Canada, a young country, has often sought to foster within its national identity a unique connection to the Arctic. This goal is one borne of complex, overlapping issues related to Aboriginal peoples, resource exploitation, competition with other states for maritime space, human and military security concerns, and the growing consequences of climate change. Routinely, a kind of uncertainty creeps into the national association with the North. The question is asked: To what degree has Canada acquired sovereignty over the Arctic? Much has been written about the many aspects of Canada’s presence in the region, and the matter is not yet entirely settled in a time when states are pursuing their entitlements to extended continental shelf areas around the North Pole.

Gordon W. Smith’s magisterial work A Historical and Legal Study of Sovereignty in the Canadian North arrives at the right moment in the development of Canada’s evolving presence in the Arctic. It is, without overstatement, the leading reference on how Canada came to acquire sovereignty in the region. No serious scholarship on the country’s progressive acquisition of its lands north of the Arctic Circle can be pursued without this exceptionally well-researched book. Intrinsically readable, it is the product of decades of insight and careful primary archival research. We are doubly fortunate to have it, because the book would not have been published after his death in 2000 without the vision of two family members, Nell Smith and Tom W. Smith, and the editorial support of Whitney Lackenbauer.

A Historical and Legal Study of Sovereignty in the Canadian North canvasses how the young Dominion of Canada came to acquire its Arctic lands, tracing that course from the immediate post-Confederation era until the period in which sovereignty was finally settled, when the St. Roch navigated the Northwest Passage in 1940–42. To a certain degree, Smith’s intent is explained in the introduction, although it is by his selection of the historical arc and specific events in the accumulation of sovereignty that he demonstrates Canada’s claim as being secure by mid-century. The credibility of his writing is enhanced by extensive quotations and citations from the historical record and the helpful inclusion of maps and photographs. The historical period referenced in the book’s title, from 1870 until 1939, is covered in fifteen chapters, together with an epilogue. Each chapter can be read in isolation, and this will ensure a wider appeal. An overall list of figures would have been useful, but the lack of one is compensated by an extensive bibliography, additional reading list, and detailed index.

Canada’s acquisition of the Arctic, like much of its territorial expansion after Confederation, was episodic. This was frequently in reaction to the interests of other states in the region, especially the United States after its 1867 Alaska purchase and a United Kingdom government exercising control over colonial foreign policy. The latter would animate the policy of successive Dominion governments until Canada acquired independent conduct of its foreign affairs in 1931 under the Statute of Westminster. ^{Footnote 1} As Smith reveals, post-Confederation governments were sometimes ill-equipped to consider the implications (including the cost and the problems of maintaining a government presence) in the far-flung north and sometimes diffident in the face of imperatives to act in the country’s long-term interest. The granting of sovereignty over Arctic islands (with their geographic extent being uncertain) was hardly a rushed affair between Ottawa and London during the 1870s: “It is clear that Britain decided, after receiving two embarrassing and potentially troublesome applications for land and other privileges to make Canada the proprietor of all British possessions [through an imperial order-in-council in 1880].” ^{Footnote 2} (The mainland part of northern Canada and a few Arctic islands had been transferred as Rupert’s Land in 1870.)

In Chapters 2 and 3, Smith ably recounts the geographic expansion of the Canada we know today, from 1880 until the administrative division of the Arctic into the Districts of Mackenzie, Keewatin and Franklin, together with the Yukon Territory. It was in the south where things remained to be sorted out, including the 1927 judicial decision confirming the Labrador-Quebec boundary and the joining of the Dominion of Newfoundland with Canada in 1949. Smith notes that in the last decades of the nineteenth century the extent of the northern archipelago “remained extremely vague.” ^{Footnote 3}

Chapters 4 and 5 explain the growth of resource activities in the North and their implications for sovereignty. In Chapter 4, “Whaling and the Yukon Gold Rush,” Smith reminds us that the central government’s response to competing claims of jurisdiction and sovereignty in the north was often driven by the pursuit of natural resources. Ottawa’s approach was “erratic and haphazard.” ^{Footnote 4} Chapter 5, “The Alaska Boundary Dispute,” is an extensive analysis. The subject here is not the as yet undetermined maritime boundary between Canada and the United States in the Arctic but, rather, the territorial and maritime division between Alaska and British Columbia. It continues to be Canada’s most active boundary dispute, flaring in the 1990s over the question of salmon stocks between the two countries. ^{Footnote 5}

Chapters 6 and 7 address the exploration of the Arctic, which took a step forward because of technological advances. “Foreign Explorers in the Canadian North, 1877–1917” breaks important ground with a careful review of ten American and European expeditions in the Arctic, two of them private. (Amundsen’s 1903 expedition was also privately financed.) Chapter 7, “Canadian Government Expeditions in Northern Waters, 1897-1918,” is likely the best short review of Dominion efforts to grapple with the high North. Smith leaves no archival stone unturned, describing the Wakeham (1897), Low (1903), Bernier (1904–11) and Canadian Arctic (1913–18) expeditions with an engaging style. These were fortunate expeditions for Canada’s later claim to the Arctic as “there had been little visible evidence of official interest or activity in the far north for several years.” ^{Footnote 6}

No work of history about Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic in the twentieth century would be complete without a discussion of the sector principle. Indeed, it arguably continues to be present in Canada’s conception of an overall Arctic seabed to be claimed and is a (possibly untenable) basis for Canada to claim a maritime boundary with the United States in the Beaufort Sea that extends north along the 141st meridian west. Chapter 8, “The Sector Principle and the Background of Canada’s Sector Claim,” ably presents the historical record. This was a Canada (and an imperial Britain) labouring to understand the vastness of its territory in the region.

Smith then moves into fascinating single episodes in the Arctic after the First World War. Chapter 9, “Vilhjalmur Stefansson and His Plans for Northern Enterprise after the First World War,” gives an original glimpse into plans for reindeer herding in the Northwest Territories: “[T]hese projects came to the fore largely because of the publicity given to them by Stefansson, at a time when Canadian authorities were extremely worried about the status and security of the northern territories and looked for means to establish undeniable rights of sovereignty over them through genuine occupation and use.” ^{Footnote 7} A century later, the anxiety seems hardly diminished with successive Canadian governments promising naval ships for the Arctic and a military base at Nanisivik on Baffin Island. Chapter 10, “Danish Sovereignty, Greenland, and the Ellesmere Island Affair of 1919–21,” is probably the best single analysis of what would inevitably result from the overlapping of Canada’s and Denmark’s interests in the region. This relationship, managed well in recent years, continues to offer modest challenges with the Hans Island sovereignty affair and what may be competing claims to an extended continental shelf in the high Arctic. Back in the day, Canada’s struggle to comprehend what would make for a useful effectivité to counter a perceived Danish acquisitiveness was not easily determined: “[T]he woeful lack of knowledge of international law amongst responsible government personnel in Ottawa stands out clearly.” ^{Footnote 8}

Better known is the question of sovereignty in the western Arctic, described in Chapter 11, “The Wrangel Island Affair of the Early 1920s.” The case arose from the 1914 landing and brief sojourn of the Canadian Arctic expedition on Wrangel Island after quitting an ice-trapped survey ship, the Karluk. Not content to leave undisturbed a Canadian government that had rejected a claim to the island made in its name, the great Canadian Arctic promoter Vilhjalmur Stefansson launched a return expedition in 1921 to re-assert sovereignty. He was summarily driven out by a Soviet naval party: “[A]dventures like that in Wrangel Island would expose Canada’s Arctic islands to incursions by other states, and, given the state of insecurity and uncertainty respecting the Canadian archipelago that existed at that time, there is little doubt that the government’s final decision to stay inside its own bailiwick was a wise one.” ^{Footnote 9} In Chapter 12, “The Question of Sovereignty over the Sverdrup Islands, 1925–30,” Smith completes his tour of exploratory incursions by other states into Canada’s northern backyard, discussing the diplomatic resolution of Otto Sverdrup’s claims for Norway after his 1898–1902 expedition. Quid pro quo counts for much in international relations. The fear of Norwegian expansionism was put to rest, Sverdrup was quietly paid a gratuity by Canada, while the imperial British government tacitly supported Norway’s claim to Jan Mayen Island.

A Historical and Legal Study of Sovereignty in the Canadian North next turns to the Canadian perspective of Danish sovereignty in Greenland. Chapter 13, “The Eastern Greenland Case and Its Implications for the Canadian North,” is once again original analysis: “The Eastern Greenland Case continued and enhanced the trend towards acceptance of a lesser degree of ‘effective occupation’ in cases involving remote, insignificant, and largely unexploitable islands … of vital importance to Canada.” Smith adds that, “if at any time after 1933 Canada’s title had been formally challenged in law, the precedent then established would almost certainly have been sufficient to decide the case in her favour.” ^{Footnote 10}

Three expeditions during this era are next discussed in both Chapter 14, “American Explorers in the Canadian Arctic and Related Matters, 1918–39” and Chapter 15, “The Eastern Arctic Patrol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Other Government Activities, 1922–39.” This was a time of sovereignty made good when “the Canadian attitude was excessively suspicious and exacting.” ^{Footnote 11} Canadian government surveys of the Arctic during the 1920s and 1930s, in the form of annual patrols, are well described. Smith must have been tempted, given his obvious in-depth consideration of archival materials, to tell a fuller story. However, the work of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Arctic has been ably dealt with by others.

In the epilogue, “Henry Larsen, the St. Roch, and the Northwest Passage Voyage of 1940-42,” Smith masterfully deploys his thesis that the Arctic was by this time secure in Canada’s hands: “There is no reason to fear that Canada’s legal position has deteriorated since [the St. Roch voyage]. On the contrary, it has probably improved. No new foreign claims have been made … In these circumstances, it may be asserted with confidence that Canada’s legal title to her northern territories, particularly to the archipelago, is secure today and has been since the 1930s.” ^{Footnote 12} The understanding of such sovereignty owes much to Gordon Smith’s lifetime of work represented in A Historical and Legal Study of Sovereignty in the Canadian North. It is a book that has a place on many Canadian (and other) bookshelves for an enduring contribution to our conception of the Arctic.