Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 2010
560 pp., illus., $39.95 hardcover
While few Canadians have actually been to the Arctic, and fewer still actually live there, the region nonetheless looms large in our sense of identity as Canadians. It’s difficult to picture a Canada without the sweeping vastness of its polar regions. And we take umbrage at the idea that other nations might have claims to some of it. But how did we come to “own” this place that for much of our country’s history was difficult and dangerous to get to, sketchily charted, hard to administer, and unforgiving to the unprepared?
Polar Imperative looks at the big picture that surrounds this question, comparing how other nations such as the United States, Britain, Denmark, Russia, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal historically laid claim to parts of the northern circumpolar region, and also going back thousands of years to examine the early occupation of the Arctic by Aboriginal peoples. The latter is noteworthy, since most books about Canadian Arctic history begin with the British Admiralty expeditions, as if no one had previously explored the Arctic.
Author Shelagh D. Grant draws on recent archaeological research that suggests human beings walked across the Bering Strait to this continent more than 20,000 years ago, but didn’t settle in the Arctic until around 3000 BC, when the glaciers had receded. By 2000 BC most of the Arctic was home to scattered bands of Paleo-Eskimos — who accomplished, as the author points out, the last major land-taking of an unoccupied region of the earth. The Paleo-Eskimos were later displaced by the Inuit and Alaskan Eskimos, representing “the first known challenge in the western hemisphere to the modern concept of Arctic sovereignty,” says Grant.
Big changes came between the years 1500 and 1812, when European merchants and monarchs pursued riches in the form of furs, ivory, cod, and whale oil, as well as a direct northern shipping route to access the fabulous wealth of the Orient. Explorer Martin Frobisher was the first to claim parts of what is now the Canadian Arctic for England. Meanwhile, further to the east, the seventeenth-century Dutch claimed possession of west Greenland and dominated the rich whaling area of Spitzbergen. And eighteenth-century Russia established settlements in what is now Alaska, complete with churches and schools.
The next era — from 1818 to 1853 — saw the rise of the British Admiralty as a key player in Arctic exploration. This was fuelled in part by the Napoleonic Wars — there was a surplus of Royal Navy officers with nothing to do, so they were tasked with exploring, mapping, and studying the world, including the Arctic. Their exploration narratives are filled with hair-raising adventure in a land of stormy seas and vicious polar bears.
The search for the Northwest Passage dominated their quest; yet, the Arctic itself was seen by the Admiralty as barren and not worth owning. John Barrow, second secretary of the Admiralty, described a British flag-raising ceremony at Lancaster Sound as “silly.”
During the second half of the nineteenth century, Americans dominated Arctic exploration, seeing it as their “manifest destiny” to have dominion over the entire North American continent. The U.S. purchased Alaska from a cash-strapped Russia in 1867 and considered making an offer to purchase the vast territory controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Seeing the danger, Prime Minister John A. MacDonald moved swiftly to have the latter transferred to the Dominion of Canada in 1870.
The last half of the book is about more recent history. It details the familiar themes of establishing Arctic sovereignty, the Arctic’s strategic importance during the Second World War and the Cold War, the recent boom in gas and oil exploration, Inuit land claims, and the impact of global warming.
The encyclopaedic detail can be a challenge to wade through. But overall, the writing is accessible to a general reader, and Grant’s comprehensive survey comes across as a fresh look at a region that has long consumed our identity as Canadians.
There’s little doubt that Grant writes from a place of authority. An adjunct professor at Trent University, she drew from thirty years of research to write this book, which this year won both the Lionel Gelber Prize for best non-fiction book on foreign affairs and the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize for non-fiction writing about Canada, Canadians, and the nation in international affairs.
— Nelle Oosterom (Read bio)
Nelle Oosterom is the Senior Editor of Canada's History magazine.