the visitors. Icebergs the size of apartment buildings, enormous elephant seals that clustered together and basked in the sun, huge flocks of penguins, old whaling stations abandoned decades ago and humpback whales that rolled around in the water and thrust their great grey-and-white flippers into the A DELANDO HAWTHORNE / SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER CATCHING SOME RAYS: Delando Hawthorne, far left, enjoys a sunny day in Antarctica with fellow travellers and Coca Cola executives Ines Rupprecht, of Germany, and Sotiris Romanos, of Greece. DELANDO HAWTHORNE / SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER FOLLOWING IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS: Expedition members were told to follow the guides footsteps in single file to keep from falling through a layer of snow covering a deep crevice. DELANDO HAWTHORNE / SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER HOME SWEET HOME: British explorer Robert Swan's E-Base on King George Island, Antarctica. The base is constructed out of sustainable materials and is completely powered by renewable energy such as the solar panels displayed here. air as though to welcome their guests. For Hawthorne, however, it was the silence of Antarctica that really stuck out in his mind. "At one point, we went camping and we were given a chance to go off on our own and I was walking along and I kept going, `Where are these sounds coming from,' and then I stopped and realized the sounds were me hearing myself think," he said. "Here, you'll hear the TV in the background, you'll hear the fridge or the hum of a computer, maybe the phone will ring. At any given time, you hear different sounds and it's very hard to escape sound, but we were in a place where there is no noise. None at all." Despite its beauty and serenity, the landscape of Antarctica does harbour many dangers, some of which Hawthorne became acquainted with on the first day of the expedition. It occurred when the visitors attempted to leave their ship at King George Island to reach Swan's E-Base. "The first two groups went out in the Zodiacs (inflatable motor boats) and we were able to get out, but after that the winds started kicking up to about 30-35 knots and then it was too dangerous because past 25 knots you run the risk of the Zodiac flipping over," said Hawthorne. "If you land in the Arctic waters, where the temperature is about as cold as water can get, you've basically got two maybe three minutes until death, and even if you do survive the water there is a good chance you could end up permanently disabled. That's the fidgety of the water." The hidden dangers of Antarctica would emerge again in the expedition as members of Hawthorne's group undertook a hike up a glacier. During these hikes, Hawthorne noted, it was important to walk single file and step where the guides stepped. While a glacier may look stable, beneath the snow lie many deep crevices, which could mean death for anyone who finds them. Such a fate almost befell one member of Hawthorne's group. "One person stepped probably half a metre outside of where he should have stepped and his foot went right down. Luckily someone was walking beside him, actually a lot closer then he should have been, and caught him and pulled him back. That could have been it," said Hawthorne. "What would have been really bad about falling down there, worse than being impaled or dying on impact, would be surviving and not being able to get back up. We didn't have the equipment to pull him up." Eventually, Hawthorne's group was able to get to Swan's E-Base, which is powered through a variety of renewable energy sources. Hawthorne noted that some of the base's power is derived from a See Expedition page 21