ou’ll never forget your first polar bear. On my 14-day Quark Expeditions cruise around Svalbard, a group of islands around 2,000 kilometres north of Norway’s mainland inside the Arctic Circle, I don’t have to wait long. The second day after our departure from the southern settlement of Longyearbyen, the call comes across the ship’s speaker system and is passed from passenger to passenger. Bear, starboard! We barely pause to grab our ship-issued yellow parkas before racing to the decks to see
