Joseph Frey

Joseph Frey, CD, FRCGS, is Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and Chair of the Society’s Fellows Committee, a retired commissioned officer of the Canadian Armed Forces, and a former Director and Vice-President of The Explorers Club, New York City. He was Expedition Lead on the HMCS Canada Expedition 2025 and the upcoming Bell Island Battle of the Atlantic Expedition 2027, both Canadian-led scientific and historical field projects documenting significant naval heritage sites.

Some of the expeditions Joseph has actively participated in include the U.S. National Park Service’s search for the Spanish pirate-slave ship Guerrero off Key Largo, Florida, and NOAA’s Battle of the Atlantic marine archaeology survey of the German submarine U-576 off North Carolina’s Outer Banks. He co-led an Explorers Club coral reef biodiversity mapping expedition in the Bahamas’ Peterson Cay National Park and took part in another with the University of Havana in Cuba’s Punta Francés National Park.

Joseph was also a Royal Canadian Geographical Society member of the Parks Canada-led expedition that discovered Sir John Franklin’s flagship HMS Erebus in the Northwest Passage.

With a strong interest in archaeology, an important focus of his work has been on 17th-century Huron-Wendat sites in Ontario. He has also participated in palaeontology excavations in Alberta with internationally renowned palaeontologist Dr. Phil Currie.

Fascinated by polar science, Joseph has taken part in expeditions to Antarctica, Greenland, Svalbard, and across the Canadian High Arctic with organizations including the National Science Foundation, Antarctica New Zealand, and the Meteorological Service of Canada. He was one of only seven international journalists selected to report from Antarctica on field science during the 2001–2002 research season.

Joseph has travelled to over 90 countries on all seven continents. An accomplished science writer, he has been published in TIME, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, Geographical, Canadian Geographic, Medical Post, and DIVER, among others, and contributed to five books on polar science and exploration, including the Canadian bestseller Franklin’s Lost Ship: The Historic Discovery of HMS Erebus. He is also a speaker on history, archaeology, and exploration with National Geographic/Lindblad Expeditions, Adventure Canada, Cunard, Maple Leaf Adventures, One Ocean, the Royal Canadian Military Institute, the University of Toronto, and Trent University.