Taissumani: May 16, 1910 – Captain Bernier and the alienation of Inuit land

KENN HARPER

Captain Joseph-Elzear Bernier had a long and illustrious association with the Canadian Arctic. Inuit remember him as Kapitaikallak – the stocky captain. He was a physically impressive man. A contemporary described him as being “below medium height but massive, with a bull neck and muscular arms and shoulders. Though overweight, he was nimble and sturdy… His head was bald on top, fringed by white hair, and he had a matching walrus moustache. His mouth was large and contained an array of gold bridgework. His nose was bulbous, his chin was heavy and his face was broad and florid. His eyes were keen.”

In 1904, in Germany, on behalf of the Canadian government, Bernier purchased the Gauss, a ship built for Antarctic service. With the ship back in Canada and renamed the Arctic, Bernier was placed in charge of her and sent north to deliver supplies to the new Royal North-West Mounted Police detachment at Fullerton in the northern Keewatin. He wintered the vessel there – the first of many winters in the Arctic. It was his first encounter with Inuit.

But Bernier’s dreams lay farther north. He longed for an expedition, not to Hudson Bay, but to the as-yet unclaimed North Pole. This dream was never to be realized. In 1906 the Department of Marine and Fisheries gave him a new assignment – to travel to the Arctic Archipelago and formally annex all new lands at which he called, to leave proclamations in cairns at all points, and to collect customs duties from foreign whalers.

Bernier wintered that year at Albert Harbour, just east of present-day Pond Inlet. There was a Scottish whaling station nearby, at Igarjuaq, and it was here that Bernier first became aware of the possibility of lucrative trade among the Inuit in the area. The following summer, when the Arctic finally broke free from her winter quarters, Bernier explored the entrance to Jones Sound, taking more land for Canada, before returning to Quebec City in mid-October.

The Inuit whom he had met were largely oblivious to the passions that drove a man like Bernier. They did not realize that it was their land that he coveted on behalf of a largely disinterested nation – and already perhaps on his own behalf.

In 1908 Ottawa sent Joseph Bernier to the High Arctic again. That 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.

Bernier was ordered north on yet another High Arctic Expedition in 1910, this time to patrol the waters surrounding the Arctic Islands, attempt the Northwest Passage, issue whaling licences to foreign whalers, and act as Justice of the Peace and protector of wildlife. But this would be a voyage very different from Bernier’s two previous excursions into the High Arctic. This voyage would lead to controversy and ultimately to Bernier’s resignation from government service.

As early as 1909, he had written privately to the Department of the Interior, filing several applications for land in the area of Pond’s Inlet (as the body of water separating Baffin and Bylot islands was called) and stating, “I beg to be allowed the honour to be one of the first Canadian settlers on the Arctic Archipelago…”

On April 5, 1910, he purchased the whaling shore station at Pond’s Bay and the store house and equipment at Button Point on Bylot Island from Robert Kinnes of Dundee, Scotland. Six weeks later, on May 16, the Department of the Interior granted him a tract of land nine hundred and sixty acres in area on the south side of Pond’s Inlet, The government knew very well that Bernier was a civil servant who had been paid well for his services to the government on his previous expeditions, and that he was “proceeding again to the Arctic regions during the present year.” Nonetheless, they granted him this huge tract of land “in recognition of the grantee’s services in connection with the said Arctic expeditions.” Immodestly, Bernier name his land “Berniera.”

When he departed later that summer on his official voyage to the High Arctic, Bernier was, unknown to his crew members, the only private landowner in Baffin Island. The voyage of 1910-11 would be a controversial one. Bernier, it was later alleged, was trading government-owned supplies to the Inuit for his own personal benefit and profit. On his return south, he resigned from government service, purchased his own small schooner, and became a private trader.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.