JOHN DUNN WAS BORN AND EDUCATED IN ENGLAND. He discovered his fascination for geography at an early age, and when he spent a term at Timbertop School in Australia, it enhanced his interest in the great outdoors even more.

A woolly lousewort and John Dunn

In 1985, he began to plan a cross-country ski trip of Canada's Ellesmere Island. At that time Dunn started up his own company, Arctic Light, to support his expedition and in 1990 his team completed a 96-day, 1,250-km cross-country ski trip of Ellesmere Island. That journey was the first recorded human-powered expedition along the length of Canada's northernmost island.

Dunn completed three other ski expeditions between 1991 and 1993: a 400 km solo journey on Ellesmere Island and two 600 km journeys across Devon Island in 1992, and across the arctic coast of Labrador in 1993 (the same year he became a Canadian citizen).

In late March 1994, Dunn and his team took on the hardest challenge of all: a six month skiing, kayaking and hiking trip across Baffin Island. On October 4, 192 days after they began, the group had completed the first known human traverse of Canada's largest arctic island -- a 3,030-km journey.

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