Canada’s non-Arctic Roots#

Canada is a country based on two major contradictions. The first one is that, in spite of its large extension, de facto it never entered history, since it never independently pursued hard power in international relations. It owes pretty much its entire territory to British expansionism, and it is even questionable whether it can be considered a fully independent country, given its never fully broken colonial ties with London (it is a Commonwealth Realm, therefore sharing its crown with the United Kingdom, and its current Prime Minister Mark Carney is the former Governor of the Bank of England) and its reliance on the U.S. for it defence needs. This makes Canada different even from Mexico, another country often mentioned as a “non-power” and a proof of the safe geographical position enjoyed by the U.S.: unlike the States’s southern neighbour, which has an imperial past (albeit a short one) and often swings between Third-Worldism and attempts to become a full-fledged North American country, Canada is not simply a post-historical nation, but a non-historical one with little doubts about its Anglo-Saxon nature (the presence of one, perhaps two, internal nations is not relevant in analysing Canada’s strategy and foreign policy).

The second contradiction affecting Canada, which we are going to analyse, is the fact that it has not been traditionally an Arctic country, in spite of the fact that around 40 per cent of its territory is classified as part of the Arctic region (https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/arctic-arctique/index.aspx?lang=eng), and the Canadian Arctic has always been some sort of underpopulated backwater. It did not become Canada’s soft underbelly just because it is too big and its climate is too harsh to work as a potential land or sea invasion route. The Arctic Ocean works as a further fence, and it is likely to remain such even with the ongoing melting of the ice cap.

Canada’s core area, after all, corresponds to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, in particular to the strip of land along St Lawrence River and on the Great Lakes, and while the expansion of the country has led to the development of new metropolis in the west, starting from Vancouver, this core region still hosts over 60 per cent of Canada’s total population. The toponym “Canada” itself traditionally referred to this narrow strip of land, traditionally divided between Lower and Upper Canada and forming the United Province of Canada in 1841. The northern regions, on the other hand, have been controlled between 1670 and 1870 by the Hudson’s Bay Company (henceforth HBC), which exploited them mostly for fur trade and which was not interested in setting up colonies or developing any kind of infrastructure that was not needed for its commercial aims. The share of European population in the area remained negligible.

How Canada Got its Arctic#

The history of Canada’s presence in the Arctic started in 1870. At that time, the HBC was no longer able to manage the land it controlled, because it lacked the capability of a state, and it started to consider the sale of its enormous territory in return to the possibility to keep its trading posts and some of its most profitable land. After a failed attempt of the United States to purchase the Rupert’s Land and the Northwest Territories (Washington’s interest for Canada is way older than Trump…), the HBC sold them to Britain, which transferred them to Canada. Part of this land was given to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; the rest was to be organised into new provinces and territories. As in the southern neighbour, there was a great demand of new land for European colonists, and it is not surprising that the purchase was followed both by a number of Indian Wars and a rebellion of the Métis (people with a mixed European, usually French, and Native American ancestry), who set up a provisional government in the Red River Colony in nowadays Manitoba. The Klondike Gold Rush, which attracted over 100,000 prospectors in this remote Arctic land between 1896 and 1899, further increased Canada’s interest for its West and was the first instance when the country exploited the richest of its Arctic regions.

Other key events were the dispute over the Oregon Country and the Alaska Purchase. During the 18th Century, the Pacific Northwest was claimed by four countries: Great Britain, France, Russia and Spain. France never managed to control any land in the region (although the toponym “Oregon” may have French roots), while Spain, whose claims originally extended up to the 61st parallel north, was actually never able to establish any colony north of the Vancouver Island, and it ultimately relinquished any claim north of the 42nd parallel to the United States with the 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty. Spain’s attempted colonisation of the Pacific Northwest left just a little bit more traces than France’s, since some toponyms of the region (Strait of Juan de Fuca, Valdez…) have clear Spanish roots. Russia, on the other hand, conquered Alaska, set up a number of settlements and built a trading post in Fort Ross, just north of San Francisco. Finally, British claims were managed by the aforementioned HBC, and these claims would give Canada automatic access to the Pacific Northwest once the HBC sold its land.

The 1867 Alaska Purchase, which transferred then-Russian America to the United States, created a land dispute between the latter and then-British Canada over the Alaskan Panhandle. Canada wanted a direct access to the sea for the Yukon Gold Fields, while the United States wanted to keep the border as far away as possible from the Pacific Ocean. A 1903 arbitration favoured the U.S. position, denying Yukon a direct sea access, and caused a first crisis in the relations between Britain and its Canadian dominion, since the latter accused the former of having betrayed its interests in the name of stronger Anglo-American relations. Canada was still a British dominion at that point, but the arbitration is often said to have played a key role in the development of a sense of “Canadianness”, distinct from Britishness.

The 20th Century: Militarisation and Deportations#

For a long time, Canada held totally different policies in the lower and the upper provinces. The former, with a relatively milder climate, were to be open for colonisation, and its native population was to be either dislodged or turned into farmers or city dwellers. The drama of the boarding schools was rooted mostly in the desire to Europeanise the natives. In the Arctic provinces, on the other hand, the native population was to be “left to their natural mode of living and not depend upon white men”. Given its harsh climate and its unsuitability for large-scale European settlement, or even as a navigation route, the Canadian Arctic—which includes the Canadian Archipelago since 1880—has mostly been left on its own, with the exception of a few spots which hosted raw material deposits and those suitable for hosting military bases or scientific research sites. The Norwegian claim on the Sverdrup Islands, an archipelago located west of Ellesmere Island in nowadays Nunavut, didn’t lead to any military conflict, and Norway renounced the claim in 1930 in return of Britain’s recognition of Jan Mayen and the Bouvet Island as Norwegian. Still, this made Canada look for more effective ways to enforce its hold on its Arctic land.

In 1953 and 1955, the Canadian government forcibly relocated 92 Inuit from Inukjuak in Quebec, then called Port Harrison, to Resolute and Grise Fjord, on the Canadian Archipelago, in a region which lacked any kind of human presence until that point. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Canadian officials had various motives for relocating Inuit to the High Arctic” and “one reason concerned Arctic sovereignty. During the Second World War, the United States had established a military presence in the Arctic. Amid Cold War fears of Soviet aggression, the United States heightened its military capabilities in the Arctic, posing a potential threat to Canadian claims to the North”. But this relocation, which actually amounted to a deportation, remains one of the most controversial pages of the Canadian history: the relocated Inuit, de facto treated as human flagpoles, had to survive in a very different environment from the one they were used to (Qausuittuk, Resolute’s name in Inuktikut, means “place of darkness”), and they didn’t have the possibility to come back to their homeland as promised. Alcoholism, depression, illnesses and domestic violence were endemic before the Inuit started to get accustomed to the new environment. The relocated Inuit were allowed to leave their settlement only in the 80’s.

But the Inuit were not the only people who moved to the Arctic in this period. Due to the start of the Cold War, which saw Canada firmly into the Western Field, there was also some degrees of militarisation of the Arctic, which was seen as a potential pathway for Soviet troops and—in particular—missiles towards the United States. In the 1950’s, Canada partnered with the United States to set up three lines of early warning radar systems across the Canadian territory: the Pinetree Line close to the U.S. border, the Mid-Canada Line on the southern border of the Canadian Arctic and the DEW Line on the coast of the Arctic Ice Sea. All of them would have been dismantled between 1965 and the end of the Cold War, with the protection of the skies over Canada and the United States now devolved to NORAD.

Latest Developments#

After the end of the Cold War, the main drivers of Canada’s interest to the Arctic have been global warming and the growing accessibility of local natural resources. The exploitation of the Athabasca Oil Sands in northern Alberta, which started in the early 2000’s, is one of the most prominent examples of the increasing role played by the exploitation of Northern natural resources. Interesting enough, global warming is both a concern and a main cause—together with technological development—of the greater accessibility of the natural resources of a country where around 50 per cent of the land is still covered by permafrost. The growing role played by the Arctic region caused also a surge in ad hoc policies. In 2007, the governments of the Yukon, the Nunavut and the Northwest Territories elaborated the first Arctic strategy, followed by a national one two years later. In 2010, the then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that “protection of Canada’s sovereignty over its northern regions was its number one and “non-negotiable priority” in Arctic policy”. The sovereignty issues affecting the Canadian Arctic, on the other hand, are still affecting the economic potential of the region. While all land claims on the Canadian Archipelago have been resolved (the last one being the one between Canada and Denmark over Hans Island, settled in June 2022 with a partition of the uninhabited island), there are still disputes about a parcel of the Beaufort Sea between Canada and the U.S., the Lomonosov Ridge between Canada, Russia and Denmark and in particular on the status of the Northwest Passage, which caused two diplomatic incidents when two American ships passed through the Canadian Archipelago without asking Canada for permission.

The dispute over the status of the Northwest Passage, in particular, explains why, unlike the Northern Sea Route, the former is still classified as a potential sea route. Canada’s interest in its development is increasing, but it is nowhere as near the Russian effort to develop the Northeast Passage as a viable sea route year-round. The end of the American unipolarism and the ongoing transition phase towards a new world order which is likely to be multipolar is further increasing Canada’s interest towards its Arctic region. Much can be said about the repercussions on the Canadian Arctic of the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis—de facto a proxy war between Russia and the “Collective West” whose consequences extend well beyond Gogol’s homeland, the rise of China and the revival of the U.S. claims on Greenland and Canada. But this will be material for another analysis.

AUTHOR

Giuseppe Cappelluti
Independent Expert