[ninty]

Thats it. It's on!!!

Those Danish ahve pushed my buttons for the last time!!!

When will they get it through thir head that its OUR desolate piece of ice? I mean, we can make ice cubes, and even margaritas out of that place.

Storm delays Arctic patrol; troops won't visit disputed island on 18-day trek



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Our Arctic campaign may prove fleeting

William Morrison and Ken Coates
National Post


March 29, 2004





It appears that Canada and Denmark have gotten themselves into a diplomatic donnybrook over Hans island -- a tiny Arctic speck few people in either country have heard of. At stake is something greater, however -- the issue of Canada's claim to its Arctic archipelago, part of this nation's self-image as a circumpolar nation.

The supposed challenge from the Danes -- a country with long-standing Arctic interests -- is but the latest affront to Canadian sovereignty in the region. The United States disputes Canada's claim to sovereignty over all Arctic waters, and insists that the Northwest Passage, made increasingly navigable by global warming, be opened to international shipping. Meanwhile, Russian scientists explore the outer fringes of our northern territories.

The federal government now promises to rush to the defence of our northern extremities with military flights, radar stations and Armed Forces exercises. Fear not, it promises, Canada's sparsely inhabited Arctic islands will be protected.

Our country has been down this path before. Since the British government bequeathed the Arctic Islands (known and unknown) to the youthful Dominion of Canada in 1880, Canadian authorities have had an uneven commitment to Ellesmere, Prince William, Victoria, Banks and the rest of the islands. We have, as the phrase goes, managed the far North in "a fit of absence of mind."

Canadians do love their Arctic Islands, but more in the fashion of a never seen Old Country aunt than as a precious member of the immediate family. We enjoy being a big country and have a passion for maps that show Canada projecting northward, thrusting bravely toward the North Pole. But we care little about the islands in a practical sense, for few visit them, and most would have difficulty saying anything about them, beyond the obvious elements of cold and winter.

What Canadians cannot stand -- and where we have drawn the line in the snow for over a century and a quarter -- is when someone else appears to covet our northern territories. When Scandinavians raised questions about Canadian sovereignty over the islands almost a century ago, we responded by sending officers on symbolic and ceremonial patrols into the high Arctic. We watched nervously when Americans, led by Robert Peary, demonstrated an interest in Arctic affairs (and breathed a sigh of a relief when their interest went no further than the showmanship and salesmanship of Peary and the Icelandic-Canadian scientist and promoter Vilhjalmur Stefansson.)

We did little except mine gold in the North until the military presence of the United States in the Yukon and Northwest Territories during the Second World War alerted us to the vulnerability of our hold on the region. After the war, we let the Americans build the Distant Early Warning Line, designed to protect the continent from Soviet attack, and only belatedly discovered that our commitment to North American defence at someone else's expense had left us no longer entirely maitres chez nous.

It was only in the 1950s and 1960s that we established a presence beyond a handful of RCMP posts. In what has proven to be a highly controversial move, Canadian authorities relocated scores of Inuit to new community sites in the far north. In part, Arctic scholar Shelagh Grant has argued, this initiative was designed to establish Canadian sovereignty in the region.

We recoiled in horror when the Americans sailed the oil tanker Manhattan through the Northwest Passage without our permission, and engaged in a decade-long angst-ridden debate about the need to embrace the Arctic as part of our identity. Canada built government facilities throughout the region, improving surveillance (including the use of 1,500 Inuit Rangers who make annual patrols), encouraging great awareness of northern places and peoples, sponsoring a major expansion of Arctic scientific research through such programs as the Polar Continental Shelf Project, and creating a series of national parks in the Arctic.

And then, for a time, we lost interest. With external threats retreating and with attention turning to the empowerment of indigenous communities, the resolution of land claims and the creation of Nunavut, Canadian efforts focused primarily on domestic and aboriginal concerns. Canadians were content with the North as an indigenous homeland and with the Arctic Islands as a little-known and generally ignored national appendage.

But it now seems we are once more back in the sovereignty game. The Danes are coming, the Russians are encroaching and the ever-present Americans are coveting the region. Where before we sent the police to establish Canadian ownership, let the American military defend our northern flank and sent bureaucrats and scientists to document and administer the region, we will now apparently rely on what is promised to be the first substantial and sustained military presence in the high Arctic.

It is difficult to know what to make of this latest burst of official enthusiasm for the high Arctic. Is it a distraction, a government ruse to deflect attention away from the sordid mess in Ottawa? It's hard to say. But whatever the case, history is instructive. In the past, national interest in the islands has typically been intense and short-lived. There is little to suggest this episode will be any different.

Ken Coates is dean of arts and science at the University of Saskatchewan. William Morrison is professor of history at the University of Northern British Columbia.


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[quote:c6a6a]Hans Island measures about 1.3 square km (half a square mile) and lies between Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island, about 1,000 km (620 miles) from the North Pole.

The foundations for the dispute were laid in 1973, when borders drawn between Greenland -- which has limited home rule under the Danish crown -- and Canada ignored Hans Island.

Since then the two sides have expressed their claim by hoisting flags, with Danes leaving bottles of schnapps behind for the next troupe of flag-bearing Canadians, who leave bottles of whiskey in return.

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rolf