Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen speak with Canadian Rangers on Saturday Aug. 23 as they arrive in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld “I love all waste and solitary places; where we taste the pleasures of believing what we see is boundless – as we wish our souls to be.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
CAMBRIDGE BAY, Nunavut — Of all the sovereignty-boosting, patriotism-inducing, national myth-building projects this prime minister has taken on over the past eight years – and there have been a few of them now – Stephen Harper’s quixotic quest to find the lost ships of the doomed 19th Century English explorer John Franklin may appear the most vainglorious. The same applies, at first glance, to the Conservatives’ entire Arctic strategy.
Canada, a northern power to rival newly aggressive Russia? Pshaw. Canada, asserting property rights over a body of water, the Northwest Passage, that even the United States politely insists is international? Silly. And yet, it isn’t. It’s actually quite clever – and possibly, good for the country to boot.
Friday, in Fort Smith, in the Northwest Territories, the PM went as far as he has yet in asserting that he deems Vladimir Putin’s Russia to be a strategic threat to Canada in the Arctic.
On the face of it, that would appear to be political lunacy, or at least politically risky. As a military power, and as an Arctic power, Canada is nowhere close to being in Russia’s league. Under Putin, the country the largest land mass in the world has made aggressive moves to reconstitute its former power in the north. It is re-commissioning old bases, rushing onward with development, and building what will be the world’s largest icebreaker.
By comparison, Saturday in Cambridge Bay, Harper personally broke ground, with a hand shovel, on a research station that was originally promised in 2007. Construction is “the final stage” of the process, the PM asserted. He promised completion by July 1, 2017. A community elder prayed over the site, which is currently a dusty, empty lot. Given the time it has taken to get this far, prayers may come in handy.
Militarily, meantime, Canada is still in refit mode. Arctic patrol vessels are on the way – but years from completion. The icebreaker John G. Diefenbaker is on the way – but years from completion. New coast-guard boats are on the way – but years from completion. The best the PM could point to, in his discussion of Arctic sovereignty in Fort Smith, was the recent expansion of the Inuit Rangers, Canada’s eyes and ears on the ground in the Far North. But the Inuit Rangers number just 5,000, even now. They range across the north in all-terrain vehicles in summer and snowmobiles in winter. They are no match for nuclear submarines.
And yet, there’s a method to this strategy. It has been thought through. And it is being executed, despite numerous delays on some of the most important projects, with a kind of relentless determination that suggests it is more than just a political gambit. I heard Harper deliver a briefing about the search for Franklin, on the bridge of the Coast Guard vessel Wilfrid Laurier, off King William Island in 2013. He spoke in detail and with as much passion as I’ve ever seen him reveal.
The argument, in a nutshell, is this: Franklin’s disappearance north of King William Island in 1845 — with both his ships, the Erebus and the Terror — is the greatest enduring mystery in Canadian history. The ships themselves, Royal Canadian Geographic Society president John Geiger noted Saturday, may be matchsticks by now – or they may be perfectly preserved archaeological and historical treasure troves. There may even be ancient daguerreotypes – the first photographs – aboard.
That aside, the search for Franklin today – it involves four ships this summer, including one Coast Guard ship, one Navy, and two private vessels — is expected to have the same salutary effect on Canada’s ability to navigate the Arctic now, as it had in the latter 19th Century. As Geiger puts it, paraphrasing the PM: “Use it or lose it.”
Or course, there’s a good chance that Franklin and his ships may never be found. There’s an equally good chance, given the track record, that the vessels, stations, ports, technological innovations, jobs and other good things being promised by Ottawa with renewed vigour this summer, will not materialize on schedule.
But here’s the clever bit: None of that will be known until well after the 2015 election. In the meantime, the PM is seen to be doubling down on his long commitment to the North. His political objective is nothing less than to appropriate, for the Conservatives, the northern mythology and imagery so long owned by the Liberals. And what better place to do that than the Northwest Passage, immortalized by Stan Rogers in one of Canada’s best-known folk songs?
The enduring image of this trip, I would venture to predict, will be a shot of Stephen Harper, against a backdrop of stunning beauty, in a part of the world where no former prime minister has ventured to go. Unfair? Well, maybe. But he took the time, and went to the trouble, to make it happen. The country will benefit, long-term, from renewed interest in then North. So if that is the result, good on him.
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