by Margaret Bertulli
Winnipeg, Manitoba
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Gordon W. Smith, A Historical and Legal Study of Sovereignty in the Canadian North: Terrestrial Sovereignty 18701939. P. Whitney Lackenbauer (ed.), Northern Lights Series, Calgary: University of Calgary Press and the Arctic Institute of North America, 2014, 512 pages. ISBN 978-1-55238-720-7, $39.95, paperback (downloadable as an open access e-book)
This readable volume represents the first of a series to collate the passion and life’s work of Gordon W. Smith and is a testament to his intense, decades-long absorption and meticulous research in Canadian Arctic sovereignty. Born in 1918, the son of emigrant English homesteaders in Alberta, Dr. Smith’s interest in Arctic exploration was well established in boyhood and culminated in a doctorate from Columbia University, New York in 1952. His dissertation on the historical and legal basis of Canada’s Arctic claims is considered a seminal work. He held various teaching and research positions and was contracted by the Canadian government in 1969 to address the implications of the contentious transit of the Northwest Passage by the American icebreaker SS Manhattan. His nine-volume analysis Arctic Sovereignty and Related Problems of Maritime Law was completed as an internal document in 1973 for the Department of External Affairs. With or without external funding, Dr. Smith continued his research, travelling to the United States, Russia, Norway and England, until his death in 2000 at age 82.
Smith spent long hours over thirty years, amassing this archive on Arctic sovereignty, a prodigious task in the days before electronic devices and databases. Credit for collating and producing these writings and making them available to researchers and policy makers is due to an Advisory Group consisting of close relatives (brother Bill Smith, niece and nephew Nell Smith and Tom W. Smith); close friend Jeannette Tramhel; and colleagues Dr. Donat Pharand, leading expert on Arctic maritime law, and Lιonard Legault, a former diplomat with the Canadian Department of External Affairs.
Following a brief biography of the author and extensive foreword by the editor are sixteen chapters dealing with the significant issues of Arctic sovereignty as Canada has experienced them from the late 19th century to the beginning of the Second World War. The 1870s and 1880s saw Canada assume responsibility for northern North America except for Newfoundland, Greenland and Alaska, although the Canadian government sponsored little activity in the region for decades. By 1914, the government’s comprehension of its responsibilities in the North was developing in the face of activities by foreign nations and citizens in resource extraction (whaling, Klondike Gold Rush), exploration and searches for lost explorers, and boundary disputes (Alaska). The last years of this period from 1895 to 1918 saw the Canadian government sponsor the voyages of William Wakeham (1897), A. P. Low (19031904) and J. E. Bernier (19061907, 19081909, 19101911) as voyages of possession “within the degrees 141 and 60 west longitude” as well as tangible expressions of Canadian law in the Arctic activities of foreign nationals. Additionally, the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 19131918 took possession of many islands in the Western Arctic.
Following the First World War, the boundary dispute between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island initiated regular patrols and the establishment of RCMP posts in the high eastern Arctic, and in the west, two unsuccessful expeditions to Wrangel Island resulted in Canada abandoning its interests. In the period between the two world wars, patrols of Arctic waterways similar to those of Bernier were conducted annually, and the permanent assignment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to remote locations on the Arctic coasts and islands confirmed a Canadian authority. This period was also marked by other countries such as Denmark and Norway ‘losing interest,’ although Canada remained wary of American attentions and lack of adherence to permitting regimes in the region. Smith’s analysis shows that by 1930 Canada was secure in its possession of Arctic lands. During and after the Second World War, with the United States having fervent security concerns for the North American continent, Canada became disquieted about its sovereignty over the waters of the northwest passages.
Of particular interest to me were the chapters on foreign explorers (18771917) and on American explorers (19181939), the latter which recounts the diplomatic intercession surrounding the authorization (or lack thereof) of Donald B. MacMillan’s three voyages to the Eastern Arctic. They also feature Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s controversial projects on reindeer and muskox herding in the North, and his ill-conceived plan for the occupation of Wrangel Island (1921) and how these played out politically. The Eastern Arctic and RCMP Patrols (19221939) are also of great interest: the former contains details of annual crew complements and ports of call, while the latter is an adumbration of RCMP investigations and tours.
As was then quite typical, Smith’s treatment of sovereignty issues is from a Eurocentric perspective, lacking reference to Indigenous People’s roles and participation. Yet, his prodigious research, and its collection and publication is valuable to Arctic scholars and politicians, as we enter an era where the North figures prominently on the global stage of changing climate and transportation routes, resource extraction, and northern people’s self-determination.
We thank Clara Bachmann for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
We thank S. Goldsborough for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
Page revised: 15 April 2020
