5. Exploration and exploitation

‘Exploration and exploitation’ reviews the history of Arctic exploration and exploitation, which owes a great deal to early European encounters with the 'New World'. This topic includes the earliest Viking settlement of Greenland to a succession of European explorers and expeditions that were designed to search for the Northwest Passage. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), which specialized in fur trading, was integral to the early exploitation of the Canadian north since it was chartered in May 1670. The history and presence of industrial-scale mining in the Arctic over the last 300 years also played an important part. The term 'Arctic paradox', used by Arctic observers, describes a series of contradictory pressures facing the region—managing resources, promoting sustainable development, and ensuring that indigenous and northern communities are beneficiaries from any form of resource-led development.

A/R/Tography as a Method of Awe: an A/R/Tographic Inquiry of the Canadian North

This thesis is a year-long inquiry on the Canadian North using the practice-based research method a/r/tography. This a/r/tographic research on the Canadian North follows the method's three modalities: theoria, praxis, and poesis. It concludes by presenting the North as a non-place, placeless, a pseudo-place. Ultimately, this thesis contributes to a/r/tography's ongoing development as a research methodology. I propose to expand the frames within which we conceptualize a/r/tography's theoria, praxis, and poesis. The re-defining and re-organization of these three modalities opens a/r/tography to a wider range of creators to allow for even more boundary-breaking work. In addition, I draw out the possibilities of Lures as a hitherto unrecognized seventh conceptual practice embedded in a/r/tography. Moreover, I describe a/r/tographers as child-voyagers who are able to momentarily dispense with their perceptual frameworks and enter spaces that allow them to see the world anew. Most importantly, I reconceptualize a/r/tography as a method of awe.

A/R/Tography as a Method of Awe: an A/R/Tographic Inquiry of the Canadian North

This thesis is a year-long inquiry on the Canadian North using the practice-based research method a/r/tography. This a/r/tographic research on the Canadian North follows the method's three modalities: theoria, praxis, and poesis. It concludes by presenting the North as a non-place, placeless, a pseudo-place. Ultimately, this thesis contributes to a/r/tography's ongoing development as a research methodology. I propose to expand the frames within which we conceptualize a/r/tography's theoria, praxis, and poesis. The re-defining and re-organization of these three modalities opens a/r/tography to a wider range of creators to allow for even more boundary-breaking work. In addition, I draw out the possibilities of Lures as a hitherto unrecognized seventh conceptual practice embedded in a/r/tography. Moreover, I describe a/r/tographers as child-voyagers who are able to momentarily dispense with their perceptual frameworks and enter spaces that allow them to see the world anew. Most importantly, I reconceptualize a/r/tography as a method of awe.

Redesigning the Iglu| ᐃᒡᓗ : towards an architecture of Inuit dwelling in the 21st century

The Canadian North has gained significant interest as of late due to expansive availability of natural resources, and the opening up of commercial shipping routes, resulting in economic and development potential. There is thus a demand to develop and build, but this has often occurred with little vision while the extreme conditions of this region make viable inhabitation a challenge. Presently, the Inuit who have maintained a sustainable way of life in the Canadian North have seen their lifestyle and culture erode due to rapid modernization, resulting in numerous challenges and no resolutions. One such challenge is the absence of affordable, adequate, and cultural appropriate housing, complicated by a housing shortage and a growing population. In order to ensure successful inhabitation in this region, a reinterpretation of the contemporary Inuit home is required. The following thesis project |explores how the adoption of a regionally responsive architecture responds not only to economic and environmental conditions, but reinforces the unique cultural identity of the Inuit.

Redesigning the Iglu| ᐃᒡᓗ : towards an architecture of Inuit dwelling in the 21st century

The Canadian North has gained significant interest as of late due to expansive availability of natural resources, and the opening up of commercial shipping routes, resulting in economic and development potential. There is thus a demand to develop and build, but this has often occurred with little vision while the extreme conditions of this region make viable inhabitation a challenge. Presently, the Inuit who have maintained a sustainable way of life in the Canadian North have seen their lifestyle and culture erode due to rapid modernization, resulting in numerous challenges and no resolutions. One such challenge is the absence of affordable, adequate, and cultural appropriate housing, complicated by a housing shortage and a growing population. In order to ensure successful inhabitation in this region, a reinterpretation of the contemporary Inuit home is required. The following thesis project |explores how the adoption of a regionally responsive architecture responds not only to economic and environmental conditions, but reinforces the unique cultural identity of the Inuit.

Sport for Sustainability? The Extractives Industry, Sport, and Sustainable Development

This article investigates the intersection of three interrelated trends: first, the positioning of sport as a contributor to sustainable development, particularly in regard to the increasing corporatization of sport for development (SFD); second, the trend toward sustainable development in the extractives industry, as taken up within a corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach; and intersection of SFD and CSR when mobilized in pursuit of sustainable development in Indigenous communities in Canada. To do so, we examined the sustainability documents of Rio Tinto, the largest mining and metals company in Canada, with a focus on its operations in the Canadian North that are near Indigenous communities. Based on our results, we argue that SFD programming and the CSR approaches of Rio Tinto promote forms of sustainable development that capitalize on broadened (and emptied) definitions of sustainability, that may ultimately contribute to greater forms of unsustainability.

Pimitamon: Conceptualizing a New Canadian North through the Graphic Narratives of Jeff Lemire

In Essex County, in Secret Path (his collaboration with Gord Downie), in Roughneck, and in his creation of the indigenous Canadian superhero Equinox for Justice League United: Canada, Jeff Lemire highlights a vision of the Canadian ‘north’ as transformative space. In Lemire’s hands, ‘the north’ is where Chanie Wenjack’s historical reality (Secret Path), Derek and Beth Ouelette’s personal demons (Roughneck), and Miiyahbin Marten’s life as an ordinary indigenous teen in Moose Factory, Ontario (Justice League United Volume 1: Justice League Canada) all undergo a transformation which speaks to shifting perceptions of identity, responsibility, and belonging in Canada. The north becomes a site where Lemire (and Lemire’s readers) directly confront how even a deliberate act of intended reconciliation between settler-colonial and indigenous peoples can effectively colonize the space in which it occurs. All three works, in different ways, deploy rhetorical strategies to minimize the ‘collateral damage’ that is probably unavoidable, and even perhaps necessary, in the articulation of the kind of anticolonial dialogue toward which Lemire’s work is oriented.

The Canadian Water Resource Vulnerability Index to Permafrost Thaw (CWRVIPT)

This study developed and applied a framework for assessing the vulnerability of pan-Canadian water resources to permafrost thaw. The national-scale work addresses a key, but neglected, information gap, as previous research has focused on small scale physical processes and circumpolar trends. The framework was applied to develop the Canadian Water Resources Vulnerability Index to Permafrost Thaw (CWRVIPT) and map the index across the Canadian North. The CWRVIPT is a linearly additive index of permafrost, terrain, disturbance, and climatic conditions and stressors that influence water budgets and aquatic chemistry. Initial results imply water resources in the western Northwest Territories and Hudson Bay Lowlands are most vulnerable to permafrost thaw; however, water resources on Banks, Victoria and Baffin Islands are also relatively vulnerable. Although terrain and permafrost sub-indices are the largest component of the CWRVIPT across a wide swath from the Mackenzie River Delta to the Hudson Bay Lowlands, the climate sub-index is most important farther north over parts of the southern portion of the Arctic Archipelago. The index can be used to identify areas of water resource vulnerability on which to focus observation and research in the Canadian North.

Arctic terror: Chilling decay and horrifying whiteness in the Canadian North

Loosely based on the events of Sir John Franklin’s fatal 1845 British naval expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, The Terror (2018) is a historical horror series written and produced for the American pay channel, AMC. In light of the lost expedition’s mythic hold on the Canadian imagination of the North, this article examines how this American series repackages and reproduces myths about the Arctic as a destructive, alien icescape for contemporary audiences in two interrelated ways. First, the coldness of the Canadian Arctic becomes a distinct landscape for survival horror, uniquely shaping the emotional register of terror. In contrast to the jump scares and fast pacing of typical Hollywood representations of horror, the action of horror slows to a glacial pace in the vast whiteness of the snowscape, made more chilling by the gradual decay and death of those who came to claim it. Secondly, ‘the white beast’ of The Terror is represented as a cannibalistic Windigo that takes on different forms as perspectives shift between Franklin’s stranded crew members and the Inuit. Through the Inuit perspective, viewers see imperial hubris transform the North into an inescapable haunted house, raising the horrifying spectre of whiteness.

Strangers on the Land

This chapter describes the period from 1781 until 1806. Following a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1781, the Blackfoot established direct trade with non-Native people for the first time, circumventing middlemen who had been devastated by the disease. While many embraced the opportunities for trade, they also carefully structured their relationships with newcomers, repurposing regional traditions of peaceful exchange and ceremony for a new era. At the same time, they deliberately prevented British (Hudson’s Bay Company) and Canadian (North West Company) traders from expanding their trade into new regions, especially the intermountain West, thus securing crucial advantages over their western and southern neighbors. By 1806, Blackfoot people had become one of the most powerful and expansive Indigenous polities in North America.