Nunavut historian, linguist retires from Danish consular appointment

Here’s Hans Island, the barren rock between Ellesmere Island and Greenland that is the cause of an unresolved boundary dispute between Canada and Denmark. Kenn Harper argues that because the island has been used and occupied only by Inughuit from northwest Greenland, it should be deemed part of the Kingdom of Denmark. (FILE PHOTO)

Kenn Harper used his appointment has Danish honorary consult to lobby for the reinstatement of a Nunavut-Greenland air service. Air Greenland did offer a summer only service in 2012, 2013 and 2014, but ended it in 2015, saying passenger volumes were too low. (FILE PHOTO)

Kenn Harper with set of bound volumes of research he’s done on the history of Hans Island that he presented to Niels Boel Abrahamsen, the Danish ambassador to Canada, and Abrahamsen’s wife, Karen Eva Abrahamsen, at a reception March 27 in Ottawa. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

OTTAWA—It all started with a 1.3-square-kilometre rock called Hans Island, and the cartoonish little squabble between Canada and Denmark over who owns it.

That’s the controversy that led to the 2005 appointment of Kenn Harper, the well-known historian, linguist, teacher and businessman, to the position of honorary consul in Iqaluit for the Kingdom of Denmark.

After 12 years of service in the unpaid position, Harper recently retired. To mark the occasion, Niels Boel Abrahamsen, the Danish ambassador to Canada, honoured Harper March 27 at a reception at the Danish ambassador’s residence in Ottawa, where he thanked Harper for his work on behalf of Denmark and Greenland.

In exchange, Harper presented Abrahamsen with a special gift: three bound compilations of research he’s done on the history of Hans Island.

In April 2004, Harper, a lifelong Nunavut resident with deep ties to northwest Greenland, published a commentary in Nunatsiaq News that argued Hans Island belongs to Greenland, endearing himself to the Danish government.

“I’ve always been a bit of contrarian, so I enjoyed doing it,” Harper said, provoking laughter from a group of about 40 guests, many of them former Nunavummiut, gathered at the ambassador’s residence in the Rockcliffe Park district of Ottawa.

Hans Island, a remote, uninhabited rock that straddles the Canada-Greenland boundary within the narrow Kennedy Channel, has always been territory used and occupied by Inughuit, the Inuit of northwest Greenland, Harper said.

And that means Hans Island is rightfully part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

“Hans Ø, as it should now be called, has never been a part of Canada. As part of the homeland of the Inughuit, it is a part of Greenland and therefore a part of the Danish kingdom,” Harper wrote in his 2004 article.

Harper had actually written about Hans Island earlier, in 1984, in an article for a Greenlandic newspaper called Hainang, which was published in Qaanaaq, a town in northwest Greenland.

“That article was picked up by a Danish newspaper in Copenhagen, and by CBC Radio in Canada, and Hans Island had its first fleeting publicity,” Harper said.

In 1983, Harper’s curiosity was piqued when he met a traveller in Resolute Bay who wore an Inuit-style knitted hat embroidered with the words “Hans Island, N.W.T.”

It turned out the man was a scientist with Dome Petroleum, a Canadian oil and gas firm that—unbeknownst to the Danish government—had been using Hans Island for years to research the movement of ice floes moving south from the Arctic Ocean.

“Dome Petroleum, as it turned out, had been doing scientific research on this tiny island for some years as part of its research on oil development in the Beaufort Sea, 1,700 kilometres away,” Harper wrote.

“Hans” by the way, is Hans Hendrik, an Inuk from southern Greenland who travelled with the American explorer Charles Francis Hall.

Not long after the 2004 commentary appeared, the Danish government contacted Harper, and in 2005 they appointed him to serve as Danish honorary consul in Iqaluit.

And Harper’s residence acquired an auspicious title: “the Royal Danish Consulate in Iqaluit.”

Honorary consuls are unpaid volunteers who represent the interests of the country that appoints them and provide basic consular services to that country’s citizens.

In Harper’s case, he provided Danish citizens in Nunavut, including Greenlanders and Faroese, with passports and visas.

And in 2008, he provided an emergency passport to the Danish pilot, Troels Hansen, who crashed into Hudson Strait, south of Baffin Island.

But Harper had another reason for accepting the position: to lobby for a Canada-Greenland air link to renew ties between Nunavut and his beloved Greenland.

Those efforts began to pay off.

In 2006, the Baffin Chamber of Commerce agreed to study the idea and in 2010, Kuupik Kleist, then the premier of Greenland, announced his government backed the idea of a renewed air passenger service between his country and Canada.

In 2012, Air Greenland started an 11-week trial air service between Iqaluit and Nuuk, offering twice-a-week flights between the two cities that ran from June to September that year.

A one-way fare for the one-hour-and-45-minute flight, on an Air Greenland 34-seat Dash-8, cost CAD $748.

The company thought they could attract passengers from the mineral and oil industries, but passenger volumes disappointed them.

In 2013, seat counts ranged between 30 and 40 per cent. In 2014, after Air Greenland focused more on tourists, and friends and family members on either side of the Davis Strait, that rose to about 50 per cent.

But in 2015, Air Greenland did not offer the service, saying passenger volumes were too low. That circumpolar air link has yet to resume.

“Naturally, I was disappointed, but I still hope those flights will come back,” Harper said.

As for Hans Island, the much-derided dispute remains unresolved, although Canada and Denmark, close allies within NATO and other international organizations, have agreed to disagree pending a final resolution.

So for now, the agreed international boundary between Canada and Greenland stops at the southern edge of Hans Island, and then resumes at the other end.