Canada's Arctic sector claim in historical perspective: A response to Alan MacEachern
Explorer Joseph Elzéar Bernier's famous 1909 sector claim on Melville Island is often described as a key moment in the evolution of Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago. Writers such as Yolande Dorion-Robitaille and Marjolaine Saint-Pierre have argued that Bernier was unfairly...
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ftcarletonunivir:oai:carleton.ca:15615 2023-05-15T14:28:51+02:00 Canada's Arctic sector claim in historical perspective: A response to Alan MacEachern Cavell, J. (Janice) 2017-03-01 https://ir.library.carleton.ca/pub/15615 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000760 en eng https://ir.library.carleton.ca/pub/15615 doi:10.1017/S0032247416000760 Polar Record vol. 53 no. 2, pp. 186-191 info:eu-repo/semantics/other 2017 ftcarletonunivir https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000760 2022-02-06T21:50:48Z Explorer Joseph Elzéar Bernier's famous 1909 sector claim on Melville Island is often described as a key moment in the evolution of Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago. Writers such as Yolande Dorion-Robitaille and Marjolaine Saint-Pierre have argued that Bernier was unfairly deprived of the credit he deserved for his sovereignty contributions. Alan MacEachern has recently stated in Polar Record that civil servants in the 1920s were to blame for this supposed unfair treatment. In particular, he sees Oswald Finnie of the Department of the Interior as a man who was determined at all costs to rewrite the historical record. This article contests MacEachern's depiction of Finnie and his colleagues, based on a range of primary source documents. It also emphasises the little-known but very significant role played by James White, who first placed the sector lines on an official map five years before Bernier's 1909 proclamation. The article thus clarifies the complicated relationship between White's 1904 map, Bernier's 1909 claim, an earlier sector claim made by Bernier in 1907, and the views on the sector theory held by influential members of the Canadian civil service at the time when an official sector claim was made by Ottawa in 1925. Other/Unknown Material Arctic Archipelago Arctic Polar Record Melville Island Carleton University's Institutional Repository Arctic Polar Record 53 2 186 191 |
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Open Polar |
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Carleton University's Institutional Repository |
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ftcarletonunivir |
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English |
description |
Explorer Joseph Elzéar Bernier's famous 1909 sector claim on Melville Island is often described as a key moment in the evolution of Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago. Writers such as Yolande Dorion-Robitaille and Marjolaine Saint-Pierre have argued that Bernier was unfairly deprived of the credit he deserved for his sovereignty contributions. Alan MacEachern has recently stated in Polar Record that civil servants in the 1920s were to blame for this supposed unfair treatment. In particular, he sees Oswald Finnie of the Department of the Interior as a man who was determined at all costs to rewrite the historical record. This article contests MacEachern's depiction of Finnie and his colleagues, based on a range of primary source documents. It also emphasises the little-known but very significant role played by James White, who first placed the sector lines on an official map five years before Bernier's 1909 proclamation. The article thus clarifies the complicated relationship between White's 1904 map, Bernier's 1909 claim, an earlier sector claim made by Bernier in 1907, and the views on the sector theory held by influential members of the Canadian civil service at the time when an official sector claim was made by Ottawa in 1925. |
format |
Other/Unknown Material |
author |
Cavell, J. (Janice) |
spellingShingle |
Cavell, J. (Janice) Canada's Arctic sector claim in historical perspective: A response to Alan MacEachern |
author_facet |
Cavell, J. (Janice) |
author_sort |
Cavell, J. (Janice) |
title |
Canada's Arctic sector claim in historical perspective: A response to Alan MacEachern |
title_short |
Canada's Arctic sector claim in historical perspective: A response to Alan MacEachern |
title_full |
Canada's Arctic sector claim in historical perspective: A response to Alan MacEachern |
title_fullStr |
Canada's Arctic sector claim in historical perspective: A response to Alan MacEachern |
title_full_unstemmed |
Canada's Arctic sector claim in historical perspective: A response to Alan MacEachern |
title_sort |
canada's arctic sector claim in historical perspective: a response to alan maceachern |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
https://ir.library.carleton.ca/pub/15615 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000760 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Archipelago Arctic Polar Record Melville Island |
genre_facet |
Arctic Archipelago Arctic Polar Record Melville Island |
op_source |
Polar Record vol. 53 no. 2, pp. 186-191 |
op_relation |
https://ir.library.carleton.ca/pub/15615 doi:10.1017/S0032247416000760 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000760 |
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Polar Record |
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53 |
container_issue |
2 |
container_start_page |
186 |
op_container_end_page |
191 |
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