Dr. Joe MacInnis was born in Barrie, Ontario, in 1937. His father’s career as a pilot with the RCAF might have foretold his son’s future distinction in high-risk endeavours. Certainly his Isle of Mull Scottish heritage helps to explain both a general penchant for adventure and a particular affinity for the sea.

Unfortunately, because MacInnis Sr. died in an air crash over Trenton when his son was just one year old, his father’s influenceessentially had to be nature rather than nurture. Soon after this tragedy, the MacInnises left Barrie for Toronto, which has been Joe’s headquarters ever since. He spent his high school years at Upper Canada College.
 

His hobbies have become his profession. Dr. Joe MacInnis, one of the world's leading authorities in underwater medicine and exploration technology, is a celebrated high-risk explorer.

His love of swimming increased as the skill developed at summer camp. By 1956 he was a candidate for Canada’s Olympic swimming team. Like many bright young men, he concealed his brains behind the “jock” smokescreen. But the brains were there and came into heavy use when he began medical school at the University of Toronto.

After he graduated in 1962, MacInnis found a way to tie all his interests together. A critical event was his involvement as an intern in caring for a man who almost died of decompression sickness. MacInnis’s love of swimming had led him to SCUBA diving. There is much physical risk involved in diving; medical consultation often is needed. Being a physician who was also a trained SCUBA diver, Macinnis was a natural to join the fledgling Ocean Systems Inc. founded by Edmund Link. This involvement took him to deep waters all over the world and to his involvement as medical director of dives that set many worldrecords.

Although his early career was centered with American firms, MacInnis has kept a permanent home base in the greater Toronto area. By 1970, his endeavours were shifting to the Arctic where he filmed harp seals, searched for shipwrecks, dove under the North Pole (the first person to do so), and, in 1975, escorted Prince Charles on a dive under Arctic ice at Resolute Bay. He leda dive under the North Pole in 1979 that included the then Governor General of Canada, Edward Schreyer. His ongoing involvement with the undersea world has included research into six-gill sharks, harp seals, narwhals, and bowhead and belugawhales.

As creator and president of Undersea Research Ltd., he has worked under contract on numerous governmental and corporate projects in cooperation with firms such as IBM Canada, Petro-Canada, Canadian Airlines, and the Donner Foundation.

In 1969 and 1970 he was responsible for the Sublimnos Project, which established an underwater station for research and education 12 metres below the surface of Lake Huron. Two years later he established and directed “Subigloo,” the world’s firstpolar diving station that allowed men to explore beneath the polar ice cap.

His commitment saw spectacular results in 1980 with the discovery of HMS Breadalbane. This, MacInnis’s second attempt, was crowned with success when the wreck finally was located on the sonar screen. Breadalbane, the northernmost knownshipwreck, had been lost during the search for the Franklin Expedition and had been lying on the bottom of the Northwestn Passage since 1853. In 1981 the team returned, aided by support from the National Geographic Society. Using a remotely controlled submersible, the researchers were able to take still and video photographs of the ship 100 metres down. Thethirty-metre-long, three-masted ship is remarkably well preserved in the icy arctic waters. In 1983 MacInnis led manned divesto the wreck. Research into this rich and invaluable discovery continues.

MacInnis has also dived to a much more famous wreck, perhaps the world’s most famous the Titanic. Not only did he serve as consultant to the discovery team in 1985, but he was also co-leader, in 1991, of the deep-diving expedition to film Titanic inthe IMAX format. The product was Titanica. MacInnis made the last of the seventeen dives to the wreck, this one being to the ship’s bridge.

In the summer of 1994, he probed the wreck of the legendary Edmund Fitzgerald, sunk during a fierce storm in November 1975 with the loss of all 29 crewmen, a catastrophe made known through the mournful song written and performed by Gordon Lightfoot.

Other diving expeditions have taken MacInnis to Lake Baikal, the Bahamas, the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, Lake Huron, the Caribbean, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and 10,000 feet into the Pacific Ocean. One assignment was a Pan-American jet recovery off Caracas, Venezuela. Another was the recovery from the bottom of Lake Mead, Nevada, of a light plane that contained secret nuclear power data. From these many adventures have come numerous articles, both popular and scientific, and several books, movies, and television programs. One of MacInnis’s books, Underwater Images, indicates the breadth of theman, for it contains his poetry.

MacInnis sees the lakes and oceans in far broader terms than as environments to be conquered and used. Rather, he espouses the concept of mutual existence and of a balance between man and technology. His current interests are focused particularly on attempts to educate the public on the need to save the Great Lakes. There is a great urgency to accelerate this process, especially to eliminate the contamination of the food chain by toxins.

MacInnis has been honoured often for his accomplishments which encompass fields as disparate as archeology, deep-water medicine, diving technology, exploration, and literature. He has received the Queen’s Anniversary Medal and, notably, in 1976he was awarded the Order of Canada.

Charles Roland