In that season it can be a genuinely beautiful spot, with plunging fjords and mountain ranges that surge to the horizon and seemingly beyond, where oceans of red arctic willow waver in the wind, and exotic arctic hare, polar bear, ermine and lemming cavort in seeming harmony as they fend for their existence; a place where a periwinkle yellow sun never sets and where the colour blue can take on more hues than infinity.
Although the Arctic occupies one third of Canada’s land mass and 50% of this nation’s shore line, it is still only on the periphery of our collective consciousness. Yet that does it no justice for three of the world’s ten largest islands are located in the Canadian Arctic and each of these is as large, if not larger than, Great Britain. At its deepest, the Arctic Ocean plunges to a depth of 4,000 metres and its depths hold remarkable treasure.
Our far Northland is the home to countless eerie legends borne of greed and desperation. From the mysterious disappearance of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, to the abandonment of Henry Hudson and his followers by a mutinous crew which left them to die on the desolate shores of a mammoth Bay which would one day bear his name, to the utter decimation of the Danish expedition of Jens Munk who, in 1619, lost an entire expedition to cold, famine and scurvy and straggled back from the Davis Straights across the frigid North Atlantic to Denmark with two followers remaining alive, the North is a place where the howl of a lost soul goes unheard and men can disappear into a blizzard-like void for centuries, if not forever.
In spite of this harsh reality, from the moment in 1496 that John Cabot whispered three words… silk, # and gold… into the ears of the English King Henry VII… the mysterious road to the Orient through the fabled North West passage mesmerized explorers of all nations.
As befits a country bordering three major oceans with the longest shoreline in the world, Canadians are, in our deepest souls, a maritime people. From the elegant Nova Scotia fishing schooner Blue Nose which held the International Fisherman’s racing record for a remarkable 17 years, to the sturdy Flower class corvette- HMCS Sackville which symbolized our singular guardianship of the Second War North Atlantic convoy system and the redoubtable Tribal class destroyer HMCS Haida which is yet Canada’s most decorated and proudest warship, to the other-worldly hydrofoil, Bras D’Or, which was quite possibly the fastest warship ever built, we clearly define ourselves and our character by the ships that our sailors and fisher folk have sailed upon.
Yet the craft which will perhaps resonate most in the Canadian consciousness in the coming years is not a sleek sloop or a porcupine gun battery-ed warship, but rather a doughty little fishing schooner constructed at the Burrard Dry Dock Shipyards in North Vancouver in 1928 and simply named the St Roch.
The motor vessel St Roch was designed as an arctic supply and patrol ship for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Constructed of thick Douglas fir; with an interior hull reinforced with heavy beams to withstand ice pressure she stood a mere 31.7 metres (104 feet) in length and with her two storey wooden deckhouse, fisher rigging and lack of any semblance of armament in what was for a nation a time of somber World War, she was certainly not much to look at or take notice of.
In 1940 the St Roch left Vancouver to traverse the Northwest Passage on a sovereignty mission. After spending two winters frozen in pack ice, where she would become a floating police detachment with her compliment of eight RCMP officers mounting dog and sled patrols from the ship, she finally docked at Halifax in 1942. In so doing, she would become only the second ship to ever navigate the Passage and the first to traverse the maritime route through the dangerous pack ice choked Arctic archipelagos from west to east.
For two decades, the St Roch would be the embodiment of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. During this time she was the only Canadian presence in the far north, carrying out various governmental duties, carrying the mails, delivering supplies to isolated Inuit villages, transporting the sick to treatment and, with its police compliment ever ready to take their dog sleds outward into the Arctic vastness, acting as the tangible manifestation of the Canadian rule of law. Sleds of about 17 feet in length were unloaded from her bowels. They could each carry up to 1,500lb of supplies. After about 30 to 40 miles of sled travel a day, RCMP crew officers would unhitch the dogs and build an igloo to sleep in. The men adopted Inuit clothing for the patrols. The clothes were also made by the Inuit and were either traded or bought by the officers.
The master of the St Roch for those many years was a stoic Norwegian named Henry Larson, who wanted nothing more than to be a Mountie and to travel the Northwest Passage. Larsen’s dedication to the land and the people of the Canadian Arctic was unswerving and legendary; for these were his waters, dangerous maritime passages that he shared with his friends, the Inuit, who affectionately called the burly RCMP sergeant Hanorie Umiarpolik (Henry with the Big Ship) Over one eight year period Larsen took but a single trip south, “to get married and learn to walk again with ordinary shoes.” He would ultimately rise to the rank of Superintendent with responsibilities for the Canadian North and the thoughtful allocation of federal police resources for its people for Larsen knew the North as few others did.
Henry Larsen’s large than life shadow and that of the stoic little St Roch loom large in the international debate which will rage over the next few years over the sovereignty of our northernmost waterways and in particular, the Northwest Passage.
Just about everyone agrees that the many islands that dot the Arctic to the north of Canada's mainland belong to Canada. But what about the water between them? Who, if anyone, has jurisdiction over the waters separating Somerset Island from Devon Island, or Melville Island from Banks Island?
In a 1995 paper published by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee Donald McRae, a University of Ottawa law professor, wrote that Canada must prove two things to win a sovereignty claim over her Arctic waters. "It must be demonstrated that the waters are the internal waters of Canada and that the waters of the Northwest Passage do not constitute an international strait."
When it comes to Arctic sovereignty, the waters separating most of the islands in Canada's Arctic are frozen for much of the year. Canadian Inuit hunt and spend large amounts of time working and even living on the ice — in effect turning it into an extension of the land, our land- Canada.
We currently boast the only year-round site of human habitation closest to the North Pole at Alert, a military base at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island. Alert is more than 700kilometres north of the nearest Inuit town at Grise Fiord- and more than 4,000 kilometres north of Toronto.
But it is still 816 kilometres from the Pole and the Russians are edging closer to that primacy,
Since 1994, they have staffed a research base called Ice Station Borneo on the deep Arctic ice, only 60 kilometres from the Pole. A tent at Borneo acts as an official Russian Post Office and a special Russian cancellation is used with permission from the Russian Ministry of Post in Moscow. Every year about 800 letters/postcards are cancelled, including philatelic subscriptions and mail from tourists, adventurers and explorers.
Tellingly if ice counts as landmass for the Canadian Inuit and armed service personnel, when it comes to international negotiations over ownership in the Arctic, it might similarly count for the Russian researchers as well.
Can the waters of the Northwest Passage be considered an international strait under maritime law? One study reported just 11 foreign transits between 1904 and 1984. Because it has not been an international navigation or shipping route, many observers say it fails the required "use" test.
That explains why the government of Canada is building new Arctic icebreakers, In addition the Canadian Forces will build a new army training centre in Resolute Bay and refurbish an existing deepwater port at a former mining site in Nanisivik.
When the US oil supertanker Manhattan barreled through the Northwest Passage in 1969, environmentalists and many others were outraged by the implications. Canadaresponded by bringing in the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, by which Canada asserted the right to control navigation in waters extending 161 kilometres offshore. The government was clearly alarmed by the prospect of an environmental disaster should a tanker spill its contents in the geo-sensitive area.
The most direct challenge to Canada's Arctic sovereignty came in 1985, when the Americans sent the icebreaker Polar Sea through the Northwest Passage without informingCanada or asking permission. The political skirmish that followed led to the 1988 Arctic Co-operation Agreement between the two nations. The agreement stipulated that theU.S. would not send any more icebreakers through the passage without Canada's consent, and that Canada would always give that consent. The wider issue of whether Canada's Arctic waters were internal sea passages or international waterways was left unresolved.
While most of the Arctic sovereignty disputes are Canada-U.S. affairs, Denmark has also recently weighed in. In 2003, the Danish navy occupied Hans Island, a barren hunk of rock between Ellesmere Island and Greenland that Canada claims as its territory. For now, the countries agree to disagree on Hans Island's status. As recently as 2007, satellite imagery placed the line delineating Canada’s portion and Denmark’s right through the centre of the island. Some scholars believe there is much more at stake, namely claims over northern fishing grounds or future access to the Northwest Passage.
The simmering dispute over whether Canada has sovereignty over Arctic waters and, in particular, the Northwest Passage may appear academic. After all, the waters are locked in ice for much of any given year.
But it is not. The American position holds that the Northwest Passage is an "international strait". Such ‘straits’ are narrower in breadth than territorial seas but, because they join two expanses of high sea and are used for international navigation, they are open to ships from any country with relatively little restriction. If such a scenario were to be accepted in international law, Canada would have the right to enact fishing and environmental regulation, as well as laws controlling smuggling and fiscal matters and those intended for the safety of shipping. It would not have the right to close the passage.
Ownership of the 19,000 islands which make up the Canadian Polar archipelago is not at issue. In 1880, Britain assigned them to Canada and that title has not been contested -with the small exception of the Danes.
In contrast, the history of Canada's claim over the Northwest Passage is far more uneven. Initially, because of the impenetrable ice, it did not seem that title over the waterway mattered. Still, a claim to the water was at least implicit made in an assertion, first made in the late 19th century, that Canada owned everything between the 60th and 141st meridians of longitude all the way up to the North Pole. The most famous articulation of this "sector theory" was made by Senator Pascal Poirier in 1907. Two years later, Captain J.E. Bernier of the C.S. Arctic placed a plaque on Melville Island that still reads:
This Memorial is erected today to commemorate the taking possession for the DOMINION OF CANADA of the whole ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO lying to the north of America from long. 60°W to 141°W up to latitude 90°N.
However, apart from the Soviet Union, which recently attempted a similar claim, other countries did not accept the sector theory.
So what is one to make of all this? The first issue of Arctic sovereignty deals with security. Even though the Arctic waterway is frozen most of the year, military submarines are able to make the trip year-round by simply diving under the ice (and there are reports that many countries have secretly sent their subs through in such a manner). Currently, we cannot routinely detect submarine transits though these waters. Critics say the world is right to question how Canada can claim an area as sovereign territory if we don't patrol or monitor it thoroughly.
The second pertinent issue is the ice itself. Plainly put, the Arctic ice is thinning at an alarming rate. Because of global warming, there are predictions that the Northwest Passagemay be open for large parts of the summer in as little as 15 years.
A number of critics say that there are major environmental risks in turning the Northwest Passage into the commercial sea route that explorers began searching for in the 15th Century. They say the rest of the world will surely take notice of a shipping route between Asia and Europe that would be 5,000 kilometres shorter than the current route through the Panama Canal. The Northwest Passage could accommodate supertankers and container ships that are far too large for the Canal. International shipping companies are already eyeing the fuel, time and canal-passage fees that could be saved; some are already building ice-strengthened vessels.
The third element is equally timely. It is estimated that fully one quarter of the world’s hydrocarbons may rest in the Arctic basin. The Arctic is believed to hold 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, more than the proven reserves of Venezuela. According to the United States Geological Survey’s latest assessment, the Arctic is even better endowed with natural gas, holding 1,670 trillion cubic feet, roughly equal to the proven reserves of the most gas-rich country on the planet, Russia.
``After the heads of several countries disputed Russia's rights to the resource-rich Arctic Ocean shelf,'' the military ``immediately'' began adapting its training plans for units ``that might be called upon to fight in the Arctic,'' Lieutenant General Vladimir Shamanov said in a recent interview published in Krasnaya Zvezda- Red Star- the Russian Army's newspaper. Shamanov was the commander of an airborne division for two tours in Chechnia and currently commands the Russian military incursion into Georgia.
The Arctic shelf holds an estimated 10 billion tons of oil equivalent, as well as gold, nickel and diamonds, according to the Russian government, which sent a mini-submarine to plant a flag beneath the polar cap in August. Shamanov said special preparations for Russian troops are needed because ``modern wars are won and lost long before they start.''
Since 1975, the United States has religiously run massive annual northern manouvres out of Alaska, culminating in a recent twelve day military scheme with 5,000 troop participants called Exercise North Edge 2008.
Lieutenant General Shamanov bluntly stated that Russian military trainers ``can't ignore such facts.''
And simply put, neither can we as Canadians.
The quest for the Northwest Passage and its ultimate conquest is subtly woven into the very sinews of this nation; in much the same manner as the last spike hammered in on the Pacific railroad, and an all but forgotten 97-metre leap of faith by a Toronto man, Frederick "Casey" Baldwin' as he piloted a rickety red biplane above frozen Lake Keuka in upstate New York and became the first citizen of the British Empire to take to the skies in a heavier-than-air machine in the dawning days of the aviation age.
The St Roch sits silent now in the maritime museum in Vancouver, far away from the ice and ocean she once challenged and defeated, a subject and increasingly compelling public interest.
She was lovingly called an Ugly Duckling by her ship’s master, Henry Larsen. And ugly she may well be; with her gun metal grey paint finish and spiderweb rigging. But the StRoch will surely become as much a very real symbol of our pride, our resourcefulness and our determination to define and protect what is ours as a nation and as a people united; as were the Blue Nose, the Haida and the Sackville.
More than the freight train roar of biting northern winds and the annual promise of vengeful blizzards cascading down from their frozen aeries in Nunavut to torment the cities of the South, the Canadian Arctic is becoming a very real part of our nation in ways that we are only now beginning to fathom.
Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.
During the first navigation of the St Roch between 1940 and 1942, she sheltered in Paisley Bay in the winter of 1941. Here, Constable Albert Chartrand died suddenly of a heart attack. Captain Larsen and RCMP Corporal Hunt humanely traveled 800 miles by dogsled and found a Roman Catholic priest to return with them to deliver a funeral service for their departed friend.
A cairn of stones rests at Paisley Bay where the dead RCMP officer is interred. Unlike the wretched souls of the lost Franklin expedition or Henry Hudson’s castaways or JensMunk’s trail of forlorn cadavres, Albert Chartrand would not be forgotten.
Nor, it would seem, will the men who once sailed upon the St Roch and successfully navigated the dreaded Northwest Passage for their shipmates, their Police Force and their nation.
For the grandeur of a nation is realized not solely by sheer power and the force of might that it exhibits to intimidate others, but by the human integrity and dignity of its citizens as they carry out the every day tasks of their calling, good Canadians like Henry Henry Asbjörn Larsen, captain of the RCMP Vessel St Roch and the men who sailed upon her to preserve the Canadian rule of law from sea to sea to sea.
And if should be I come again to loved ones left at home,
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
Chuck Konkel is an experienced Canadian police officer serving in one of Canada’s principal police forces. Prior to that he was an inspector in the Royal Hong Kong Police. He is the creator of Canada’s Hate Crime Law and is an acknowledged expert in Asian and Eastern European Organized Crime; training the National Police of Poland and travelling to Moscow to execute a search warrant. He is a book reviewer for a major Canadian newspaper and was for twelve years a lecturer of corporate communications at a community college. He has a masters degree in international relations and is the author of two best selling novels. He is currently at work on a third.
The Canadian Arctic can be a truly brutal place, bitterly cold, remorselessly unforgiving to the uninitiated. It has but two real seasons and one of them is a winter’s night that stretches for six long, gloomy months. During this time the Arctic is a polar desert, with an average temperature hovering at a numbing -29F/-34 C. It can freeze a face to hard stone in milliseconds. The Arctic summer that follows brings the phenomenon of floating ice which expands to an average of 6.2 million square miles- more than 1 ½ times the area of the United States. The tundra- or treeless plain- which carpets this land in summer covers fully 1/10th of the earth’s surface.
