Canadian North
December 8, 1953, was a historic date for Canada. The Prime Minister, Louis St. Laurent, spoke in the House of Commons on a bill to create a Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources to administer and develop Canada’s Northland. He noted: “It has been said that Great Britain acquired her empire in a state of absence of mind. Apparently we have administered these vast territories in an almost continuing state of absence of mind.”
The “vast territories” to which St. Laurent referred were the parts of Canada left after the provinces had been carved out of the country’s land mass. Today there are two of them: the Yukon Territory to the west, and the Northwest Territories east of the Yukon. They lie north of the 60th parallel (the northern limits of the Prairie Provinces and of agriculture) , cover 1,511,979 square miles or 40 percent of Canada’s land surface, and contained a peak population of 25,100 in 1951. Here, in earlier days, the triumvirate of church, state, and commerce held the land for Canada. The Anglican and Catholic missions, the Mounties, and the Hudson’s Bay Company (whose initials were alleged to stand for “Here Before Christ”) held sway over most of the territories, while a few mines produced gold, silver, and uranium, and the Indians and Eskimos carried on traditional pursuits like furtrapping. To most Canadians, the vaguely defined “North” was a land of ice and snow, peopled by strong Mounties, happy, smiling Eskimos, mad trappers, and characters from the novels of Jack London and the poems of Robert Service.
Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 focused fresh attention on Canada’s northern territories; until then they had been thought of as nothing but a wasteland. This was the first gold rush in the era of mass media. The screaming headlines (“A Ton of Gold”) in the popular press conjured up a picture of a rich Eldorado, just waiting to be exploited, and helped to create the concept of the North as a “rich treasurehouse of mineral wealth.” This cliché clouds rational discussion of development to this day.
The Klondike Gold Rush ended almost as soon as it began. By about 1904, the footloose gold-seekers had rushed away to Fairbanks and Nome in Alaska. The large companies moved in with dredges and other capital-intensive methods of mining. The population dropped, the government contracted, and Yukon mining towns like Dawson went into decline. Silver and copper mining began on a limited scale. White men who did not work in the mines or for the government led an independent, frontier life, prospecting, hunting for meat, trapping for furs, panning a little gold, fishing. No one starved in the Yukon. Mutual aid and the “golden rule” were practiced not only from a sense of frontier idealism, but from necessity, for each man had to help the other in a hostile land.
In 1942, another “rush” populated the Yukon. In that year the Japanese invaded the Aleutians. As a defensive measure, the United States built the Alaska Highway to provide an interior land link between the state of Washington and Alaska. Airports were built along the route to ferry planes to Russia. About 30,000 troops and civilians crowded into the Whitehorse area, and the Yukon Territory boomed again. T he war also touched the Northwest Territories in the form of air bases thrown up on the tundra. The base for this boom was even more fragile than gold, for the Japanese were soon dislodged from the Aleutians, and the shifts in war strategy relegated the Northwest and Alaska to a remote garrison spot. By the end of the war, the Yukon was again in the doldrums. Shacks and barrack buildings cluttered up the lower townsite of Whitehorse, around whose fringe lived a large squatter population. But there were improvements: new roads began to take the place of the river as the main means of communications, for they were open all year and offered a cheap method of getting “in" and getting “out.”
True North
Then, in 1953, the Canadian government officially discovered the North. In typically British fashion, the act that set up the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources was as vague as it was allencompassing. It gave the federal government carte blanche to do what it wanted in the areas north of the 60th parallel. A number of motives were behind Ottawa’s move to develop its Northland. Canada had emerged from the war as a world power, and its primary products, some of which came from the North, were in great demand to rebuild shattered economies. The war also had made Canada aware of the military importance of the North. During World War II, the North had been part of a through route for airplanes sent to Russia. The cold war turned it into an advance position, a possible station for the interception of manned bombers and missiles. The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was hurriedly erected in 1955 as an electronic fence to warn the settled southern areas of North America of impending attack. There was concern that the United States might claim Northern Canada unless that country established “effective occupancy.” Britain had transferred the Arctic Islands to Canada in 1880 (although its claim to the area was tenuous, to put it mildly). The desire to assert sovereignty was another reason for Canada’s move north— though no country had actually coveted Canada’s North. Canadians talked of the “true North, strong and free”: the image of Northernness is deeply imbedded in the Canadian consciousness despite the fact that the majority of the population lives in cities, or huddles along the American border.
A humanistic reason was also apparent. While the happy Eskimos, rubbing noses and swapping wives, were a popular legend, the reality was something else again. Life expectancy of Northern native peoples was low, infant mortality was high, the fur trade subject to wide fluctuations, and general living conditions miserable. Canada, moving onto the international scene, was newly sensitive to the opinion of other countries in a postcolonial world concerning its treatment of its native peoples. There was a strong official desire by the federal government to rescue the Indians and Eskimos from the arbitrary forces that stunted their potential and shortened their lives. Nineteen fifty-nine was the first year in which the Canadian government was able to announce that no Eskimo had died of starvation—no mean feat considering that their population that year of 10,000 was scattered over a vast area with scant resources.
The period between 1954 and 1964 was a “decade of development” in the North. There was some attempt to equate the “opening up” of the Canadian North with that of the American West. In the American West, the land and conditions that the pioneers left behind were not vastly different from those they encountered as they traveled west. They had tools and a culture that worked tolerably well in most parts of the interior, and at the end of the West was California. They went ahead of government. Free land and the promise of a better life lured them on. Canada reversed the process. The American West was a little man’s frontier, or at least a place where an individual could wrest a living from the soil. The physical and spatial limits of the Canadian North ensure that it will be a corporate frontier—a land where large amounts of capital and skilled workers will be needed to develop any resource. At the Great Canadian Oil Sands operation in northern Alberta, six men (with shift reliefs) operate two massive diggers that do the work of thousands of pick and shovel laborers. The Northern prospector who travels rough in the bush and “finds new mines” is a folk figure of the North as the frontiersman was of the West. Above the prospectors, airplanes carrying sophisticated electronic equipment search for minerals by identifying magnetic anomalies.
“Ottawa in the bush”
When Canada decided to “open up” and develop its North, it was the central government that sent out its representatives in strength. Instead of a rush into an unknown land by individuals seeking a better life, the government went in to make life safe for Eskimos and other Northern Canadians. In doing so, they had to dispatch large numbers of civil servants who exemplified the middle-class way of life.
Like a father welcoming a prodigal son, the government showered benefits on the newly discovered North, regardless of the desires of the local people or the capacity of the territories to sustain a modern society or economy. Roads, schools, houses, public buildings, sewer and water systems were built in a great construction boom. Between 1956 and 1966, the federal government spent $614 million north of the 60th parallel. The top summer population of both territories was 43,120 in 1966; this included a number of summer transients and many civil servants. In 1967, 9127 people were employed there full time or part time by the government.
The message soon came out loud and clear. The government had rushed into the North shouting about its valuable mineral resources and its other riches. It had raised great expectations about the North without knowing exactly what was there. The individual who failed in the American West cut his losses and pushed on. But what could a government do? The government had created an “Ottawa in the bush,” and established middle-class, industrial standards for performance in a barren land. There was no coordination of activity. Each government agency acted as a separate entity. One government agency built houses for Indians in Dawson, and another closed them down for health reasons. The Yukon Children’s Aid Society, run on a volunteer basis and a small budget, was replaced by the Territorial Department of Welfare, whose budget in 1967—1968 was $810,000.
But few people went north to stay. They went north to “clean up and clear out.” In 1963, Dawson contained a population of 750, of whom a third were poor by any standard. Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory, has a less stable economy even than Dawson. Its main base is government, although it is also a transportation and tourist center. The territories rely heavily on nonrenewable resources, and sectoral shifts affect large numbers of people. In 1966, the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation, the last of the large companies, closed clown when the gold was worked out: it had provided employment for 350 to 500 people. Even the government was not a stable employer. The Canadian Army handed over administration of the Alaska Highway in 1964 to the Department of Public Works, which is scheduled to hand over its responsibilities to the Territorial Government. Each transfer secs fewer people employed for the increasingly capital-intensive operations.
The Yukon Territory presents an example of “economic overfit"—a structure adapted to the needs of Southern Canada, and built up without regard to the realities of the North. The scene is reminiscent of an incident in a Buster Keaton movie, The Navigator, where the comedian, alone with his girl on a liner, attempts to boil two eggs in a caldron designed for hundreds. More and more time, money, and energy is spent on keeping things going and on fixed costs. In 1967, the federal and territorial governments spent about $123 million in the territories, and received revenues of about $34 million.
The dilemmas of a dual economy have arisen. Whites, in the main, are affluent; native peoples are poor. The Eskimos and Indians have moved into the settlements, abandoning their traditional ways in favor of hanging around town, relying on welfare and casual jobs. The Canadian government at this time does not have a Northern development policy, if “policy" means a coherent set of rational alternatives that aim at specific economic and social goals that can be attained within the limits of the North. On the one hand, the government has been promoting the idea of the rich North. On the other, they are faced with jobless Eskimos and Indians who do not fit into the wage economy.
Too much, too soon
The frantic promotion of recent years has helped conceal the deep disquiet that many Canadians feel about what is happening “north of sixty.” Primary products do not provide a secure base for economic development—price changes, substitutes, the discovery of new resources, instability of an isolated labor force all make reliance on lead, zinc, copper, or other single commodities questionable. The Canadian government is attempting to rationalize its large expenditures of public funds on Northern development as an investment that will be repaid with interest in the future: it insists that the resources belong to the people of Canada.
In the Yukon, in 1968, a new mine was going into production with a government contribution of $25 million for power facilities, roads, townsite, and other “ancillary facilities.” This mine will produce lead and zinc for the Japanese market on an eight-year contract. In the Northwest Territories, the government has just entered into a consortium to search for oil and minerals in the Arctic Islands. The original promoter tried to raise $30 million for the venture on the market. He could not, and the government put up 89 million of the $20 million needed, in return for 45 percent interest. One government representative sits on the board of directors of the consortium—hardly a true governmentprivate-enterprise partnership.
The conflict between economic, social, and political goals so common in the precolonial period of many developing nations has appeared then in Northern Canada. The government’s theme is that new mines and oil wells (if they are found and brought into production) will provide employment for Eskimos and Indians ( if they are willing to work in such enterprises).
The construction of the prisons at Whitehorse and Yellowknife best illustrates the dilemma of trying to run a free-enterprise world in a welfare state. The prison at Whitehorse cost over a million dollars, and is referred to by local whites as “the Walled-off Astoria.” It represents the most modern approach to the rehabilitation of prisoners. The federal government built the prison, and then handed it over to the territorial government to run. The operating costs come to about $400,000 a year. Since a major source of the territory’s revenue (apart from federal government subsidies) comes from the sale of liquor, there is some sort of rough justice in that money is being spent in rehabilitating people who may have been jailed because of the influence of drink. Drinking has become a problem in the North, and for traditional peoples, life in a modern jail may be more attractive than working in Northern mines.
In 1966 the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources became the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The introduction of the word “Development" indicated a more positive approach by the federal government to the problems of the North. But the inclusion of the administration of Indians touched on sensitivities, for in the past the Department has been tarred with the epithet “colonial” despite efforts to transfer power and responsibility to Northerners and Indians. Both territories (like Canada’s Indians) are the direct responsibility of the Canadian government under acts of the Parliament of Canada. They get most of their revenue from the federal government, and are governed by appointed commissioners of the territories.
Too little, too late
The Yukon was just about to get representative and responsible government at the time the Gold Rush bubble burst. The Yukon Territorial Council of seven members is elected, but has no power to introduce money bills. The Northwest Territories Council numbers twelve, with the Commissioner sitting in Council also. Seven members are elected, five appointed, and this Council, like the Yukon’s, has no power to bring in money bills. Of late, both Councils have been making noises about independence—the power to introduce money bills and control of resources are the pivots of the demand for independence. The Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is currently struggling with some sort of system that provides financial autonomy for the territories and a measure of independence.
The Canadian government, stumbling along in the overfit shoes of the British colonial tradition, refuses to consider provincial status for the territories. If the initial thrust for development can be summed up as “too much, too soon,” the political situation may be summed up as “too little, too late.” Trouble looms, as in Alaska, over resources—the revenue and ownership of the “vast mineral wealth.” The mines in the North are producing wealth. The three-year tax exemption for new mines encourages a quick looting operation. Young Eskimos and conservationists are claiming that the North is being looted. And the North, despite its immensity and harshness, is a land in delicate balance: its ecology is being disturbed by oil and mineral searches and operations.
Among the whites in Canada’s North, one word keeps cropping up. This is “outside.”It sums up the human dimension of the Canadian North. The people, before 1953-1954, white, Indian, and Eskimo alike, were all locked in when freeze-up came. “Outside” is never precisely defined by Northerners, but it usually means Southern Canada, where food and fuel are cheaper, the climate is milder, amenities are more varied, and opportunities are greater. It is a place desired and feared. “Inside" may be climatically severe and have limited opportunities and amenities. It is safe, if not without some new stresses and strains which industrialization and urbanization have brought. There is talk now of the “good old clays” of the golden _ rule and the simple, friendly life.
And all around, the great land sits in silence. Man in the North realizes his own significance—and his own insignificance. The North is a land of instant feedback—the land sets the limits and soon shows tip any foolish act. In the North, the neolithic and the postindustrial exist side by side. In this residual part of Canada, the last part of the country to be reached and discovered, all the processes of the Industrial, Democratic, Welfare, and Electronic Revolutions have been crammed into about fifteen years. Canadians may never be able to live in the North—but they have to learn how to live with it.