The Queen's College Record 2023

Obituaries
the Arctic and for nearly 40 years they spent many summers out in the wilds of
Greenland, Svalbard and Baffin Island making sound recordings of birds and
narwhal. They visited remote Inuit settlements in North-West Greenland and used
small inflatable boats to explore the fjords of North- East Greenland. Here they
rarely encountered anybody else but they had many exhilarating but occasionally
dangerous encounters and experiences – watching a polar bear enjoy itself bouncing
on one of their inflatable boats; coming within touching distance of an arctic wolf;
being chased by a lone musk-oxen; avoiding a collapsing iceberg, and getting
stuck on the wrong side of a glacial river. Their most memorable boating trip was a
circumnavigation of Clavering Island in North-East Greenland. This too had its hairy
moments, particularly trying to find leads through the pack ice towing a second boat
while being increasingly forced further away from the shore! During this time Michael
became President of both the Arctic Club and the Scottish Arctic Club. He also
served on the Gino Watkins Committee which awarded grants to arctic expeditions,
and set up and maintained the Arctic Club website.
Eventually Michael and Kate felt their boating days in Greenland were over, but they
still felt the lure of the arctic, spending one summer on the White Sea and another
going down the river Lena in Siberia.
Retiring back to a small village in Westmorland, they branched out and tackled many
new projects; editing a newsletter for the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian
and Archaeological Society; taking 33 members on a ‘pilgrimage’ round the Saga
sites of Iceland; publishing a new edition of W G Collingwood’s Letters from Iceland;
saving and raising the profile of old cast-iron fingerposts in Cumbria; and raising
money to restore the local tithe barn.
Michael died on 24 April 2023 after a long illness. He had no children but is survived
by his wife.
Kate Lea
GWANG HOON (JASON) LEE
My dear friend, Gwang Hoon Lee, died in the early hours of
19 December 2021. Some may have known him as Jason,
others as Kwang Hoon, but regardless of how you knew
him, he left an indelible mark upon the lives he touched.
Gwang Hoon Lee was born on 20 October 1995 in Seoul,
South Korea. In his early years, he moved from Seoul to
Wonju to Jeju then back to Seoul with his family. He was a radiant, energetic young
boy, who easily made friends in every school he transferred to. At the age of 15,
110 The Queen’s College | College Record 2023