The Current - From the Titanic to the North Pole: Joe MacInnis reflects on a life of exploration

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

Joe MacInnis has spent his life going where very few people ever have — beneath the ice at the North Pole, down to the wreck of the Titanic, and into the deep waters of Lake Superior to visit the Edmund Fitzgerald. Now 88, the Canadian physician and deep-sea explorer looks back on a lifetime of high-risk exploration. He talks about the moment he caught “sea fever” as a teenager, what those extreme environments taught him about fear and teamwork, and why leadership — not technology is what really matters when survival is on the line.

Viking. Committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship with thoughtful service and cultural enrichment, on board and on shore. Learn more at viking.com. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. At the exact point of the North Pole, in Arctic Canada, two men prepare to enter the ocean at the very top of the world. One of those men was Joe McKinnis. In 1974, he was part of a team to dive beneath the North Pole. That feat, as extraordinary as it is, is merely one tick in a long list of deep sea adventures he has been on. He has dedicated his life to exploring our oceans. This is the start of a new year. And so there are a lot of people who are looking for inspiration, motivation to do big things, perhaps stretch themselves beyond the limits that they think they have. In the coming weeks, we are going to speak with a number of Canadians who have made an impact on our country and our world.

Fascinating people who have done fascinating things. And with us this morning to kick that off is Joe McKinnis. Joe, good morning. I'd like to be with you, Matt. We're really glad to have you here. What is your first memory of the ocean? Well, I was a young, young teenager, and my parents took me to Gas Bay, and I remember looking out across that huge, open stretch of water, and there was mystery to it, there was magic, there was uncertainty, and there was a kind of come hitherness to it. So, yeah, I had sea fever.

I grew up in Ontario, but when I saw the ocean for the first time, I got sea fever. Tell me about the magic. I mean, what is it about being in a place underwater where, I mean, we don't really belong there as human beings, right? It's difficult and complicated for us to be there. But when you're there, what is it that you love so much? it's hard to say specifically but it's the whole kind of immersive experience in this in this medium that is 800 times denser than air but is filled with these extraordinary creatures and sunlight and shadows and it is another world and my first dive in the 50s at the beginning of scuba i just became and chanted with this this place and and i remember that first dive so vividly because of, again, the strange colors and rhythms and the feeling I have, this connection with something ancient and mysterious and infinite. And that's never

left me. You grew up admiring Jacques Cousteau, right? He was, what I call a mentor at a distance. I read his books, The Silent World. I saw his films, again, The Silent World. He became this voice that was so articulate, by the way, and took us into this new world. And again, he was one of the reasons that I committed to learning how to scuba dive and then committed learning how to swim safely under the depths of the sea. Do you see anybody doing today what he did? I mean, I grew up watching those TV programs like so many people did. And it was like being transported to your point, to another world in some.

ways. Is there anybody today who is doing something like that, do you think, taking us to those places? Well, there is. And he's a friend of mine, and you all know his name, and his name is Jim Cameron. Jim, I've had the good fortune to know our first acquaintance when he was 14. I've been on his last three deep sea expeditions. And Jim, not only in his films that he makes, his feature films, but in his deep sea expeditions. This is a man who has built a sub that took him seven miles into the marionette train. And he's a storyteller. He's an explorer. He's a discoverer, but he's really a storyteller. And yes, he is more than anyone today shifting our thinking about the ocean. I mean, you call him Jim. I think a lot of us would call him James Cameron, who's like

the director of Avatar and Titanic. And to your point, has become an inventor and somebody who's gone to some of the deepest parts of the ocean. What have you learned from him and from that friendship? Jim has been a master mentor for me. I helped him a little bit when he was 14, encouraged him. He's never forgotten that. And so he has become one of my great interest currently is leadership, what it is, how it's performed. And Jim is a brilliant leader in terms of selecting his teams and taking them into this performance zone, I call team genius. How did you encourage him? He now seems somebody who is, I mean, very much the architect of his own worlds in some ways. What did you say to him to encourage him?

I didn't have to say very much. It was, it was an interesting story. Briefly, it was, I had this undersea station on display outside the Royal Interior Museum in 1969. Jim comes by with a sketch pad, makes a sketch, writes me a letter asking for the blueprints for the station because he wants to build one. This is at 14. And by the way, the sketch shows the signs of genius. And so I wrote him back. I encouraged him and he has taken that, took that deeply and said to himself, I can do anything I want to do because this guy has encouraged. me. And so he's never forgotten that. That's wonderful.

Mentoring is magic, the reciprocity. And now, of course, he is now my mentor. He's teaching me so much about leadership and teamwork and that kind of thing. We started this conversation with that little clip of you being at the top of the world. You get to the North Pole, and that is, I mean, getting to the North Pole is a remarkable thing. You decide that you're going to go one step further, and you're going to go one step further, and you're going to dive under it. What was that, walk me through that day. What was that adventure like? We were there because of a Department of National Defense rehearsal. They wanted to rescue someone from the far north. And so we volunteered to go to the North Pole. They flew us up. We spent three

days, made 10 dives. But the first dive, going under the ice at the geographic North Pole, cutting through the ice, slipping through the dive hole, and then immersed in this crystal, clear water. I could see 100 meters in every direction, and every time zone was there, every direction was there, every direction was south. It was this most sundered and set. It was an extraordinary experience, but slipping into that water and then realizing that the nearest land was, 2,000 or so meters beneath my swim fins, this roof of ice that went from Russia to Canada. And I had this extraordinary sensation of being able to turn around, as I did, 360 degrees, very slowly, and sensing the ocean in all directions, the Pacific in one direction, the Atlantic in the

other, and sensing this 70% of the world all interconnected in this extraordinarily complex way. I mean, you've hinted at this. When you're there, what does that feel like? We experience things through what we see and through, but we feel in our, you know, in your heart of hearts, those experiences as well. What did it feel like? Well, it was that kind of sense of oneness, that sense of continuity from the past to the present to the future and a sense of gratitude. I mean, the fact that I was able to have that and to have this life that I've had with these extraordinary people and places that I've been to, the primary feeling that I have is gratitude and wonder and awe, all mixed into this extraordinary sensation, which we might call discovery,

but it's an awareness of life as it is. And the fact that, and I'm 88 years old now, so really have a sense of the value of life and its importance. How does fear factor into that? I mean, how thick would the ice be when you slip through it? Well, it wasn't so much the thickness of the ice. We've dived under a meter of ice and even more, but it's the near freezing water.

If you, we were wearing a special kind of dry suit that kept us warm, 30 minutes or 40 minutes before it starts to get cold. But, no, it's the water that can kill you. Unprotected, a diver in that water will die within minutes. And so how do you think about that? What is your relationship like with fear in what you have done? Well, fear is a friend. A friend? It's got to be a friend.

I was talking to someone this morning about the fear of death. Someone asked me, are you afraid of dying? And I said, no, I'm not, because I had an experience early in life. I lost my father in an aircraft accident. He was a flight lieutenant just before the Second World War. And I became familiar with death and its brevity and the urgency that we have to live it. So I have maybe a different point of view about death. I'm not afraid of it.

It's going to come, and it's part of the grand continuum. And part of me exists in my kids and my grandchildren who are wonderful. And part of me will float off as I make room for someone else when I die to become part of other living beings. So fear is you make it a friend, And that's okay. Does that free you up in terms of the work that you're doing? Because part of it, part of fear can be limiting, right?

You're afraid to do something so you don't go. But if you have that relationship with fear, if you see it as a friend, does that give you a sense of freedom in some ways? No, no, good for you, Matt. It frees you up once you realize that you have to be. The way that we handle fear, and I've talked to astronauts and others in high-risk environments, is that you commit yourself to the task. You focus entirely, completely on the task. And as Jim Cameron would tell you, you plan and you make plans of your plans. You are really

rigorous and you hammer out every single detail that will keep you safe. Viking. Committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship with thoughtful service and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. Learn more at viking.com. The PWHL is

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achieve a three-beat, will a new team take home the trophy? There's only one way to find out. Watch the PWH for free on CBCJR. You have taken some people under the ice that perhaps do not have the same appreciation for fear that you did.

What was it like diving? You went under with Pierre Trudeau? Yes, I did. Well, there was another man who again, a good friend, but he had come to terms with fear and he knew that preparation and planning and participation was a way to handle that. And again, I dove with Prince Charles

and others, and they all had gone through a process that made them comfortable with the risk and the challenge and the fear that goes with it. There's a lesson, I mean, for those of us who were not going to dive under a meter of ice, there's a lesson perhaps for all of us in that, right? Well, there is, especially today when we are confronted with so many cascading emergencies from climate heating to machine intelligence. You know, we have to challenge ourselves and find the resilience and deal with our anxieties and fears. We have to really rise to the challenge of these issues. And one of them is knowing yourself and challenging. yourself to difficult situations and finding mentors to help you get through this and building a

library of books and and conversations like this to help you understand. This year we saw the 50th anniversary marked of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. This was, as people famously know, a cargo ship sank in Lake Superior. The subject, again, as people will know, of the Gordon Lightfoot song. But tell me about your connection with the Edmund Fitzgerald. I was working with, I was working with some scientists in the United States. They were bringing a research vessel. This is in 1994, bringing a research vessel into the Great Lakes. And I suggested to them, among the things they might do, would be a dive, a series of

dives to the Edmund Fitzgerald. And they agreed. And so we made some extraordinary descents through this crystal clear water of Lake Superior, dropping down about 500 so feet. And there was the wreck, and the bow section was furtively intact, this freezing cold water. Everything was in liquid permafrost. And so we had a chance to look inside the bow section at the pilot, through the pilot house windows. And again, it was a sacred place because 29 men had died there.

So it was one of those moments where you really, again, appreciate the technology that takes you there, but the story that is there and has to be respected. A sacred place is an interesting way of putting it, because it's not just the Edmund Fitzgerald. You've also seen the Titanic. Tell me how you think about those sorts of experiences. And what goes through your mind when you're looking at, these aren't, it's not a tourist trip.

These are shipwrecks. These are places where tragedy has happened. Well, exactly. And again, because we were among the first to dive to the Titanic, And to the Fitzgerald, again, it comes back to the reverence for the history of the place. The beauty of the place is stunning. It's a different kind of beauty, of course, but it's a deep oceanic, in the Titanic's case, abyssal beauty. And there's this story that you know that you've read about.

And so you are deeply moved by the experience. Which, by the way, brings me back to Jim Cameron. And before Jim made his blockbuster film, he made 12 dives to the Titanic. And the reason for that is that he wanted to familiarize himself with the sacredness of the place. And he wanted that experience to make it possible to create a really true and authentic story of the sinking. What was it like when you first saw the Titanic? Oh, it was much bigger than I thought. It was the size of the bow.

We were looking through a small viewport and to see the size of the bow and the size of the anchor. So it had this sense of size that really was riveting. And then there was this corrosion, these rusticles, red and brown rusticles that had formed on the steel hull plates, gave it a kind of gothic sense. No, there was a strange, organic beauty to the Titanic that I've never forgotten. It can be dangerous work as well, right?

Oh, yes. Diving shipwrecks can be extremely dangerous because they are broken. There's tangles of wire. We got trapped on my last dive to the Titanic. We got trapped on the pilot house roof. We were making the last dive. This is during the IMAX film that we did in 1991, making the last dive. making the last of 17 dives, we landed on the pilot house roof, our landing skids slipped under a telephone wire, and we couldn't get off the ship until the Russian pilot, this is a wonderful guy, called in the second sub to take a look at what was holding us down, and the two of them worked back and forth, talked, and again, about 30 minutes later, the longest year and a half of my life,

He was able to wiggle the sub back, and we went up to the sunlight. But this, again, speaks to the fact that we had two subs, one to do the work and other to be in assistance and to be there to rescue us. And that was the reason we were successful. Did the test your friendship with fear being stuck there? Oh, every time. Every time. It was a thick adrenaline event. My heart rate went up to try.

triple digits. And Matt, I won't kid you. I'm a physician who's treated all kinds of injuries and blunt flores trauma in the ocean. And over the years, my respect for the ocean has turned me into an alpha coward with a PhD in fear. They say the ocean will always win. I mean, you would see this firsthand. Absolutely. The ocean is not only owns the stadium, but, you know, not only bats last, but owns the station. That's why I have this enormous respect for this concern of climate heating. It's an ocean story. Rising sea levels, more severe storms, and so it's given me an enormous respect.

My time in the ocean, those 6,000 hours under the Atlantic Pacific and Arctic Ocean have given me an enormous respect and reverence from other ocean. Do you despair with what's happening now? with warming seas, the changes in oceans, we talk about coral bleaching and what it is that we are doing to this entirely different world in some ways that's part of our world. Do you despair about that? Yes, Matt, I do, like many others, but I'm heartened by the fact there are so many good people doing good things, and we must not despair. We can despair only for a short, brief time and then we've got to get to work and find the joy in the work of recovering the lost ground that we have with the ocean and again i'm heartened by so many people including jim and a long

list of others from the world wildlife fund to people who are really stepping up and trying to bring the resilience back into the ocean i've spoken with people who have have spent time like you uh under the see. And one of the things that they talk about is we're just scratching the surface about understanding what's going on in the ocean. And yet we're obsessed in many ways as a species with trying to get off this planet and head to Mars or head back to the moon and what have you. What do you make of that? I think this. First of all, we're very fortunate. We are the generation that watched very carefully, this is in the 1960s, when humans stepped off the planet for the first time and went into the ocean for the first time. And these are parallel

journeys. These are stepping off the land and going into these other worlds. And so there's been an extraordinary parallel between the two. The technologies have some similarities. The attitudes of the people have some similarities. I mean, the first astronauts were trained in the ocean. So yes, I would like to see more ocean activity. And yes, I'm fascinated with stepping off the earth and going into orbit because it teaches us about, not only about technology, but about ourselves, as well as the worlds that we're exploring. So it's another opportunity for discovery. I only wish that they would take more poets into space. More poets? Yes. Because those are the minds that really excite us, the people who can take words and compress them into

into poetry. I'm thinking right now of Marcel Proust, and he said it's so beautiful. He said the only true voyage of discovery is not to visit strange lands, but to possess new eyes. And these are the things that poets can tell us. We need those people to kind of put that into that kind of perspective.

Yes, we did. Let me just ask you finally. And I mean, you've hinted a little bit just at age and how you're thinking about life now. You talked about one of the things as we get older, you think about the road that's in front of you and the urgency that perhaps you did not take as seriously when you were younger because you felt like you had the luxury of time.

How do you see that urgency now? What do you want to do? I hope that you have much, much more time in front of you. But what do you want to do in that time? I want to continue the voyage of exploration, the voyage of discovery. I want to learn. I want to keep learning

and then turn that learning into ideas and insights for my family, my friends, and others. So I've just finished a memoir. I'm working on a documentary, but I'm trying to take this extraordinary life that I've had. I mean, the luckiest guy in the world to have gone to the places and seen the things and spent the time with my team partners. So I want to share that and enlarge that and use that to to improve the world. Is that how you feel that you've had the luckiest life you could imagine? Absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, I've had boys' own adventure. Again, as I look back, Matt, I see a silver thread, two silver threads. One is miracles, and the other is mentors. I've lived in Canada. I've grown up with a family that loves me. And I've had this extraordinary list of coaches and professors and teachers who have mentored me along the way, who have given me advice. So, yeah, I am the luckiest guy that maybe you've ever spoken to.

You have had an incredible life. And as I say, the sense of curiosity that you still have is really inspiring and a lesson to us all. In the meantime, it is a real pleasure to talk to you about what you have seen and the places that you have. you have taken us. Joe, thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. Thank you so much. Joe McKinnis is a Canadian explorer, doctor, and writer. We are kicking off this new year by speaking with interesting people from this country doing interesting things. Some of them are big names, some of them people perhaps you haven't

heard of before, but you should know of. They live in every community in this country. And so if you know somebody that you think we should talk to, somebody who is fascinating, who is doing something fascinating or done something fascinating, you should let us know. that. You can email us, the current at cBC.ca. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.