scholarly journals Cyber Capacity Building in the Canadian Arctic and the North

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Csenkey ◽  
Bruno Perron

The Canadian Arctic cyber domain is set to rapidly expand in the next decade with emerging security vulnerabilities that would benefit from a multi-stakeholder Arctic Cyber Security Ecosystem. Great power competition will affect the Arctic as the United States, Russia, and now China seek to influence the resource rich region. Cyber is not only a matter of defence, but it is interconnected with education and economic development. The threat of disinformation is an example of how new ways of warfare can impact Canada through the Arctic. Cyber capacity building (CCB) could include domestic cyber education, skills training, and investment in scientific and technical (S&T) and information technology (IT) infrastructure. A focus on CCB would need to foster growth of resources available to territorial governments and local communities, hardening the region’s cyberspace and support incident response to malicious cyber actor activity. Information technology security (ITSEC) resources need to be combined with community-based media literacy and critical thinking education programs to increase the region’s resilience to malign influence.

Polar Record ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 10 (67) ◽  
pp. 365-371
Author(s):  
T. A. Harwood

In 1946 the United States Weather Bureau and the Canadian Meteorological Service installed the first of the Joint Arctic Weather Stations at Resolute Bay. The network of satellite stations was extended into the Arctic archipelago in the following years on roughly a 275-mile spacing to Mould Bay, Isachsen, Eureka and Alert.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (S1) ◽  
pp. 233-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farahnaz Fazel-Rastgar

Abstract The observed unusually high temperatures in the Arctic during recent decades can be related to the Arctic sea ice declines in summer 2007, 2012 and 2016. Arctic dipole formation has been associated with all three heatwaves of 2007, 2012 and 2016 in the Canadian Arctic. Here, the differences in weather patterns are investigated and compared with normal climatological mean (1981–2010) structures. This study examines the high-resolution datasets from the North American Regional Reanalysis model. During the study periods, the north of Alaska has been affected by the low-pressure tongue. The maximum difference between Greenland high-pressure centre and Alaska low-pressure tongue for the summers of 2012, 2016 and 2007 are 8 hPa, 7 hPa and 6 hPa, respectively, corresponding and matching to the maximum summer surface Canadian Arctic temperature records. During anomalous summer heatwaves, low-level wind, temperatures, total clouds (%) and downward radiation flux at the surface are dramatically changed. This study shows the surface albedo has been reduced over most parts of the Canadian Arctic Ocean during the mentioned heatwaves (∼5–40%), with a higher change (specifically in the eastern Canadian Arctic region) during summer 2012 in comparison with summer 2016 and summer 2007, agreeing with the maximum surface temperature and sea ice decline records.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon C. Halaychik

The Russian Federations drive to reestablish itself as a global power has severe security implications for the United States, its Arctic neighbors, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a whole. The former Commander of United States Naval Forces Europe Admiral Mark Ferguson noted that the re-militarization of Russian security policy in the Arctic is one of the most significant developments in the twenty-first century adding that Russia is creating an “Arc of steel from the Arctic to the Mediterranean” (Herbst 2016, 166). Although the Russian Federation postulates its expansion into the Arctic is for purely economic means, the reality of the military hardware being placed in the region by the Russians tells otherwise. Implementation of military hardware such as anti-air defenses is contrary to the stipulated purposes of the Russian Government in the region. Therefore is the Russian Federation building strategic military bases in the Arctic to challenge the United States hegemony due to the mistreatment against the Russians by the United States and NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union.


2021 ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Nadezhda S. Nizhnik

The review of the XVIII International Scientific Conference "State and Law: evolution, current state, development prospects (to the 300th anniversary of the Russian Empire)" was held on April 29-30, 2021 at the St. Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Russian Empire existed on the political map of the world from October 22 (November 2), 1721 until the February Revolution and the overthrow of the Monarchy on March 3, 1917. The Russian Empire was the third largest state that ever existed (after the British and Mongolian Empires): It extended to the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Black Sea in the south, to the Baltic Sea in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east. The Russian Empire was one of the great powers along with Great Britain, France, Prussia (Germany) and Austria-Hungary, and since the second half of the XIX century – also Italy and the United States. The capital of the Russian Empire was St. Petersburg (1721 - 1728), Moscow (1728 - 1732), then again St. Petersburg (1732 - 1917), renamed Petrograd in 1914. Therefore, it is natural that a conference dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the formation of the Russian Empire was held in St. Petersburg, the former imperial capital. The conference was devoted to problems concerning various aspects of the organization and functioning of the state and law, a retrospective analysis of the activities of state bodies in the Russian Empire. The discussion focused on various issues: the character of the Russian Empire as a socio-legal phenomenon and the subject of the legitimate use of state coercion, the development of political and legal thought, the regulatory and legal foundations of the organization and functioning of the Russian state in the XVIII century – at the beginning of the XX century, the characteristics of state bodies as an element of the mechanism of the imperial state in Russia, the organizational and legal bases of the activities of bodies that manage the internal affairs of the Russian Empire, as well as the image of state authorities and officials-representatives of state power.


ARCTIC ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
A.R. Byers

James Buckland Mawdsley, M.B.E., Ph.D., F.R.S.C., a Charter Associate of the Arctic Institute of North America, died very suddenly on 3 December 1964 at the age of 70. As Director of the Institute for Northern Studies, University of Saskatchewan, he played a major role in its organization and development and exerted a very great influence on research in northern Canada. He was born on 22 July 1894 near Siena, Italy, the son of British-American parents. In 1904 the Mawdsley family left Italy and settled in the village of Gainsborough, southeastern Saskatchewan. After receiving his public and high school training in Saskatchewan he entered McGill University in 1913. His career, like that of many of his contemporaries, was interrupted by the First World War. Twice wounded in France, first with the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry and then as a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps, he was awarded the M.B.E. at the end of the war. In 1919 he returned to McGill and two years later graduated in Mining Engineering. He then went to Princeton University where he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Geology in 1924. That same year he joined the Geological Survey of Canada and for the next five years applied his scientific knowledge to the problems of the regional geology of northwestern Quebec. A new chapter in his life began in 1929 when he accepted the appointment of professor and head of the Department of Geology at the University of Saskatchewan, a position he held until he became Dean of Engineering in 1961 and also the Director of the Institute for Northern Studies. In 1963 he retired as Dean and was then able to devote all his time to the affairs of the Institute. In addition to his academic duties his professional activities included field work in northern Saskatchewan for the Geological Survey of Canada and the Saskatchewan Department of Mineral Resources, and private consulting assignments took him to other parts of northern Canada, to the United States and Great Britain. He was the author of 51 scientific papers and his honours were many. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1933 and was chairman of Section IV for the year 1954-55. He was president of the Geological Association of Canada during 1955-56 and of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy for 1961-62. In 1953 he was awarded the Institute's Barlow Memorial Medal in recognition of his paper entitled "Uraninite-bearing deposits, Charlebois Lake area, northeastern Saskatchewan". He was a Fellow and Director of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, a member of the Society of Economic Geologists, the Engineering Institute of Canada, and the Association of Professional Engineers of Saskatchewan. He had an eventful life, travelled widely, met and was a friend to many people. Such qualities as tact, kindliness, sincerity and respect for the thoughts of others enabled him to present his views without arousing undue antagonism, and to cooperate with others in reaching decisions. Recognized as an able administrator, scientist, and teacher, perhaps his greatest service will prove to be the influence he had on those who worked or studied under him. In them he not only instilled a feeling of scientific curiosity but also a keen interest and love of the North.


Polar Record ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 5 (33-34) ◽  
pp. 14-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. T. Wilson

Exercise Musk-ox was no isolated adventure, but the culminating test of several years of wartime work. In it, vehicles, equipment, and techniques of training and of air-supply, secretly developed during the war, were given an open test to ascertain their usefulness in northern Canada. Because the public had not been aware of this secret work by the services, Exercise Musk-ox was hailed by them as a new idea, but it would not have been possible had not the equipment and methods all been ready and proven before tbe close of the war.So great had been these wartime improvements that none of those men best acquainted with the north country and with older methods of transportation believed that the ground party had any chance of driving 2600 miles without roads across the Arctic and sub-Arctic in less than 2½ months. Neither was it generally realised that the military purposes had already been served and that this was no tactical exercise but a demonstration of the soundness of military development and an experiment in applying it to peaceful pursuits in the Canadian Arctic.


1943 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 999-1013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elmer Plischke

Current press articles and periodical literature, both in the United States and abroad, are manifesting a developing interest in trans-polar aviation and Arctic aërial jurisdiction. Although this interest in Arctic airspace appears to be conceived in the exigencies of the present world conflict, belief in the practicability of air routes traversing the Arctic Basin and joining the great centers of civilization of the two hemispheres was expressed as long ago as shortly after the First World War. Perhaps most vocal of the exponents is the polar explorer and publicist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who began to stress the positional significance of the Arctic almost twenty years ago.Meanwhile the feasibility of polar aviation was demonstrated in actual practice. Following a series of experimental flights by dirigible and plane—and once the urge to attain the North Pole via the air materialized in the successful flights of Richard E. Byrd, Roald Amundsen-Lincoln Ellsworth, and Umberto Nobile in 1926 and 1928—polar flying concentrated largely upon the spanning of the Atlantic and Pacific aërial highways between the two hemispheres.


Author(s):  
François-Antoine Mathys

SummaryThe Arctic Cooperation Agreement signed at Ottawa on January 11, 1988 deals strictly with movements of United States government-owned or government-operated icebreakers. In future, the United States will seek Canada's prior consent for each and every transit of United States icebreakers through the waters of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. The Agreement provides Canada with more effective control over the waters of the Arctic archipelago than it had at the time of the Polar Sea voyage through the Northwest Passage in 1985. The Agreement does not resolve the legal dispute between Canada and the United States over the status of the Canadian Arctic waters. It does not affect the legal position of either country. Canada takes the view that the waters of the Arctic archipelago are internal waters by virtue of historic title. The United States, on the other hand, takes the position that these Arctic waters are international straits subject to the right of innocent passage or the right of transit passage. The Agreement does not cover the movements of U.S. naval vessels, including submarines, which are in accordance with Alliance commitments and relevant bilateral arrangements. U.S. (and other foreign flag) commercial vessels operating in Canadian Arctic waters have to conform, as in the past, with the provisions of the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act and other relevant laws and regulations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 142-165
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hoy

By 1874, Canada and the United States had surveyed land and placed boundary stones over 6,000 kilometers of territory. They had established a cohesive skeleton for the border in every major region except the Arctic. Drawing on government correspondence, annual reports, and paylists, chapter 7 rebuilds the bureaucratic footprint of the Canada–US border at the end of the nineteenth century. It maps the positions and operations of the North-West Mounted Police and American soldiers as well as customs, immigration, and Indian Affairs personnel. In doing so, it shows how the border diverged across the East Coast, Great Lakes, Prairies, West Coast, and Artic, as well as differentiating the US approach to its border with Canada and Mexico.


Author(s):  
Jan Zalasiewicz ◽  
Mark Williams

Ellesmere Island today is a destination only to a particular type of tourist: rich enough to afford the most exclusive of package tours, and hardy (or ascetic) enough to yearn for the spiritual purity of an icy wasteland, rather than the sensual pleasures of a Mediterranean seashore. The island is large—twice the size of Iceland. Yet, its largest settlement, Grise Fjord (or, in the local Inuktitut language, Aijuittuk—‘the place that never thaws’) has but some 140 souls—while its smallest, Eureka, bizarrely but somehow appropriately, was listed in 2006 as having precisely none. Squeezed between northern Canada and Greenland, Ellesmere Island is well within the Arctic Circle, and its northern tip is not much more than 700 kilometres from the North Pole. A land of mountains, fjords, glaciers, and ice-fields, it has been dubbed ‘the horizontal Everest’. In the short summer, the Sun never leaves the sky, and temperatures might, on brief sunny days, exceed 20 °C. When the winter months come, the Sun never rises, and temperatures drop below –40 °C. The only tree that can grow, here and there, is the dwarf Arctic willow, usually knee-high, while the mammals—musk ox, caribou, seals—have attracted Inuit hunters for some 4,000 years (and more lately, Viking explorers too). It was the handsomely whiskered First Lieutenant Adolphus Washington Greely (1844–1935) of the United States Army who discovered the ancient forest that had lain there, deeply buried, for fifty million years, a forest as expressive of bygone glories as any Arthurian legend. As part of the First International Polar Year, in 1882, he had been given charge of a party of soldiers, and tasked with making magnetic and meteorological measurements in the far north. They explored the Greenland coast, and traversed Ellesmere Island from east to west, stumbling upon the forest in the course of these journeys. The voyage killed most of his men, and almost killed him. When the relief crews arrived, two years late (the expedition had not been ideally planned) only six men, including Greely, were left alive. They had survived—just—by eating their own boots and, it seems, the remains of their dead colleagues.


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