Dr. Mark Terry is a Canadian scholar, explorer, and filmmaker. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Communications and Culture, York University and the Faculty of Arts, Wilfrid Laurier University.
He received his PhD from York University in Toronto defending his dissertation titled The Geo-Doc: Remediating the Documentary Film as an Instrument of Social Change on January 18, 2019.[1] He received his master's degree from York University in 2015 with a thesis titled The Documentary Film as an Instrument of Social Change. In 1980, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Glendon College, York University in English and Media Studies. In 2021, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the country's highest academy.[2]
In 2009, Terry produced and directed the documentary feature film The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning (2009)[3] and was invited to screen it at COP15, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Copenhagen that year.[4] The film was screened 25 times at the two-week conference and viewed online 60,000 times by delegates. The screenings established a relationship with Terry and the Communications Department of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that continues to this day.[5] He was asked to produce a second film on Arctic research for the subsequent climate summit, COP16 in Cancun. The film he directed, The Polar Explorer (2010), consists of Terry profiling the research team from ArcticNet during a crossing of the Northwest Passage, and this made The Polar Explorer the first film to document a complete crossing.[6] The film was once again screened 25 times at the conference and was included in a policy-writing session as a resource. The resulting resolution – Enhanced Action on Adaptation: Section II, Subsection 25 of the Cancun Accord – was co-authored by Terry.[7]
While the medium of the documentary film was welcomed as a communications tool by the UN, a demand for more visible evidence of climate change was made. To accommodate this, Terry conceived of the Geo-Doc to provide multiple documentary shorts of climate research from around the world on one digital map. The project was an extension of the Youth Climate Report, a curation project commissioned by the UNFCCC in 2011.[8] The project called for the global community of youth to produce short video films of climate research in their home countries. From 2011 to 2015, the best films were edited together to create a feature-length documentary film that was screened for delegates attending the annual UN climate summits. In 2015, the Geo-Doc format was introduced at the Paris climate summit. It was adopted by the UNFCCC the following year as a partner program to showcase the best videos submitted to the Global Youth Video Competition.[9] The Youth Climate Report GIS Project continues to this day.[10] In 2021, the United Nations recognized this innovative form of documentary film with a Sustainable Development Goals Action Award [11] and Terry was inducted into the Order of Vaughan.[12] This work has extended to the private sector in 2023 when he was appointed the Director of the Environmental and Sustainability Program for the City of Vaughan in Canada.[13]
Terry has contributed to 80 film and television productions as a producer, director, writer, publicist, actor, and even stunt driver. As an actor, he is perhaps best known as the Alien Pilot in Gene Roddenberry's (1997–2002) produced by Atlantis Alliance Communications and distributed by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. He is best known as a documentary filmmaker, specializing in environmental themes. In particular, many of his films made for PBS in the US and CBC in Canada focus on climate change research in the polar regions: The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning (2009),[14] The Polar Explorer (2010), Polar (2011), A Climate of Change (2014), Antarctica in Decline (2017), and The Changing Face of Iceland (2021).[15] His latest documentary on climate change impacts in Iceland premiered at the UN climate summit, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, on November 4, 2021.[16]
In 2011, Terry was honored by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television with its Gemini Humanitarian Award for his dedicated lifetime service to environmental filmmaking.[17] [18]
He has won 39 international awards for his film work, including back-to-back Audience Choice Awards at the American Conservation Film Festival for The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning in 2010 and The Polar Explorer in 2011.[19] His most recent film, The Changing Face of Iceland, has won 12 international Best Documentary film awards. [20]
As an explorer, Terry was made a Fellow of The Explorers Club in 2010 and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 2012.[21] He has sailed all three of the major passages that connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans: the Drake Passage, the Panama Canal and the Northwest Passage. He was commissioned by the Explorers Museum in Ireland to lead a pennant expedition through the Mindo Cloudforest of the Andes Mountains in Ecuador in 2016.
In 2010, the Canadian Chapter of The Explorers Club awarded Terry its highest honor, the Stefansson Medal, for his "unique contributions to documenting the natural world".[22] In 2013, the Governor-General of Canada decorated Terry with Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his "international humanitarian service" informing the environmental policymakers of the United Nations through his documentary film projects.[23] In 2015, Canadian Geographic Magazine named Terry one of Canada's "Top 100 Greatest Explorers".[24] In 2023, he serves as an Expedition Team Member, Climate and Climate Action, for Adventure Canada's expeditions to Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Arctic.
While in production on the documentary The Polar Explorer, Terry was on the top deck of the Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker, Amundsen, when the ship was photographed from a helicopter for the back of the Canadian $50 bill. As a result, Terry was captured as the sole figure on the upper deck of the ship making him the only living person on Canadian money as of 2024. [25]
Famous Quote: "The destination of discovery begins with a journey of exploration."
Mark Terry's recent research has been published by Palgrave Macmillan in the book The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change (2020). He is currently the Chair of the ADERSIM Arctic Group, the Advanced Disaster, Emergency, and Rapid Response Simulation program at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is also an Associate of the UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education through Sustainability. He continues his research in digital media and humanitarian communications as a research fellow at the Young Lives Research Lab and the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto.[26] He also serves as contract faculty of environmental studies teaching the courses EU/ENVS 1010: Introduction to Environmental Documentaries and EU/ENVS 5073: Social Movements, Activism and Social Change: Underrepresented Voices in Climate Change.[27]
In 2020, York University gave Dr. Terry the President's Award for Research [28] and in 2016, honoured Dr. Terry's innovative work with the Geo-Doc with the President's Sustainability Leadership Award.[29] Terry has given more than 80 lectures at universities and academic conferences throughout the world presenting research papers on the subjects of documentary film theory, digital media, and climate change research in the polar regions. He has also given three TED Talks on the subjects of Antarctica, the Arctic, and a published book of poems entitled "Pandemic Poetry" (2020).[30] He has worked with the United Nations since 2009 providing documentary film research on the polar regions (2009, 2010, 2021). Today, he serves as the Executive Director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's Youth Climate Report, an ongoing research project since 2011, now showcasing more than 1,000 videos produced by the global community of youth aged 18 to 35.
In 2020, Palgrave Macmillan published Dr. Terry's first book The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change. In 2022, his second book, an anthology of research co-edited with Michael Hewson, a professor at Central Queensland University in Australia, was published by Rowman & Littlefield entitled The Emerging Role of Geomedia in the Environmental Humanities. In 2023, his third book focused on youth climate activism and was again published by Palgrave Macmillan: Speaking Youth to Power: Influencing Climate Policy at the United Nations