Taissumani, Aug. 7

KENN HARPER

Last week, in “Sovereignty 101 for Inuit,” I wrote about Joseph Bernier’s first foray into the High Arctic in 1906, an expedition on which he explained to Inuit, as best he could, their responsibilities as citizens of Canada.

In 1908 Ottawa sent Joseph Bernier to the High Arctic again. The Arctic followed the Greenland coast north, then, after a brief stop at Etah in northern Greenland, she headed west.

But ice prevented a passage through McClure Strait to Banks Island, and the expedition wintered on Melville Island at Winter Harbour, far north of where any Inuit lived.

There, on July 1, 1909, Bernier proclaimed sovereignty over the entire Arctic archipelago as far north as the pole, the first time Canada had claimed ownership based on the sector principle, which divided the far north into pie-shaped slices with the pole at the centre.

Sovereignty now dominates news from the Arctic and has for the past few years. For some time Canada felt – or acted like it felt – that its sovereignty over the High Arctic was threatened.

This makes it all the more important that Canada maximize every opportunity to remind the world, and indeed our own nation, of our ownership of a vast portion of the Arctic. For symbolic reasons, we should identify and celebrate every anniversary of a relevant northern event that we can.

But official Canada downplayed the most important anniversary of all. July 1 just past was the anniversary of Bernier’s important proclamation on Melville Island 100 years ago, the cornerstone of Canada’s claim to Arctic sovereignty.

And how did our government celebrate the occasion? With a low-key ceremony at the Lester B. Pearson Building in Ottawa, at which Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon unveiled a commemorative marker featuring a map that Bernier had prepared, three portraits of the explorer, and a group picture of Bernier’s 1909 crew. The event was attended by “dozens of foreign ambassadors to Canada.”

That’s it. It’s not much and it’s not enough. It smacks of an event belatedly and hastily put together. Yet it’s not as if the government didn’t know the anniversary was coming.

In Whitehorse on March 11, Cannon mentioned the impending anniversary in a speech on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy. That left ample time to plan a major multi-media celebration of Bernier’s achievement, with events in both northern and southern Canada.

After all, Newfoundland has devoted much of 2009 to a celebration of the achievements of its own polar hero, Bob Bartlett. Why did Stephen Harper’s government – our government – miss the opportunity to commemorate in a more public way the achievements of Joseph-Elzear Bernier, a French-Canadian patriot who was indefatigable in his efforts on behalf of Canada?

At the very least, a commemorative stamp would have been appropriate. Bernier has appeared on Canadian stamps before, but the context of a commemoration of the events of July 1, 1909 should have warranted a stamp and a visit by the Prime Minister or a surrogate and an appropriate gaggle of press to Melville Island.

They could have had a marvellous High Arctic photo-op at Parry’s Rock, the four-metre high chunk of sandstone to which Bernier affixed a bronze plague announcing his claim on behalf of Canada, the site of Bernier’s own 1909 photo-op.

But we missed the opportunity to cover this anniversary with the splash that it warranted. So did most of the press that covers Canada’s north.

But one Canadian historian did not miss it, and he deserves our congratulations. William Barr of the Arctic Institute of North America wrote of Bernier’s achievement in a special piece in The Globe and Mail on June 27, 2009, under the title “The man who put Canada on the map.”

In it Bill Barr asserts that Bernier’s “dedication to the north now serves as the foundation for Canada’s claim to sovereignty in the Arctic.” More importantly, Barr stated, “Had Bernier not laid his claim, and made several other voyages as a representative of the federal government, the geopolitical configuration of the North might be quite different today.”

Bernier made his claim just three months after Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole (a claim never proven and now unprovable), although it would be over two more months before Peary reached a telegraph station to announce his claim to the world.

Before 1909 Bernier had already claimed much of the Arctic for Canada, but, as Bill Barr has pointed out, the events of July 1, 1909 were “designed to sum up all the others in case any islands had slipped through his net.”

Canadians celebrated Canada Day this year with the usual parades, concerts and speeches. Not one in a thousand recalled the events that took place one hundred years earlier and far to the north of where most Canadians live, events that secured Canada’s future as a northern and Arctic nation.

Talk about an opportunity missed!

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.