The concept of the Canadian "North" has undergone many changes since the last quarter of the nineteenth century and can still provoke considerable debate. In many ways the definition of the Canadian North has been in continual flux. Aside from purely geographic or climatic definitions, the North can be considered a function of the advance of many types of frontiers social, cultural, and economic. The more a region becomes populatcd and displays the trappings of "civilization", the less it can be called a frontier area. Today, in Canada, the term "North" is usually applied to the Yukon and Northwest Territories.
Shortly after Confederation in 1867, two events occurred which turned the young Dominion's eyes to its western and northern frontiers. The first, the transfer of Rupert's land to Canada had been long sought by Ontario politicians and businessmen anxious to expand their western horizons beyond the north shore of Lake Superior. In fact provision had been made in the British North America Act for the incorporation of this North-Western Territory, formerly the preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company. The final transfer of this vast, only vaguely explored territory took place in 1870. Canada was now thrust westward and northward, possessing a huge territory stretching from Lake Superior to the Rockies and from the 49th parallel to the virtually unknown shores of the Arctic Ocean.
The second event which turned Canada's gaze northward occurred in 1880 when Great Britain, by Order-in-Council, transferred the then-known Arctic Islands to Canada. Canada, it should be noted, had never really given thought to acquiring this particular territory and had to be prodded by Imperial authorities. The British Government, for its part, was worried that if no official status were given to these islands, the United States especially would claim the area and limit possible Canadian expansion. Only a few Canadian politicians, such as Alexander Mackenzie, considered the territories to be of any potential value, and fewer still talked of this northward expansion as a natural part of Canada's own brand of manifest destiny.
Canadian acceptance was perhaps too casual, for the government failed to assert vigorously her sovereignty over the Arctic Islands. The Dominion's developmental priorities were much further south: administration and peopling of its western lands and the building of the Canadian Pacifc Railway. The higher latitudes of Canada still had the unofficial status of a no man's land, an area perhaps to be developed in the future. Very little was done on an official level to investigate the region, and only the Hudson's Bay Company continued to be a permanent fxture. A handful of men from the Geological Survey and Dominion Lands Branch of the Department of the Interior reconnoitred the northern mainland west and east of Hudson Bay to the Yukon during the 1880s and 1890s. The main areas explored were the Peace River country, Great Slave Lake, the waterways of the great Mackenzie River basin, and portions of Ungava. Their fndings, which received little popular acclaim at the time, from Fort Chimo to Fort Yukon not only filled blank spaces on the map of northern Canada, but also helped to uncover untapped resources. The oil-laden Athabaska Tar Sands and the iron-bearing rocks of Central Ungava were discovered by these explorers.
As for the waters and islands of the Arctic, they commanded little or no attention. The only official investigation of northern waters was conducted in 1885 when Lieutenant A.R. Gordon, commanding the sealing ship Neptune, investigated the navigational possibilities and resources of Hudson Bay. Penetration of the Arctic Archipelago was left, in the main, to non-Canadians: Scottish whalers in Hudson Bay, American whalers stationed at Herschel Island in the western Arctic from 1889 on, and erstwhile Americans, like the colourful and vain lieutenant Frederick Schwatker who searched for traces of the Franklin expedition in and around King William Island (1878-80).
Canadian authorities seemed little disposed to worry about these activities in the northern territories. In the long run the territory might have been lost to the Dominion by sheer negligence. Canada in fact did not formally acknowledge the 1880 transfer of territory until the 1890s. In 1895 and 1897, two Orders-in-Council were passed declaring that all northern territory between 141 West Longitude (the main Alaska-Canada Boundary) and a vague line running west of Greenland belonged to Canada. The Orders-in-Council also created three new northern districts for administrative purposes: Mackenzie, Yukon, and Franklin. Arctic Islands which had been discovered to that date were placed within the District of Franklin.
The action was none too soon, for, at that very moment in Canada's history, the North made headlines. Gold was discovered in 1896 in the Yukon in a stream called Rabbit Creek, renamed appropriately, Bonanza Creek. The entire world was briefly caught in the grips of gold fever. Fortunes would be made and lost in the rush to the goldfields. Men walked away with millions in gold dust and nuggets stuffed in satchels, blankets, and even jam jars.
By 1899 Dawson, with a population of about 40,000 had become the largest city in Canada west of Winnipeg, and by 1903, modern society was transplanted into the North. Wealthy Dawson became an opulent and garish settlement with all the amenities of western civilization: government institutions, hospitals, churches, schools, sidewalks, a water system, electricity, saloons, and theatres. By 1901 the centre of the Yukon could even boast telegraph and telephone connections with the outside world.
Overseeing all of this development were the North-West Mounted Police, who had moved into the area just before the discovery of gold. Until other government agencies and private institutions arrived on the scene, the police were jacks-of-all-trades as well as the symbol of law and order. Klondike society, it should be mentioned, consisted largely of American citizens, men and women who might flout Canadian law and request that Washington, already involved in an imperialist adventure (the Spanish-American War), make the Yukon part of the United States. Whether this threat was real or imagined, the territory was stamped Canadian mainly through the early efforts of the police.
Nevertheless the American challenge remained. In 1903 the United States were victorious in their claims regarding the boundary of the Alaska Panhandle; the Dominion claimed it had been sold out by a mother-country anxious to establish friendlier ties with the Americans at the expense of Canada. Since the Alaska Boundary dispute and the attendant American aggressiveness had posed a threat to northern boundaries, Canada commissioned an examination of her claim to the Arctic. The Dominion was to be rudely shocked by the findings.
The confidential 1904 report by W.F. King, the Dominion Astronomer, concluded that Canada's title to the Arctic Archipelago was incomplete and imperfect. Canada, King argued, had been tardy in acknowledging the 1880 transfer, leaving it to nationals of other states to penetrate the Arctic. The most direct threat to Canadian control of the entire Archipelago came from Norway which, as a result of Otto Sverdrup's discoveries between 1898 and 1902, could have claimed Axel Heiberg and the Rignes Islands (now known as the Sverdrup Islands) on the basis of prior discovery. Americans also had been active in the North since the middle of the nineteenth century. Most American expeditions to the northlands had been privately sponsored, but they frequently built cairns, deposited written records and raised their country's flag. Though there were few definite territorial claims, the Americans might argue that they had been far more active in the North than the Dominion. King further pointed out that American whalers regularly operating and wintering in the vicinity of Herschel Island and Hudson Bay might entertain attitudes which could threaten Canadian sovereignty. Unless Canada demonstrated that she could exercise effective occupation, King implied, she was in danger of losing complete and unquestioned control of some of the Arctic territories.
A relatively low-key and sometimes muddled programme was inaugurated by Ottawa to secure Canadian suzerainty and to find out more about these northern regions. Lawlessness at the winter headquarters of the American whaling fleet in the Beaufort Sea and the alleged debauchery of the sailors with the Inuit (Eskimo) led the North-West Mounted Police to establish in 1903 posts at Herschel Island and on Hudson Bay. The Police presence, it was also hoped, would notify other states that Canada controlled these waters and territories. Ironically, though Canada claimed that her establishment of these posts in 1903 was designed to protect Inuit who were left exposed to white man's ways and vices, very little was readily done to protect the natives of the area.
In 1906 Canada resolutely claimed the Hudson Bay as belonging wholly to Canada and empowered government agents to collect fees from every vessel in these waters. Although American captains chafed under what they considered an imposition, no serious difficulties were encountered; their token adherence to Canadian regulations was seen as a demonstration of Canada's ability to control these waters and surrounding territory. The Arctic islands, on the other hand, were a more complicated matter.
Canada toyed with the idea of applying the so-called sector principle to the archipelago. In 1907 Senator Pascal Poirier suggested that the Arctic be divided like a pie, the North Pole as the centre. Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the United States would each be given its share. The Dominion's slice would lie between 141 West Longitude to roughly 60 West Longitude, thereby encompassing a triangle stretching from Canada's mainland Arctic coasts to the North Pole. The solution seemed a simple one, but the United States as a supreme maritime power would never accept boundaries which would restrict her movement on the high seas. The territorial waters of any state, by international agreement, were supposed to extend only three miles from the mainland. Poirier's northern boundaries extended hundreds of miles beyond Canada's mainland. Nevertheless, in 1909 Captain Joseph Bernier, who made several forays into the North aboard the Arctic between 1906 and 1911, formally claimed the Arctic "sector" for Canada.
The Canadian government continued to worry about the activity of the Americans in what she considered her rightful territory. Robert Peary, for example, claimed the North Pole for the United States in 1909, but the American Congress made no move to formalize the discovery. In addition American scientific societies had been sending expeditions to the North. These included activities of the American Museum of Natural History of New York and the National Geographic Society of Washington. Both were interested in scientific investigation, but also in the possibility of discovering the much talked about mysterious polar continent north and west of the Canadian mainland. These activities constituted an implicit threat to Canada's sovereignty should they succeed in making new discoveries.
In 1913 these societies prepared a joint expedition to the Arctic under the command of a Canadian-born American, Vilhjalmur Stefansson - discoverer in 1910 of the so-called "Blond Eskimos" of Coronation Gulf. The Canadian government succeeded in persuading the American societies to relinquish their control. The expedition became a wholly Canadian project and Stefansson became a British subject at the request of the government. The result was the Stefansson Arctic Expedition of 1913-18, which included members of the Geological Survey and other scientists concerned with marine biology, oceanography, and the study of Inuit.
Although handicapped by hasty planning and fraught with internal dissension, the expedition marked the high point of Canadian interest in the North to that date. The greatest blot on the expedition however occurred when the primary government ship, the Karluk, became caught in the ice north of Alaska, drifted in a north-westerly direction and was finally crushed by the relentless ice pressure. Before she sank, the crew and government scientists abandoned the ship, some setting off for the distant Siberian coast, never to be heard of again; others managing to reach Wrangel Island, a tiny island 110 miles north of Siberia. There the Karluk survivors remained until the summer of 1914 where on July 1st, it was alleged, the island was claimed for Canada.
The expedition's scientific reports gave to Canada and the world more knowledge of Canada's northern coast and islands than ever before. Stefansson, for his part, was able to explore 100,000 square miles of Arctic territory, travelling roughly 20,000 miles by sled and dogteam and discovering the last major bodies of land in the Arctic Archipelago. All this, he claimed with some exaggeration, was accomplished while living off the land or, more correctly, the marine resources of the Arctic Ocean. Stefansson returned from the Arctic convinced that the region was the land of the future and that the country which possessed and developed it would be the greatest power in the world. He argued that the greatest empires in history had slowly moved northward, each empire being succeeded by a more northerly one. It was logical that Canada would be a great power once she exploited the apparent riches of the Arctic. Just as Rome's greatness lay in her control of the Mediterranean, so Canada and the British Empire could realize their destiny by controlling this strategic polar "Mediterranean". The Arctic Islands would serve as bases for airplanes, dirigibles, and submarines. In 1919 such ideas anticipated the polar air route and submarine voyages of half a century later, but when Stefansson tried to demonstrate their practicability, they served only to embroil Canada in a serious and complicated international incident over the ownership of Wrangel Island.
Stefansson wanted Canada to lay claim to Wrangel Island as part of a general effort to secure Arctic islands. The government of Arthur Meighen turned down the idea. Undaunted, Stefansson, one of the last "red-hot imperialists", created a private company and occupied the island in 1921 in the hope that the Canadian government would officially recognize it as part of Canadian territory. Meighen's successor, Mackenzie King, complicated matters by stating before the House of Commons in 1922 that Wrangel Island was part of Canada. The U.S.S.R. protested that this was a violation of Soviet territory. The United States, hampered by the Washington Conference disarmament agreements (1922) which had reduced her strategic presence in the Pacific north-west, hinted that she might occupy certain islands north of Canada to redress the balance of power.
By claiming Wrangel Island, north of Siberia, Canada had moved out of her unofficial sector, in theory denying her claims to the Arctic Archipelago. The matter was finally resolved when the British Government eventually recognized the island as part of the U.S.S.R. The United States seemed content about the fate of Wrangel Island, but a U.S. State Department official reiterated in 1926 that Canadian claims to the entire Arctic Archipelago were "not worth a damn". In that same year, the Soviet Union adopted a sectoral approach to its Arctic territory, and although this could have conceivably strengthened the Canadian position, it too had never been accorded international recognition. Canada, happy with this turn of events, returned to a low-profile approach in the Arctic. The Dominion scrapped a secret expedition to the North to avoid publicity about the frailty of her claims. The misadventure of Wrangel Island had almost cost her the territorial integrity of the Arctic Archipelago, and so Canada avoided any northern confrontations at all costs. Rather she relied on annual R.C.M.P. patrols, the establishment of police posts on both flanks of the Archipelago, and other kinds of government activity to consolidate theoretically unclaimed territory.
Canada's concern with sovereignty in the North lies now, not so much with the possibility of losing some of her Arctic Islands, but, since the voyage of the Manhattan in 1969 and the exploration for gas and oil in the Arctic, with demonstrating her control over surrounding waters. Thus Ottawa has moved since World War II from the generally indifferent attitude that characterized Canadian policy toward her last frontier in the 1880s and 1890s, to a positive attitude toward the northlands. Nevertheless, public consciousness must be freed of misconceptions and forebodings about the North before there can be a careful appreciation of its peoples, resources, and of its past and future.
