For more than twenty years, Aaron has obsessively explored, studied, documented—and yammered about—the world’s polar places.
For a decade he ran Up Here, the journal of Canada’s north, which in 2010 was named the country’s best magazine. Before that, Aaron edited Canada’s northernmost paper (Nunatsiaq News), the world’s southernmost paper (Antarctic Sun), and the highest-circulation paper in the Alaskan “Bush” (Tundra Drums).
(As further evidence of his Northern obsession, he literally wrote the book on Alaska—Lonely Planet’s Alaska 8th ed. He produced CBC’s Inuktitut-language newscast, Igalaaq. He even worked as a kayak guide in the Inside Passage.)
Aaron recently left Arctic journalism for Arctic academia: He earned a master’s degree in Northern Studies at the University of Alaska in 2015, and is now working on his Ph.D. at the University of Bergen, Norway, where he examines the opportunities and challenges of Indigenous governance in the circumpolar world.
For the past eight summers he has joined Adventure Canada as an expedition guide, lecturing on polar history, politics, and current events. Joining him is his wife, Adventure Canada marine biologist Deanna Leonard-Spitzer, and sometimes their eleven-year-old son, Adventure Canada Hot Tub and Dessert Specialist Mark the Shark.