Harold Innis and the North: Appraisals and Contestations 9780773588769

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harold innis and the north

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Harold Innis and the North Appraisals and Contestations

Edited by william j. buxton

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

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©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2013 ISB N ISB N ISB N ISB N

978-0-7735-4164-1 (cloth) 978-0-7735-4167-2 (paper) 978-0-7735-8876-9 (eP DF) 978-0-7735-8877-6 (eP UB)

Legal deposit third quarter 2013 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec  rinted in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest P free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from Concordia University’s arre Program, administered by the Office of the Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowl­edges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowl­edge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Harold Innis and the north: appraisals and contestations / edited by William J. Buxton. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISB N 978-0-7735-4164-1 (bound). – IS BN 978-0-7735-4167-2 (pbk.) ISB N 978-0-7735-8876-9 (eP DF). – IS BN 978-0-7735-8877-6 (eP U B) 1. Innis, Harold A., 1894–1952.  2. Canada, Northern – Historiography.  3. Canada, Northern – Economic conditions – 20th century.  4. Economists – Canada – Biography.  5. Historians – Canada – Biography.  6. Mass media specialists – Canada – Biography.  I. Buxton, William, 1947– FC 3956.H38 2013

971.9'0072

C2013-902083-7

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

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To archivists, unsung heroes of our heritage

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Contents

Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: North by Northwest: Harold Innis and “the Advancement of Knowledge of the Canadian North”  3 Willia m J . B ux to n

  1 Innis and Northern Canada: Fur Trade and Nation  51 B a r ry G o ugh   2 Harold Innis, Peter Pond, and the Fur Trade  65 Pau l He y e r   3 The Northern Vision of Harold Innis  73 Matthew E v e nd e n   4 Harold Innis’s Overlooked 1924 Memo on Wildlife Conservation in Northern Canada: The State, Staples and the Economics of Conservation  100 G eor g e C o l p i t t s  5 A Confidential Memorandum on the Conservation of Wild Life in the Mackenzie District, Prepared at the request of Mr Hoyes Lloyd and submitted to him by Mr Harold A. Innis of the Department of Political Economy, University of Toronto  122 Ha rold A . I nni s   6 Innis, Biss, and Industrial Circuitry in the Canadian North, 1921–1965 127 Liz a Pi p e r

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viii Contents

  7 Harold Adams Innis and Northern Manitoba  149 Jim Moc horuk   8 The Newfoundland and Labrador Fieldwork of Harold Adams Innis 167 Jeff A . We b b   9 Bringing Nordicity to the South City: Harold Innis as Reviewer of Books on the North, 1928–1944  186 Willia m J . B ux ton 10 North-South Networks of Knowledge: Harold Innis, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Canadian Social Science Research Council’s Arctic Survey  211 Jeffr ey D. B r i so n 11 Arctic Surveillance: Innis, the Arctic Survey, and Canadian State Agencies 227 Willia m J . B ux ton 12 Northern Enlightenment: Innis’s 1945 Trip to Russia and Its Aftermath 246 Willia m J . B ux ton 13 Towards the “Second Renaissance”: A Russian Perspective on Innis’s Russian Diary  273 Ser g ei Ar k h i p ov a nd Wi l l i a m J . Bu xto n 14 Innis and Environmental Politics: Practical Insights from the Yukon 295 Shir ley R o b ur n 15 Innis and I on the Highway of the Atom 326 Peter C . V a n Wyc k Bibliography 355 Contributors 387 Index 393

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Illustrations

  0.1 Log chute. Photographer: Harold Innis, University of Toronto Archives (uta), B1991-0029 / 025 (03), 2006-23-11MS.  22   1.1 Innis canoeing the Peace River, 1924. Photographer: John Long. uta, B1972- 0003 / 34 (01), 2003-21-2MS. 59   6.1 Innis with T.W. Harris (Indian inspector at Fort Simpson), Northwest Territories, 1924. Photographer likely John Long, uta , B1972-0003 / 34 (19), 2012-40-002.  132   7.1 Innis at Churchill, Manitoba, 1929. Photographer unknown, uta , B1972-0003 / 34 (35), 2012-40-001.  162   8.1 Lobsters, Newfoundland. Photographer: Harold Innis, uta , B1991-0029 / 024(03), 2006-23-4MS. 173 12.1 Photograph of Innis, Selye, and Porsild in Soviet Union. Photographer unknown. uta , B1972-0003 / 34 (42), 2009-8-1MS. 250 13.1 Bird’s-eye view of Yakutsk. Photographer: A.E. Porsild. Library and Archives Canada (l ac ), Alf Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771447 (top image, #31).  278 13.2 Our hotel at Yakutsk. Photographer: A.E. Porsild. l ac , Alf Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771447 (bottom image, #32).  279 13.3 Street in Yakutsk with tea kiosk. Photographer: A.E. Porsild. lac , Alf Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771456 (top image, #50).  280

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x Illustrations

13.4 Main street of Yakutsk. Photographer: A.E. Porsild. l ac , Alf Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771448 (bottom image, #35).  281 13.5 House in Yakutsk. Photographer: A.E. Porsild, l ac , Alf Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771447 (top image, #46).  282 13.6 Government food store. Photographer: A.E. Porsild, l ac , Alf Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771447 (bottom image, #47).  283 13.7 Street on waterfront in Yakutsk. Photographer: A.E. Porsild, lac , A lf Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771449 (top image, #36).  284 13.8 Girl who was captain of motorboat.Photographer: A.E. Porsild, l ac , Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771451 (top image, #42).  285 13.9 Waterfront: Crew of river barge. Photographer: A.E. Porsild, lac , Erling Porsild Fonds, R5945-0-7-E, e010771451 (bottom image, #41).  286

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Acknowledgments

This book has its origins in a workshop entitled “Harold Innis and the North,” which was held at Concordia University in August 2007. Many of its chapters are revised versions of the papers that were presented there. I would like to acknowledge the support for the event provided by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (through its Aid to Workshops and Conferences in Canada Program) and by another from the Faculty of Arts and Science at Concordia University. In particular, I wish to thank Dr Graham Carr (then dean of arts and science) and Dr Louise Dandurand (then vicepresident, Research and Graduate Studies) for their help in getting the workshop off the ground. I also convey my appreciation to Concordia Conference Services for the care and effort they gave to catering our event, and to the Fur Trade at Lachine National Historic Site, which kindly provided the workshop participants with a tour of the premises, adding a distinctly Innisian flavour to our proceedings. As a collective endeavour that involved subjecting our work to careful scrutiny, the workshop was an invaluable point of reference for putting together this edited collection. In addition to thanking those participants who contributed revised versions of their papers to this volume, I salute Lorna Roth, Jonathan Bordo, and Mary Louise McAllister for their thought-provoking presentations and for their well-informed interventions in our discussions. Our lively exchanges on Innis and the North would not have been possible without the technical acumen provided by Jon van der Veen and Simon Tattrie. Because of the quality of the papers that were presented at the workshop, participants were asked to revise their manuscripts with a view to possible publication. The response was encouraging; a

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xii Acknowledgments

manuscript was assembled, consisting of revised versions of the workshop papers along with Matthew Evenden’s fine article on Innis’s northern vision as well as a few other chapters written by the editor to fill in some gaps. It was submitted to – and accepted by – McGill-Queen’s University Press, which has ably shepherded the manuscript from its nascent post-workshop form to a published volume. This metamorphosis largely came about because of the diligence, savvy, and patience of our editor, Jonathan Crago. He not only gave invaluable advice about how to negotiate the sometimes bewildering process of publication but also admirably performed his editorial role by providing trenchant and thoughtful commentary on the emergent text. Moving the manuscript through its various stages has been expedited through the efforts of Jessica Howarth, editorial assistant at MQUP. Joanne Richardson’s care and stylistic flair in copy-editing the manuscript is very much appreciated by the contributors. Dianne Tiefensee rendered my rather rambling and inchoate draft of the index into its much more judicious and accessible final form. Ryan Van Huijstee, managing editor par excellence, has overseen the final phases of the book’s production with acumen, a knack for resolving would-be intractable problems, and unfailingly good humour. We are also indebted to the three M Q U P reviewers whose insightful criticisms and suggestions pushed our contributors both to consider new issues and to sharpen their arguments. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and with the help of an award from the Aid to Research-Related Events, Publication, Exhibition, and Dissemination program at Concordia University. My preparation of this volume was funded by a Standard Research Grant (#410-2008-1949) of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In preparing this volume, I have had the good fortune to receive the unstinting support of Anne Innis Dagg. In addition to graciously giving us permission on behalf of the Innis family to publish texts and images from the Harold Innis Papers at the University of Toronto Archives, she has been a continual source of encouragement and inspiration. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to those who have contributed in a variety of ways to having this book finally see the light of day: Charles Acland, Harold Averill,

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Acknowledgments   xiii

Jody Berland, Valérie Bernier, Deirdre Bryden, Kerry Cannon, Philip Cercone, Carol Cloutier, Nancy Crowe, Cathy Daigle, Stephen Dutcher, Barbara Edwards, Matthew Evenden, Leslie Field, Gerald Friesen, Marnee Gamble, Louis Edmund-Hamelin, Bob Hanke, Philippe Jacques, Suzanne Lemaire, Galina Levina, Loryl MacDonald, Mary Melnyk, Manon Niquette, Nicole Pissowotzki, Mary Ann Quinn, Richard Smith, Sophie Tellier, Peter van Wyck, and David A. Wilson. Finally, when preparing the manuscript to go into production, I was very saddened to learn of the death of Sergei Arkhipov, who came from Russia to take part in our workshop, and who contributed a co-authored chapter to our volume. Sergei brought a keen intellect, a passion for ideas, and boundless enthusiasm to the project. Bringing this collection to fruition can be seen as our own way of honouring his memory. Given that a number of chapters in the collection draw heavily on unpublished sources, I am grateful to the following institutions for granting permission to reprint material: Glenbow Archives, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Library and Archives Canada, Northwest Territory Archives, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Queen’s University Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center, Soeurs Grises de Montréal Archives, University of Toronto Archives, University of Alberta Archives, Rare Books and Special Collections of the University of British Columbia, and Yukon Archives. Professor Louis-Edmund Hamelin has kindly allowed portions of an e-mail message he sent to me to be included as a note in the introduction. I also acknowledge the permission of the Journal of Canadian Studies to publish Matthew Evenden’s chapter and to the Canadian Journal of Communication to publish Peter van Wyck’s chapter. While editing a collection of essays has its joys and rewards, it can also be a lonely and exasperating pursuit. But because of the compassion, humour, and joie de vivre of Manon, Océane, and Jesse Lee, I have managed to keep this project more or less on an even keel, without losing perspective on how it fits into the grander scheme of things.

William J. Buxton Quebec City, August 2012

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harold innis and the north

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Introduction

North by Northwest: Harold Innis and “the Advancement of Knowledge of the Canadian North” william j. buxton Small grey flies at Nelson – bite hard – arm becomes poisonous and red – swollen and itchy around bites. Harold Innis, Mackenzie River Typed Notes, July 1924

innis and tyrrell

In 1944, Harold Adams Innis was selected by the Royal Society of Canada as one of the first recipients of the J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal, presented each year to honour the most outstanding contributor to historical scholarship in Canada.1 As A.M. Lower noted in his remarks at the presentation of the medal:2 “Innis has been conspicuous in a field singularly appropriate for the recipient of the Tyrrell medal, that of the advancement of knowledge of the Canadian north. In 1924 Innis made the first of several tours of personal inspection of the northland [and] equipped himself in original and thoroughgoing fashion for his life task of interpretation of the Canadian economy and its development.”3 The conjunction of Innis, Lower, Tyrrell, and the theme of the North at the awards ceremony was a fitting one. Innis and Lower, in addition to having worked together on two major collections of documents pertinent to Canada as a northern nation (Innis 1929d; Innis and Lower 1933),4 had co-authored a volume in the Canadian Frontiers of Settlement Series, the second part of which was grounded

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in the fieldwork on placer mining that Innis had conducted in the Yukon and in Alaska during the summer of 1926 (Innis and Lower 1936). It is noteworthy that Innis dedicated his section of the volume to J.M. Tyrrell.5 Innis could not have found a more appropriate recipient of his dedication; Tyrrell had long served as a model and mentor to him. Indeed, in his northern visits, Tyrrell’s work in exploration and mining served as an important point of reference for Innis.6 In a manner akin to Tyrrell, Innis made a point of seeing the North at first hand. Both of them also worked very closely with government and industry officials. To be sure, the respective purposes of their travels were much different. As a professional geologist, Tyrrell sought to discover mineral resources that could be potentially exploited. This involved the exploration of hitherto unknown territories, with a view to mapping them and making them more accessible to development and settlement. Innis, on the other hand, travelled on well-established routes, with the intent of learning more about staple production and transportation.7 He never viewed himself as an explorer but,8 rather, as a researcher and commentator bent on making the North better known. Nevertheless, in travelling in the North, Innis would on a number of occasions visit the same areas that Tyrrell had visited and opened up a few decades earlier. In addition to sharing an interest in northern affairs, both Innis and Tyrrell took an intense interest in the North West Company (n wc ) and its rivalry with the Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc) over the fur trade in Canada’s Northwest. To this end, through intense study of old maps and records as well as through travels to the sites of fur-trading posts – past and present – they both sought to better understand how the fur trade developed. Their initial contact appears to have been through their letters published in the correspondence section of the Canadian Historical Review (chr) in 1928 (Tyrrell and Innis 1928).9 To be sure, prior to this, Innis was well aware of Tyrrell’s contributions, as is evident in his assessment of the latter in the final pages of The Fur Trade in Canada: “Tyrrell bridges a gap between the fur trade, settlement (survey), and mining” (1970 [1930], 401n20).10 Indeed, Tyrrell became an important resource for Innis in his continuing efforts to understand the North as well as the origins and impact of the fur trade in Canada.11 Innis loaned Tyrrell his copy of a new book on the Canadian North that had just been published (Le Bourdais 1931).12 Moreover, in the wake of a fistful of publications on Peter Pond (Innis 1928a, 1928b, 1930a), he consulted with Tyrrell

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in his efforts to better understand the role played by Pond in opening up the Northwest and, by extension, the North.13 Tyrrell (1934) had turned his attention to a similar project, namely, editing the journals of the explorers Samuel Hearne and Philip Turnor. In order to clarify a number of issues related to the activities of the two figures, he consulted with Innis.14 The relationship between Innis and Tyrrell was not confined to the exchange of letters and the occasional meeting in Toronto. In late August and early September of 1933, they spent some time together in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, where they both gave addresses to the Prince Albert Historical Society and looked for the remains of old fur-trading posts on the North Saskatchewan River.15 Following Innis’s return from western Canada, Tyrrell paid a visit to the Innis household, bringing apples,16 and a few days later the Innis family spent a day at Tyrrell’s farm on the Rouge River in northeastern Scarborough.17 In receiving the Tyrrell Medal, then, Innis further cemented the bond he had developed with one of Canada’s greatest northern explorers. However, Tyrrell was by no means the only person with whom Innis had a relationship based on a shared interest in the North. By virtue of his research in the North and his extensive travels in Canada’s northern regions, Innis developed friendships and acquaintanceships with governmental officials,18 fellow travellers,19 fur-trade managers,20 those involved in transportation,21 religious figures,22 scientists/engineers,23 researchers,24 practitioners of the arts,25 journal editors,26 police officials,27 and various northern residents.28 His exchanges with these individuals reveal that Innis’s concerns with the North were myriad; they included wildlife conservation, exploration, transportation, primary resources, law enforcement, race relations, religion, agriculture, mapping, geography/mapping, and settlement. t h e c o l l e c t i o n at a g l a n c e

Conventionally, Innis’s academic and professional identity as political economist and economic historian (as influenced by his University of Chicago training) has been taken as the core of his being, serving as the substratum for his thought and activities.29 However, echoing the breadth of Innis’s concerns with the North – as revealed in his large circle of friends, acquaintances, and contacts sharing an interest northern issues – the chapters in this volume

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demonstrate that Innis engaged with the North through an assortment of identities, including economic researcher, geographer, tourist/ traveller, pedagogue, public intellectual, book reviewer, consultant, gatherer of strategic information, foundations advisor, research impresario, arts advocate, as well as white male professional. They shed light on the relevance of Innis’s writings to our understanding of the contemporary Canadian North, drawing attention to his efforts to highlight northern issues through his written work, media interviews, public presentations, contact with foundation and government officials, and research council activities. They also reveal that Innis’s abiding advocacy of the North was closely bound up with his vision of northern Canada as the embodiment of a second industrial revolution based on mining, hydro-electric power, the pulp-and-paper industry, and new forms of transportation such as gasoline-powered vehicles and aviation. Each contribution to this volume bears witness to an Innis that has largely escaped the attention of commentators, who have mostly confined themselves to repeatedly surveying the same few pinnacles of his work rather than rendering visible the broader ranges of his scholarship and engagement. Through an appreciation of Innis’s long-standing engagement with the North – as the incarnation of his preoccupation with Canada’s coming to age as a more balanced and better integrated industrial nation-state – we can better understand the nature and scope of his overall project. Taken collectively, the chapters in this volume form a new narrative for Innis based on the successive and interrelated phases of Innis’s engagement with the North. In order to highlight the main constituent features of this narrative, we examine how it relates to prevailing scholarship on Innis in relation to the North and how it can potentially address the lacunae and shortcomings in this body of work. This involves a discussion of how and why the North has not figured prominently in scholarship on both northern Canada and on Innis, emphasizing that this absence is rooted in the space and time biases that have been endemic to work in these areas. This is followed by a plea to abandon the conventional grand narrative of the development of Innis’s thought in favour of an approach grounded in more nuanced and detailed micro-narratives. We then elaborate a micro-narrative based on Innis’s engagement with the North, rooted in a periodization and spatial orientation that differs markedly from conventional grand narratives of Innis’s life and work. We conclude

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by examining the collection in more detail, exploring its contribution to the building of a micro-narrative that captures the strong northern component of Innis’s thought and practice. innis and the north in scholarship

Accounts of the key historical works of northern scholarship have largely ignored Innis’s involvement with the North. A major survey of Canadian discussions of the North makes no mention whatsoever of Innis’s contributions (Hodgins and Grant 1986). Another prominent special journal issue on the Canadian North makes virtually no reference to Innis, even though discussions of the historical backdrop to the late twentieth-century context figured prominently in its articles.30 Similarly, the essays in Abel and Coates’s (2001) volume on how the North has been represented in Canadian history makes scant mention of Innis. Indeed, on the two occasions that Abel and Coates refer to Innis, it is for his role in inspiring, rather than in directly contributing to, work on the North. While David Neufeld (2001, 51) acknowledges Innis’s contribution to Canadian historiography and the commemorations of the Canadian North that it engendered, most of his attention is given over to how the North was commemorated by federal agencies, such as Parks Canada and the Historical Sites and Monuments Board. And in her discussion of how historians have examined the provincial norths, with particular reference to Ontario, Kerry Abel (2001, 137–8) confines her attention to examining the historical work that Innis inspired rather than addressing his own contributions. Along the same lines, in her review essay on English-Canadian historical writing on the North, Janice Cavell (2002, 8) includes Innis only as an example of how members of the “nationalist school of historians” largely ignored the North in their writings. Innis has fared little better in treatments of policy making in relation to the North. Shelagh D. Grant’s otherwise exhaustive account of the subject is a case in point. While she provides a very detailed description of the Arctic Survey under the auspices of the Canadian Social Science Research Council, she fails to acknowledge the key role Innis played in laying the foundations of the survey and shaping its activities (Grant 1988, 141–3). Arguably, one can attribute the absence of Innis in accounts of historical writing on the North – at least in part – to the assumption that he was a leading proponent of what W.L. Morton (1946, 1970)

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terms the “Laurentian thesis”: the view that “central Canada was conceived as the dynamic heart of a commercial imperialism that … incorporated subordinate hinterlands” (Berger 1976, 241). Morton’s claim that Canadian historical writing was biased towards the interests of central Canada, relegating the west to the margins, was further developed by Donald Careless (1954), who argued that the Laurentian school, as rooted in Innis’s thought, had in turn spawned a metropolitan approach, emphasizing how eastern manufacturing interests were able to control the west through an east-west system of communication. Hence, Innis’s work was held to be the inspiration for a shift of attention away from north-south relations to east– west relations. As Westfall (1981, 41) describes this reorientation: “Under the influence of Innis’ work, Canadian historical writing shifted from a north-south orientation in order to emphasize the importance of the east-west dimensions of Canadian development, both within Canada and in her relations with Europe. The spine of this east-west dimension, the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes system, became a new organizing principle in Canadian historiography.”31 Indeed, the Laurentian thesis was later subject to criticism by commentators who believed that it had resulted in a bias against the study of Canada’s northern regions.32 As Neufeld (2001, 51) notes: “The Laurentian thesis … emphasized the importance of the major metropolitan centres of the country, all located in the St. Lawrence Valley, that extended their influence outward into the periphery of the country, linking it into a single national entity.” He goes on to claim that the thesis was “anti-regional in its understanding of the country” (33). This “Laurentian framework of historical interpretation,” as described by Cavell (2002, 8), “with its emphasis on the western frontier, permitted no new understanding of the north. It was still seen as a second frontier, to which Canadians could turn now that the first frontier was settled.” By implication, the North did not have its own integrity but, rather, was little more than “a second west, a realm of promise for the future, but one that was expected to conform to the familiar pattern of development” (47). Sherrill Grace (2001), while not addressing the “Laurentian thesis” per se, was steeped in its thinking and consciously sought to develop an alternative to it. Those scholars of the North who have rejected Innis for his alleged Laurentian tendencies have, in effect, introduced a decided spatial bias into interpretations of Innis. Since he is thought to have considered Canada exclusively in terms of an axis extending westward from the

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9

Laurentian basin, this has meant that, almost by definition, commentators have concluded that he had little to say about the North. Given its spatial bias, it is not surprising that those challenging the Laurentian thesis have largely overlooked Innis’s numerous writings on the North, not to mention his frequent visits to the region.33 The lack of attention given to Innis’s views on the North is also rooted in the way his life’s work has been periodized. Mirroring the claims about Innis as a proponent of the Laurentian school of historiography, biographical accounts of him have largely used staples, as embodied in The Fur Trade in Canada,34 for the defining point of reference for his activities; these have overdetermined how his other writings and activities, both preceding and subsequent to The Fur Trade in Canada, have been interpreted.35 The template for this periodization was established by Donald Creighton (1957) in the first biographical study of Innis. According to Creighton, “the decision to approach Canadian economic history through the study of trade in staple products or commodities was the most important decision of Innis’s scholarly career” (59). Creighton then uses Innis’s work on staples as an organizing principle for periodizing his life and work: The significant periods in Innis’s career were periods of ten years, which coincided nearly, if not exactly, with the decades of the century. In 1920, he presented his thesis … to the Graduate School of the University of Toronto. His first great work, the Fur Trade in Canada was published in 1930, and in 1940 … The Cod Fisheries.” Continuing this periodizing schema, Creighton notes: “The work of the 1940s was to have a wider range in space and a greater depth in time. It was to be, in fact, an investigation into the economic foundations of culture throughout a long succession of civilizations” (96–8). Paul Heyer’s (2003, 22, 24, 30) more recent biography of Innis uses more or less the same periodization, based on the fur-and-fish tandem eventually giving way to Innis’s studies of media staples. Prima facie, Watson’s (2006) voluminous study of Innis differs from that of Creighton and Heyer in the way it examines Innis’s life and career. While Watson suggests a different kind of model, with industrialism at its centre, he does not really follow through on it, falling back on the fur trade and the cod fisheries as the essential points of reference. As enunciated by these three biographers, this tripartite division of Innis’s career into three successive decade-long stages marked by differing concerns and culminating in the publication of

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major studies does have a certain plausibility. But it comes at the expense of selecting certain aspects of Innis’s work for emphasis while downplaying or ignoring others. With The Fur Trade in Canada taken to be Innis’s defining work, what happened before that becomes mere prelude; there is a strong tendency to read history backwards with Innis, to emphasize aspects of his life that seemed to underpin his later interest in staples and the fur trade.36 These include his early exposure to nature during his rural upbringing (Creighton 1957, 10; Heyer 2003, 3), his encounter with technology during the First World War (Watson 2006, 89), and his supposed anti-British sentiments, which were thought to have been engendered by his war-time experience (Heyer 2003, 3). These claims may have some basis in fact. However, because they were selected due to their possible link to Innis’s later work on staples and the fur trade, this has meant that those aspects of his life with no obvious connection to primary resources tend to get overlooked.37 This is particularly evident in the case of the North, which has largely been either downplayed or overlooked in the major biographies of Innis. Indeed, Innis’s northern activities are only referred to when they have some bearing on what are considered to be his staplesbased major projects, such as his research on the fur trade and his study of civilizations.38 However, not all those who have written about Innis’s biography have failed to give an adequate account of his engagement with the North. While Carl Berger (1976, 97) does not discuss Innis’s work on the North in great detail, he does acknowledge that, for Innis, “the development of western Canada and the North were outstanding instances of the way in which new areas came under the influence of modern industrialism almost at a single stroke.” He goes on to note that “Innis, who travelled extensively and followed northern development very closely, saw with his own eyes the results of … cyclonic growth” (63). Berger suggests that Innis was interested in the North insofar as it revealed a new pattern of South-North relations, rooted in the ongoing process of industrialization. The SouthNorth vector thus embodied the spatial dimension of industrialization. While the place of the fur trade in the North was one of Innis’s major concerns, his overriding preoccupation was with the extent to which the Canadian North was a site for the industrializing process. Innis did not view the northern fur trade as simply providing the framework for later industrial development, as standard accounts

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suggest; rather, it was by virtue of its decay and disintegration that the “second industrial revolution,” as centred in the North, became possible.39 From the outset, Innis was not a detached observer of the process; he was actively involved in helping to bring industrialization in the North to fruition. His dialectical involvement with the industrial transformation of the North, rooted in a new pattern of South-North relations, provided the narrative for the unfolding trajectory of his activities. i n n i s a n d t h e n o r t h : t o wa r d s a m i c r o - n a r r at i v e

Examining Innis through the lens of industrialization, underpinning an emergent pattern of South-North relations, has the potential to help correct both the spatial and temporal biases that have characterized interpretations of his thought and activities. Moreover, it allows us to understand how the “idea of North” emerged in his work as he engaged with the process of helping to define the vectors of South-North relations. This suggests that Innis’s engagement with the North as it related to “modern industrialism” might be viewed as a micro-narrative40 – an alternative to the grand macro-narrative anchored in The Fur Trade of Canada.41 To be sure, one cannot deny that The Fur Trade in Canada and Innis’s other major monographs were important benchmarks in his scholarly career. But because The Fur Trade in Canada has largely come to stand as the point of reference for Innis’s oeuvre, his engagement with the North – along with other intersecting micro-narratives, such as his pedagogy, his travel, his penchant for compiling and organizing information, his Foundation-related activities, and, indeed, the broader array of his involvement with the fur trade – have for the most part escaped attention. In order to examine Innis’s long-standing engagement with the North – in relation to other micro-narratives – one must rethink the assumption that his activities should be defined primarily in terms of decade-long endeavours, each culminating in major publications. If one examines his trajectory in terms of patterns of his shifting intellectual practice, various micro-narratives suggest themselves. For instance, if the micro-narrative of his engagement with the North and industrialism is one’s point of reference, three phases of this period, each having a particular characteristic, can be discerned: (1) 1923–33, production of knowledge about the North through Canadian travel

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and direction observation; (2) 1934–44, production of knowledge about the North through cumulative commentary on published texts; (3) and 1944–48, production of knowledge about the North through international travel and research-committee work.42 The first phase (1923–33) is anchored in Innis’s four major journeys to the Canadian North – to the Mackenzie River drainage basin (1924), to the Yukon (1926), to western Hudson Bay/Eastern Arctic (1929), and to Labrador via Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada (1930– 33). Innis’s conception of the North became deeper and richer as a result of these travels. The point of departure was his long-neglected A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (published in 1923), which examines in detail how industrialism affected the onset of civilization in Canada’s emergent regions. The end of the phase is marked by Innis’s abandoning the natural drainage-basin framework as outlined in A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway in favour of an approach that emphasized vectors and networks of transportation and communication, rooted in industrialism rather than in the natural environment. Innis’s contribution to the second volume of Select Documents in Canadian Economic History, published in 1933, while organized in terms of the St Lawrence and Hudson Bay drainage basins, prominently featured discussions of transportation and communication.43 In the second phase (1934–44) of his northern engagement, Innis turned his attention to the writing of review essays on the North for the c h r . In effect, he was continuing the Select Documents project, which only covered the period up until 1885 (when the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed). Given that the Canadian North became a major area of concern beginning in the 1890s, and was very much rooted in transportation and communication, the review essays can be viewed as a “Select Documents on the North” – an extension of his two earlier edited volumes. In the third phase (1944–48) of his involvement with the North, Innis built on the foundations of the review essays to develop a major research initiative related to Canada’s Arctic region, which was linked to his growing interest in how the Soviet Union had been able to develop its North through the use of scientific knowledge. As we now examine, Innis’s emergent idea of the North – as expressed in his work in the late 1940s essays as well as in his prior writings and activities – could be traced to his early work on the history of Canada’s first transcontinental railway.

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a history of the canadian pa c i f i c r a i lway : i m p l i c at i o n s

Innis’s (1923) A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway has largely been overlooked in discussions of his writings, most likely because he pointed to its “inadequacies” in a memoir that he wrote just before his death.44 However, a close reading of the text reveals that it is about much more than the Canadian Pacific Railway (hereafter c pr). To be sure, Innis sought to give body, substance, and meaning to the contemporary organizational form of the railway, which he initially saw as the lynchpin for the emergence of “civilization” in Canada. Nevertheless, it can be viewed more broadly not only as an effort to “map” Canada in a spatial sense but also as a conceptual mapping of how the railway, as technology, intersected with Canadian landscape, staples industries, industrialization, and human settlement (as well as phenomena such as trans-oceanic travel, tourism, and real estate).45 In particular, Innis is at pains to demonstrate the extent to which the fur trade set the terms for how the railway system in Canada developed. When examining the text, it is clear that Innis was not simply writing a descriptive study of the railway; rather, he was grappling with how Canada came into being as a union linking the sub-civilizations that had grown around three of the continent’s major drainage basins: the Pacific coast, the Hudson Bay, and the St Lawrence River. Each of these had been formed by virtue of the fur trade. However, it is clear from his analysis that Canada did not simply take form within the grooves of the fur trade, as many have claimed; rather, he stresses that, as it required vast uninhabited areas, the fur trade was largely antithetical to civilization. Indeed, the hbc’s preservation of the fur trade served to retard human settlement. Ironically, by virtue of the settlements that the hbc developed in order to administer the fur trade, commerce and industry eventually emerged, leading to its decline. In effect, Innis sought to situate the cp r in relation to the development of settlement within the three sub-civilizations that had taken form within Canada, largely as a result of h bc activities. The introductory chapter charts how civilization and settlement developed in three of Canada’s drainage basins, along with the challenges involved when efforts were made to bind them together in the northern tier of North America. What is striking about Innis’s account is that he proceeds in reverse chronological order. He begins in British

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Columbia, turns to Manitoba, and concludes with the St Lawrence drainage basin. Why is this the case? It could be argued that his study was firmly anchored in the present and therefore began with the contemporary, working backwards to understand its roots. He wished to understand how a Canadian civilization could be actualized – making the political union a real one by virtue of strengthening economic and cultural relations. While Innis evinced a certain sympathy for British Columbia and the Red River Colony, his point of reference was clearly in eastern Canada and was in line with its political and economic elites. In this regard, the two sub-civilizations of the west posed different problems by virtue of the way that the fur trade operated in each. In the case of British Columbia, the fur trade was important at the outset but declined further to the south in the American-settled regions. American imperialism resulted in the spread of settlers, who forced a settlement of the boundary dispute in 1846, giving the United States land south of the 49th parallel (Innis 1923, 10). This political arrangement forced the British to develop their trading organizations independent of the Columbia River. Moreover, the h bc was in a weak position because of the distance between its headquarters and the west coast, which meant that the local authorities could have an upper hand in encouraging settlement and the development of an infrastructure for civilization. As a result of the gold rush, a dynamic development set in, combining transportation, mining, and settlement, untrammelled by the fur trade. Hence, because of this growing strength and autonomy – at a distance far removed from the centre of power in eastern Canada – it was vital that lines of communication be established with this region in order to avoid the prospect of its seeking common cause with its neighbours to the South (20). Innis then turned to the Hudson Bay drainage system, giving particular attention to the Red River Colony, located in an area monopolized and controlled by the h b c. This resulted in an antagonistic relationship between the settlement and the h bc. The legacy was a colony that was very alienated from central authorities and needed to be brought into line, again through strengthening lines of communication between it and eastern Canada (Innis 1923, 45). The St Lawrence drainage basin sub-civilization, according to Innis, had been able to develop industry and commerce in an unfettered fashion because it had been established in an area in which the French fur-trade empire had collapsed. Accordingly, it could best serve as the source for modernizing the rest of Canada through technological means (66–7).

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What made Canadian civilization possible, in Innis’s view, was a linking of the three sub-civilizations through a transcontinental railway. He likened the railway system to a bridge that spanned the three main abutments in each of the drainage system areas. Innis’s discussion reveals that he had more in mind than simply a linkage between the east and the west; he was at pains to emphasize the importance of the web of lines that had been put in place, bringing civilization, settlement, and the circulation of goods into hitherto remote areas (as is evident in the railway map that he intricately annotated). He stressed that, while Canada achieved some degree of political union with Confederation, “the barriers proved to be of a character which tested severely and almost to the breaking point the union which had been consummated” (Innis 1923, 74). Likely fuelled by Innis’s retrospective criticisms of his first major work – as well as by his statements about the failure of the c p r to create a strong Canadian union – commentators have concluded that Innis, in effect, rejected the technological-industrial framework that A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway represented. Instead, he supposedly shifted his attention to the more fundamental “original unity” of Canada as rooted in the fur trade and as made possible by the country’s extensive waterways. There is some truth to these claims. But they come at the expense of consigning A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway to Innis’s juvenilia rather than exploring the extent to which it provided the template for his subsequent work. Innis by no means abandoned his interest in how industrial technology was altering the Canadian landscape, nor in how human settlement interacted with the natural environment to produce new variants of civilization; rather, using his first monograph as a point of reference, Innis sought to deepen and enrich the drainage-basin framework that he had established in this text. In so doing, he would continue to examine how industrial technology prevailed in the building of civilization, in spite of Canada’s daunting natural terrain. the mackenzie river drainage basin

While Innis gave attention to the Pacific coast, the Hudson Bay, and the St Lawrence River drainage basins in A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Mackenzie River drainage basin was noticeable by its absence. To be sure, he does mention that the Mackenzie River drainage basin is the second largest in the country (after that of the

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Hudson Bay) with the Mackenzie River itself “extending over 2,000 miles” (Innis 1923, 2). But unlike the other major drainage basins, that of the Mackenzie River did not figure in Innis’s comparative analysis of how the fur trade spawned different civilizations, depending on a range of regionally specific factors. However, Innis was quick to correct this oversight. As the chair of the Department of Political Economy, Robert MacIver explained Innis’s next research project to University of Toronto president Robert Falconer: “[Its] ultimate goal … would be a book-length study of the Mackenzie River basin; a knowledge of the fur trade would also help his teaching.”46 Belying the notion that he was fixated on the St Lawrence River system, Innis also expressed interest in the Peace River and the North Saskatchewan River. In order to pursue this research project, Innis, accompanied by John Long,47 made an extended visit to northern Alberta, northern British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories in the summer of 1924. They travelled west by train from Toronto to Edmonton and then took the train to the town of Peace River. From there they travelled by canoe up the Peace River and then the Slave River to Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake. After traversing Great Slave Lake on the Liard River to Fort Providence they continued on to Fort Simpson. After a return trip from Fort Simpson to Fort Nelson on the Liard River, they then switched to the Distributor, which they took to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. They then proceeded back to Fort Smith and Fort McMurray.48 While the trip is commonly associated with the Mackenzie River and the fur trade, Innis was actually painting on a much broader canvas as he sought to make sense not just of the fur trade but also of settlement, transportation, and economic activity within the vast Mackenzie River drainage basin. That this broader perspective informed his journey is evident in the memorandum he wrote on the conservation of wildlife in the Mackenzie District, which he submitted in 1925 (Innis 1925b; this volume, 122–6). At the outset, Innis emphasized that in order to address the issue of wildlife conservation in the district he would need to conduct a “careful survey of the whole economic development of the area concerned,” namely, “the Mackenzie River drainage basin where the principal export is fur, where agriculture is slight and to a large extent in the experimental stage and where, as a result, the population is scanty and sustained principally by food imported from

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outside, and by the products of fishing and hunting. These facts dominate the whole situation.” To this end, Innis framed his analysis in terms of the food situation in the region: “When the people must depend to a large extent on canned foods and imported products, a continual diet of which becomes intolerable, it can hardly be expected that they will refrain from violating the law. This is especially true because of the high prices of imported food stuffs incidental to heavy transportation charges.” Moreover, by virtue of “the scarcity of the population and the distances covered, it is impossible for the police to give adequate supervision to prevent violation of the game laws.” Innis clearly suggests that the sub-civilization of the Mackenzie River drainage basin rested on a precarious basis since it was highly dependent on imported foods for its existence. This, in turn, made for tensions and conflicts as those persons lacking adequate supplies of food would be inclined to violate the game laws, putting them into direct conflict with police and government officials. Innis was of the view that, in order to “ease the strain of the game laws,” the food supply needed to be enhanced through various measures linked to the expansion of civilization and government control. These included a “more regular distribution of the imported food supply throughout the year, improvements in transportation facilities and the general establishment of better communication – wireless, etc.” as well as “the elimination of irregularities in transportation rates” and “a careful study of the food situation.” At the same time, Innis was well aware that those in need of food were also dependent on the trapping of fur- bearing animals for their livelihood. Hence “the conservation of fur bearing animals” needed to be addressed. Again, Innis believed that an effective policy could be established through one of the key aspects of civilization, namely, “intelligent legislation” grounded in “a careful study of the fur trade” (see chapter 5, this volume, 126). This concern with the need for better knowledge about the region was evident in an article that Innis (1925a) published in the same year: “A Trip through the Mackenzie River Basin.” In line with his capsule accounts in The History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, his article examines the sub-civilization that formed within the entire drainage basin. It also brought his analysis up to the present, as this drainage basin had a frontier moving “within its boundaries” (153) and was in the process of transformation. As with Innis’s earlier descriptions, the point of reference was the fur-trading system, particularly that of the h bc. However, because

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of the harshness of the environment, “the violent seasonal changes,” and the swiftness and turbulence of the rivers, the h bc’s foothold was a rather precarious one (Innis 1925a, 151). Indeed, this was true of settlement as a whole: “Since the rivers are the highways, the buildings of the missions, of the trading companies, and of the police, each with a separate landing, are strung along the banks. These posts have length but no depth” (152). Still, Innis was of the view that the formidable landscape was beginning to give ground. The hb c, hot on the heels of the Canadian Arctic expedition (1913– 16),49 had “enlarged the Western Arctic district, with its headquarters at Herschel, by establishing posts from the delta to Coronation Gulf.” The increase in trade resulted in the arrival of the police, thereby thickening the texture of settlement. Innis also remarked at the significant changes taking place “at the other end of the basin.” In this case, not only had railroads “been completed to Peace River, to Athabasca Landing, and to Waterways,” but there had been “increased amounts of products such as grain and butter shipped, an experimental farm had been started at Fort Vermillion, boat capacity had increased, and restaurants and even an ice-cream parlour had sprouted up at Fort Simpson” (153) Above all, there were signs of new forms of economic activity, including the mining of salt and the investigation of the tar sands at “McMurray, or Waterways.” All the same, unlike the other drainage basins, that of the Mackenzie River was still “an unknown quantity.” Given that this drainage basin represented “more than one-third of Canada” it presented “fascinating problems to the social scientist as well as to the so-called natural scientist” and would “repay a great deal of study on the part of government bodies as well as of private individuals” (153). Consistent with this admonition, the Mackenzie River drainage basin formed the backdrop to Innis’s next major work, The FurTrade of Canada (1927b), which was finished in the spring of 1926 and published in 1927. It is centred in the fur-trading practices found in the Mackenzie River drainage basin and draws upon materials that Innis had collected from his research.50 Based on extensive fieldwork and archival research, it gives an account of the fur-trade industry in Canada, with particular reference to its practice and prospects.51 That Innis’s writing on contemporary fur-trade practices held centre stage for him during the 1920s reveals that his primary preoccupation at this time was not so much to engage in Canadian economic history for its own sake as it was to make sense

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of the state of civilization-building in Canada – a project, of course, that could be aided and abetted by historical research. In describing the fur industry of the 1920s, Innis stressed its close link to urbanization, a process that had been closely associated with the development of the railway: The demand for furs is located primarily in centers of population which support a large leisure class. These are areas with populations in which class distinctions have been built up as inherently a part of the social organization, or which have greatly increased the production of goods through new processes, as in countries recently brought under the sweep of machine industry … [G] rowth of large cities [was] made possible with the existence of a surplus of goods. (17, 94) By the same token, Innis observed an increase in the number of white trappers, whose methods of trapping were, in his view, superior to those of the Aboriginals. According to him, the growing presence of the white trapper was due to “new transportation lines incidental to the construction of the railways” (Innis, 1927b, 94). Overall, Innis believed that the transformation of transportation, as rooted in the spread of railway technology, would increase rivalry among fur traders: “The prospects are not promising. It appears probable that competition among traders will increase with the constant improvement of transportation facilities. The small experienced trader has certain advantages under conditions of favourable transportation over the large company” (96). Innis’s standpoint was that of the state faced with the problem of making the fur industry work more effectively through finding ways to increase supply and to regulate production. Embodying the evolutionism that Innis saw as characteristic of Western civilization, the state, according to him, required a knowledge base in order for it to keep the staples industries on an even keel. Hence the knowledge that he and his colleagues produced about the fur industry, which emphasizes how it was bound up with industrialization, new transportation networks, and settlement, was inherently practical in nature and very much in line with the Taylorist tendencies of the period.52 As is evident in his writings based on the Mackenzie River drainage basin, with particular reference to the fur trade, Innis had yet to

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develop a view of the North per se; rather, his frame of reference was still the vast, largely uncharted trading territory of the “Northwest.” As such, this region was still very much an “unknown quantity,” with a frontier that was largely indeterminate. Still, consistent with his analyses of the other drainage basins, which he presents in The History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, this formidable and savage area was slowly being conquered through the extension of trading networks, new forms of transportation, and industrialization. the yukon and beyond

It is noteworthy that immediately after The Fur-Trade of Canada was complete and submitted for publication, Innis embarked on another visit to the North. In 1926 he and W.K. Gibb took the train from Toronto to Vancouver,53 then took the s s Prince George to Skagway, Alaska. After taking a steamer to Atlin, British Columbia, they proceeded to Whitehorse in the Yukon, where they picked up their canoe and travelled via Lake Laberge and the Yukon River to Dawson City. They continued on the Yukon River to Circle, Alaska. At this point, they left the Yukon River (after paddling on it for eight hundred miles) and travelled by foot and automobile to Fairbanks, Alaska. From there they proceeded to Seward, Alaska, where they took the s s Yukon (of the Alaska Steamship Company) to Seattle. They then returned to Vancouver and travelled back across the country by train to Toronto.54 Innis’s experience in the Yukon was different from his experience of the Mackenzie River drainage basin, involving, as it did, the booming placer-mining industry as linked to automobiles, steamships, and the railway. Innis’s investigation of placer mining in the Yukon was part of a broader investigation of the mining industry that he undertook in the late 1920s, forming the basis of his comparative study of “important sample regions with widely divergent characteristics … two regions in the Pacific Coast drainage basin (namely, the Yukon and the Kootenay) and Northern Ontario, with particular reference to Porcupine, Kirkland Lake, and Noranda.”55 In his examination of placer mining in the Yukon, Innis was deepening his earlier analysis (Innis 1923) of how the Pacific coast drainage basin further to the south had originally developed in relation to the declining fur trade,

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settlement, mining, and railways. Moreover, as he would later elaborate in his full-length discussion of mining in Canada, the developing of mining in the Yukon represented the extension of activities that had been set in motion by the discovery of gold in the Fraser River Valley. He also emphasized that mining in the Yukon introduced an element of instability into the North, as the frenzied activities in that region spread into the Mackenzie River drainage basin, bringing about change.56 By virtue of his visit to the Yukon, Innis began to see the Northwest as an area that was increasingly prone to the vectors of industrialism emanating from the South through the chain of mining developments of the Pacific coast drainage basin. This meant that the Yukon, with its turbulent culture of gold discovery and extraction, was showing the much slower-paced Mackenzie River drainage basin the image of its future. “A gold rush or another substantial oil discovery,” Innis (1925a, 153) wrote, “would work marvels.” Innis continued his exploration of mining in the following years. In 1927, after visiting pulp and paper mills and lumber mills in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia in June, he toured mining installations in Quebec and in northern Ontario. In the spring of 1928, Innis travelled by railway from Toronto to northern Ontario and northern Quebec, where he conducted research on the pulpand-paper and mining industries in a number of communities, including Iroquois Falls, Kirkland Lake, Rouyn, Timmins, Cochrane, Haileybury, Porquis Junction, and Island Falls Junction.57 theorizing industrialism and settlement in western canada

Up until this point, Innis had been content to discuss his research and travels in a primarily descriptive fashion, not venturing into theoretical discussion. However, this changed in the summer of 1928, when he presented a paper on the western Canadian wheat economy at the International Geographical Association held in Cambridge in the United Kingdom (Innis 1930b). What likely precipitated this shift was Innis’s task of explaining to an international audience how the New World differed from the Old World in terms of settlement patterns. While the paper was putatively about settlement and the wheat economy, it was actually about industrialization

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0.1  Image of log flume taken by Innis during one of his research trips in the 1920s and 1930s.

in relation to agriculture and how New World industrialization differed from that found in the Old World.58 Hence, he discussed how the development of the wheat economy in western Canada was affected by “the technical developments in the United States responsible for a rapid increase in the production of wheat” as well as by “the increasing industrialization of Great Britain” (373). Innis drew attention to how “the growing efficiency of the price-mechanism,” fuelling the spread of industrialism through the railway, greatly affected the development of the wheat economy: Wheat produced in Canada was sold on a world market in return for a direct cash payment. The numerous transactions involved in the transfer of wheat from the Canadian producer to the English Consumer necessitated a high stage of efficiency in

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the marketing of wheat and in foreign exchange and internal exchange. Canadian banks were rapidly extended from headquarters in the east, and adjustments were made by which wheat could be sent directly from the frontier to the centres of industrialism with the least possible friction (374). In developing this line of analysis, Innis for the first time drew directly on Thorstein Veblen (1892, 1915), citing some of his writings on economic development and on the wheat economy. Innis’s analysis was also very much inflected by the “possibilist” approach of French cultural geography, which he had begun to learn more about in the 1920s (Berdoulay and Chapman 1987).59 Proponents of this school of thought held that natural geography in no sense determined the path of economic, social, and political development; the environment could best be seen as providing a range of constraints and possibilities that could lead to various outcomes, depending on the needs, designs, and activities of human inhabitants. Innis’s discussion of how the wheat economy in western Canada was developed in relation to settlement and the railway draws on a possibilist frame of reference.60 He argues that what made the greater efficiency of the railway possible was “improvements of communication, elaboration of banking skill, and a comparatively effective educational system. The cumulative effects of these factors were shown in the marked and rapid increase in the production and export of wheat” (Innis 1930b, 374). This pattern of development, Innis suggests, had important implications for the organization of urban and rural life in western Canada. As a result of factors such as the scattering of settlers on narrow belts straddling the railway lines, the occupation of land that could be “broken into cultivation with the least possible difficulty,” and fieldwork based on seasonal fluctuations, “family life and social life were temporarily broken up” and “community life was seriously handicapped.” The growth of towns was made possible by “railroads and government subsidies.” This meant that urban centres in western Canada were characterized by “periods of feverish real-estate speculation and the heavy charges for long street-car lines, electric light lines, gas pipes, telephone lines, and sewerage systems” (375). Nevertheless, Innis maintained that life in these communities was improving: “Branch lines have been built giving greater accessibility. The automobile, the telephone, and the radio have contributed to a solution of the problems. Better

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living conditions have followed the improvements of transport and communication. The wheat pool has developed as an evidence of a new solidarity” (376). the fur trade in canada

The Veblenian frame of reference that Innis deployed in his analysis of the western Canadian wheat economy was very evident in The Fur Trade in Canada, which was completed in the late 1920s and finally published in 1930 (Innis 1930c). In conventional periodizations of Innis’s work, this text is considered to be not only the quintessential expression of his staples research but also the culmination of his decade-long research on the fur trade. Moreover, it is viewed as a discrete entity, standing apart from Innis’s other writings. But when examined from the standpoint of Innis’s emerging engagement with the North, The Fur Trade in Canada takes on a different meaning. Rather than culminating a phase of Innis’s work, it takes its significance from how it fits into his unfolding exploration of how the North was linked to the process of industrialization. And rather than standing alone as a monumental work, it is apparent that it very much owed its shape and orientation to a number of Innis’s other key works of the period. With its exhaustive discussion of the history of the Canadian fur trade, it fulfilled its original purpose as “an introduction to the analytic study of that industry which appears in another volume, The Fur Trade of Canada (Toronto: 1927)” (MacIver 1930, viii). In doing so, it built upon the drainage-basin framework that Innis (1930c, xvii) had originally developed in A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Mirroring the earlier work, in addition to extensive discussions of how the fur trade developed within the St Lawrence and Hudson Bay drainage systems, it addresses how “the territory of the Pacific Coast drainage basin” was organized (Innis 1930c, 203–6). However, unlike A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Innis’s later monograph gives detailed attention to the development of the fur trade within the Mackenzie River drainage basin. Indeed, an entire section of the book (comprising a single comprehensive chapter) is dedicated to the Northern Department of the h bc, which had a special interest in “the Mackenzie river district.”61 While the first ten chapters of The Fur Trade in Canada draw on the drainage-basin approach originally laid out in A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the final two chapters (breaking rather

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abruptly from the preceding text) are framed in terms of the Veblenian industrial model that Innis first articulated in his study of the western Canadian wheat economy.62 Building on that model, Innis shifted his attention from wheat growers in western Canada to the decline of the hbc fur-trade monopoly in the Northwest, attendant upon “the effects of machine industry,” the spread of the price system, improvements in transportation and communication, as well as increased competition. In line with his reflections on developments in the Mackenzie River drainage basin, Innis (1930c) remarked on the “increasing accessibility of the northern areas” (369) and the gradual disappearance of the northern frontier (378). In terms of Innis’s ongoing engagement in the North, chapter 11, entitled “The industrial Revolution and the Fur Trade, 1869–1929,” is of particular interest. As with chapter 12 (“Conclusion,”) it was evidently slated for revision as Innis continued to add references in the margins of the published text.63 The new references “to books or articles most of which had appeared after the publication of the work in 1930” were primarily about how the North was becoming more accessible as the process of industrialism and settlement accelerated (Innis 1956g, xix). This indicates that the first edition of The Fur Trade in Canada was by no means a fixed and stable text; rather, it was a work that was still in progress. Innis used the additional material to provide more depth and substance to his examination of how new forms of competitive practice based on the price system and breakthroughs in transportation and communication were quickly superseding the established fur trade. w e s t e r n h u d s o n b ay

The Veblenian theme of how machine industry transformed Canada’s northern region was increasingly evident in Innis’s writings in the aftermath of his 1929 trip to northwest Ontario and western Hudson Bay.64 From the outset, the excursion had a sense of culmination about it. Prior to his departure, as Innis noted in a letter to D.A. MacGibbon of the Board of Grain Commissioners (Innis’s former ma advisor at McMaster University): “My plans are still unsettled but I want to see the Hudson Bay some time this summer to round out my knowledge of the north country – perhaps I should say to complete my introduction to the north country.”65 In July, Innis took the train from Toronto to Chicago, where he spent some time with

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his wife’s family in Wilmette, Illinois. He then took the Chicago and Northwestern Transportation Company train through Wisconsin to Duluth, Minnesota. From there he had a berth on the s s Noronic (of the Canadian Steamship Lines) to Fort William and Port Arthur, Ontario, where he spent a day visiting grain elevators. He then proceeded by train to Sioux Lookout, his jumping-off point for visiting the booming gold-mining area of Red Lake, Gold Pines, and Hudson. After spending a few days in the region, Innis travelled by train via Sioux Lookout to Winnipeg, where he spent a week. He then went to The Pas on the c nr line, with a side trip to Flin Flon to visit mining installations. From The Pas he took the Hudson Bay Railway (hb r) to Churchill (travelling the last few kilometres by automobile truck as the line had not yet been completed).66 Innis was obliged to stay in Churchill for over a week as he was waiting for the s s Ungava to arrive, which was to take him into the area of western Hudson Bay. Once aboard the Ungava, he travelled to Chesterfield Inlet (just south of the Arctic Circle) and back, visiting a number of settlements, including Eskimo Point and Repulse Bay, en route. He then returned to Toronto from Churchill by rail. In the wake of his visit to Hudson Bay, Innis (1930h) expressed his thoughts in “The Canadian North,” an article published in the University of Toronto Monthly. Unlike his earlier article on the Mackenzie River drainage basin, his reflections this time were on a much vaster area and brought to bear a more sophisticated theoretical approach, drawing on the Veblenian framework that he had begun to develop in 1928. Indeed, by bringing up to date how wheat production and distribution had been transformed through new technological developments, Innis solidified the Veblen-based analysis of western Canadian agriculture that he had offered two years earlier. And, in line with the industrial model that he had brought to bear in the final two chapters of The Fur Trade of Canada, Innis gave particular attention to how the mining industry coupled with the expansion of railways was transforming the western Hudson Bay region. He underscored the fact that “no country ha[d] swung backwards and forwards in response to such factors as improvements in the technique of transport, exhaustion of raw material and the advance of industrialism with such violence as Canada” (163). In particular, he noted: “The Klondike gold rush witnessed the first impact of recent industrialism on that portion of North America above the frost line. The whirlwind character of the attack was an indication

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of its success and of its failure.” Innis was of the view that the advance of industrialization was also evident in western Hudson Bay and that the year 1929 was a landmark in this respect: “If any one date may be chosen as epoch-making from the standpoint of the development of the Canadian north it will be that of the year just closed. It must be regarded as an historical height of land” (166). Not only was the last spike for the h br driven at Churchill on 3  April 1929, but the first train, the Muskeg Limited, arrived on 13  September. Moreover, during the season, eighteen hundred pounds of wheat were shipped from Churchill to the United Kingdom, a shipment of goods was received in Churchill, “the first shipment of gold-bearing quartz was made from Term Point by Churchill,” and for the first time an ocean steamer (the Ungava) “visited Wager Inlet and the Repulse Bay” (166). Innis attached particular significance of the h br – significance that went well beyond the increase of traffic and the improvement of techniques of transport. Indeed, in his view, “it was the keystone of the arch in the development of northern Canada.” The construction of the h b r would “bring together the hitherto isolated and independent areas of the Northwest.” Having established to his satisfaction that the year 1929 had been a transformative one, Innis hazarded some predictions regarding what was in store for Canada in light of what had just transpired in the Northwest. However, he suggested that the changes would not occur automatically: “The opening of the new Northwest” would generate problems that could only be solved “by the application of all the scientific knowledge we can command” (Innis 1930h, 167). To this end, he underscored the need to draw upon the experience of explorers and the knowledge of scientists in a broad range of fields, including geology, biology, anthropology, medicine, geography, and meteorology. Consistent with his view that individuals working in various fields could draw on their knowledge and experience to help develop the North, during his 1929 trip Innis made a point of writing up brief life stories of a number of the persons whom he met.67 More broadly, during this period Innis increasingly turned his attention to biography and the role that key figures had played in developing civilization within Canada.68 These included a number of explorers, traders, and entrepreneurs whose activities had a significant impact on the North, including Peter Pond (Innis 1928a, 1928b, 1930a), Sir William Mackenzie (Innis 1933b), George Stephen (Innis 1933c),

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and Hugh Bart Allan (Innis 1930d). Innis not only sought to help write these figures into existence (largely as heroic individuals who left their indelible mark on the Canadian firmament) but also, in some instances, to retrace their space-binding activities (e.g., Peter Pond’s 1778 traversing of the Methye Portage). Innis’s penchant for not just writing about momentous events but also helping to enact them was particularly evident in his 1929 trip. He not only witnessed the final stages of the building of the h br but he was also in the area when its first train arrived and was on board the s s Ungava, which made the first round-trip from Churchill to Repulse, bringing with it the first cargo of gold-bearing quartz from Term Point. Moreover, he spoke at length with engineers and scientists about the problems that the region was confronting,69 later sharing this knowledge with the readers of professional publications (Innis 1930e, 1930f, 1931a). Innis’s trip to the western Hudson Bay area had a profound impact on how he viewed Canada’s North. This was evident in the fact that the “Northwest” was now described as the “new Northwest.” What made it “new” was the fact that the hitherto scattered territories of Canada’s northern tier would now be brought together within a starkly different configuration. This also signalled the death knell of the Northwest frontier as the entire region was now potentially open to development through new, innovative forms of industry and transportation. Echoing his previous conclusions about the development of the Mackenzie River drainage basin, Innis stressed the importance of the new Northwest’s increasingly becoming the object of scientific knowledge, with a view to generating practical solutions to the problems that were likely to arise. He also conjectured that there would be closer relations between western Canada and the Atlantic provinces – as well as between Canada and England – a mitigation of the “blighting influences” of centralization, and “closer integration and more … balanced growth” in both northern Canada and Canada as a whole (Innis 1930h, 168). t h e at l a n t i c p r o v i n c e s

Given his contention that the developments of 1929 had brought the new Northwest closer to the Maritimes, it was not surprising that the following year Innis made an extensive visit to the Atlantic provinces. In 1930, he went by car with R.H. Fleming from Toronto

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through eastern Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia to Sydney, Nova Scotia. From North Sydney they took the ferry to Port au Basques, Newfoundland, and then the Newfoundland Railway to St John’s. After spending a few days in St John’s, they went by boat (the Kyle) to visit Twillingate, St Antony, Belle Isle, and Battle Harbour in Labrador.70 Innis made further visits to Labrador and Atlantic Canada in every year from 1931 to 1936 and again in 1938.71 Innis deployed a strikingly similar framework in his analysis of economic development in Newfoundland and Labrador, largely based on a research visit he had made to Atlantic Canada in the summer of 1929.72 In this case, however, he did not draw on the organization and technology of the railway directly but, rather, on an ancillary development he had discussed in detail in his A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway – namely, the steamship. In Innis’s view, the steamship and the railway were connected as part of a seamless web of transportation, forming a link between Great Britain and the Far East (via the land mass of Canada, including its Great Lakes system) (Innis 1923, 138–9). Indeed, as he pointed out: “It is significant that the first ocean-going steamer to visit Wager Inlet and Repulse Bay [in Hudson Bay] and to take out the first cargo of wheat from Port Churchill to England in 1929 was a sealing vessel chartered from Job. Bros. of St. John’s and manned and captained by men from Newfoundland.” In Innis’s view, by virtue of the Newfoundland steamships linked to the newly constructed (1929) h b r, “the great gap through Hudson Bay between Western Canada and the Labrador will be bridged largely through the experience and skill of the fishermen of Newfoundland and the Labrador (Innis 1930e, 17). He also viewed the steamship as an important feature of local transportation and the fishing industry, particularly in Canada’s coastal regions. In this regard, he viewed the emergent network of steamships as transformative for both Newfoundland and Labrador, affecting a broad range of staples industries: “The rise of the steamship in the sealing industry, in the fresh salmon industry, in the fur trade and in the fishing industry has proved a strong foundation on which future expansion will be firmly based.” He further noted: “The improvement of transportation brought in by the steamer tends to lead to further encroachment in the territory in which the schooner formerly reigned supreme” (141). In the same way that the railway had been transformative for Canada as a whole, the steamship came to provide crucial linkages within the

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Newfoundland and Labrador region. Moreover, by virtue of the new division of labour between Prairie agricultural interests, the h br, and Newfoundland mariners, Canada would be part of a new transAtlantic shipping network, as it were, a northern variant of the Canadian Pacific Ocean Steamship Services that he had outlined in A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (Innis 1923, 170). shifting the northern focus

As Innis began to wind down his travels to Canada’s northern areas in the early 1930s, his engagement with the North took on a different focus. As we now examine, Innis shifted his attention from producing knowledge about the North through direct experience based on travel to producing knowledge about the North through summarizing and commenting on published texts that discussed the region. Beginning in 1934, he wrote a series of eleven review essays on books about the Canadian North and Arctic regions for the chr .73 In these writings, the North was no longer defined by the contiguous drainage basins of the Mackenzie and the Pacific Coast along with Hudson Bay but, rather, by South-North vectors of transportation and communication, a schema introduced in Select Documents vol. 2 (Innis and Lower 1933). The North now became an object of knowledge, in dynamic relation with the emergent, material “North” that was undergoing change through settlement and development.74 Mirroring the way that explorers, settlers, industrialists, and government officials had defined and filled in Canada’s northlands, the review essays served to shape and fill in the public’s understanding of the North. Innis not only produced a substantial body of commentary on what had been written about northern Canada and the Arctic region but he was also largely responsible for setting in motion the first major research initiative on Canada’s northern tier. In his capacity as designated reviewer of books on northern Canada and the Arctic for the c h r , he had come to realize that a volume on Canada’s North comparable to T.A. Taracouzio’s Soviets in the Arctic (1938) was sadly lacking. Unable to convince either Richard Finnie, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, or Sidney Fay of Harvard to undertake a study of this kind, Innis, in his capacity as chair of the research committee of the newly formed Canadian Social Science Research Council, was able to secure support from the Rockefeller Foundation for what came to be called the Arctic Survey.75

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Finally, Innis’s visit to the Soviet Union, made possible by his attendance at the 220th anniversary of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (held in Moscow and Leningrad in June 1945), allowed him to broaden his understanding of issues pertinent to the North.76 On the one hand, mirroring the body of work that he had assembled about Canadian northern development, this involved an analysis of the South-North vectors that had been formed in the Soviet Union and the way in which Soviet agencies generated and deployed knowledge about the North. More broadly, in line with the theme of the 220th anniversary celebrations, Innis was keenly interested in why the Soviet Union had been so successful in elevating the status of science, whereas Canada was lagging far behind in this regard. To this end, by better understanding the nature of the Soviet infrastructure of science, Innis, in his capacity as chair of the research committee of the Canadian Social Science Research Council, came to be in a better position to shape and direct research studies on the Canadian North. And continuing the practice of learning by travelling that he had honed in the Canadian North, Innis made a point of visiting a number of northern communities in the Soviet Union so that he could better understand the local circumstances. By virtue of his quartercentury involvement with the North, then, Innis had become not only one of the leading figures in Canadian northern scholarship but also one of the Canadian North’s strongest advocates.77 t h e c o l l e c t i o n a s n o r t h e r n m i c r o - n a r r at i v e

That Innis was preoccupied with the North is evident in the contributions to this volume, which, to a large extent, follow the chronology of the northern micro-narrative we have outlined. They provide insights into how Innis engaged with the North, the extent to which issues related to the North articulated with his other concerns, and the pertinence of his work to our understanding of contemporary northern Canada.78 They not only reveal the multiple identities that underpinned Innis’s northern encounter but also serve to highlight a broad range of concerns not usually associated with the designations of “political economist” and/or “economic historian” that have come to define his background and outlook. As the contributions to this volume reveal, Innis did not simply view the North through the prism of economic history and political economy that he had acquired at the University of Chicago; his

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emergent perspective was very much shaped and inflected by his prolonged engagement with South-North relations. The first two chapters of the volume – those by Barry Gough and Paul Heyer – situate Innis’s interest in the North in relation to his early research on the fur trade and on exploration, with particular reference to the activities of the nwc. Both chapters underscore the fact that Innis’s interest in the North originated in his examination of how the nwc was able to nurture and develop a trading network extending from Montreal into Canada’s Northwest. Gough examines how Innis’s early fur-trade research, culminating in the publication of a series of writings on the subject, was linked to both his emergent intellectual concerns and his broader career path. According to Gough, by virtue of Innis’s intensive study of the n w c – with its focus on the activities of its founding partners – he was able to generate a highly innovative “trans-regional framework for Canadian history.” By examining Innis’s work on the fur trade against the backdrop of broader currents of research and interpretation, Gough is able to provide detail and nuance to our understanding of him as an economic historian. Heyer gives particular attention to Innis’s biographical study of one of the nwc’s founding partners, namely, the “wild and woolly character” Peter Pond. According to Heyer, Innis’s examination of Pond can best be understood within the ambit of a broader body of work that he produced on memoirs and diaries (including his own).79 He stresses that Innis’s work on Pond could be seen as an example of writing “history from the inside,” an approach that is not usually associated with Innis, who is better known for his examination of the “material, technological, and broad social conditions of history”(71). Examining Pond in this manner allows him to add a much needed human dimension to The Fur Trade in Canada. And by retracing the fur-trade routes of Pond and his contemporaries, Innis, according to Heyer, was able to vicariously experience early encounters of white explorers with the Canadian North. In chapter 3, Matthew Evenden uses the fur trade (in its decaying stages) as a backdrop to Innis’s engagement with the North, demonstrating the centrality of Innis’s “northern vision” to his development as a scholar, with particular reference to how he saw the North as “a frontier for industrialism and a binding agent for national unity” (74). Emphasizing how Innis’s emergence as a “public intellectual and nationalist thinker” (74) was bound up with his engagement with the

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North, Evenden draws attention to Innis’s pedagogical concerns, his many public talks on northern issues, and his close relationship with members of the elite responsible for northern development. He deftly traces not only the antecedents and the consequences of Innis’s northern excursions but also the race and gender biases that informed his encounters. Moreover, drawing on both Innis’s field notes and his early publications, he traces how Innis’s views on the North evolved between his visit to the Mackenzie River basin in 1924 and his trip to western Hudson Bay and the eastern Arctic in 1929. While Innis’s focus in the first journey was on the decaying fur trade, water transportation, and settlement, during his second excursion he was preoccupied with how mineral development and new energy sources (such as gasoline and hydro-electric power) were the centrepieces of a “new industrialism,” which would have an impact on such practices as lumbering, hunting, agriculture, and transportation. In this respect, (inspired by Veblen’s evolutionary framework) Innis viewed the North as “a crucible of development, a land where growth and decay marked progress” (87). Drawing on the framework developed by Evenden, George Colpitts (chapter 4) examines the “confidential” memorandum written by Innis, which was submitted to the Federal Wildlife Advisory Board in January 1925. Echoing Evenden’s views on how Innis’s informants in the North were primarily “men of authority,” Colpitts discusses how, in a similar manner, Innis relied on the perspectives of managers, government agents, and missionaries in drafting his memorandum. This resulted in a report that was not only biased in favour of dominant interests (particularly those of the h bc) but that also reflected the commitment of the federal government to extending governance through regulation to the North, with particular reference to the area of wildlife conservation. It is followed by Innis’s memorandum itself (chapter 5), which spells out his emergent views on the conservation of northern wildlife. In chapter 6, Liza Piper provides further insight into Innis’s northern travels by comparing them to those of his doctoral student and junior colleague Irene Biss, who visited various sites in the North during the summer of 1935, conducting research on hydro-electric power and energy. Through her examination of how Biss’s travels were constrained because of her gender, Piper is able to highlight the extent to which Innis’s status as a man allowed him to gain access to installations and persons that were unavailable to Biss. Piper also

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draws attention to striking differences between the two researchers with regard to what they observed, by virtue of their divergent research agendas and the time frames of their visits. While Innis was interested in how resources of the Precambrian Shield could be exploited as part of the industrialization of the North, the insights into this issue were limited by his preoccupation with the “fixed transportation corridor” of the railway (most notably the Hudson Bay Railway) and by the fact that air travel was still in its infancy during his two visits to the North in the late 1920s. By contrast, Biss was able to use new transportation technologies (particularly aviation) that were available in the 1930s to quickly and efficiently get to places in the North that Innis had been unable to visit because of time constraints. Moreover, by virtue of her focus on fuels and energy, Biss was able to provide insights into the workings of the new industrial economy that surpassed those of Innis. Indeed, as Piper persuasively argues, Innis’s most trenchant discussion of the new industrialism (in Settlement and the Mining Frontier) likely owed a good deal to Biss’s research on new technologies and power sources. In chapter 7, Jim Mochoruk examines Innis’s much neglected contributions to the understanding of northern Manitoba. In doing so, he places Innis squarely in the tradition of “northern boosterism,” comprising “earlier exponents of Canadian nordicity as a defining trait of Canadian identity” (151). At the same time, he stresses that Innis’s views on how the North could be developed were quite temperate compared to those of most boosters of development for northern Manitoba. In particular, unlike other advocates of building the Hudson Bay Railway in Manitoba, Innis’s assessment of the project was highly critical. According to Mochoruk, while Innis fully acknowledged how northern Manitoba was characterized by “cyclonic development,” he also saw “the creation of well-balanced, multifaceted industrial economies in the North [as] a very real possibility” (154). And, more generally, Mochoruk argues that Innis believed that advances in northern transportation technology created the conditions for “a new northern-oriented unity for Canada – a unity that would finally include Newfoundland” (159). In chapter 8, Jeff A. Webb picks up the theme of Innis’s contentions about the northern Manitoba/Newfoundland interplay, but this time from the perspective of Newfoundland and Labrador. Indeed, it can be argued that Innis’s visit to northern Manitoba/western Hudson Bay in 1929 and his visit to Newfoundland and Labrador

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in 1930 can be viewed as a tandem; the “new industrial model” that congealed for Innis upon his trip to Manitoba/western Hudson Bay – building on his earlier visits to the Mackenzie delta and the Yukon – became his point of reference for examining Newfoundland and Labrador. The internal combustion engine that was transforming the North found its equivalent in the gasoline-powered boats that were having an impact on the fishing industry. Indeed, by virtue of the way that motor boats made it possible to become prosperous quickly, Innis likened Newfoundland to “a regular Klondyke.” In the same way that a new industrial complex based on new forms of transportation, energy, mining, lumbering, and pulp and paper was emerging in northern Manitoba, it was Innis’s view that the use of the steamship in the fishing industry, the fresh-frozen salmon industry, and the shipping of cod and furs would result in the expansion of business from the coast inland, bringing in its wake “the development of electric power, pulp and paper, and mining” (181). Mirroring his views on how the Canadian North was in the process of reconfiguration through the “second industrial revolution,” Innis’s own knowledge of the North was consolidated through his extensive visits there. Following the completion of his travels to northern Canada in the early 1930s, Innis sought to reconfigure knowledge and public opinion about the North through engaging with a broad range of texts about northern affairs. Specifically, as William Buxton demonstrates in chapter 9, this took the form of a series of eleven review essays written for the c h r in an eleven-year period from 1934 to 1944. The books selected for review spanned a broad range of genres, including memoirs, biographies, government reports, travelogues, and novels, as well as both amateur and professional historical studies. As Buxton points out, Innis’s conception of what constituted the North was grounded in his notions of how the northern tier of the country was being transformed through the introduction of new technologies and through new vectors of communication and transformation linking southern metropoles with the northern hinterland. Hence, among the books that Innis reviewed were those on Newfoundland and Labrador as well as those on Blanc Sablon on the lower north shore of the St Lawrence River. He also included among the books he reviewed those that dealt with the northern reaches of other countries, such as Denmark, Norway, and the Soviet Union. As Buxton points out, the review essays had the goal of not only strengthening the fixity of time and space in relation

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to northern exploration, travel, and settlement but also of challenging and correcting books on the North (such as those written by Vilhjalmur Stefansson) that could potentially detract from the formation of a well grounded public opinion about northern matters. In terms of the evolution of Innis’s engagement with the North, the review essays are significant for the linkage they provided between his early work on the North (largely based on his travels) and the two major North-related initiatives that he undertook during the last decade of his life – namely, the Arctic survey and his reportage on the Soviet North. They also demonstrate how Innis broadened his activities as a “publicist” for the North by producing material for a broader literate audience. In chapter 10, Jeffrey D. Brison emphasizes how the Canadian Social Science Research Council’s Arctic Survey originated in the “foundation of knowledge about the North” (214) that Innis had established in his review essays on books with a northern focus for the c h r . Brison gives particular attention to the role played by the Rockefeller Foundation in shaping and directing the survey and on how the project was linked to its efforts to establish “a continental network of knowledge production” (217). In this respect, as he demonstrates, the support the foundation gave for the Arctic Survey “was part of a broader escalation of support for the cssrc under Innis’s leadership” (216). More generally, he draws attention to what underpinned the emergence and development of the Arctic Survey, namely, a concern with an increasing American presence in the Canadian North as well as with the potential threat posed by the Soviet Union’s development of its northern regions. Brison shows how Innis’s involvement with the North was connected not only to his long-standing work on behalf of American foundations (Fisher 1999) but also to his leadership in establishing Canadian funding agencies. In chapter 11, which deals with the Arctic Survey, William Buxton shows how the survey was specifically related to Innis’s efforts to develop a Canadian research project along the lines of Taracouzio’s Soviets in the Arctic, which Innis had enthusiastically reviewed in the c h r . To this end, Buxton examines how Innis was able to manoeuvre within the Canadian Social Science Research Council to bring the survey to fruition. He also draws attention to the extent to which Canadian government agencies controlled and directed the research projects that made up the Arctic Survey, and how this initiative was bound up with efforts of the Department of External Affairs

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– through the C SSR C – to procure information about how the Soviet Union was developing its northern territories. In this sense, Buxton provides a broad account of how Innis’s efforts dovetailed with those of government agencies and helped the latter realize their goals. Chapter 12, also authored by Buxton, examines how Innis’s growing interest in how the Soviet Union was developing its northern regions informed his own visit to Russia in the summer of 1945. Indeed, the trip to Russia could be seen as an extension of his ongoing involvement with the Arctic Survey, as Innis’s fact-gathering activities were very much at the behest of the Department of External Affairs. More generally, Buxton discusses how Innis sought to share his views on Russia after his return to Canada and how his Soviet experience catalyzed the University of Toronto’s efforts to initiate a program in Slavic studies. He reveals Innis’s willingness to gather strategic information for state agencies, belying his image as an opponent of those academics who engaged in this sort of activity. In chapter 13, Sergei Arkipov and William J. Buxton discuss Innis’s visit to the Soviet Union from a Russian perspective, with specific reference to how his travels in Russia served as the backdrop to his claims about the coming of “the second renaissance” (the convergence between Western and Byzantine civilizations due to the recent movement of Greek philosophy to the East). They situate Innis’s visit to the Soviet Union in relation to a body of literature produced by writers who had written memoirs about their travels in Russia. Their focus is on Innis’s observations of life in the Soviet Union set against the backdrop of his more detailed, social science-based knowledge of the economics, politics, and culture of the Western world. They conclude with some reflections on why Innis’s plea for a reconciliation between the Soviet Union and the West – rooted in the notion of the “Second Renaissance” – fell on deaf ears and why his message might find more resonance in today’s world. The final two chapters in the volume examine the implications of Innis’s work for understanding the contemporary North. Rather than focusing on Innis’s own experience with the North per se, they draw upon Innis as a resource for making sense of current developments in northern Canada. Based on her experience as executive director of a Yukon community-based environmental group, Shirley Roburn (chapter 14) finds Innis’s work to be helpful in understanding how patterns of empire/centre-periphery relations have been structured. Drawing on the work of Julie Cruikshank’s Innis-inspired

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studies of the oral tradition, she examines the shift from “‘spacebiased’ models of centralized power” towards “‘time-biased’ structures of more decentralized governments”(303). Echoing some of Innis’s precepts, she calls into question Western-based “witnessing practices,” which, in their efforts to generate an “objective” account of events, largely suppress more traditional storytelling practices. Overall, she believes that Innis’s frame of reference allows northern researchers to critically appraise their own practices. In chapter 15, Peter van Wyck explores what it means to “witness” the North, based on his experience as a researcher at the Eldorado Mine site on Great Bear Lake and on a boat plying the Mackenzie River. His account not only provides rich and insightful observations about the North but also captures the sense of bewilderment he felt in “confronting an ambiguously located wilderness” (329). He also explores, in a reflexive manner, how it might be possible to develop an “emphatic geography” based on “chorographic procedures” that could “capture a more subjective dimension of spatiality in specific rather than in generic terms” (345). To this end, during the course of his travels, he engaged with the field notes made by Harold Innis, who, in the summer of 1924, had visited many of the same places. Echoing the views of Shirley Roburn, van Wyck finds that Innis, through the template provided by the staple, was able to “understand the relation between economies of the margin and central cultural forms; empire and the cultural logics of hinterland(s)” (336). At the same time, van Wyck ultimately finds Innis to be a disappointing interlocutor: the dialogue for which he had hoped never materialized. By virtue of what van Wyck concludes to be “an all-too conventional optic of an indifferent euro-ethnography” (347), Innis was able neither to see nor to comprehend Aboriginal people who were “not reliable witnesses for his territorial ethnography” (347). Van Wyck’s encounter with Innis did little to shed light on how an “emphatic geography” might be developed and, indeed, only added to his bewilderment. All the same, his reflections on Innis allow us to better appreciate some of the blind spots in Innis’s views on northern life. Chapters 14 and 15 add a contemporary dimension to our understanding of Innis’s engagement with the North. While van Wyck scrutinizes the interplay between Innis’s reflections on the North and his own experiences of some of the same terrain that Innis visited, Roburn uses some of Innis’s insights on centre-margin relations to

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examine recent policy-formation processes in the Yukon. They serve as a complement to the other chapters in the volume, which collectively explore various aspects of Innis’s northern engagement. t o wa r d s n e w m i c r o - n a r r at i v e s

Aside from shedding light on Innis’s micro-narrative of the North, it is hoped that the historiographical approach that frames this volume will contribute to Innis scholarship more generally. It points a way out of the impasse created by using his major “staples” publications – particularly The Fur Trade in Canada – to periodize the development of Innis’s thought and practice. Not only has this led to a bias in the way that his writings and activities have been situated in time and space but it has also meant that topics of importance to Innis – such as the North – have largely escaped the attention of commentators. The virtual absence of the North in discussions of Innis is symptomatic of the overriding tendency to view the development of his oeuvre in terms of a grand macro-narrative anchored in his most heralded staples monographs. Our intent is not to supplant the grand staples-based narrative with one centred on Innis’s engagement with the North; rather, it is to demonstrate the extent to which the North was one of Innis’s major concerns and, by so doing, to show the fruitfulness of looking at his intellectual practice in terms of a micro-narrative that is not reducible to the conventional “staples monograph” periodization that has informed discussions of Innis’s contributions. This opens up the possibility of conceiving of the development of Innis’s thought in terms of intersecting micro-narratives, which, when taken together, allow one to better define the overall contours of his complex and variegated trajectory.80

notes

1 The 1944 meeting of the Royal Society of Canada was held at the Université de Montréal from 29 to 31 May under the presidency of Mgr Olivier Marault, rector of the university. 2 The J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal was established in 1927 with an endowment by Tyrrell to the Royal Historical Society of Canada “for the furtherance of the knowledge of the history of Canada.”  To this end, “the medal

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is awarded for outstanding work in the history of Canada.” See http:// www.rsc.ca/awards_JB_Tyrrell_Historical_Medal.php (viewed 26 February 2010). 3 A.M. Lower, Remarks on the Presentation of The Tyrrell Medal to Harold Innis, uta -i r, B1972–0003/03 (06). Lower himself was awarded the medal in 1947. 4 While Lower was not listed as contributing to the first volume, he had in fact worked with Innis in preparing the text. 5 Lower was not comfortable with dedicating the entire volume to Tyrrell as he had known him “only in a very casual way.” Lower to Innis, 5 February 1936, q ua–lp 5072, box 7, file 74. When Innis informed Tyrrell of the dedication, the latter wrote to him: “[I would be] delighted to have your book on the economic aspects of Canadian mining dedicated to me and my wife and I will both read it with interest and regard it with pleasure. In writing such a book you will have started on a subject that has never been adequately treated, except possibly from the standpoint of coal and iron mining, and, I look forward to much valuable information being made available to bankers, financiers, politicians, etc.” Tyrrell to Innis, 18 April 1934, u ta–n s, B1983–0001/005 (03). 6 For instance, while travelling on the Hudson Bay Railway to Churchill in the summer of 1929, he reported that one of his informants believed that Tyrrell was wrong about the “mineral belt at Chesterfield” (Innis 1929e, 40). 7 His travels were very much tied in with his teaching. For instance, one of the main purposes of his trip to the Mackenzie River delta was to collect material for a seminar he taught in 1924–25 to fourth-year commerce and political science students entitled “Research in Economic and Social Studies Relating to the Dominion of Canada.” The main product of the seminar “was a series of theses dealing with the fur trade in all its details, and affording practical and valuable information on all phases of the industry.” The theses (which were eventually drawn upon in the preparation of Innis’s Fur Trade of Canada) were made available through the Extension Department at the University of Toronto. See “Theses on Fur Trade Are in Great Demand,” Toronto Star, ca. 5 January 1926, uta–ep, A1973–0018. For his part, Innis not only collected material from his travels for the seminar (which he taught on three occasions) but also from government agencies (such as Natural Resources Intelligence Service) and the private sector (such as the Canadian Fur Auction Sales Company Ltd.). 8 For instance, Innis showed little enthusiasm for Clara Rogers’s suggestion that they travel together in Labrador, mapping the Magpie and Romaine rivers, and ultimately declined on the basis of his academic workload

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(although he did manage to find time to visit Western Hudson Bay and northern Manitoba during the same summer). See Rogers to Innis, 20 April 1929, u ta–pef, A1976–0025/004 (04). See also Matthew Evenden’s chapter, this volume. 9 Both were members of the Royal Canadian Institute in Toronto as well. 10 In this footnote, Innis referred to a recent biography of Tyrrell (Loudon, 1930). 11 Tyrrell to Innis, 21 September 1932, 26 September 1932, uta –pef, A1976–0025/004 (13). While it is commonly assumed that Innis abandoned his interest in the fur trade with the publication of The Fur Trade in Canada, he continued his work in the area well into the 1940s. In particular, with the availability of new archival material, Innis evinced a strong interest not only in helping to consolidate sources but also in encouraging reinterpretation in line with the changing archival milieu. See, inter alia, Innis (1933a, 1934a, 1940a, 1943a). 12 Evidently sharing Innis’s disdain for supporters of Stefansson, Tyrrell wrote: “One comes away from it with the impression that it is fortunate that Stefansson did not have a couple of thousand men under him instead of a couple of dozen, or the disasters might have been terrible.” See Tyrrell to Innis, 11 January 1933, u ta–pef, A1976–0025/004 (14). 13 Innis continually emphasized the importance of Pond’s having been the first white man to traverse the Methye portage (near Waterways, Alberta), which linked the Mackenzie River drainage basin with that of Hudson Bay. 14 Innis provided Tyrrell with a copy of the Special Report of the Hudson Bay Company of 1788 and called his attention to a pertinent passage in Bigsby (1850). See Tyrrell to Innis, 21 September 1932, 26 September 1932, uta–pef, A1976–0025/004 (13). 15 Tyrrell had arranged for the visit to help him in the editing of journals made by Philip Turnor, who had travelled in the region in the spring of 1789 to survey and to report on forts for the Hudson Bay Company as part of its effort to counter the rival Montreal-based traders. Tyrrell invited Innis to accompany him. When Reverend W.A. Macdonnell, the secretary of the Prince Albert Historical Society, got wind of their visit, he invited them to make addresses to the Society Archives. See Macdonnell to Tyrrell, 4 July 1933, pahs. Evidently unfazed by a potential conflict of interest, Innis (1935a) reviewed the edited collection of the journals of Samuel Hearne and Philip Turnor that Tyrrell (1934) had produced for the Champlain Society. 16 Mary Quayle Innis, Personal Diary, 14 September 1933 entry, uta –ifr, B1991–0029/057 (06).

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17 As Mary Quayle Innis noted in her diary: “All but Anne [Innis] went to Mr. Tyrrell’s farm. Saw apple picking, walked through orchard, packing, poultry, turkeys, view of Rouge Valley, garden, gold fish pond. Had supper. Drove us back with a bushel of apples & 3 doz. Eggs.” See Mary Quayle Innis, Personal Diary, 16 September 1933 entry, uta –ifr, B1991–0029/057 (06). 18 These included A. Brabant (Hudson Bay fur-trade commissioner), Hon. Charles Dunning, F.C.C. Lynch, T.W. Harris, Hoyes Lloyd, Charles Camsell, Oswald Sterling Finnie, R.A. Hay, C.W. Jackson, (both of Department of Mines and Resources) and F.H. Peters (surveyor general, Topographical Survey of Canada), and Mr Johannsen (representative of the fisheries board). 19 These included Anne Tamminen, Rachel Harris (daughter of T.W. Harris), Clara C. Rogers, and Edmund W. Bradwin of Frontier College. 20 These included L. Romanet, acting district manager, Mackenzie River District, H BC; W.A. Phillips, hbc, Herschel Island; Harry Ford of Noonala; and L.A. Learmonth of the hbc. 21 These included George E. Mack, captain of the ss Nascopie, Mr. Johnson (divisional engineer of the Hudson Bay Railway), Andy Anderson of the Hudson Bay Railway, Northern Aerial Minerals Exploration pilot Duke Schiller, and Gilbert La Bine of the Eldorado Company. 22 These included Reverend C.E. Whittaker, Alf J. Vale, Bishop I.O. Stringer, Bishop Arsène Turquetil of Chesterfield Inlet, and Reverend Edmund J. Peck. 23 These included Guy Blanchet of Dominion Explorers Ltd. and Major J.B. McLachlan. 24 These included Griffith Taylor, Alf Erling Porsild, Dr G.J. Wherett, Andrew Moore, T.H. Manning, and Trevor Lloyd. 25 These included filmmaker Richard Finnie (son of O.S. Finnie), and painter Gwen Dorrien-Smith (travelling companion of Clara C. Rogers). 26 These included Gladys Wrigley of the Geographical Review and George Brown of the Canadian Historical Review. 27 These included Inspector Arnold Anderson of Peace River, Alberta; Sergeant Joyce of Chesterfield Inlet, n w t; and Colonel J.T. Wilson. 28 These included “Old Man Kennedy” of Peace River, Alberta; Dr J.A. Sutherland of Fairbanks, Alaska; Jack Costello of Red Lake, Ontario; Dr Walton of Churchill, Manitoba; Eskimo Harris of Churchill, Manitoba; Harold Wilson of Nipissing; Hilda Rose of Fort Vermilion, Alberta; and Husky Harris of Wager Inlet. 29 The instructors at the University of Chicago who influenced Innis included Frank Knight (for his views on the role of institutions for economic

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advance), J.M. Clark (for his accelerator principle and the notion of overhead costs), and C.S. Duncan (for his views on how the physical relationship of a commodity related to the marketing structure that developed in relation to it), and Chester Wright, whose areas of expertise were trusts as well as American economic history. Innis was also first exposed to the ideas of Thorstein Veblen during his Chicago studies. See Berger (1976, 88); Neill (1972, 20–34); Watson (2006, 111); Matthew Evenden (chapter 3, this volume); and George Colpitts (chapter 4, this volume, n6). Perhaps most important, his doctoral dissertation on the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway (written under the direction of Chester Wright) provided Innis with the drainage-basin framework that was so central to his subsequent encounters with northern Canada. Combining insights from the University of Chicago thinkers with those of researchers such as W.A. MacIntosh (1923), Marion Newbigin (1926), and N.S.B. Gras (1922), Innis was able to develop a geographically informed approach to the study of civilization that was nourished by his northern experience. 30 “Representing North.” Of the thirteen articles in the collection, only that of Ray (1996) referred to Innis’s contributions to northern scholarship (recognizing The Fur Trade in Canada as a classical work that addressed the role that Aboriginal groups played in the fur trade and the impact that the fur trade had on Aboriginal culture). 31 Since Innis does refer to the St Lawrence River’s extending through the Great Lakes systems as a major artery of the fur trade, commentators have taken this to be the defining feature of his work. However, unlike Creighton, Innis is at pains to demonstrate that the Hudson Bay drainage basin was at least as important historically as was that of the St Lawrence River. 32 A variation of this line of criticism against the “Laurentian thesis” was developed by writers in Atlantic Canada during the 1970s. However, in this case, Innis was considered to be complicit with his student A.S. Saunders in developing “a new orthodoxy.” A forceful critique of the Maritimes scholars has been developed by Bickerton (1999). 33 Some of the works that do address how insights from Innis can be brought to bear on the North include Watkins (1977), Tussing (1981), Usher (1981), and Valaskakis (1981). 34 For instance, as Chad Reimer (2009, 110) writes: “The Laurentian thesis can be seen as a regionalized application of the staples thesis, the arrival of which in full form was marked by the 1930 publication of Harold Innis’s Fur Trade in Canada.”

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35 The three major biographies of Innis have been singled out for attention because they provide one of the main points of entry for how Innis is understood. 36 For instance, in concluding his discussion of Innis’s History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Heyer (2003, 7) notes that “the C PR study harbored the seeds of what would become Innis’s next major project and perhaps crowning achievement in political economy [i.e. The Fur Trade in Canada].” 37 These include his enduring connections to his classmates and teachers at McMaster, his relationship with Mary Quayle Innis, and the positive aspects of his First World War experience (such as the close ties he developed with his fellow soldiers, the friendship he developed with the Jossien family, as well as his growing interest in culture and his exposure to European civilization). 38 In particular, only his “Mackenzie River” trip has received much attention. However, since it is almost always linked to The Fur Trade in Canada, it has been distorted, misrepresented, and privileged over his other trips. 39 In a Hegelian sense, the process of industrialization in the North represented the “Aufhebung” of the fur trade, which was preserved and transformed within it. 40 Indeed, the dominant historiography of Innis’s thought can be viewed as a variant of the “hedgehog” way of thinking so eloquently described by Isaiah Berlin (1953). In this case, the “one big idea” that supposedly dominated Innis’s thought was the “staple,” particularly in its fur-trade guise. By framing Innis in this manner, commentators have for the most part given little attention to other aspects of his thinking. We are suggesting, rather, that Innis could be more appropriately viewed as a “fox,” which knew many things and did not seek to reduce the world to a single, overriding idea. 41 This formulation can be viewed as an adaptation of Jean-François Lyotard’s (1984) reflections on historiography, as articulated in The Postmodern Condition. However, departing from Lyotard’s use of “grands récits” (grand narratives) to describe dominant legitimating myths, we use the grand narrative to refer to how Innis’s biographers have sought to make sense of the history of his thought and practice. Correspondingly, the notion of a micro-narrative does not refer to a local narrative in the sense used by Lyotard but, rather, to a specific aspect of Innis’s concerns and activities. Works that attempt to apply Lyotard’s ideas to history and historiography include Megill (1995) and Berkhofer (1995). 42 In focusing on the North as a micro-narrative, we are placing it in the foreground against the background of other micro-narratives (such as

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travel), which are drawn upon when relevant. Arguably, a broader, more complete biographical study of Innis would weave together the various micro-narratives, shifting them between foreground and background and revealing their intersections. 43 As Innis, in his capacity as editor of Part II, wrote: “Part II represents an attempt to … rewrite the introductory sections of A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway” (Innis and Lower 1933, 409). 44 While acknowledging its “comprehensiveness,” Heyer (2004) finds it to be a “challenging read” because of its “exhaustive data mongering.” 45 Innis (1932, 1) noted that “the spread of Western civilization over the northern half of North America … was dependent on the geographic characteristics of the area and on the character and institutions of the people involved.” 46 See Evenden (chapter 3, this volume), quoting MacIver to Falconer, 18 March 1924 (copy), u ta-pef, A1976–0025/002 (09). 47 Born and raised in Walkerton, Ontario, John Alexander Long (1891– 1957) was an alumnus of McMaster University (class of 1915), where he had earned a degree in theology. Like Innis, he had enlisted to serve in the First World War and served in the signal corps. At the time of the trip to the Mackenzie delta, he was teaching at North York Collegiate. He went on to do a PhD in educational testing at Columbia University and later became director of the Department of Educational Research at the Ontario College of Education. 48 It is not clear what route the two travellers took to return to Toronto. They evidently needed to return to Edmonton by 1 September 1924. Presumably, they took the quickest route possible to travel from the mouth of the Mackenzie River to Edmonton and then returned by train to Toronto. See Innis (1924b), (1925a), and “Toronto Men Leave for Arctic in Canoe: One Goes for Pictures: The Other to Study Conditions,” Toronto Star, 11 June 1924, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/004 (11). 49 The Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913–18 was the Canadian government’s first large-scale effort to explore Canada’s Arctic region and to collect scientific and ethnographic information about the area. It was divided into two parties, a northern party led by the explorer Vilhjamur Steffansson and a southern party led by zoologist R.M. Anderson (accompanied by anthropologist Diamond Jenness, who conducted ethnographic research in northern coastal regions). Even though the expedition was mired in controversy for years afterward (largely because of the loss of twelve lives during its first year), it resulted in the discovery of a number of new islands, the collection of thousands of specimens, and the production

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of valuable new data. It served as an important point of reference for those interested in the Canadian North, including Innis and Tyrrell. 50 He also made use of the theses on the fur trade that his students had produced for the final-year seminar of the commerce course. See note 7. 51 The Fur Trade in Canada was simply intended to supplement the earlier work by providing the historical background to it. As R.M. MacIver (1927) noted in the preface to the text: “This history of the fur trade here presented by Doctor Innis may be regarded as an introduction to the analytic study of that industry which appears in another volume, The Fur Trade of Canada (Toronto, 1927). The two volumes together are intended to give a conspectus of the industry, showing against the historical background the social and economic significance of the fur trade, the role which it has played and continues to play in the general life of the country” (General Preface to Innis 1927b). 52 Like Veblen and Frederick Taylor, Innis was very much an admirer of the engineering profession and its ethos of efficiency. 53 A native of Fergus, Ontario, William K. Gibb (1905–?) graduated in 1926 with a degree in commerce from the University of Toronto. He served on the executive of the Commerce Club, where he likely came to know Innis, who was its faculty advisor. He lectured for two years in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Toronto, worked as a commercial specialist in Ontario high schools, and was later the secretary-treasurer of the Toronto Conservatory of Music. 54 Gibb (1934) later wrote an article describing the trip. 55 Innis and Lower (1936, 171). As Innis emphasized, “an interest in this subject has followed from a study of the Canadian Pacific Railway” (ibid.). In effect, the portion of his study dealing with the Yukon and the Kootenay can be seen as an effort to deepen and enrich his analysis of Canadian development based on the drainage basin systems that he had initiated in his first major monograph. 56 It is instructive that his first two major trips involved visits to areas marked by the decay of the fur trade, on the one hand, and by the decline of mining, on the other. In both cases, Innis was not just studying history but witnessing it unfold. 57 Innis drew on the observations he made during this visit in the preparation of Settlement and the Mining Frontier. 58 As Innis (1956a [1933], 88) stressed, the wheat economy was closely tied in with mining: “The mineral industry … has been in some sense a byproduct of wheat production. Railways built to produce and transport wheat were responsible for the discovery and transport of minerals.”

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59 In this sense, Innis was very much influenced by the possibilist tradition as practised by Vidal de la Blache and Brunhes. See Vidal de la Blache (1922) and Brunhes (1910). He noted in a 1935 letter to geographer Isaiah Bowman that he had fallen under the influence of the “French.” See j h ua - b p. That Innis was quite conversant with French cultural geography was evident in some of the book reviews that he wrote in the 1920s: Innis (1924a), Innis (1928c), and Innis (1929b). 60 As he wrote in the introduction to the 1929 volume dealing with the period from 1497 to 1783: “The spread of western Civilization in North America has been largely determined in its nature and extent by the character and the number of population, by the institutional equipment of the European settlers, by the advance in the industrial arts known to them, by the cultural background of the Aboriginal peoples of North America, and also by such interrelated geographical circumstances as climatic conditions, geological formations, topographical and physical features, and flora and fauna” (Innis 1929d, xxix). 61 His inclusion of such an extensive discussion of the Mackenzie River drainage basin might well have been part of Innis’s effort to address “the incompleteness of that volume [the CPR history]” as well as of other related works (Innis 1930c, xvii). 62 And while the first ten chapters can be viewed as a lengthy introduction to the previously published Fur Trade of Canada (1927), – their original intent – the final two chapters, with their focus on the then current state of the fur-trade industry with specific reference to the Mackenzie River drainage basin, can best be viewed as a coda to that work. 63 These items were eventually incorporated into a posthumously published version (Innis 1956f). 64 Indeed, Innis (1929e, 13) referred to Veblen explicitly within a broader discussion of economic development in the region: “Economic theory – Veblen – distinction business and industry. W [Wesley] Mitchell – business– room for study of industry – see Homan volume [likely Homan 1928]. – sketch rise of industrial revolution and spread. Factors responsible for location and importance power coal, iron. Effect on population, food – wheat – clothing, hydroelectric. Minerals, tropical products, sky-scrapers – light and air for office workers.” 65 Harold Innis to D.A. MacGibbon, 12 June 1929, uta –ir, B1972–0003/ 003 (3). 66 An automobile truck is an automobile that has been adapted to run on a railway track. 67 These included Major J.G. MacLachlan, Captain George E. Mack, and the Honourable Frank Oliver. See also Mochoruk (chapter 6, this volume).

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68 See also Heyer (chapter 3, this volume). 69 Innis’s plea for the application of scientific knowledge to solve emerging problems – with a view towards “more sane and balanced growth” – was likely linked to the violence inherent in the advance of industrialism that he had detected. This “whirlwind” style of development to which Innis referred can be seen as a precursor of his notion of “cyclonics,” which became one of the key components of his theoretical arsenal during the late 1930s and early 1940s as he began to situate Canadian tendencies in relation to the global economy. See Innis (1940b, 1956b [1943], 1956c [1938]). Because Innis’s notion of cyclonics was not worked out until the late 1930s, it does not figure prominently in the contributions to this volume. The chapters that address Innis’s engagement with the Canadian North (as well as Newfoundland and Labrador) focus on the period of Innis’s field trips (1924–33), when he had not yet articulated a fully developed theory of cyclonics. 70 In his travel diary, Innis did not record any entries about his trip after his visit to the outports of Newfoundland and Labrador. Later that year he published a newspaper article giving an account of the fishing industry in Labrador (see Innis [1930h] and Webb [chapter 8, this volume]). It is instructive that Innis considered Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Quebec north shore to be part of Canada’s North, as evidenced by his commentary in the reviews that he wrote for the Canadian Historical Review. In his view, the North was not defined exclusively by geographical coordinates but, rather, by vectors of transportation and communication to more southerly points. In this sense, because Newfoundland was a crucial port of call for ships exploring and servicing the Arctic and Hudson Bay area, Innis included it and the contiguous areas of Labrador and the Quebec north shore as the North. 71 His visit to Nova Scotia in the summer of 1934 was in conjunction with his membership on the Royal Commission on Provincial Economic Inquiry (Nova Scotia 1934). 72 Innis’s visit to the Atlantic region marked an important milestone for him as it meant that he had been able to visit the Canadian North by four different routes, namely, the Yukon and Mackenzie rivers, Hudson Bay, and the Labrador coast. See “Overcoming Barriers in the Frozen North: Engineers Triumph over Problems Presented by Frost on the Ground,” Toronto Star, 25 April 1931, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/003 (2). 73 Altogether, the number of books reviewed by Innis for the Canadian Historical Review totalled 157. See Buxton (chapter 9, this volume). 74 There is some evidence that the impetus to the series of review essays came from chapter 11 of The Fur Trade in Canada (see p. 25 above).

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Among these notes were not only numerous citations of earlier books about the North but also references to recently published books on the North, some of which appeared in Innis’s review essays for the Canadian Historical Review. These include Graham (1935) and Klengenberg (1932). 75 The results of the research project were published in a series of articles in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. See Brison (chapter 10, this volume) and Buxton (chapter 11, this volume). 76 In conjunction with this visit, Innis made a point of learning about the progress that the Soviet Union had made in developing its northern regions. This information was made available through his widely circulated “Russian diary,” through articles, and through media interviews. See Buxton (chapter 12, this volume) as well as Arkhipov and Buxton (chapter 13, this volume). 77 Indeed, Louis-Edmund Hamelin, the founder of nordicity studies, refers to Innis as a “savant historien” who influenced his conception of both “géographie” and “nordologie.” Professor Hamelin notes that, in his studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Laval University (under the direction of Georges-Henri Lévesque) beginning in 1945, he took a course with Albert Faucher, who had done his master’s degree under Innis’s direction at the University of Toronto. In the course, Faucher made use of Innis’s Fur Trade in Canada as well as some of his other writings on staples. According to Hamelin, Innis’s knowledge of the North was comparable to that of both Griffith Taylor and Vilhjamur Stefansson (he had attended lectures given by the latter at a Summer school at McGill in 1947). Hamelin also acknowledged how a scholarship he received from the Canadian Social Science Research Council in 1949 (through a program that had been instigated by Innis) had been important for his career: it had allowed him to study at the Institute of Alpine Geography in Grenoble (which culminated in a doctoral degree). On a personal note, he participated in an international excursion to Spitzberg (now Svalbard) with Innis’s son Donald, who, in his view, showed a great interest in the High Arctic islands. Finally, Hamelin notes that he cited two of Innis’s articles in Nordicité Canadienne (1975). E-mail from Hamelin to the editor, 7 July 2012 (translation mine). 78 Most of the chapters in this volume are revised versions of papers presented at a S S HRC-funded workshop entitled “Harold Innis and the North” held at Concordia University in August 2007. 79 For instance, as Mary Quayle Innis notes: “In his continuous search for first hand material, he asked his old uncle, George Henry of Galt, to write an account of his homesteading in Manitoba in 1870. He encouraged the

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old man, provided him with scribblers and pencils and at last he did write a short account. It was very inadequate and H.A.I. made out a list of questions for his uncle to answer. The resulting material was published in the second volume of Select Documents and the mss is in the U. of T. library.” See Mary Quayle Innis, “Notes on H.A.,” 6, uta –ifr, B1972– 0003/036 (07). For further evidence of Innis’s interest in biography, see pp. 27–8. 80 For instance, the micro-narrative of Innis’s engagement with the Canadian North can be seen as part of a family of micro-narratives that comprise his involvement with other regions of Canada, including western Canada and Atlantic Canada. If one examines how these three micro-narratives intersected, a broader picture of Innis’s regional-related activities could begin to emerge. For western Canada, the key elements in the periodization of Innis’s engagement would be his 1915 experience as a teacher in Landonville, Alberta, A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1923), “Industrialism and Settlement in Western Canada” (1930b), “The Wheat Economy” (1956d [1939]), and his edited work, The Diary of Alexander James McPhail (1940c). For Atlantic Canada, the central elements would be his numerous visits to the area during the 1930s; his membership on the Nova Scotia Royal Commission, Provincial Economic Inquiry (Nova Scotia 1934); and the publication of a number of writings on the Maritimes and Newfoundland/Labrador, culminating in The Cod Fisheries (1940b). For the post-1940 period, given that Innis’s northern engagement shifted towards the cs s rc-sponsored Arctic Survey, on the one hand, and towards the study of the Soviet Union, on the other, this portion of the North micro-narrative could be productively juxtaposed to his ongoing efforts to found and strengthen Canadian research councils (with American foundation support) and to situate Western civilization within a global context, as evident in his “History of Communication” manuscript (a two-volume version edited by William J. Buxton, Michael Cheney, and Paul Heyer will be published by Rowman and Littlefield).

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1 Innis and Northern Canada: Fur Trade and Nation barry gough

The story is told of a young undergraduate who, when attending the initial class of a course in Canadian economic history at the University of British Columbia offered by the renowned historian W.L. Morton (a visiting professor from Manitoba), listened for an hour to the great man pouring forth the details of the mating life of Castor canadensis: how the beaver, a monogamist, lived and worked; how many young were born each spring (usually two to five); how the kin were weaned in six weeks though remained with the family for about two years, then were forced to migrate to new swamplands, there to dam and divert water so as to make new ponds and new homelands and colonies; and so forth. Beaver, he said, mate at two years; and they reach full size, about that of a water spaniel, weight fifty-five pounds for the male, in about two years. The lecturer went into such details that the said student approached the learned one at the close of class and queried if indeed she were in the wrong course. Was it a course in mammals? she asked. No, answered Professor Morton, the life history of the beaver is the introduction to Canadian history.1 Elsewhere, in another class at the same university, another student was listening to the noted resident geographer Lewis Robinson holding forth on the subject of regional geography. How do you define “North” in the Canadian, or for that matter the world, context, he queried? Was the North all lands lying beyond the termination of Yonge Street, say beyond Barrie, Ontario? Was it above sixty degrees North latitude? Was it a place of the boreal, or northern, forest? Did it include the tundra and the taiga? What were its northern limits?

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Or was the North really a state of mind? Or, as novelist Gabrielle Roy put it in Where Nests the Water Hen (1961), an easier place to love, especially the farther north you went?2 These anecdotes are recounted here as expressions of the types of questions posed in universities in the late 1950s at precisely the same time that Harold Innis’s work on the history of the Canadian fur trade was having its greatest impact on Canadian scholarship. Morton was no strict devotee of Innis and was, in fact, more concerned about the odd duality of regionalism and nationalism in our state formation. Robinson was attracted to the issues of how you define a region. He got to the essence of regional geography and, by definition, the limits of a region – for when the commonality of things, that is, those things held in common, broke down you were out of the region, so to speak. When the commonality existed you were within the region. Both Morton and Robinson were beholden to Innis for having helped shape the Canadian consciousness about the roles of staple trades, resources, routes of trade and transportation – indeed the commercial structures of Canadian life – that were part of the Canadian ethos. Three decades before these considerations, Innis had just completed his PhD dissertation on the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was published in London as A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1923). He had undertaken this as a postgraduate student at the University of Chicago, a rising, prominent institution for the study of economics, social studies, and social policy. It was a world of academic heresy by some standards. Social Science was then foreign to Canadian academic minds, but it was stealthily gaining ground. Innis sought to define his own intellectual and academic space. In his early years in academic life at the University of Toronto Innis tended to see himself as a geographer, an economic geographer, in fact. In later years he migrated more to economic history and to political economy (in those days the two were happily coupled and the journal of record was the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science). There always seemed to be an institutional home for his talents and his interests. In those same years, it may also be remarked, postgraduate study was virtually non-existent in Canada, the most formidable influences being those of Oxford, Cambridge, London, Paris, and Harvard. Innis had been exposed to English university curricula when he was, for a brief time, a student in the Khaki University in England, itself a stopgap

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measure for British Empire soldiers who were returning to civilian life. Innis had been at Vimy Ridge. He had been wounded. He had found brotherhood among his fellow privates. He had seen the mud and sorrow of France, and these had intensified his consciousness about being Canadian.3 For a time, on returning to his native land, he had considered law as a prospect, diverting the attention of his hard-shelled Baptist parents from their desire that he take up the ministry. One thing had led to another, and before long he had completed that Canadian Pacific Railway history dissertation, had landed an appointment in the University of Toronto as a lecturer, and was soon casting about for other topics about which to write. His war experiences, then his academic background at Chicago, made him uniquely fixed to observe Canada first from the outside and (as it were) from a distance and then, on return, to examine the vitals of its corpus. Innis was aware that these years, the 1920s, were years of particular Canadian self-consciousness. This decade saw the flowering of a distinctive Canadian foreign policy, the emergence of the (British) Commonwealth of Nations, and the definition of Canada’s dominion status. War had shaped this new ethos and strengthened Canadian individuality among the Britannic nations. It was more than that, as Innis knew. The recent war had been, as he expressed it, a means of showing Canadian commitment to causes of civilization as opposed to barbarity. His Christianity in those days was muscular and pronounced; later, it faded out into agnosticism. No drum-and-bugle imperialist, Innis was familiar with Canadian mores and values, and the experience of farm days in his childhood and youth, his sense of rural community, and his appreciation of the fellowship of humankind (for he mixed easily with others) were blessed with other qualities that made for great, even-handed, and unpretentious scholarship: inquisitiveness, dedication to task and the necessary labour, and a zeal for worthy academic causes. He exhibited academic integrity of the highest order, not least because he did not follow the easy paths of research but exploited sources hitherto untouched. In this regard, he continued to search for new materials for fur-trade scholarship: the flurry of articles and other publications that he produced on the history of the fur trade, beginning in 1926, shows his constant, persistent attention to that line of historical inquiry. He found in Canadian topics legitimate prospects for works of international scholarship: he was seeking to determine the basis of the Canadian

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fact and to set forth a wide field for the study of Canadian cultural growth. Witness this, which he wrote for the preface to The Economic History of Canada, written by his wife Mary Quayle Innis: “The emphasis [of this volume] has been on the forgotten areas, such as Hudson Bay, the Pre-Cambrian formation and the fishing banks, on the forgotten men, the fishermen, the Indians, the voyageurs, the slaves, the farmers, the lumbermen, the navvies and the miners; on forgotten commodities, the beaver, iron, brandy, rum, cod, square timber, potash, and placer gold, and on forgotten equipment, the canoe, the Durham and York boats, the stern-wheel steamboat and the sluice box.” Innis and his wife were seeking to recover history from a technologically driven and dominating age, one in which the individual had been swamped by technology. Thus: “The interest has been in the continuous labour of Canadians who have shifted the scenes, rather than on those who have been engaged in the unseemly rush to take the curtain call.” Canada might have been a constitutional creation or result, but to Innis it was the product of four centuries of intensive labour. All of Canada, all its regions, reflected the same zeal and sweat of labour. This was the Canadian achievement, though doubtless supported, as he admitted, by the influence of the state, the church, the army, and the entrepreneur. These institutions, he said, reflected “the energy, patience and initiative of a people who did the country’s work” (Innis 1935e, v-vi). This was history from the ground up. And haunting the margins of his work was the American experience – of rebellion against empire, of revolutionary creation, of settlement, of civil war, and of western expansion. What provided Canadian unity of experience? The fur trade offered a start – and it was transcontinental and northern. Carl Berger (1976, chap. 4), the noted historiographer, tells us that, at the time Innis began his research on the fur trade, two scholars had a profound influence on his projected work. The first was William A. Mackintosh, an economic history scholar at Queen’s University, who was then calling for a systematic analysis of Canadian history along the lines being advanced by American scholars. “In the settlement of new countries,” Mackintosh wrote, “one problem takes precedence over all others – the problem of discovering a staple product for a ready market. The world makes a path to the door of those regions fortunate enough to possess such a product and all commodities of other countries are obtainable in exchange … So well do young communities understand this fact, that it is almost possible to write the

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history of the settlement of North America in terms of the search for new vendible products” (quoted in Berger 1976, 92). Mackintosh called out the need to identify staple trades, and he also called forth the opportunity to examine beaver, cod, wheat, timber, coal, ores, and other potentially profitable subjects for the student of Canadian political economy. This was Innis’s opportunity. But another scholar, this time a Scot, helped direct Innis in his research, helped steer him towards the role of government in the affairs of Canadian commercial history. This was Marion Newbigin, who had written Canada: The Great River, the Lands and the Men (1926). She had asked why Canada had come to be, and why it was separate from the United States. She had visited Canada in 1924 and had become attracted to the French colonization of the St Lawrence. She wanted to know why it was that Canadian settlement was concentrated in the St Lawrence lowlands and towards the Great Lakes. Modern Canada, to Newbigin, seemed to be an enlarged New France. She wrote that humans can modify the lands in which they dwell but that, elsewhere, they must follow where nature leads. The Precambrian Shield – and human access and passage along its southern margin – became the anchor of transcontinental Canadian empire, one stretching to northern portals and gateways. Access to the sea, so necessary because of the thrust and grain of the land, was coupled with Canadian internal expansion, the latter dependent on staples production and export. Here, in Newbigin, was the source of the Innis argument. It was also the expression of Canadian staple theory, the introduction to Canadian history. Innis had already come to Newbigin’s fundamental argument and, in his own research, had given form and substance to the general argument. Other scholars were working on similar economic themes at this time – Donald Grant Creighton, Arthur Lower, and Gerald Graham, to name three – but it was to the fur trade that Innis turned. He had begun this study as a means of finding the precursor to his railway studies. He wanted – to repeat – to know about the foundations of the Canadian economy and the Canadian state. Like Newbigin, Innis found the earliest substance for his argument in they study of the French fur empire. And, like other Canadian furtrade historians since, he showed the easy shift from French ways to the British ways after the conquest, though he did note how new capital and new talents energized the trade after 1760. The French and the British bourgeoisie, plus the Canadian voyageurs and the

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various Aboriginal canoeists and haulers, worked in harmony in the westward, northward, and southwest quest for new trading partners and allies. Under the French regime there had always been an uneasy balance between the needs of settlement and the attractions of the pays d’en haut. And the old bushrangers of the era of Radisson and Groseilliers in the 1670s held no romance for Innis, who, for the eighteenth century, wanted to know who traded where and when; what commodities were imported and exported, in what volume, and at what cost and profitability; what corporate combinations were made; where profits could be made in new fields; how an abundance of partners would allow for opportunities of geographical exploration; and the like. For Innis, fur traders were work-a-day functionaries in the larger system. Even Peter Pond, the quizzical Connecticut Yankee (of whom more presently) who had been one of those who entered the Northwest trade after the conquest, was referred to by Innis (his biographer) as one of the sons of Martha – that is, as one of the regular traders in the business of furs (Innis 1930a). The beaver business held no passion for Innis, and nowhere do we find him being attracted to the allurements described by Grey Owl (Archie Delaney) or by northern travellers whose journals depicting isolated northern life and/or travels were finding markets in Canada, Britain, and the United States (e.g., Malcolm Macdonald, John Buchan, and George Whaley). Innis’s fur-trade studies were necessarily limited by the embargo then in effect in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (h bca), then in Beaver House in the City of London. These papers were closed, and very few if any exceptions were made to the rule.4 Thus Innis had to search elsewhere, and he found in the vaults of the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa all sorts of treasures, French and English, painstakingly collected over the decades by Dominion archivists, though seldom exploited except for the writing of, say, biographies of the trader, explorer, and capitalist Sir Alexander Mackenzie (who, in 1927, was the subject of special attention for, in that year, Mackenzie King and the Canadian government celebrated the seato-sea project initiated by Mackenzie as an anniversary testament to sixty years of Canadian Confederation). Innis trawled through French and English fur-trade records. Some of these were suggestive of great expeditions of trade and exploration; others were mere dry balance sheets; still others were infertile scraps of correspondence; yet others were records of marriages, or correspondence between

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trading firms, or perhaps even lobbying tracts sent to the British Colonial Office or Board of Trade. All of this was the Canadian trade, the trade based in Montreal, with links to London’s beaver auctions and sales. The rivals to the Canadian trade – that is, the Hudson’s Bay Company (hb c) and John Jacob Astor’s New Yorkbased American and Pacific fur companies, had to be pieced together from secondary sources. Innis had sufficient mounds of documentation in the Archives to suit his needs. From these documents he extracted his articulation of staple theory in the Canadian context; they gave every indication of the Pre-Cambrian thesis of Canadian development, otherwise known as the Laurentian thesis, a concept to which Innis, unlike Creighton, was not completely wed. At the University of Toronto, librarians and archivists aided his work, most notably W. Stewart Wallace, himself a historian of the Canadian fur trade, especially of the North West Company (n w c). That university built up a considerable fur-trade archive, aided and abetted by Innis (Glover 1978). The beaver was a means for Innis to explain history. It was the subject of the staple trade as long as the beaver felt hat was in fashion (until about 1835). It was to Innis an amalgam of economic forces, human activity, and political organization. The beaver pelt was the currency of exchange, the meeting of European “civilization” with that of the Aboriginal peoples of North America, the focus of trade rivalry and corporate wars, the link between metropolis and far frontier, the driving force for new fields and districts of exploration, fort-building and local exploitation, the symbol of new trade allies. The trade was based on Aboriginal, indigenous needs; it linked European markets with interior fur posts and, even further, circuit traders who traded en derouine and freemen. During the 1920s Innis kept up a steady pace in his fur-trade research, with regular trips to the Ottawa archives coupled with occasional summer expeditions to the North. The latter is the subject of other chapters in this volume. Even so, it is important to note here that, like Parkman and Trevelyan before him, Innis believed that history could not be written exclusively from archives and libraries. In 1924 he went to the Mackenzie River basin, travelled in an eighteenfoot (canvas-covered Hudson Bay canoe on the Peace River for the first short leg and then, for the rest of the trip, on the Distributor, Liard River, and D.A. Thomas vessels. He studied the modes of transportation and the places of occupation and extraction. He saw

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the partnership of Canadian commerce and indigenous labour at first hand. He watched the industrial age creep north. As the historiographer Robin Winks (1962, foreword) wrote of Innis, the diary of that trip “infused life into the documents he studied so closely during the next five years. He repeatedly travelled thereafter to make certain he had the feel of a place before he wrote of it, for he knew that there are nuances of knowledge to be gained only by going to the spot and seeing with one’s own eyes.” Two years later he was in the Yukon, investigating mining. The next, 1927, found him touring mines and mills in eastern Canada. In 1928 it was the mining towns of northern Ontario, and in 1929 it was Churchill on remote Hudson Bay. In 1930 it was Newfoundland; and, Labrador. His willingness to submit himself to the rigours of northern travel added special qualities of mind that helped him in his role as historian.5 As Donald Grant Creighton (1957, 59), his biographer, puts it, Innis was a born historian “with a tremendous irrepressible interest in the facts of experience.” Innis was “an integral part of his own northern vision,” as Matthew Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, 92) writes, and he saw the North linked by transportation – barges and tugboats, roads and railways – to the South. It was yet another example, of the parts of Canada being held together by economic purpose and human labour. All during this time a stream of publications poured from his pen and typewriter, all commenting on the nature of the fur trade and of current historical scholarship.6 Northern travel spurred his research. On one occasion the subject might be a comment on the state of Rupert’s Land in 1825 (Innis 1926); on another, a general description or profile of the nwc (Innis 1927a). By 1928 his first piece on Peter Pond appeared in print: the links between Pond and Captain James Cook’s explorations on the Pacific coast of North America (Innis 1928a). Then, shortly thereafter, an article on Pond explained his movements in Montreal in 1780 (Innis 1928b), thus completing, as it were, a sort of flourish leading up to the publication of the biography of Pond in 1930 (Innis 1930a). Soon to follow were discussions about the interrelations between the fur trade of Canada and the United States, of the French fur trade in Canada, and of English mercantilism in regard to the Canadian fur trade (Innis 1933a, 1934a, 1943a). But of all these the Pond biography was the most unique achievement. It is clear that Innis wrote his account of Pond’s remarkable life as a way of explaining the history of the fur trade in the Canadian

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1.1  Innis in canoe on the Peace River, 1924.

Northwest in the first two decades after the conquest of Canada. Here was a man who owed little loyalty to the British Crown, was a Connecticut Yankee of military background, had an interest in First Nations ethnography, and was a master at commercial frontier expansion – specifically in supply and logistics, for which his experience in colonial regiments that fought the French during the Seven Years War had nicely positioned him. Pond, to Innis, was nothing remarkable in the larger order of things: a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. Even so, the very nature of the fur trade and of the search for Aboriginal consumers and trading partners induced Pond’s northwestern pursuits, taking him from one great watershed to another. Pond opened Athabasca, crossed from the Precambrian Shield into Canadian northern waters flowing to the Arctic Sea and, in doing so, worked unnoticed along the margins of the great

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monopolistic rival, the hbc. Through links with Cook’s explorations Pond was defining the Canadian space of the greater Northwest. He was examining prospects of opening trade with the Russians in Alaska and Kamchatka, of acquiring new Aboriginal trading partners in the Mackenzie River area and the western cordillera, and of engaging in rudimentary cartography of the Canadian Northwest. Pond stood last in the line of the old Nor’Westers before the commercial dominance that came in the era of Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, and George Simpson (other figures of interest to Innis). Pond was of an earlier, more grizzled character than the well-educated Mackenzie and was by far the more elusive character when it came to being framed within a biography. But Innis was not deterred by this or by the lack of a great corpus of documentation on Pond’s commercial doings. And to this day his biography of Pond is the only book-length one in print.7 It was, more generally, in the history of the n w c that Innis found able room for his talents and his curiosity. He found fascinating the individual enterprises that made up the larger, tenuous whole or amalgam. The nwc, reflecting internal corporate struggles, was controlled by key shareholders known as partners. From time to time new partners were admitted and other retired. The n w c was an organic association of older interests, Innis explained, the roots of which date to 1776, though first known incorporation is 1779. The object of the nwc was to maximize its profits in the Aboriginal and fur trades; and this could best be done by pooling the resources of various trading, legal, and banking interests by making agreements to exploit the possibilities by districts or departments and to keep rivals at bay. The nwc thus, of necessity, sought monopoly control within geographical areas in which it was dominant, while in the south, north, and far west it persistently faced rivals. Over time, this gave the Nor’Westers a characteristic dogged determination. Unlike their hb c opposition the nw c never enjoyed the security of a Royal Charter. This meant that its business acumen had to be all the sharper and that it had to be democratic – each of the partners had a vote, and although some of the partners had more shares than others, policy still had to be developed along the lines of unanimity and consent. Sometimes capital and the number of partners raced ahead of consolidated needs: when, in 1804, the New North West, or xy, Company, headed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, rejoined the n wc upon the death of the powerful Simon McTavish, there was an

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excess number of partners to be employed. This had two consequences: (1) a new attempt to find new districts of trade and new Aboriginal allies and (2) the correlative necessity of exploration. Thus, as Innis explained, David Thompson, Duncan McGillivray, and Simon Fraser were deployed towards the Rocky Mountains and then sent to find routes through the Continental Divide’s ramparts. Also, the beaver was to be linked with the sea otter: and herein lay the genesis of the Columbia enterprise, the concept advanced by Mackenzie and encouraged by his ally William McGillivray, principal director of the nwc (Gough 1997). The n w c was the precursor of transcontinental Canada, and it came into existence in spite of, or perhaps because of, it great corporate, state-chartered rival. It was a Canadian, not an English, imperial triumph. It foreshadowed what the Canadian Pacific Railway might do in the industrial age. Innis also understood that the fur trade had its own logistical problems. Not only did this bear on the nature of the canoe, or, more correctly, types of canoe (for they could be made from different materials – birch, cedar, and cottonwood) but also on their size. In any event, Innis was among the first to broadcast the importance of the canoe in Canadian history. W.L. Morton did the same.8 According to Innis (1930c, 389): “The development of transportation was based primarily on Indian cultural growth.” The birch-bark canoe was adapted to the demands of the trade. Without Aboriginal agriculture, especially in corn (though he could have added wild rice and maple sugar), and Aboriginal methods of hunting buffalo, from which could be made pemmican (a dried, portable meat), no possible extended transportation network could have been established. The fur trade floated on Aboriginal foodstuffs in Aboriginal canoes. The limits of canoe transportation led to agricultural development in various areas – the lower St Lawrence, southeastern Ontario, southwestern Ontario, Michilimackinac and Lake Michigan, Red River, Peace River, and the Pacific coast. But the canoe was only one development attended to by Innis. Added to it were canals and improved water passages, portages and roads, docks and ports – capital-intensive projects most of them, sometimes requiring finance and credit and long-range planning. The farther inland the trade progressed the more difficult the logistics. Pond needed two seasons to get his goods ready for delivery in Athabasca, and other traders found the difficulties of commercial extension to the point of overstretch perplexing. Try as they might,

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the Nor’Westers never completely made the Columbia enterprise a profitable one as shipping costs and the vagaries of navigation, including monopoly restrictions of the East India Company (which controlled British trade to China), stood in the way of success. In 1821 the nwc was united with the h bc, and the true monopoly of the Canadian trade had been achieved. Thereafter the trade could be rationalized, restructured, and rigidly controlled. London had triumphed over Montreal: the empire had struck back, as it were. By this time, too, the Red River colony had been firmly planted with Scottish “oatmeal eaters,” and this foreshadowed the coming of a greater settlement to the west. And, as agriculture was antithetical to the fur trade, Red River tended to deflect fur-trading interests north. By 1869, and the sale of Rupert’s Land to the British government and then to the Dominion of Canada, the h bc had ended its imperial dominance. Shortly afterwards Canada asserted its influence in the Red River Colony, only to find that Louis Riel and the Métis nation, the true children of the fur trade, opposed the new regime. But the Canadian railway soon succeeded the fur trade, and the old Plains life based on the fur trade, and also for a time on buffalo robes, was swept away. The railway triumphed over the canoe. Before closing, let us note that the intention of this inquiry has not been to question Innis’s research or to examine his results; rather, it has been to appreciate his intentions and to describe, if briefly, his writings. The essence of Innis is as follows. Innis’s work on the fur trade provided a trans-regional framework for Canadian history; indeed, he believed that Canada developed because of geography not in spite of it. Labour linked all the sub-economies of Canada, creating a larger cultural unity. Canada was a logical extension of the fur trade and fur-trade arrangements; it was a successor to the old order of New France. The northern half of North America remained British because of the fur trade. Canada was not a fragile creation, a tenuous link of disparate parts and regions. Instead of there being regional definition and interregional differences there was the countervailing tendency towards unity, based on rivers and the Precambrian Shield. As Berger (1976, 98) puts it: “Confederation was, in a sense, a political reflection of the natural coherence of northern America.” Put differently, the Precambrian Shield, the east-west waterway connections, the production of staples (furs, fish, lumber, wheat), and, finally, the integration of Canada through increasing industrialization

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provided firm determinants of the nation’s historic evolution. That shield extended in a profound north-westerly sweep across the continent to the Mackenzie River estuary and was bounded on the north by north-westerly isothermal lines that determined the limits of the northern forests and, especially, of the canoe birch.9 The canoe men could carry gum but not the birch bark, except for a repair patch. Trade followed the waterways along the southern fringe of the shield, linking the St Lawrence to the Mackenzie; it spread, by great portages, to the Pacific drainage basin. And the last words belong to Innis (1930c, 392): It is no mere accident that the present Dominion coincides roughly with the fur-trading areas of northern North America. The bases of supplies for the trade in Quebec, in western Ontario, and in British Columbia represent the agricultural areas of the present Dominion … “The lords of the lakes and forests have passed away” [quoting Washington Irving] but their work will endure in the boundaries of the Dominion of Canada and in Canadian institutional life. The place of the beaver in Canadian life has been fittingly noted in the coat of arms. We have not yet realized that the Indian and his culture were fundamental to the growth of Canadian institutions.

notes

1 That student was Anne Llewellyn Frisby. 2 That student was the author. 3 His master’s thesis at McMaster University was entitled “The Returned Soldier.” 4 The prime exception to the rule was A.S. Morton, the first to have access, but the extent of access is unknown. I expect his experience ran parallel to that of another historian, Frederick Merk. As he explained, he did not have access to the hbca themselves, the documents’ being selected by him from a manuscript catalogue and brought for transcription to an outside office. His transcripts were censored. He had to rely on other repositories for correspondence related to his field. See Merk (1968, lxi–lxii). The h b c was keen to guard its secrets and protect its stockholders – of this there can be no doubt. In the mid-1960s, when I researched hb c documents at Beaver House, London, I was obliged to observe the rule

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that, at the end of a research day, I would have to leave my notes with the archivist for examination (and, who knows, photocopying); they were returned to me the following morning. Not only did the hb c want to know what I was researching, but it was also maintaining an energetic publishing program open to subscribers: the Hudson Bay Record Society. It suited the h b c’s interest to have its archivist prepare the documents for publication and have a bona fide and highly professional historian (as general editor) guide the search and write the introduction. Innis was never published under the imprimatur of the hb rs but appeared under that of a Canadian parallel, the Champlain Society. W.J. Eccles was unfamiliar with the restrictive nature of hbca access, and to my way of thinking he was overly critical of Innis’s inability to get access (see Eccles 1979). This is not the place to take up the issue, as did Eccles, of the soundness, limitations, and biases of Innis’s work. On these, consult Eccles (1979). See the exchange between Eccles and Hugh M. Grant, precipitated by Eccles’s review (Grant 1981; Eccles 1981). See also Ray (1999). 5 All quotations in this chapter are from this edition. Winks’s foreword has been dropped, sadly, from later editions. 6 In addition to those cited herein, see the bibliography in this book as well as in that of Neill (1972). 7 I am grateful to my colleague Paul Heyer, professor of communication studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, for his insights and assistance. See Heyer (2007). 8 See, for instance, Jennings, Hodgins, and Small (1999, 21). 9 B. papyrifera.

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2 Harold Innis, Peter Pond, and the Fur Trade pa u l h e y e r

When Innis was on his deathbed he began writing an autobiographical memoir. Recently made available through the Canadian Journal of Communication (2004), it will be published as part of the first volume of a two-volume compendium of his “History of Communications” manuscript (Buxton, Cheney, and Heyer forthcoming). The memoir only covers Innis’s life up until 1922, with his history of the Canadian Pacific Railway a fait accompli (it would be published the following year) and his study of the fur trade an emerging project. The memoir is an exercise in self-portraiture – candid in its discussion of his professional life, guarded when dealing with family matters. It highlights those events and individuals from his early years that resonated significantly in his personal rear-view mirror. It is also more lucid than anything he scripted for academic purposes – not a page-turner perhaps, but a unique glimpse into his character, the times in which he lived, and the events, especially the First World War, that not only influenced him personally but that also shaped the first quarter of the twentieth century. Why would he want to write such a personal account at a time when other, seemingly more pressing, projects compelled his attention? After all, few academics, and even fewer social scientists, write autobiographies. Of course, only a handful acquire the requisite fame that would make any of us interested if they did. But in Canada at least, Innis did have that requisite fame. It has been suggested that he wrote the memoir at the behest of his family members, or a least with the intent of providing them with an account of his life as he saw it. If so, they certainly get a rather

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cursory acknowledgment: for example, his wife Mary (née Quayle) is never mentioned by name, receiving only a few passing references as “my wife.” Let me propose an alternate speculation regarding what might have prompted the memoir. The idea could have been partly inspired by Innis’s earlier editorship of autobiographical or diary-type accounts of three intriguing historical figures: Peter Pond (1740–1807), who was engaged in the fur trade; Alexander McPhail (1885–1937), who was involved with prairie agriculture; and Simeon Perkins (1735–1812), an early fish-and-timber entrepreneur in the Maritime provinces (Innis 1930a, 1940c; Innis et al. 1947–78).1 The first of these figures, those of Peter Pond, so fascinated Innis that the same year in which he published his magnum opus, The Fur Trade in Canada (1930), he also brought out Peter Pond: Fur Trader and Adventurer. Although Innis refers to it as his “biography of Peter Pond,” the project is more akin to what might be referred to as a biographical sketch. It deals only briefly with Pond’s early life and postretirement years. Mostly it is a running commentary based on a selection of Pond’s journal entries and other relevant works that provide a basis for understanding Pond’s role in the fur trade from 1773 to 1790, with the period from 1775 to 1790 devoted to his involvement with the North West Company (n w c). While on the subject of Innis and memoirs, and before taking a closer look at his Pond study, let us fast forward to a major project of his final years, The Bias of Communication (Innis 1951). Often seen as a work of macro-history, in other words history viewed in terms of what the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber (1944) used to call “pattern and process.” The Bias of Communication is steeped in citations from epistles, diaries, and memoirs. Some are from individuals long forgotten. Some are from figures with a more enduring shelf life, such as Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Butler, and Ezra Pound.2 Elsewhere, I have documented these citations (Heyer 2004). As source material they represent quite a leap from the hard-nosed data-mongering of Innis’s early years – if you want to know how many spikes, ties, and rails were used in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Innis’s book on the subject will provide answers – to the memoirs of poets. David Black (2003) suggests that Innis’s wife Mary’s humanist sensibility perhaps helped incline him in this direction. Of the three volumes of personal recollections that were edited by Innis, the one by Pond looms as the most relevant for the purposes

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of this collection and perhaps overall. It involves the North and chronicles a number of places Pond visited that would be revisited by Innis 150 years later, during the course of his fur-trade researches. However, the other two merit at least a brief mention. The McPhail project was published, with extensive annotations by Innis throughout, in 1940, the same year that Innis’s The Cod Fisheries was ushered into print. During the 1930s Innis’s staples research led him to consider the cooperative movement on the Canadian Prairies and the establishment of the wheat pools, a project in which McPhail was a major player. However, Innis’s relationship to McPhail goes back even earlier, as is evident in his preface to the diary. McPhail’s colleague, C.R. Fay, was already working on western cooperatives and provided Innis with a letter of introduction to meet McPhail in August 1923. Innis goes on to discuss his meetings with McPhail through to 1931. Innis’s interest in western farming can be traced back to his stint as a teacher in Landonville, Alberta, in 1915. He subsequently maintained a correspondence with the family with whom he stayed. Also, much of Innis’s history of the Canadian Pacific Railway deals with its impact on farm practices in western Canada. Other, more personal interests may have also drawn Innis to McPhail: both men had Scottish ancestry and a rural farm-based upbringing around the turn of the century, and both enlisted in the war, although McPhail remained with the domestic militia while Innis saw combat duty. Sadly, both men would die prematurely and have their memoirs rendered into typescript by their widows. Not only are there stylistic similarities between the McPhail diaries and Innis’s memoir but also Innis seems to have recognized, perhaps unconsciously, a kinship of temperament. Quoting from an uncited source (which Innis was prone to do from time to time), he notes that McPhail was someone who “loathed cynicism, smartness, and pomposity in equal degrees. He admired brains and respected honesty … It was difficult for him to unbend physically or mentally … no use for cards in any form, or any time wasting pastimes except conversation.” From these and other observations Innis then deduces that McPhail “had a strong sense of humour … as well as a hard agnostic bent of mind which resisted emotionalism … He disliked publicity … He read widely, and particularly biography” (Innis 1940c, x–xi, 9 [emphasis mine, since Innis was now headed in that direction). It is not a stretch, I think then, to say that these very traits also characterized Innis himself. On the other hand, Innis had

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another side to his personality, as evidenced in his reflections on army life, involving frivolity (he loved to play cards) and a penchant for crude humour (he enjoyed off-colour jokes). Simeon Perkins was a historically more distant figure whose life overlapped with Pond’s. Like Pond he was a Connecticut Yankee, hailing from Norwich, while Pond came from Milford. Perkins’s reflections, which Innis helped publish in 1948 along with a thirtyfour-page introduction in The Diary of Simeon Perkins, were a valuable source for Innis’s cod-fisheries project. Perkins was, to use contemporary parlance, an “entrepreneurial player” or “wheeler dealer” involved in the fish, timber, and leather trade, both eastward to Europe and southward as far as the West Indies (Innis et al. 1947– 78). His involvement helped strengthen the position of Nova Scotia as an outpost of empire. Perkins also became a lieutenant-colonel in the Nova Scotia militia, and Innis admired his chutzpah during the American Revolution, when he managed to move goods between Nova Scotia and New England while dodging American privateers. This brings us to our primary, and perhaps Innis’s most significant, memoir subject, Peter Pond. In the second half of the eighteenth century Pond was instrumental in establishing trading links for the nwc, an organization from which he would later be excommunicated – or at least forced to sell his interests.3 Pond was the first white man to enter the Mackenzie Basin – before Alexander Mackenzie would claim that honour. According to historian John C. Jackson (whose forthcoming book on western exploration in North America features a chapter on Pond), Mackenzie was an “ungrateful apprentice who stole Peter’s vision of continental geography and greedily claimed the King’s honors in proving it.”4 Innis shared a similar view. Pond was a wild and woolly character – a trader as well a soldier of fortune (who never managed to amass one) who died in poverty. He fought for the British against the French in the Seven Years War, avoided the American Revolution by remaining in the North, and had a notorious temper that led him to kill at least two men, one in a duel, the other under circumstances that possibly led to a trial for which we have no direct evidence. Today there is a growing interest in Pond on the part of historians but, alas, not among Innis scholars. John Watson’s (2006) recent biography gives Innis’s fascination with Pond no shrift at all, nor does he discuss Innis’s work on McPhail or Perkins. These are important omissions, I think, since one of Watson’s avowed goals is to get inside

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Innis’s head. While Pond scholarship has acknowledged the significance of Innis, who in 1930 championed Pond’s cause, to date there has been no attempt to discuss why and how this came about.5 Innis’s Pond book was published in Toronto by Irwin and Gordon. It contains numerous entries from Pond’s “memoir,” set off in quotations marks and followed, after a normal sentence break, by Innis’s commentary. I use the term “memoir” rather than “journal” to characterize Pond’s text since he did not commit his thoughts to writing until he was sixty and retired. Innis also began writing his own autobiographical memoir long after the fact, relying on memory, although had he continued, before his untimely death in 1952, his chronology would no doubt have made use of the journals he compiled during his fur-trade research in the mid-1920s. Innis’s task was not just to highlight Pond’s legacy of trade and exploration in the Canadian North. He also endeavours to assess, and to resurrect to a rightful place, an individual whose contributions have generally been either ignored or deliberately suppressed. Innis’s resurrection of Pond also attempts to counter at least two other biases in most previous studies of the fur trade: the first, that it has been written as an institutional history driven by Scottish entrepreneurs, with most of the credit given to a handful of big names; the second, that Pond was overshadowed by other individuals born in the colonies who made valuable contributions to the fur trade. Alexander Henry was one, and while his memoirs are available, if not acknowledged to the degree that they should be, Pond, up until the time Innis wrote, had been largely forgotten. So strongly does Innis feel about his subject that, in the preface, he refers to Pond as someone who should be regarded as “one of the fathers of Confederation.” Anyone familiar with Innis’s writings will immediately recognize this as an example of his penchant for provocative overstatement in order to draw our attention to the substance of an argument he wishes to make. In this case, that Pond, from the Methye Portage to the Mackenzie Basin, was so all over the map, literally, that if the routes established during the fur trade provided the conduits that laid the foundation for the nation (which Innis argues in The Fur Trade in Canada), then Pond has to be seen as one of the individuals most responsible. According to Innis, Pond was not part of the n w c’s Scottish-born inner circle In other words, like Innis himself, he was socially marginal to the milieu in which he operated. Pond also had rivals and

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enemies who sought to disavow his contribution – the aforementioned Alexander Mackenzie being perhaps the most notable among them. Pond’s chances for posterity were also hurt by his lack of formal education and what Innis calls his “illiteracy.” Barry Gough refers to Pond as “marginally literate,” which might be a more appropriate designation. Pond wrote with full cognizance of the alphabet but gave the impression that he had not been taught basic writing skills. Nor does he appear to have been widely enough read to recall the spelling of many common words (the deciphering of which, in some cases, requires an orthographic leap of faith). We can almost imagine Pond’s voice in our mind’s ear when reading “lake Mishegan,” “We sun imbarkt,” “beaing destatute myself,” “convars with other tribes nor inter-marey,” and so on (Innis 1930a, 36). These examples might also be the result, as was sometimes the case in colonial times, of Pond’s learning his abc ’s as an adult, given the necessity of a career that did not begin until he was in his twenties (following his early training as a shoemaker’s apprentice), a career in which documents, maps, and ledgers had to be understood. In writing this way, late in life and from memory (rather than dictating his reminiscences to someone fully literate), Pond was, in effect, transcribing his own oral history. The result led Pond to be regarded as, to use Robert Fulford’s term, an “unreliable narrator.” As a consequence, most of what he wrote has unfortunately been either lost or destroyed. How trustworthy are his observations? As a way of checking Pond’s reliability, Innis, after presenting and commenting on Pond’s account of his service in the Seven Years War, employs a technique that the nineteenth-century anthropologist Edward Tylor refers to as the “test of recurrence.” Other, formally published accounts of the events described by Pond are measured against his. The degree of corroboration is high enough for Innis to give credence to what Pond has to say about events that occur later, where his accounts are the only record we have. Before Pond journeyed into the Canadian North he went to the upper reaches of the Mississippi, helping in the establishment of an effective trade network. This is a legacy American historians are now just beginning to examine. Innis marvels at Pond’s ability as a facilitator, leader, peacemaker, and amateur anthropologist, especially given his observations on the various tribes with which he came into contact: “Thare amusements are singing, dancing, smokeing, matcheis,

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gameing, feasting, drinking, playing slite of hand, hunting, and they are famous in Mageack” (Innis 1930a, 37). Innis constructs Pond’s initial sojourn into the Canadian Northwest, accompanied by Alexander Henry, from what has survived of Pond’s memoir as well as from Henry’s account. Innis adds several observations of his own on the difficulties of travelling by canoe in that region but does not cite from his own journal in that regard. In 1924, accompanied by John Long, to whom the Pond book is dedicated, Innis travelled by canoe down the Peace River to Lake Athabasca, then by the Slave River to Great Slave Lake before continuing his journey via steamer down the Mackenzie River to Aklavik and the Delta, taking a side trip to Fort Nelson on the Liard River. In 1786, Pond ventured into the Athabasca District as far as Great Slave Lake and the entrance to what would later be known as the Mackenzie River. He had planned to go farther, entertaining the idea, according to Innis, of a route that would take him to the Great Northern Ocean, followed by a return through Hudson Bay. However, he had to return to Montreal the following year for unspecified business reasons and, perhaps, for the murder trial of which we have no record. When Mackenzie arrived in 1787, Innis contends that Pond gave him information, which Mackenzie used to fulfill what were originally Pond’s plans. While acknowledging Pond’s flaws in his capacity as Pond’s first biographer, Innis nevertheless portrays him as courageous, having a good character and leadership skills; and yet, at the same time, he was someone who was proud, sensitive, and unable to make people see the importance of his contributions. To the old cliché that history is written by the victors, we could add that it is also written by those who can write it and those, like Mackenzie, who are part of a dominant inner circle. Innis seems to be arguing that even those individuals who are less educated and privileged can yield insights that are well worth the historian’s consideration. When Innis wrote about Pond, and McPhail, and Perkins, and when he began drafting his own autobiographical memoir, historians did not appreciate these kinds of sources to the degree they do today. In this regard there may have been two Innis’s – no, not the largely discredited dichotomy between the political economist and the media historian. Rather, on one hand, we have an Innis concerned with the material, technological, and broad social conditions of history; on the other, we have an Innis, largely neglected, who was

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interested in what I call “history from the inside” – an approach that acknowledges the role of the individual as a witness to history. His work on Pond was especially important in helping Innis bring out the human element largely absent from The Fur Trade in Canada. This concern is also evident in a series of review essays he wrote for the Canadian Historical Review.6 Towards the close of his life Innis perceived himself not only as a chronicler of history but also as someone who observed one of its defining moments first hand (the discussion in the memoir of his experiences in the First World War is especially telling). And, in retracing the fur-trade routes of Pond and others, Innis experienced part of the relationship between the early exploitation of the Canadian North and the land upon which it took place.

notes

1 Innis edited and wrote an introduction to volume 1, which covered the period from 1766 to 1780. (Innis’s book on Pond was republished by Benediction Classics in 2011.) 2 Innis may not have read Pound’s poetry – a gross oversight according to McLuhan – but he definitely read Pound’s letters and those of John Maynard Keynes. (There is no citation of Keynesian theory in Innis’s political economy, but Keynes’s memoirs find a place!) 3 A concise yet thorough analysis of Pond’s exploits in the Canadian North can be found in Gough (1989). Also in preparation, a biography of Peter Pond. 4 Peter Pond Society Newsletter (2007a, n.p.). 5 Recent Pond scholarship includes a forthcoming biography by David Chapin, part of which I was able to see thanks of Bill Macdonald of the Peter Pond Society. Peter Pond Society Newsletter (2007b). 6 See Buxton (chapter 9, this volume).

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3 The Northern Vision of Harold Innis m at t h e w e v e n d e n

In the spring of 1924, the Mackenzie River loomed large in Harold Innis’s thinking. At the end of the academic term, Innis, a junior assistant professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, would travel the river and begin to reorient his career and scholarship in a northern trajectory. The river would become a point of entry into a new northern vision. Although Harold Innis remains one of Canada’s most celebrated and studied social scientists, relatively little is known of his early career or northern scholarship.1 The limited attention granted to Innis’s interest in northern Canada invariably centres on his field expeditions, which he conducted in the 1920s to investigate the fur trade, mining, transportation, and communications. Innis travelled, with companion John Long, along the Peace, Slave, and Mackenzie rivers in 1924; down the Yukon River in 1926 with his former student, W.K. Gibb; to various towns of northern Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes in 1927; and to Hudson Bay in 1929.2 These four busy summers have been enshrined as mythic instances in the history of Canadian historiography. Donald Creighton’s biography of Innis devotes four pages in a slim volume to the Mackenzie voyage alone. He suggests that the trip marked a turning point in Innis’s personal development: the limping junior scholar, still showing the marks of war in 1924, returned from the North an invigorated, healthy man, no longer in need of a cane (Creighton 1978 [1957]), 61–4; Berger 1986a, 89–90). The North served as a context for the redefinition of self: from ill health to vigorous manhood, from uninitiated scholar to renowned field researcher and economist.

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Parsing this image of Innis and the North – by inquiring into the constructed nature of the idea of the North and Innis’s role in developing it; by asking what Innis sought to learn and earn from his northern experiences; and by considering how Innis’s northern research altered his development as a scholar in the 1920s – this chapter seeks to redraw this mythic instance, to focus the problem of the social creation of nordicity in the context of intellectual biography. Innis imagined the North before arriving there, grafted ambitions onto the region, inscribed ideas in field notes, and represented the North to popular audiences in southern Canada on his return. In the process of creating a northern vision that stressed the importance of the North as a frontier for industrialism and a binding agent for national unity, Innis adopted and refashioned popular ideas of Canada’s northern regions and remade himself as a public intellectual and nationalist thinker. imagining north

In the winter of 1924, Harold Innis began to plan his northern career. Letters fanned north seeking advice about canoe routes along the Mackenzie and the North Saskatchewan rivers. Contacts were made with officials in the Department of the Interior and the Hudson’s Bay Company (h b c ) , with missionaries and geographers.3 In a research prospectus written for R.M. MacIver, his department head, Innis outlined his interest in the settlement of the Peace River region, the fur trade, and mining development. His research was not solely focused on the fur trade at this early stage, as is often assumed (Creighton 1978 [1957]), 60–1). The ultimate goal, he explained to MacIver, would be a book-length study of the Mackenzie River basin; a knowledge of the fur trade would also help his teaching.4 His interest in the fur trade at this time was intimately bound up with the idea of the importance of rivers in Canadian history. Only months before he had corresponded with H.G. Moulton of the Institute of Economics in Chicago about writing a history of the St Lawrence.5 Since the publication of his thesis on the Canadian Pacific Railway the previous year, he had the uneasy feeling that he had begun the economic history of Canada in medias res (Innis 1952, 126–7). While he had analyzed the unification of Canada through the steel rail, he had come to believe that the river networks utilized by the fur trade had established Canada’s original political space.

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Innis’s subject of research was still evolving when he left for the Mackenzie in June 1924. However, two important strands of thought bounded his general approach: one drew on an amorphous sense of nationalism, tinged with northern imagery; another, more narrowly intellectual, was based on Thorstein Veblen’s theories of industrialism. Innis’s attitudes towards nationalism shifted over his career, but in the 1920s they were largely enthusiastic, a product of recent experience and an envisioned future. During the First World War, Innis was appalled by the disregard shown to Canada and Canadian soldiers by the British, and he lost whatever sentimental affection he may have once felt for Britain and empire (Innis 1952, 126). Similarly, while completing graduate school in Chicago, he expressed frustration at the lack of recognition paid to the Allies by the Americans and voiced concern about a growing American arrogance in world affairs.6 By the early 1920s, his disillusionment with Britain and the United States produced a complementary counterpart: an enthusiasm for the growth of Canada as a nation with the ability to create itself as a dominion through internal territorial conquest. The territorial aspect of Innis’s nationalism intersected with a long tradition of treating the North as a site of national imagining. Dating at least to the late nineteenth century and the nationalist tracts of Canada Firsters, an imagined North played an important role in Canadian nationalism, as a defining element of Canada and as a site of national self-realization.7 Contemporaneously expressed in the paintings of the Group of Seven, in popular literature on the possibilities of northern development, and in the mythic presence of northern adventurers such as Vilhamjur Stefansson, the nordicity element of Canadian nationalism complemented Innis’s desire to help Canada realize itself as a nation. Innis’s nationalism thus evolved as a northern nationalism, one that would offset the degrading influence of Britain and the United States by finding Canada’s meaning in its own mythic North. Yet to study Canada as a distinctive place, Innis would have to draw on metropolitan scholarship in order to define his own way of seeing. His analysis of Canadian development drew on discursive theoretical approaches. He built on the example of J.M. Clark on the theory of overhead costs; C.S. Duncan on the effects of the physical properties of commodities on marketing; the teachings of Frank Knight on the theory of value; and debates over the frontier thesis, the model of metropolitan dominance,

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and W.A. Mackintosh’s staples approach (Innis 1952 97–8, 125). Each of these theories yielded important insights for Innis, but by far the most important influence was the scholarship of Thorstein Veblen, particularly his writings on industrialism. Innis had studied the works of Veblen as a student at the University of Chicago and would publish an appreciative review of Veblen’s life’s work in 1929. Veblen’s theory built on an institutional analysis of economic growth. He distinguished between industry and business, as productive and ritualistic sides of capital, and highlighted the growth and decay effects of industrialism, particularly in settings of recent capitalist development. His approach suggested a broad conceptual framework for studying the frontier margins of Canada, where the marks of integration within the world economy stood beside signs of apparent decline. An integral aspect of Innis’s imagining of the North related to career opportunities. Becoming a student of the North meant building a career as well as a new national vision. Although, by 1924, Innis’s thesis had been published and he had three years of teaching experience, he had yet to attain a permanent position, and his annual salary sat modestly at two thousand dollars.8 As he wrote to H.G. Moulton when requesting research funds for the St Lawrence study: “These expenses are slight but so too is a salary at the University of Toronto.”9 And yet, opportunities were opening up. In the fall of 1922 he wrote enthusiastically to his wife in Chicago about “a very great shock.” The President is anxious to appoint a man in Geography, preferably from the University. This would mean a considerable chance to travel at the University’s expense, a chance for rapid promotion and the possibility of establishing a chair. He asked me what I thought about it. It looks very nice especially as it fits in with the general approach which you know only too well. It would be a wonderful chance to open up something that has never been done in Toronto and which needs doing very badly. What do you think about it?10 Mary Quayle Innis had plenty of time to think about the matter that summer as she and her husband travelled around Europe at the university’s expense, investigating geography programs and meeting prominent scholars (Berger 1986a, 90–1). Innis had some misgivings

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about the idea. The next year, while preparing some geography lectures, he admitted: “I know nothing about economic geography.”11 His self-deprecation had its point; despite reading widely in geographical literature, he had no formal training in the field (Dunbar 1985, 160).12 When he left for the Mackenzie it was in the hope that the trip would not only build his research program but also educate him about the geography of Canada and advance his career. Shortly after his departure he received a letter announcing his promotion to the position of assistant professor.13 The Mackenzie voyage and subsequent northern excursions seemed like great adventures to Innis, his family, and friends. Newspapers across the country carried short announcements of his first adventure.14 Friends asked whether he had decided to survey railways now as well as write their histories.15 Weeks before he left he watched Call of the Wild at the local cinema, an adaptation of one of his favourite novels at the time.16 It would have been only a short step to imagine his own jour­ney through Jack London’s optic. Only Innis’s mother lamented the fact that he liked to “take such wild trips.”17 But despite her different opinion, the idea of the North at the root of her concern was the same as the one Innis and his friends shared: the North was a wild place where mystery lurked. And yet, the trip was not as wild as all that. Innis’s route was well known, and the trip was planned cautiously. Innis had been told by the hb c manager of the Mackenzie District that the first section of his trip would be what they liked to call the “‘Tourist Trip’ when an opportunity is afforded to view the midnight sun and … along the huge river natives can be seen.”18 F.C.C. Lynch of the Department of the Interior gave the opinion that Innis’s full route could be made “quite easily.”19 The majority of his trip to Aklavik, in fact, would be made sit­ting on the deck of the ss Distributor and the Liard River, hb c supply ships.20 Unlike an ethnologist’s field­work, which requires that time be set aside to take circumstances as they come, in Innis’s case a long stream of correspondence arranged details in advance.21 A canoe was commissioned in Edmonton, routes worked out, and alternatives sketched. In his pack he included let­ters of introduction provided by officials at the Department of the Interior.22 What made this trip special, and caused his mother worry, was not the phys­ical exertion involved, but the “wild” location in the North. In subsequent years, Innis would receive numerous requests to give public talks on this and other excur­sions to the North, to which he

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heartily complied. During the 1920s the North held a privileged position in discussions about the future of Canada: new Ontario beck­ oned with resource potential, and the Arctic cast a spell of mysterious possibility over media commentators. When Innis packed his gear on the night of 29 May, with his head “in very much of a whirl,” as he put it, he was preparing to become a northern expert for southern Canada. His role would be that of a metropolitan “seeing man,” in Mary L. Pratt’s evocative phrase: an individual who represents the periphery to the centre, who defines and situates the Other through the genre of travel literature (Pratt 1992).23 inscribing north

Harold Innis kept two records of field notes of his northern excursions: one of his Mackenzie River trip in 1924, the other of his 1929 trip to Hudson Bay.24 The typed copies of these notes are eighty-nine and one hundred pages long, respectively. The entries in the notes are uneven. Innis wrote more about particular portions of his voyages and engaged in different styles of note-taking between trips. The first reads like point form and contains reports of conversations and facts and figures about the fur trade. The second adopts a more seamless approach: observations and interviews are embedded within a descriptive narrative of transportation developments on Hudson Bay. Field notes, as anthropologists have shown, are many-sided docu­ ments: they are personal creations, made for future reference; they are inscriptions of cultural interpretation; they contain transcriptions of the views of others.25 A point of entry into Harold Innis’s emergent northern vision is through the making of his observations. The view from Harold Innis’s canoe was not neutral. As each fact from his two sets of field notes is sifted and its source unveiled, a series of unstated conventions of interpretation may be constructed.26 His selection of informants set boundaries of exclusion and inclusion: the views of women are recorded but once; and only three short notes report the observations of Aboriginal peoples.27 One of these notes is followed by the terse dismissal: “But this is difficult to credit.”28 Métis fare more favourably. At least seven male Métis, or “half-breeds,” as he called them, had their views recorded, including a man named Alexander Mackenzie, who claimed descent from the explorer.29 Other individuals, who defied classification, such as the Hawaiian trapper “Fiji Jim,” grace his notes once or twice.30 Yet the

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overwhelming majority of Innis’s informants (by my account over 80 percent) were white men, generally in positions of authority.31 Those whose views were recorded at greatest length included district agents of the hb c, railway company officials, missionaries, and government employees. Innis’s observations were made using a primarily white male optic. The representation of persons in Innis’s notes parallels his approach to infor­mant selection. Women are rarely mentioned specifically. In the instances when their actions are described, they are performing domestic functions or are the vic­tims in stories of male sexual predation.32 If women are nearly completely out of sight, then Aboriginal peoples inhabit the margins of Innis’s notes. They are rarely differentiated by culture group, and their actions are always recorded at a distance: they are viewed on the shore, approaching the supply ship, or across a room.33 There is a definite sense that a barrier stands between Innis and Aboriginal peoples, be it language or a cultural divide. Yet this does not mean that he assumes their unimportance. His later writings on the fur trade place Aboriginal peoples in central positions of importance in the working of the trade (Berger 1986a, 100; Trigger 1985, 38).34 His notes also express sympathy for the plight of Aboriginal peoples, under the pressures of disease and “civilization.”35 In one passage he avers that “Indians [are] better in some ways than white.”36 However, this sympathy and respect is tempered when one considers that Aboriginals are represented as a necessary aid for northern development: “Eskimo of utmost fundamental importance to opening up North,” Innis notes while on Hudson Bay.37 Aboriginal peoples, he writes on a number of occasions, must be “conserved.”38 “Spend less time on cruelty to dumb animals,” he argues, criticizing the Department of Indian Affairs, “and more on cru­elty to dumb Indians.”39 The juxtaposition of Aboriginal peoples with endangered wildlife demonstrates their ambiguous boundary position in his representation: they exist near to “nature,” beyond the reach of civilization, but nevertheless experience the “white man’s” corrupting effects. Against these margins, the central characters in Innis’s notes stand out. Métis appear with greater frequency than do Aboriginal peoples and are favourably described. On a number of occasions he writes that they are “good people.”40 They appear in the middle ground of Innis’s racial representation. They do not need conservation, like Aboriginal peoples, but are prone to the corruption of whites: “Civilization spoils them for hunting.”41 This in-between position is

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not neutral, however; it is tied up in a historical logic. “[The] halfbreed,” he writes, “[is the] forerunner of [the] white man.”42 This historical logic leads to Innis’s main characters: white men. Curiously, he does not note their appearance, as he occasionally does with others. White men exist in his representation as purveyors of ideas rather than as physical beings who must be described. Their ideas command the space of Innis’s notebooks, with little cen­sure or criticism, even when the views expressed appear to contradict his own beliefs noted elsewhere. The only cases in which he criticizes white men are concerned with instances of institutional neglect (as with the Department of Indian Affairs or missionary churches) and moral depravity.43 He blames white men for “corrupting” Aboriginal peoples or for turning to “amber colored wine, slow horses and fast women.”44 While in Red Lake, a “tough place,” he concludes his comments on the base life of the town with the question: “Why not y m c a ?”45 The North, he points out a number of times, can be “very immoral … plenty of v d .”46 Innis’s observations on northern mores suggest his class position and the legacy of his Baptist upbringing (Gauvreau 1995). More broadly, his concerns represent a moral discourse on the North in the early twentieth century that describes the region as a sexually depraved social space (Dubinsky 1993, 154–8). One can only speculate as to the reasons Innis created such exclusions and inclusions in the making of his observations. Unlike an anthropologist, he was not in the practice of “writing culture”: he was in search of economic facts and on a tight schedule. It is likely that such concerns led him to contact local “big men” as a way of cutting to the quick. This, nevertheless, made for important distortions in his method. Predominantly, Innis relied on informants who held positions of authority. Indeed, the planning of his Mackenzie trip was only made possible by the cooperation of Department of the Interior and hbc officials. The relationships formed with such officials lasted long after his journeys. He maintained corre­spondence with figures like T.W. Harris, Indian inspector at Fort Simpson, and depended on the Department of the Interior offices in Ottawa to supply him with maps, lantern slides, and statistics.47 He was not a client of these individuals or insti­tutions, but he reciprocated good will shown. He sent books to Harris on request, sent reprints of his publications to interested officials, and wrote a confidential memorandum on the conservation

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of resources in the Mackenzie basin for the Department of the Interior in 1924 (chapter 5, this volume).48 As a researcher, Innis remained closely bound to state authority and company power. While Innis’s research practice engaged official views, it excluded the views of Aboriginal peoples and women. Neither of these exclusions can be explained simply by noting the kind of information he sought or his hurried schedule. The role of Aboriginal peoples and women in the fur trade was too important to allow for their views to be blithely passed over. Innis’s approach to Aboriginal peoples was bounded by the fact that he lived in a racist culture and saw them through its filters.49 His notes contain numerous complaints by white informants about Aboriginals and their trapping “privileges.”50 His own descriptions suggest ambivalence towards, and distance from, Aboriginals. At least once, his friendships with white men in the North involved him in racist caricature. On the Yukon in 1926, he became a member of the “Squawmen’s Union,” a farcical organization that instructed its membership that one “should not covet thy neighbor’s klootch.”51 His union membership card was one of the few tokens from the journey that he saved. Innis may have seen past such racism, but his subjectivity was conditioned in relation to it. Like the thoughts of Aboriginal peoples, those of women were rarely recorded, even if their voices were occasionally heard.52 Three women correspondents wrote the most of any individuals Innis met on his excursions. Rachel Harris, an acquaintance made on the Liard River, wrote affectionately, recalling the beauty of starry nights, for two years following his return from the Yukon.53 Clara Rogers and Gwen Dorrien-Smith, encountered on the Yukon River in 1926, became frequent correspondents, visited Innis in Toronto, and discussed the idea of a joint trip to Labrador.54 Even though it would appear that Innis respected certain women he met, their views were not noteworthy. In contrast to Innis’s interaction with white women, little evidence suggests that he mingled on a social level with Aboriginal women. Indeed, the women he did meet defined themselves in contradistinction to Aboriginal society. Rachel Harris complained to Innis of the lack of whites in her neighbourhood in northern Alberta, and Clara Rogers, a globe-trotting Brit, romanticized the North as a place of magnetic attraction, a background against which her adventures could be realized. Innis’s approach to women intersected with Aboriginal-white relations.

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If Innis’s research practice contained instances of gender and cultural selection, it nevertheless provided the basis for his conclusions about economic life in the North. His ideas about northern society and economy recorded in his field notes are connected in their diversity by a unifying theme: that the North was a world in motion, marked by rapid growth and decay. Particular attention is devoted to the transportation networks that underlie specific trades: the river transportation of the fur trade and the railway transport and shipping routes of mineral development. Under their sway, certain cultures grow in the North and others decay; certain trades are made viable, and others rendered no longer profitable. Still others, in his estimation, await the peculiar combination of technique and capital investment needed in order to make innovation out of geographical endowment. His 1924 and 1929 notes, due to their focus on different aspects of northern development, provide a telling contrast in the evolution of his northern vision. Innis’s Mackenzie field notes demonstrate his attention to the close relation­ship between water routes and the economic geography of the fur trade. “Whole arctic civilization a capitalization of advantages of a swift river,” he noted some­ where near Fitzgerald in 1924. The town, he observed, was a product of the fur trade; it reflected the spatial organization of river transport and the geography of its situation. “Tremendous advantage,” he remarked, “of swift current load provi­sions heavy material going in and light coming out – adaptation of trade (furs).”55 The theme of the adaptation of the trade to the means of transport had earlier been noted at Peace River, where Innis described the river as a “highway.”56 He postulated that there was a tendency for settlement to “spread northward up river and toward Peace River.” The reason for this was the “effect of swift current on direction of growth of town.”57 The notes of Innis’s Mackenzie trip contain many other detailed observations about prices, rivalries between trappers, and graft in the hbc, to note three recurring interests. Yet it is the sweeping statements concern­ing rivers and transport that suggest the geographical basis of his interpretation. In a subsequent, published account of his trip, he quoted almost verbatim some of the passages selected above (Innis 1925a, 151–3). The observations arguably represent the meeting of expectation and experience: his thesis concerning the importance of river trans­port in the early history of Canada was affirmed, in his mind, by the economic geography of the Mackenzie basin. On one

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day he mused in his field book: “River is very important determining factor in the direction of economic devel­opment of early period.”58 His northern laboratory was turning out to confirm his historical hypotheses. “The rivers,” he wrote later, “hold sway.”59 Innis’s field notes from his trip to Hudson Bay reflect five years of further thought about northern conditions. Since his Mackenzie River trip, he had trav­elled down the Yukon River and paid close attention to mining developments, and he had examined resource-development facilities in northern Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. Although his Fur Trade in Canada was still a year away from publi­cation, his research program had changed direction. His focus was on what he would later describe as the foreground of Canadian unity: mineral development. The field notes suggest that Innis had come closer to developing a coherent ana­lytical approach to the study of staple commodities since his 1924 Mackenzie trip. Dispersed reflections on costs, social conditions, and technology are hemmed in by conclusions about the meaning of such data and by specific references to economic theory. On one level, he had come to a more focused statement on forward and back­ward linkages. “A mine is an economic explosive,” he postulated near the end of his tour, “developing in its train lumbering, agriculture, hunting, industry, transport facil­ities in a remarkably short period of time.”60 This new staple commodity was made possible by a new transportation technique. “Overwhelming importance,” he insisted, “of gasoline and hydroelectric and water transport contrasted with steam, rail, and coal. New revolution in the gasoline tank.”61 In certain respects, this observation was predictive and looked beyond the railway link to Churchill that served ostensibly as his subject of study during the trip. The prediction, however, helps to reveal his sense of the meaning of development. Development occurred when new commodities could be exploited through more advanced forms of transportation and technique. His conception of development drew directly from his reading of Veblen (Neill 1972; Cowen and Shenton 1996, 216–19). In one cryptic passage, Innis points to Veblen’s “distinction [between] business and industry,” which was spelled out in detail in Veblen’s Theory of Business Enterprise and which can be related to Innis’s analysis of mineral devel­ opment as an example of industrialism and its effects.62 Veblen’s distinction, wrote Innis in his 1929 review essay, asserted “that machine industry was overwhelm­ingly, and increasingly productive, and that the problems of machine industry were incidental

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to the disposal of the product” (Innis 1956e [1929], 23). Innis’s notes mirror this assumption of a basic cleavage between marketing and industrial development in their atten­tion to the details of technical change. His photographs taken during the trip focus on physical structures, transportation devices, and gasoline tanks.63 Innis’s later analyses of mineral development would stress the central place of the engi­neer in development and the all-encompassing effects of the machine process in dissolving institutions and forging new ones in their wake. More tangibly than in 1924, Innis’s notations on Hudson Bay show the marks of a more theoretically engaged empirical approach. It was an approach that he advocated in his review of Veblen: “Any substantial progress in economic theory must come from a syn­thesis between economic history and economic theory” (Innis 1956e [1929], 26). Innis’s field notes suggest how he asked questions, who he found important, and how he came to view the North. But it was not until he returned from “the field” that he composed his refined reflections of what he had seen and attempted to syn­thesize this material with archival research and secondary reading. In the 1920s he engaged in three kinds of public engagement with his refined reflections about the North: he wrote for popular audiences and gave public lectures; composed private memos to persons in authority; and wrote scholarly books and articles advancing the theories and arguments at the basis of his popular claims. In these different forms, Innis clarified and crystallized his northern vision: he combined the concepts of development and nation into a necessary and progressive relationship. By examining his views and representations of the North, an understanding of his role as a public intellectual may be developed. The point is not to offer a close textual analysis of Innis’s most famous works (a well-trodden path) but, rather, to point out some of his lesser-known ideas, buried in popular publications, and find the parallels and distinctions they created with his better known interpretations. representing north

Harold Innis sought out the role of public intellectual in the 1920s. The message he delivered to public gatherings was optimistic; his North was the future. A typical engagement occurred on a cold night in Hespeler in February 1926. The talk had been

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arranged by the University of Toronto Extension Department after a request by a group in Hespeler for a public speaker.64 The group wished to develop an organization like the Canadian Club; its correspondent hoped for something “above average.”65 Innis showed some lantern slides on loan from the Department of the Interior and then began to outline his views of the North.66 The reporter cov­ering the event for the Mail and Empire noted approvingly that Innis “had an abiding faith in the future of Canada and the opening of the north coun­try, further exploration and means of conservation of the large supply of miner­als, furs, timber and pulpwood. As to why he had this belief he stated that the advent of modern machinery and mechanical methods dated back only about 150 years and that minerals were the background for this vast industry.”67 Pointing to maps, Innis suggested the possibility of agriculture; this land, he insisted, was not a “frozen waste.” After offering these opinions, he stated his cre­dentials for judgment. He described his trip down the Peace and Slave rivers, across Slave Lake, and down the Mackenzie. By way of conclusion he gave a ringing endorsement of the building of the Hudson Bay Railway. The railway, he argued, would not depend on the exports of the grain trade via Hudson Bay, as was pop­ularly assumed, but would act as a point of access to developing the North. Through the refraction of his northern vision, an outlet for prairie agriculture became a means of penetrating the North. Before stepping down, he enthused: “[Canada is] t h e country of the twentieth century on account of her vast mineral resources … [I feel] perfectly safe in saying ‘Go sell your boots and buy Government Bonds’” (Mail and Empire, 18 February 1927). The performance earned Innis a little over nine dollars.68 There were other nights like the one in Hespeler. Between 1924 and 1931, Innis delivered at least sixteen public lectures on the theme of the North in Canada.69 Throughout the decade he spoke to groups such as the y mc a, the Canadian Institute, and the Brotherhood of the United Church of Davenport Road in order to advance his public standing and to proselytize about the North. In the late 1920s and early 1930s there was increasing interest in the Canadian North, Canadian history, and the plight of the nation’s explorers in opening up the land. Innis’s biography of Peter Pond, whom he anachronistically described as a “Father of Confederation,” was one such expression of this interest (Innis 1930a, ix). In his lectures on the North he responded to this mood by predicting the

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future of Canada in a manner that paralleled its romantic and heroic past and charted its progressive future. On one level, his representations of the North portrayed the region as an anti-modern enclave, safe from the din of the industrial revolution. In a lecture to an association of furriers meeting in Toronto in 1930, he stated that the fur trade in the North remained “romantic” despite changes in transportation technology. “In the work of the trapper,” he says, “the emphasis is still on the individual as in the days of the French Regime. The men of the north have substantially the psychology of the men of the wilderness of former times. And I think as long as the fur trade lasts it will still put a premium on the individual and produce a race of men who are unlike the factory organized wage-earning industrialists of the south.”70 The northern fur trade was not a relic of history, Innis suggested; rather, it was Canada’s heroic past incarnate. Other popular descriptions highlighted the institutions that the fur trade had bequeathed to the making of the nation. Central government and Canadian institutions were rooted, he claimed, in the fur-trade past.71 “An under­ standing of our economic background,” he told an audience at the Canadian Institute in 1930, “is a certain antidote to those who worry about American penetration … Historically, Canada is an economic unit, not a series of provinces.”72 Thus, on one level, in his popular descriptions the fur trade existed as an escape from modernity; on another level, it existed as the solid base, rooted in the past, upon which the present and future of the nation could be constructed.73 His lectures also drew a subtle parallel between himself, as the modern searcher after knowledge, and the explorers of the past. Opinions of the North’s possibilities were interspersed with his own travel narratives. In his published account of his trip down the Mackenzie, he made no mention of the fact that he had travelled mainly on a supply ship (Innis 1925a).74 The picture of Innis in a canoe (which accompanies the arti­cle) and his frequent references to canoeing tell another story. While Innis may have been subtle in juxtaposing his experience with that of earlier explorers, it was drawn in high relief by reporters in search of good copy. “Professor Innes [sic],” wrote reporter Henry Lynn-Folke in 1929, “has the eye of the true explorer.” “Directness of manner and a breadth of shoulder betoken an ability to handle situations and men, and he has the calm gaze which indicates deep penetration.”75 Lynne-Folk had a way with unself-conscious Freudian turns of phrase. When he described Innis’s research

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method, he wrote that Innis went “armed with a voluminous notebook, a camera, and his extremely retentive mem­ory.”76 Penetrating, armed, and retentive, all at once: here indeed was a true explorer. The representation of Innis as explorer demonstrates the force of popular narratives of nordicity in shaping his public image. In his role as public intellectual, Innis focused attention, both in popular and academic writings, on the notion that the North was a crucible of development, a land where growth and decay marked progress. In his popular engagements he pro­moted development; in his academic publications he analyzed it. The concept was protean in his hands: it melted boundaries between past, present, and future as well as between nature and culture. In one popular article, for example, he read rivers as historical objects, subject to the power of development. Under his pen, the spirit of capitalism metaphorically drove the Mackenzie. “Violent seasonal changes and the swiftness of the current,” he wrote, “are tremendous forces making for pronounced and rapid geo­logical action” (Innis 1925a, 151). Like the violent price swings that commanded the course of resource exploitation in the North, seasons could usher in rapid transformations. Constant carrying away of the soil, especially in the bends of the river where the water flows with greatest speed, provokes land slides, and leaves typical fresh surfaces known as “cut banks.” … Channels are constantly changing, islands are being built up and torn down, deltas are in process of formation, and the bays about the entrances to the lakes, as at Chipewyan and Resolution, are being filled in … Large trees constantly undermined slap into the river. These are carried down and piled into great heaps on the heads of islands or scattered around the deltas. (Innis 1925a, 151) Nature reveals itself, in this passage, as the contradictory process of development, where growth and decay are inseparable oppositions. Although some have argued that Innis was a geographical determinist, his few writings on landscape suggest, to the contrary, a metaphorical social determinism. Nature affected human affairs, in his analysis, but it functioned according to cycles that paralleled human institutions and economies conceptually as well as metaphorically. Beaver lodges, in The Fur Trade in Canada, could be described as “fixed capital,” while the rapid decline of beavers could be suggested

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on the basis of the “depreciation through obsolescence of the beaver’s defence equipment” (Innis 1930c, 4). What is forgotten in the debate about Innis’s geographical determinism is that he did not hold fast to a boundary separating nature and culture (Berger 1986a, 93; Drache 1995, xxix). Only since the 1970s has criticism of Innis forced scholars to take positions on him as a boundary keeper between the assumed nature-culture dichotomy. In Innis’s approach, nature and culture commingled, affected each other dialectically, and could be analyzed with a common language. The language of growth and decay extended from landscape to the historical and spatial analysis of economies. The productive and destructive aspects of the river, for example, parallel Innis’s description of staples.77 Staples, he argued, arose out of a combination of geographical endowment and technique driven by the export markets of industrialized countries. They developed economies through linkages, but they also destroyed much in their path. The fur trade created a continental trans­portation network, institutions of central government, and the political space of Canada. In the process, however, it diminished Aboriginal culture and showed every sign of destroying its resource base. The succession of staples, in turn, reproduced the logic of growth and decay at a different level. Lumbering succeeded the fur trade in the east, and mining promised to overtake it in the North. Thus, Innis’s appeal to the history of the Canadian fur trade as a continuity in the development of the nation was paradoxical. The fur trade’s progressive aspects, he suggested, were largely spent; its significance arose out of the basis it laid for the rise of further sta­ ple industries. The background of Canadian unity, Innis wrote, was found in the fur trade; its foreground, on the other hand, lay in the development of minerals. Both developments were marked by growth and decay. Time and space collapsed into continuity. In his present-minded discussion of northern development, railwaybuilding and mineral exploitation rose out of a decaying fur economy. Water routes faded in to insignificance; railways, airplanes, and gasoline took their place. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, Innis promoted to various audiences the causes of mineral development and the Hudson Bay Railway (Innis 1930e, 1930h, 1930f, 1931a, 1933e).78 The railway served to focus his ideas about the future of the North. It had been built as a competitive route for the export of prairie wheat, but Innis saw its possibilities in the development of local traffic and minerals. Such an economy would only be developed by struggle, he

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suggested, but its rewards would be a new national economy. “In the whole of Canada as well as in northern Canada,” he wrote in one popular publication, “we shall probably have a closer integration and more sane and balanced growth”(Innis 1930h, 168). The significance of the railway, he insisted, “lies much deeper than in the immediate development of traffic and in the evolution of transportation technique. It is the keystone of the arch in the development of northern Canada. It will bring together the hitherto isolated and independent areas of the Northwest” (167). The railway promised to unleash the North’s potential, he argued, as well as spur national unity. Innis’s advocacy of railway and mineral development complemented his career strategy. After his research expedition to Hudson Bay in 1929, Innis pressed President Falconer of the University of Toronto to appoint a geographer with expertise in northern Canada. His motivation in the matter had overtones of career ambitions as well as a nationalist zeal for the Canadian North. In the late 1920s, Innis had found his home department of political economy confining (Creighton 1978 [1957], 69–70). In 1926 he pursued the possibility of a joint position as an advisor with a financial insti­tution; three years later he resigned from the university when a colleague was pro­moted over his head.79 Throughout the decade he was drawn to the idea of estab­lishing an independent geography department. His interest in geography gained him the president’s ear as an ad hoc advisor at a time when most communication would have been directed through department heads (Watson 1981, 219). After his Hudson Bay trip in 1929, he spelled out his northern vision as a strong reason for supporting geography. “I am very much impressed,” he wrote in a confidential memorandum to the president, after this summer’s experience of the growing importance of the Hudson Bay area. We must follow up along these lines 1– Scientific work on the Arctic and Archipelago, 2, Closer relations between the Maritimes and the West by Hudson Bay, 3, Closer relations with Newfoundland. My fear is that the Americans will pre­cede us and that we shall lose our one chance at broadening out in our own coun­try. This may appear beside the point but to me it makes more urgent the prob­lem of geography.80 The study of geography, northern development, and national selfrealization were all of a piece in his mind.

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As an advisor on geography and the North, Innis strengthened his position within the university. Although he dropped his earlier interest in becoming a geo­grapher, he did not abandon his advocacy of the subject: in 1928 he attended the International Geographical Congress and delivered a lecture on industrialism and settlement in western Canada; and he continually pressed Falconer for the appointment of Griffith Taylor, an Australian geographer at the University of Chicago.81 Under the encouragement of the president in 1930, Innis set aside earlier reservations and almost took up the position.82 He was already listed as an economic geographer in official documen­tation, and the move may have appeared as the logical institutional recognition of his intellectual progression. But the appointment never occurred, perhaps for financial reasons. In later years, he continued his “geography crusade,” as John Watson (1981, 218–25) dubs it, and finally succeeded when, in 1935, President H.J. Cody, Falconer’s successor, followed Innis’s advice and hired Taylor. Innis’s role in the advocacy of geography and the North placed him in a strong position for career advance­ ment and allowed him to travel internationally at the university’s expense. His con­nection to the president helped him to win departmental battles. When he resigned in frustration in 1929 the president reappointed him and promoted him against the wishes of his department. The North and geography had their uses. Innis’s advocacy of the North within the university was buttressed by a defence of the university in public discussions of the North. In 1927 Innis became involved in a dispute between University of Toronto academics and the Financial Post and the Globe over the role of academics in representing the Canadian North.83 The dispute arose when the Financial Post and then the Globe carried editorials criticizing an “article” published in the Canadian Historical Review (c h r ) that besmirched the devel­opmental possibilities of the Canadian Shield.84 The offensive passage stated: “While to the north and northwest of Lake Superior there lies only a continuation of that endless dreary waste which forms the dead heart of the eastern half of Canada, to the south of Lake Michigan there is a land of far greater possibilities.” The Globe concluded the quotation with a fierce rebuke: “The ‘dead heart’ is very much alive.”85 Both editorials mentioned that the c h r had a close relationship with the University of Toronto. The implication seemed to be that the university was not pulling its patriotic weight. No one could doubt the editorial stance of the newspapers, but for historians of a fact-grubbing persuasion the situation was appalling.

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George Brown took issue with the implied slander of the c h r and the University of Toronto. The “article,” he clarified, was in fact a book review. And the reviewer, W.A. MacIntosh, had simply quoted the book’s author, the Scottish geographer Marion Newbigin, in her analysis of the economic value of the regions in question in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.86 Innis chimed in next, pointing out his annoyance “that the University of Toronto [had been] attacked in this fashion.”87 He listed the work conducted in the practical sciences at the university and his own research as proof of a commitment to northern development. In response, the Financial Post published a partial retrac­tion, which noted the complaints and then reiterated the newspaper’s commitment to the development of the Canadian Shield.88 The episode is testimony to the uncritical boosterism of the Canadian North that infected the Toronto press in the 1920s, but it also suggests the complicity of Canadian intellectuals.89 While the stance of the newspapers points to the power of the mining interest in the politics of the province, the position of the University of Toronto academics was not as different as one might have expected. Innis and Brown defended their positions as fellow northern boosters. As Brown put it: “The Canadian Historical Review is in sympathy with The Globe’s desire to dispel false notions regarding the value of Northern Canada’s resources.”90 The character of Innis’s and Brown’s defence suggests the length to which Canadian academics, and Innis in particular, were convinced disciples in the task of northern development. Innis’s northern vision thus developed in close relation with his career ambi­tions and institutional affiliation. Yet the tone of its enunciation with respect to mineral development owed little to this context. Innis’s advocacy of northern mineral exploitation and railway development owed more to the northern boosterism that filled the newspaper pages he felt bound to criticize than it did to any institutional politics. While he had described the fur trade as a reminder of the past and as an example of growth and decay in the hinterland, his present-minded focus on the Hudson Bay region adopted a rhetoric of war. In a lecture on the railway to the Canadian Engineering Institute, he observed: “We have only begun the advance to the north. To the engineer belongs the task of forging the weapons by which the vast northern territory made acces­sible by the railway may be conquered. The railroad itself is an auspicious omen of success and already the aeroplane and the tractor have shown important possibilities” (Innis 1930f, 660).91

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The military metaphors had their point: nations were forged in battle. “It remains to be seen,” he stated in 1930, whether the front line which has been pushed forward in the first attack on the last vast stretch of the Canadian shield will be occupied and consolidated; but it seems reasonable to suppose that Canada will continue to take advan­tage of the industrial revolution based on gasoline and to broaden out toward the north. The political framework of the Dominion worked out under the fur trade will be gradually filled in economically. (1930e, 30) Innis’s northern boosterism bred a rhetorical militarism. At the basis of this rhetoric lay an interpretation of the course of national development. Spelled out in its most advanced form in the conclusion to The Fur Trade in Canada, the interpretation held that Canada was not invented “in spite of geography, but because of it” (Innis, 1930c, 397). Canada’s national boundaries, Innis instructed, followed fur-trade routes across the continent. However, this established political space served only as a sufficient cause in his formulation; it was space yet to be consolidated. In his argument, mineral development and railway construc­tion acted as the means of consolidation, as the necessary causes of national integration. In the intellectual context of the 1920s, when Innis first made these claims, his argument was idiosyncratic and original. The argument stood Oliver Goldwin Smith’s claim that Canada was bound to disintegrate under the ineluctable forces of continental geography on its head (Morton quoted in Cook 1971, 143). Nationalist arguments about the historical integrity of Canada could now be based on a myth of territoriality as well as weaker myths of blood. Like nationalist histories of the late nine­teenth century produced by historians Frederick Jackson Turner and Sergei Mikhailovich Solov’ev, Innis’s interpretation of national development integrated a strong territorial element (Bassin 1993). It treated national history as a narrative of geo­graphical transcendence. Harold Innis was an integral part of his own northern vision. At the centre of this northern vision was a belief that national self-realization followed economic development. He imagined nation not as a community but, rather, as a geo-body that would be given life when its territory was filled in economically. This fundamental belief was buttressed by a series of secondary positions: that the North’s devel­opment depended upon a progression from one mode of transportation to

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another; that the background of the fur trade provided the basis for the foreground of mineral development. Mineral development, in his estimation, would be one of the most important staple industries of the twentieth century. In its wake, the Canadian econ­omy would reorient itself along a northern axis; railway links to Hudson Bay would rebalance the transportation economy of the nation. As Innis studied the North and crafted these positions, he became more and more tied to his own vision. His research practice and the popularization of his ideas to various audiences made him into a northern prophet, with links to the forces of development. When he studied north­ern peoples and places, he took the view of the conquerors. Aboriginal peoples and women did not tint his optic. Innis gave meaning to his observations from his field research within a narrative of unceasing and benevolent development. When he pre­sented his ideas to different publics, he could only advocate development and more of it. Within the university, he called for the establishment of a geography department and studies of the North; he parlayed his northern expertise into rapid career advancement. In public forums he defended the position of the university, in its knowledge-producing capacity, as one of the agents of northern development. Canada’s epitome of the ivory tower scholar was, in fact, a northern booster. In creating a North, Innis recreated himself.

notes

I would like to thank Daniel Drache for allowing me to use certain research materials collected as his assistant. Anne Innis Dagg, Daniel Drache, Kirsty Johnston, H.V. Nelles, Alan MacEachern, Marlene Shore, Robert Sweeney, Bill Waiser, and Journal of Canadian Studies reviewers provided help­ful comments on drafts. I would like to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. This chapter was originally published in a slightly different form in The Journal of Canadian Studies, 1999, 34 no. 3 (Autumn), 162–86. It is reprinted with the Journal’s permission. 1 In a related article (Evenden 1998), I examine Innis’s involvement with a social-scientific survey of the Arctic during the 1940s. 2 Another field excursion was made to Newfoundland in 1930. 3 Chalifour, Chief Geographer, Department of the Interior, to Innis, 13 March 1923; A. Brabant, Hudson Bay Fur Trade Commissioner, to

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Innis, 22 March 1923. Both in u ta–pef, administrative files, A1976– 0025/002 (07). See Innis to Hon. Charles Dunning, n.d.; Reverend C.E. Whittaker to Innis, 29 March 1924; Bishop I.O. Stringer to Innis, 29 April 1924; F.H. Kitton, Natural Resources Intelligence Service to Innis, 14 May 1924; F.C.C. Lynch, Department of the Interior, to Innis, 21 March 1924; Alberta Motor Boat Co. to Innis, 28 April 1924. All in uta –pef, A1976– 0025/002 (08). See also L. Romanet, Acting District Manager, Mackenzie River District, hbc, to Innis, 26 March 1924, uta–ir, B1972–0003/004 (11). 4 MacIver to Falconer, 18 March 1924 (copy), uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (09). Innis’s proposal was quoted in MacIver’s letter seeking funds for the Mackenzie trip. The request was turned down. See Falconer to MacIver, 19 March 1924, u ta–pp (Falconer), A1967–0007/084 (02). It is unclear whether Innis received any other funding for the trip. 5 Innis to H.G. Moulton, 11 January 1924, uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (08); Innis to Moulton, n.d., u ta–i r, B1972–0003/004 (11). 6 Innis to Mother and All, 6 July 1918, u ta–ir, B1972–0003/004 (04). 7 On the history of nordicity in Canada, see, for example, Berger (1986b), West (1991) and “Representing North,” (1996). On the popularity of Stefansson at the end of the First World War, see Zaslow (1988). 8 Falconer to Innis, 11 May 1920, u ta–pp (Falconer), A1967–0007/058(B), Hunter-Johnston File. The president’s offer of appointment stated that the job was not permanent and set the salary as $2,000 per annum with no mention of raises. 9 Innis to Moulton, n.d., u ta–i r, B1972–0003/004 (11). 10 Innis to Mary Quayle Innis, 7 October 1922, uta –ir, B1972–0003/004 (09). The “he” in this quotation is R.M. MacIver. 11 Innis to Mary Quayle Innis, n.d. [1923], uta –ir, B1972–0003/004 (10). 12 Innis to Mary Quayle Innis, 29 September 1922, uta –ir, B1972– 0003/004 (09). 13 F.A. Mouré to Innis, 27 June 1924, u ta–pef, A1976–0025/002 (08). He had received informal notice of the appointment as early as April. See Mary Quayle Innis, Personal Diary, 12 April 1924 entry, uta –ifr, B1991–0029/057 (02). 14 Announcements appeared, for example, in the St. John Globe, 20 August 1924, and the Christian Science Monitor, n.d. Another unidentified paper in Innis’s papers announces their voyage with the statement: “Easterners to Attempt Canoe Trip to Arctic,” u ta–i r, B1972–0003/006 (05). 15 Norman Clark to Innis, 2 March 1924, u ta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (08). 16 Mary Quayle Innis, Personal Diary, 12 April 1924 entry, uta –ifr, B1991–0029/057 (02).

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17 Mother to Innis, 10 June (n.d.), u ta–pe f, A1976–0025/002 (06). 18 L. Romanet, Acting District Manager, Mackenzie River District, HB C to Innis, 26 March 1924, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/004 (11). 19 F.C.C. Lynch to Innis, 21 March 1924, uta –pef, A1976–0025/004 (08). 20 In a later trip down the Yukon River, Innis travelled a substantial leg of the journey by car, from Circle, Alaska, to Fairbanks. Innis to Mary Quayle Innis and Donald, 22 July 1926; Innis to Mary Quayle Innis and Donald, 2 August 1926, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/004 (13). 21 Alberta Motor Boat Company to Innis, 28 April 1924; HBC receipt to Innis, 14 June 1924, u ta–pef, A1976–0025/002 (09). 22 F. H. Kitto to Innis, 14 May 1924, u ta– pef, A1976–0025/002 (08). Kitto gave Innis eight separate letters to specific individuals, all employed in official capacities. 23 Innis to Mary Quayle Innis, 29 May 1924, uta –ir, B1972–0003/004 (11). 24 The following analysis refers to the typed copies of his originals. They appear to have been typed after his return, either by F. Hahn or his wife, and contain incidental corrections, sometimes in Innis’s handwriting. The typed versions were cited because the originals are barely legible in parts, and the typed copies generally contain page num­bers, which allow for precise citations. All originals and typed notes may be found in uta –ir, B1972–0003/006. Other field notes were kept of trips to Newfoundland and British Columbia. An account of his trip down the Yukon River was written by his companion and former student, W.K. Gibb (1934). 25 The literature of self-reflexive anthropology is enormous, and the following are works that I have found particularly stimulating: Clifford and Marcus (1986); Geertz (1973); Sanjek (1990); Stocking (1983); Clifford (1990); and Plath (1990). 26 A number of problems attend the analysis of Harold Innis’s field notes, and these should be considered: first, it is difficult in parts to distinguish Innis’s remarks from the transcriptions of the views of others. On the whole, Innis attempted to distinguish these views, but, occasionally, attribution is not clear. I have tried to avoid passages that could not be precisely attributed. Second, the heritage of Innis’s informants was not consistently stated; in over half of the cases he stated their ethnicity or provided a clue of their general background. I have therefore tried to make my comments on the heritage of informants sufficiently general. However, where possible, I do make specific statements regarding numbers. 27 The female interviewed was Mrs J.M. Bolinger, whom he met on a train going north in 1929, on the subject of the wheat trade in North Dakota. The Aboriginal people interviewed, all on his Hudson Bay trip, were

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unidentified. See u ta–i r, B1972–0003/006 (07), pp. 5, 7, 59. While in Skagway, Alaska, in 1926, Innis wrote to his wife about talking with local Aboriginal people. See Innis to Mary and Donald, 22 June 1926, uta -ir , B1972–0003/004 (13). 28 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (07), p. 5 29 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (03), p. 8. 30 Ibid., (07), p. 73. 31 See note 26. 32 uta - i r, B1972–0003/006 (03), p. 6; ibid., (04) pp. 11–12, 27, 29, 32, 49, 98; ibid., (07) pp. 18, 54, 57. 33 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (03), pp. 9, 11, 21, 31; ibid., (04) pp. 22, 29; ibid., (07) pp. 5, 11, 54. 34 Trigger points out that Innis treats Aboriginal peoples narrowly as homo economicus. 35 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (04) p. 3. 36 Ibid., (03), p. 16. 37 Ibid., (07) p. 66. 38 Ibid., pp. 3, 14, 66. 39 Ibid., p. 14. 40 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (03), p. 14; ibid., (04), pp. 11–12. 41 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (03), p. 16. 42 Ibid. 43 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (04), p. 49; ibid., (07) pp. 3, 14, 52, 65, 68. 44 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (07), p. 4. 45 Ibid. The original quotation did not include a question mark. 46 uta – i r, B1972–0003/006 (03), p. 8. 47 Innis to F.C.C. Lynch, 13 January 1926; Innis to Lynch, 21 January 1926; Innis to Lynch, 16 February 1926. All in uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (06). See T.W. Harris to Innis, 6 September 1925, uta –pef, A1976– 0025/002 (12). 48 Hoyes Lloyd to Innis, 24 October 1924, uta –pef, A76–0025/002 (09). In this letter Lloyd thanked Innis for his “confidential memorandum on the question of wildlife conservation in the Mackenzie District. This will be of great value, and I hope will assist in carrying out improvements in that area.” A follow-up letter by Innis on the subject of the memorandum was received by Lloyd. See Hoyes Lloyd to Innis, 8 January 1925, uta – p e f, A1976–0025/002 (11). 49 On Aboriginal-White relations in the Yukon in this period, see Coates (1991). During the 1920s, Innis made a number of references to the concept of race that implied a belief in innate characteristics. In a

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memorandum to R.M. MacIver on possible thesis topics, he suggested “the negro population in Canada.” He hoped that such a thesis would “show something as to the adaptability of the negro to northern latitudes.” See Innis to MacIver, 17 March 1924, uta, Department of Political Economy Administrative Files, A1976–0025/002 (9). In his review of the work of Thorstein Veblen, he pointed out Veblen’s racial background, and discussed certain theories of racial mixing, that had made the idea of racial groups redundant (Innis 1956e [1929], 17–18). Innis was not peculiar in thinking that races existed, but, on the whole, he displayed a more progressive attitude towards the relevance of presumed racial characteristics than was general at the time. 50 UT A – I R, B1972–0003/006 (04), pp. 6, 23. 51 Membership Card, Squawmen’s Union No. 1, 26 June 1926, uta –pef, B1972–0003/006 (01). 52 Besides the three women mentioned below, Innis received a letter from Anne Tamminen, whom, it appears, he met on his 1926 trip. See Anne Tamminen to Innis, 28 October 1926, u ta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (14). 53 Rachel Harris to Innis, 30 August 1924; Harris to Innis, 30 September 1924; Harris to Innis, 10 November 1924. All in uta –pef, A1976– 0025/002 (09). See Harris to Innis, October (n.d.) 1925, uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (12). 54 There are a total of sixteen pieces of correspondence from Clara C. Rogers to Innis in u ta–pef, A1976–0025 and B1972–0003. On the Labrador idea, see Clara C. Rogers to Innis,26 January 1928; Rogers to Innis, 11 July 1928; Gwen Dorrien-Smith to Innis 12 July (n.d.); Rogers to Innis, 30 July 1928; Rogers to Innis, 14 August 1928. All in uta –pef, A1976– 0025/004 (01). 55 uta – i r , B1972–0003/006 (04), p. 4. 56 Ibid., (03), p. 20. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., p. 9. 59 Ibid., 152. 60 uta – i r, B72–0003/006 (07), n.p. 61 Ibid., 15. 62 uta – i f r, B1972–0003/006 (07), n.p.; Veblen (1963 [1904]). 63 Many of Innis’s photographs and lantern slides are contained in uta – i f r, B1991–0029. 64 Harriet M. Latter, University of Toronto Extension Department, to Innis, 28 January 1926; File 13, Latter to Innis, 19 February 1926, uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (06).

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65 H. L. Trapp, quoted in Harriet M. Latter to Innis, 17 February 1926, uta – p e f, A1976–0025/002 (13). 66 F.C.C. Lynch to Innis, 17 February 1926, uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (13). Lynch was Innis’s main contact at the Department of the Interior. 67 “Hespeler Men Hear about the North,” Mail and Empire, 18 February 1927, uta–i r, B1972–0003/003 (01). 68 Harriet M. Latter to Innis, 1 March 1926, uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (13). 69 I determined this number by cross-referencing newspaper articles, speech announcements, letters from the University of Toronto Extension Department, and entries in Mary Quayle Innis’s diary. Following is a list of the sites at, or the groups to which, Innis spoke on northern subjects. The dates accompanying this list are approximate as they generally list the newspaper coverage date rather than the actual speaking date. Speaking engagements: Rose Avenue School, 31 October 1924; Marmora, 27 November 1924; Eaton Club, 20 November 1924; Hespeler, 18 February 1926; Memorial Hall, Elora, Girl Guides Association, 25 January 1927; Women’s Art Association, 18 February 1927; Canadian Institute, 27 January 1930; Central ym ca, 20 February 1930; Furriers’ Convention, 29 March 1930; Engineering Institute of Canada, 31 October 1930; Hart House, 3 March 1931; Canadian Institute, 25 April 1931; Toronto y mc a, 27 September 1932; Davisville Home and School Club, 1923; Brodie Club, Royal Ontario Museum, n.d.; United Brotherhood of Davenport Road, n.d. Innis may also have spoken to the Appleby Community League and the Women’s Club at T. Eaton and Co. in 1924, but the only evidence is letters of request. See u ta–i r, B1972–0003/003 (1); uta – i f r, B1991–0029/057 (2) (3) (5); uta–pef, A1976–­0025/002 (6) (9) (13). 70 R.C. Reade, “Fur Trade in Canada Centres in Toronto,” Star Weekly, 29 March 1930, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/003 (01). 71 “Fur Trade Is Origin of Many Institutions Peculiar to Canada,” Globe, 27 January 1930; “Importance of Fur in Canada Outlined,” Montreal Gazette, 27 January 1930. Both in u ta–ir, B1972–0003/003 (01). 72 “Says Fur Trade Made For Canadian Unity,” Toronto Star, 25 January 1930. 73 This perspective contrasts markedly to the one taken in a short primer on the modern trade published on the basis of a series of research papers written by his students and entitled The Fur Trade of Canada (Innis 1927b). 74 The article contains a picture of the Liard River and refers to it once but does not give the impression that Innis took passage on it.

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75 uta – i r, B1972–0003/003 (01). This article was printed twice, it would appear, once under the title “From the Classroom He Ranges Far North,” presumably in 1929, although no date or paper title is listed; and again five years later as Henry Lynne-Folk, “Professor-Explorer Ranges Far Afield in Chosen Work,” Ottawa Citizen, 3 March 1934. 76 Lynne-Folk, “Professor-Explorer Ranges Far Afield in Chosen Work,” Ottawa Citizen, 3 March 1934. 77 See, for example, Innis (1930c); Innis and Lower (1936). 78 A number of the speaking engagements noted above concerned the Hudson Bay Railway. 79 Innis to J.P. Crysdale, Cochran Hay & Co. Ltd., 13 December 1926, uta – p e f, A1976–0025/002 (14). 80 Innis to Falconer, 15 November 1929, u ta –pp (Falconer), A67–0007/12. 81 Falconer to Innis, 14 November 1929; Falconer to Innis, 19 November 1929; Falconer to Innis, 18 January 1930; Innis to Falconer, 6 February 1930; Innis to Falconer, 3 April 1930; Falconer to Innis, 7 April 1930; Innis to Falconer, 29 April 1930; Innis to Falconer, 2 May 1930; Falconer to Innis, 3 June 1930; Innis to Falconer, 19 June 1930. All in uta –pp (Falconer), A1967–0007/120. The paper presented to the International Geographical Congress was later published as “Industrialism and Settlement in Western Canada.” For an account of Taylor’s life, see Sanderson (1988). 82 Falconer to Innis, 7 April 1930, u ta–pp, A1967–0007/120; Innis to Mother and All, 2 February 1930, u ta– ifr, B1991–0029/002 (03). 83 The dispute is partially documented, though with occasionally incorrect dates, in Innis’s scrapbook. See u ta–i r, B72–0003/003 (01). 84 Financial Post, 12 August, 1927; Globe, 16 August 1927. 85 Globe, 16 August 1927. 86 George Brown, Letter to the Editor, Globe, 19 August 1927. The book under review was Newbigin (1926). See Mackintosh’s review (1927). 87 Harold Innis, Letter to the Editor, The Globe, 26 August 1927 (dated 18 August). 88 uta – i r, B1972–0003 (01), clipping undated. 89 On the promotion of New Ontario from the late nineteenth century, see Nelles (1974, 48–62). 90 George Brown, Letter to the Editor, Globe, 19 August 1927. On aspects of the chr’s editorial policy in the 1920s and 1930s, see Shore (1995, 417–23). 91 The speech was also published in slightly different form as “The Engineer and the Hudson Bay Railway” (Innis 1931a).

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4 Harold Innis’s Overlooked 1924 Memo on Wildlife Conservation in Northern Canada: The State, Staples, and the Economics of Conservation george colpitts

In 1924, a young Harold Adams Innis travelled by canoe and steamer into the Athabasca District and Mackenzie Valley. The journey provided him with first-hand observations of northern issues and development. But it also introduced him to some of the economic problems posed by recently implemented northern conservation policies. These became better identified upon his return home, when the federal ornithologist and conservationist Hoyes Lloyd, secretary of the Federal Wildlife Advisory Board, asked Innis to prepare a report on game conditions in the North.1 The five-page “confidential” memorandum on “Wildlife Conservation in the Mackenzie District” received by Lloyd in January 1925 has, to date, been largely ignored by Innis scholars as copies were not kept in Innis’s departmental and personal papers (now held at the University of Toronto Archives). Its rediscovery in the files of the Department of Indian Affairs (d i a ) , one of the bureaucracies that received it,2 offers an opportunity to reappraise both it and some of the political economist’s early analytical methods. Thus, although the report was eventually mothballed by its bureaucratic recipients,3 it has considerable value for intellectual history as it constitutes some of Innis’s first analyses of his northern observations and field notes. Quite plainly, it reveals Innis’s fascination with the fur trade and what would become his career-long interest in northern studies: here we read about the need for research into “the whole economic

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development of the area concerned” and the “serious need for a careful study of the fur trade” in the context of modern development problems in the North (lines 1–2 and 138–9).4 The document also suggests Innis’s entry into the contemporary debate over conservation and resource exhaustion, a subject that formed an important element of Innis’s work and, eventually, his writings on the “economics of conservation.”5 But perhaps the memorandum’s greatest value is that it highlights Innis’s intellectual leap from experiencing the North to identifying a theoretical relationship between the fur trade and northern development. Although Innis would have shaped some of his analysis from existing intellectual and economic models, his northern observations were clearly falling into an emerging framework that he was crafting on the spot. Indeed, as this chapter argues, Innis’s memorandum reveals some of the theoretical foundations of The Fur Trade in Canada, resource economies, and, more intriguing still, Innis’s method.6 His observations on the Mackenzie Valley during the interwar years, significantly filtered through what Matthew Evenden calls “big-men” informants, seem to provide a meaningful glimpse of Innis’s political and economic views. It is likely not insignificant that those views ultimately supported the northward extension of the Canadian state.7 a document of many voices

It is not known how the Wildlife Advisory Board learned of Innis’s journey to the Mackenzie District or why it solicited his observations afterwards. The memorandum that he wrote, however, spoke directly to the concerns of this powerful intergovernmental advisory panel, which was made up of influential movers within the Canadian government.8 The document begins by identifying problems apparent in the enforcement of the Migratory Birds Convention and the Northwest Game Act, both enacted in 1917. Probably most concerning to the advisory board (and seemingly the reason Innis made the report “confidential”) were Innis’s descriptions of police complacency regarding the game violations he saw being committed (lines 9–38).9 But the memorandum did more than just report game violations. Innis went on to raise doubts that ordinances could be effectively enforced anyway and, indeed, suggested that coercive conservation measures might be detrimental if they heightened, as they already seemed to be doing, the hostility of residents (lines 47–51). Instead,

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Innis provided the beginnings of a northern economic analysis that predated his 1927 The Fur Trade of Canada, an economic overview of the modern fur trade, and his 1930 The Fur Trade in Canada, framed around his staples theory (Innis 1927b, 1999 [1930]). In his memo, he cited local problems that would continue to impede the government’s ability to enforce game and bird laws: an almost nonexistent agricultural base to supply local needs, a reliance on fur exports to pay for extremely bulky and expensive food imports, an onus on competitive transport companies to bring “lighter, more valuable and more profitable supplies than foodstuffs” (lines 94–5), the increase in the northern population (lines 116–20), and, ultimately, the fundamental questions around the “conservation of fur bearing animals” now that newcomers were competing with Aboriginal hunters (lines 126–41). Beyond the specifics of these observations, Innis’s document has a number of general characteristics worth highlighting. The most obvious is the memorandum’s perspective. Despite its stated subject matter, the North, the document is firmly grounded in the “centre,” that is, in the perspectives of central Canada and the federal government. And it is interested in how governance through regulation – in this case, wildlife conservation – extended (or not) from the state into the northerly frontier. It might be the case that Innis was anticipating the needs and concerns of his readers. But, just as likely, the memorandum reflects his sources and informants. Arguably, there was little neutrality either in Innis’s observations and field notes or in the analysis he derived from them in order to write this memorandum, which so well anticipates elements of his staples theory. As Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, 110) points out, when in the North, Innis chose the people with whom he spoke (mostly men of authority, hb c managers, police, government agents, and missionaries). On the whole, the debate conducted with this class of informant concerned not whether governance should move North but how. Having largely excluded the views of women, treaty Indians, and many Métis – collectively constituting a large majority of northern residents – Innis relied upon the capitalized free trader, established trading-post managers, credited (and therefore respectable) trippers, steamship operators, and government representatives, almost all of whom were party to or interested in a key policy debate of the period: how can the economy in the North best support Canadian governance?

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That such a question should be filtered through Innis’s memorandum on wildlife conservation should not be surprising. Throughout Canada in this period, the state’s authority was extending into wildlife “commons” through ordinances, new game offices, and scientific wildlife advisors who sought the maximum sustainable returns being promised through “Progressive Conservation.” Conservationists extended the state’s authority, often at the expense of local practices and, in this case, Aboriginal hunting traditions.10 Although he did not detail the process by which his investigation proceeded, the ends of Innis’s analysis are apparent: he presents as a given the transition to state power. The predominantly Aboriginal population, which depended on wild game, would be most affected by the state’s conservation measures, while the white newcomers, whether in business or government, could be only partially supplied by garden produce and “a substantial quantity” of costly food imports (lines 60–4). This, essentially, was the “study of the conservation of wild life” (lines 113–14). Furthermore, such observations were made at a critical juncture in government policy in the North. That Lloyd solicited the memorandum in the first place confirms the federal government’s revived interest in northern wildlife conservation in the early 1920s (Sandlos 2007, 17–18). This was no ordinary moment in northern history, as Innis’s memorandum makes clear. He was well aware that the government needed “intelligent legislation” (line 140) for “what [was] admitted to be a very urgent problem” (line 144). By the time Innis was reporting on conditions, most administrators understood some of the complexity of the questions his memorandum raised. Wartime concerns – many exaggerated – about foreign traders in the North had provided some of the impetus for the writing and for the application of a more stringent Northwest Game Act in 1917.11 The assignment of northern wildlife to the responsibility of the federal parks department that year brought enthusiastic conservationists such as parks commissioner James Harkin and scientist Maxwell Graham into the file. The same year, Canada’s signing on to the Migratory Birds Convention with the United States made it imperative for the state to control its northerly bird-nesting fringes. The sections of this international convention trumped any of Canada’s prior treaty obligations to First Nations and provincial powers in game legislation, as provided for in the British North America Act. A federal multi-departmental wildlife advisory board was established in 1916 to negotiate this potentially

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controversial treaty, and its membership continued to exert influence across many departments and provincial governments to see that it was honoured afterwards (Foster 1998, 162). Postwar interest in conservation had also grown with new estimates of northern economic potential and large numbers of newcomers arriving to try their hand at trapping or prospecting. The establishment of a separate Northwest Territories and Yukon (n wt&y) branch of the Department of Interior, headed by O.S. Finney, resulted. Wildlife conservation was a priority to Finney and his branch, as its seal, illustrated with a muskox, well communicates. Given that muskoxen conservation, and the Northwest Game Act, 1917, had been a means of establishing Canadian sovereignty in the North, it is perhaps no surprise that the new northern branch would attend closely to wildlife conservation as it undertook to extend Canadian governance.12 The statist framework of Innis’s memorandum, and the governance it implied in northern Canada, however, should not lead to any exaggerated estimate of the state’s real power. Throughout his report, Innis restates: “the subject involves a careful survey of the whole economic development of the area concerned” (lines 1–2); “a careful study of the food situation is essential” (line 112–13); “the enforcement of game laws depends for its success on a much deeper problem” (lines 124–5), requiring greater study; “there is a serious need for a careful study of the fur trade” (lines 138–9). As a study of his field notes makes clear, the many informants Innis relied upon for his northern observations – and for this memorandum – were hardly of one voice. There was little consensus on the central question of the regulation or non-regulation of the economy. Not only was wildlife protection important but the “question of the conservation of fur bearing animals” (lines 126–7) was also of paramount interest since it was fundamental to the establishment of a South-connected and South-dependent economy. Differing views with “little to do with the facts of the case,” however, blurred issues. On one side were large, established companies, on the other “white [free] traders, and trappers, missionaries and Indian agents” (lines 155–6), both arguing for or against special trading privileges awarded to year-round occupants and permanently established companies. Rather than reporting on the state’s moving as a bloc northward in game and bird ordinances, Innis was a witness to a great debate about policy, and the background to all this was the ragged, uneven

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extent of true Canadian governance in the North. No wonder that the Wildlife Advisory Board took Innis’s report of rcm p complicity in game abuses very seriously (launching an investigation of the offending officers).13 This Ottawa-based board worried about any fracture in the consensus on wildlife conservation. By 1925, it was equally concerned that Fort Fitzgerald police had made a practice of “treat[ing] Indians leniently with regard to shooting duck, moose and caribou out of season” and that the same police had communicated this unofficial policy to nwt Indian agencies, who were following suit.14 The very idea of government expansion into the North at this time, which was unreasonable given the small budgets allotted to its administration and the thin number of personnel, was undermined by internal divisions over wildlife and fur-trade policy. The n w t & y Branch was frequently at odds with the views of rcm p officers and inspectors actually in place. The branch often disagreed with d i a officials whose postwar interests lay more in reducing the cost of rations to destitute treaty Indians and who were defending treatyhunting freedoms in court, in large measure to avoid huge h bc food bills.15 Aboriginal peoples had assumed that Treaty 8 (1899) and Treaty 11 (1921) would grant them unfettered hunting and fishing rights throughout the Athabasca and Mackenzie regions. Although written treaties contained clauses freeing the government’s hand to legislate on game issues from time to time, Indian agents in the region were under considerable pressure to continue guaranteeing treaty Indians their unlimited right to hunt and fish.16 Those who did this were reprimanded accordingly.17 But most Indian agents understood, as did many travelling rcm p inspectors, that tampering with those rights would bring untold hardship to the North and massive destitution to Aboriginal peoples.18 Some Indian agents even advanced the heresy that ordinances had little applicability among Aboriginal people who already practised a form of sustained yield in their hunt and whose interest in maintaining game for the future had led them to develop family hunting territories and nonintensive harvesting.19 It was likely only O.S. Finnie’s nwt & y Branch, located in Ottawa, whose administrators sought to assert control over Aboriginal inhabitants around the fringes of treaty promises that consistently saw the issue in concrete terms. Just as Innis recommended (lines 124–5), Finnie devised educational propaganda to encourage Dene and Cree

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hunters to follow non-Aboriginal traditions in forest and caribou conservation as well as health and sanitation measures.20 The creation of Indian hunting “reserves,” established by 1924 and referred to by Innis (lines 127–8), and parks such as the Wood Buffalo, while attempting to reserve game for Aboriginal hunting, undermined many treaty rights.21 But it was likely the issue of the North’s economy and the conservation of fur-bearing animals that Finnie’s branch took most seriously. By the time Innis arrived in the North, almost all of his informants were speaking to this issue, which was central to governance. All were aware of the influx of free traders and the changes they were introducing to the North. These competitors introduced new trading relationships with Aboriginal people, sparked new Aboriginal consumer behaviour, and offered credit that Finnie’s superior, Minister of Interior Charles Stewart, later suggested “warranted special attention.”22 Innis’s document, though not offering policy directions, spoke clearly to this debate. This perhaps constitutes the most interesting feature of Innis’s memorandum. Innis was not really describing an indigenous, northern economy, one based on country produce and, at least for the moment, remaining largely autonomous (he in fact rarely speaks about wildlife at all). Rather, Innis’s analysis focuses upon the imported food substitutes that would make the northern economy dependent upon southern suppliers. In this respect, the memorandum addresses economic relations North to South and how, through governance, those relations could be better established. There is much to suggest that Innis’s memorandum touches upon central questions at play in postwar policy development, which was soon to culminate, in 1926, with the “No Tripping Policy.”23 With this, the government raised licence fees to itinerant traders to five hundred dollars, largely to the benefit of established companies; curtailed cash disbursements (which, as the hb c knew very well, gave Aboriginals who received it more power in negotiation); reduced “frivolous” wares offered to Aboriginal buyers; and narrowed the loose credit provided to Aboriginal trappers. People on the spot – free traders, the rcm p, missionaries – criticized the policy because it raised prices on goods for Aboriginal people.24 Innis’s document of many voices, then, was written in a formative moment of policy development and northern history. This memorandum, and Innis’s first analysis of northern life, takes sides on this key issue, supporting Canadian governance and the curtailment of Aboriginal economic freedom. In this respect, it

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offers a glimpse of the often overlooked, but significant, statist assumptions of staples theory itself.25 f r o m i n f o r m a n t s t o s ta p l e s e c o n o m i c s

Innis went from observation to analysis in making the points offered in his memorandum. His interest in industrialized transport and the “disjuncture” of industrialization, drawing on Thorstein Veblen’s work,26 and so evidenced in his field notes,27 is here worked into a framework of differential shipping costs and capacity, and the contrasting relative prices of heavy and light items in and out of the country (lines 46–7, 66–7). This is undoubtedly the building-block conception of a fur-trade economy dominated by “excess capacity,”28 one of the “rigidities” of Innis’s thought that, as Irene Spry (1999, 108–9) points out, determined the type of resource a resource economy would exploit and the rate of its development/exhaustion.29 Innis was not only making a particular observation, represented as a “rigidity” of industrialized transport, but was also extracting it from a myriad of very interested informant voices. Transportation in the North was reported to Innis in highly charged political and economic terms as transport innovations were supporting a rapidly expanding and competitive fur trade, which not only divided rivals within the economy but also challenged government administration in the North. Almost all of his field note informants had stakes in the issue. These included “Lawrence,” the former h bc supplier, now independent fur merchant at Peace River, who described to Innis the high prices of his independently imported food after breaking ranks with a grasping and monopolist h bc.30 There was Doherty, Reveillon Frères’ representative at Peace River, whose information included the “charge that collusion exists between buyers.” Further, there was “considerable competition [and a] large number of Jews in Business.” Finally, Doherty comments: “[There are] more and more independent buyers. Travelling license – $100. Travelling buyers follow up trappers.”31 K.F. Anderson, police inspector, relayed details of venereal disease, bootlegging, and credit accompanying the expansion: “Trading companies gave credit to Indians. Indians in return often sell furs collected to another company. Result traders can do nothing against Indian as he is a ward of Crown and cannot be sued.”32

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Innis clearly had a choice among all of these viewpoints when he began developing the memorandum’s lengthy observations on northern transportation, the basis of which became the “rigidity” of “excess capacity.” Rather than identifying, as he did, transportation as a problem of nature, he might well have sided with non-governmental and non-h b c supporters, those oft-criticized free traders (many of whom were Canadian or American newcomers, Jews, “Gypsies,” and other ethnicities) who so thoroughly undermined the supremacy of the hbc, and, in their practices, actually empowered Aboriginal traders. They offered a far greater variety of goods at much better prices. It was also the free traders who offered cash and forced the hb c to do so as well, which infinitely freed Aboriginal hands in negotiation and consumer choice. Why did Innis disregard the potential of this competition, which was, as one informant pointed out, successfully bringing in more supplies of fresh fruit throughout the ice-free season than the hb c, which continued to use an antiquated and internally criticized system of annual requisitioning to deliver, once in the season, its outfit of oranges and broken eggs?33 For government readers, Innis seems to have dismissed the expanding presence of competing companies driving twin-screw propeller and more mobile boats, and the enterprising free traders pushing scows and following spring-flush rivers earlier in the season. Although he urged “more study,” his analysis of northern transportation more than suggests that Innis had already identified a “reality” in the northern economy – a reality that was being reported by established hbc voices. Furthermore, by 1924, northern residents, particularly those with stakes in controlling an expanding fur-trade economy, agreed that business was changing. “Establishment” voices tended to paint that change in a negative light.34 It is true that the war years had allowed for more competitive fur-buying – in good measure because of the brief hb c suspension of sales that welcomed free traders. Fur prices in general were, as Ray’s analysis and those of contemporaries confirm, rising quickly.35 Immediately after the war, newcomers had rushed to claim traplines. In turn, their hunting and the way traders made purchases challenged centuries’-old Aboriginal-based trading and hunting traditions (Wenzel 1987, 195–210).36 None of these issues was described with much objectivity to Innis, as his field notes make clear.37 Innis’s informants themselves rarely suggested that the fur trade had simply enlarged in these years, merely stating that it now included large numbers of independent companies, individual traders,

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Aboriginal “trippers,” and trapper-traders who purchased furs in exchange for new and different types of merchandise – which most likely formed the most important current issue in terms of governance.38 The h b c, meanwhile, was barely coping. It struggled with the costs of maintaining some twenty-seven posts in the Mackenzie District, with twenty-nine outposts maintained by trippers, of which twenty were Native.39 Peter Usher identified some 217 trading posts operating at 139 locations in the Northwest Territories between 1925 and 1929. Great Slave Lake posts jumped in number from seventeen before the war to thirty in the interwar period and forty-three just before the Depression. During the same period, Mackenzie River posts multiplied from twenty-two in number to thirty-one and fifty-six. 40 Traders attached to hbc service, and key informants for Innis, in turn reported the difficulties they faced reconciling their business traditions with the postwar competition, price system, and credit innovations of rival trippers and traders.41 By the end of the First World War, they were indeed witnessing the rapid integration of the Mackenzie and Athabasca districts into southern economies, but they were also fearing that the integration was largely beyond the control of both the hbc and the federal government. Shortened lines of communication and transportation made exchanges between northern suppliers and southern buyers easier and quicker. Better links established during the war connected a Mackenzie waterways system. Now, the Alberta & Great Waterways Railway linked the new transnational from Edmonton to the waterways. The hbc’s own competitors had established steamship services on Lake Athabasca and Great Slave Lake. Newcomers using the system introduced significantly larger volumes of goods and made them available in far more liberal credit arrangements (available year-round and not just during the spring trade).42 The h b c attempted to rein in its traders from following suit and giving debt too freely or goods too cheaply (the year of Innis’s arrival, the hb c fired traders in the eastern Arctic and Mackenzie for doing just this),43 but competitors did not. In 1923, Fort Fitzgerald’s hbc post, although collecting about 71 percent of the area’s fur and extending relatively little official debt, watched as the Pinksy Brothers, with only 14 percent of the catch, extended $3,500 in credit to Slavey trappers; Lamson and Hubbard, with only 9 percent of the share, had extended another $1,800; Northern Traders, with 4 percent, had given $1,200 credit; and an independent trader, J.H. Russell, with 2 percent, had extended $300.44

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Major increases in stock of goods in inventory accompanied the credit.45 Concerned hb c officials estimated the volumes reaching the Mackenzie on the new transportation links. Large numbers of free traders were taking goods themselves in individual barge packets, beating the hb c to the jump because the latter’s steamers had to wait until full breakup before their transport could begin. Traders who traditionally kept “just enough goods to face the probability of an average season’s trade” now stocked surpluses to deal with competition and “ha[d] a sort of reserve to deal with” changing fur prices or the “slashing of merchandise sale prices.”46 The sheer tonnage of goods coming North – canned foods, heavy merchandise, rifles, shotguns, metal goods, and the like – impressed traders: in 1922, the hb c’s area inspector, Louis Romanet, guessed steamship cargoes to the Mackenzie topped two thousand tonnes that year alone. About 755 tonnes were carried by the hb c, the rest by six other major competitors and many small traders and trappers.47 Transport issues are worth highlighting because they dominate Innis’s 1924 memorandum. The fur trade clearly benefited from industrialized and mechanized transportation. If h bc employee estimates are accurate, a sizeable gain was made by companies that benefited from new technology. Romanet’s intelligence on competitor transport ranged in the following ways: in 1923, the hbc shipped 755 tonnage tons of goods northwards to the Mackenzie and returned 14.5 tonnes of fur; Northern Traders, a leading rival, shipped 380 tonnage tons of goods, returning 4.9 tonnes of fur; Lamson and Hubbard (soon going bankrupt) shipped 360 tonnage tons and returned 3.7 tonnes. In total, the six major competitors (not including the many small traders in the Mackenzie) imported some 1,680 tonnage tons of merchandise into the region and returned with some twenty seven tonnes of fur. The comparative value of these heavy imports and light exports were also tabulated: Romanet estimated that goods worth about $750,000 were returned in fur valued at $1,165,000.48 But what about rivals’ charges that h bc competitors were better at stocking food in the North? From a weight perspective, this was likely the case. It was the h b c, not its more enterprising competitors, that was guilty of bringing in the lightest trade items (and most likely the non-food items Innis is speaking about in his memo) in return for very valuable furs. By the hbc’s own estimates, for every kilogram of fur it exported from the North, it imported a mere nineteen kilograms of trade supplies. Northern Traders brought in thirty-one.

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Lamson and Hubbard brought in thirty-nine. Although Colin Fraser, at Fort Chipewyan, and Hamsden and Alley brought in less than the hb c, even the Pinsky Brothers brought in twenty-seven kilograms for every kilogram of fur they extracted from the North. Furthermore, although statistics are not available for the dozens of independent and itinerant traders, the fact that they were taking 6.9 percent of total fur returns in 1923, and offering generous terms for them, suggests that a comparatively massive amount of supplies, undoubtedly food, was making its way North in the expanded, competitive fur trade. In other words, Innis’s view of transport – the foundations of excess capacity – ended up matching how the h bc saw its problems and interests in northern transportation. More intriguingly, this interpretation was identified as problematic for the state. Certainly, Innis’s memorandum’s quite conservative view of competition (“under conditions of severe competition between the companies, the prices of fur may have risen unduly, the food supplies of the companies may have been bought and consumed early in the spring,” lines 88–91) is revealing. Innis saw competition undermining the capacity of companies (presumably well established) to make their long-term profit planning and to anticipate the needs of the country. And these issues helped ensure that, ultimately, game laws were unenforceable. While it most likely did not directly contribute to the No Tripping Policy, the Innis memorandum had identified, through its selection of voices, many of the “problems” the legislation addressed. Though he stressed the need for further study of the entire Mackenzie economy, his memorandum made the “problem” of transportation and the dependency of the staple fur economy on the outside world seem natural to the region. Given the influence of staples theory on northern development in general, it might be argued that the region has been trying to free itself of such dependency ever since. c o n c l u s i o n : i n n i s a n d c o n s e r vat i o n

When he wrote his 1924 memorandum, Innis, like his colleagues of the period, did not really analyze the role of the state in conservation. Economists who were studying “conservation” looked at problems arising from overproduction and exploitation in industrialist settings. In this respect, Innis’s 1924 memorandum does not differ greatly from the economic analysis of his time: it confronts emerging problems of the market, the effects of intense competition between

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resource extractors (and the consequent debasement of the price of exhaustible commodities like oil, coal, and forests), and distortions to production caused when Big Oil and numerous mining operations expanded so rapidly that oilfields and mines began failing and prices began falling. The highly competitive Californian oil- and gasfields, where too much drilling and waste were accompanying the scramble of independent drillers, really constituted the first instances in which economists studied conservation.49 Much changed by the 1930s, and so did Innis’s writing on conservation. By then, his analytical model of northern development had become fully articulated. He now saw regions locked into almost inevitable processes of natural-resource exhaustion.50 His dispassionate view of the North, reflecting both regional geographic “realities” and economic principles, now provided the basis for some of Innis’s characteristic pessimism, at least in terms of government planning and policies that laid aside resources (and their consumption and exhaustion) for future generations (Innis 1930a, 163). In this respect, the memorandum’s strains of positive statism contrast sharply with Innis’s later views on conservation, best described in 1938 when he published the provocative article entitled “The Economics of Conservation” in the Geographic Review. In it, Innis (1995 [1938], 207) criticized the conservation movement, which was then gaining a new following thanks to the fallout from the agricultural Depression. He did not dismiss the importance of conservation but, rather, probed the assumptions made and terminology left undefined by the period’s leading conservationists. He was most concerned about the movement’s possible impact on natural economic developments, along with the force of interests that were combining to form government policies of “wise use.” Without careful study, states that were advancing conservation might divert funds and capital, and back specific interest groups. Since, in so far as they artificially supported development at the cost of allowing more rational and pragmatic activities to take place, and often did so in the name of the nation, conservationists’ goals were similar to those of economic nationalists and protectionists. For this reason Innis condemned the conservation movement as “a phase of nationalism.”51 In 1924, the younger Innis had urged more study of northern conservation problems. More optimistic economists followed him to join other social scientists who, by the end of the Second World War, viewed the state in positive terms. By then, however, Innis had grown

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doubtful that the state could be staffed with enough trained personnel, who, with enough correct information and the means of educating a voting public, could protect its rightful monopoly on natural resources and negotiate those resources as a capital investment for future generations.52 By the later stage of his life, Innis no longer shared in the project of social science as did the “government generation” (Owram 1986).53 Instead, he sided with the pessimistic Harold Hotelling (1931), who cited a broad array of outcomes in conservation programs that might inadvertently affect the market, consumer demand, or price of resources in the present or future. Of most concern was the possibility of interfering with otherwise beneficial technological shifts as resources become more and more scarce. For his part, Innis reserved his strongest criticisms of “the wise use of our resources” for the Royal Society of Canada in the early years of the Second World War, when he suggested that governments often enacted conservation measures to mitigate the problems they had created through artificially diverting energy, resources, and human capital into specific resource developments: “[The] state has been an important instrument in the development of disequilibrium and the rapid exploitation of natural resources which has accompanied it” (Innis 1942d). Innis’s misgivings, it might be pointed out, continued, in the mid-twentieth century, to prompt economists to press states and public proponents of conservation to better identify the nationalistic and protectionist nature of the movement.54 Innis’s later pessimism around conservation raises the need to reexamine his 1924 memorandum on the Mackenzie Valley. Evenden suggests that Innis’s northern “vision” was of a “world in motion, marked by rapid growth and decay.”55 For Innis, at least in the 1920s, conservation was necessary given the way that industrialized transport and new communications had shocked the North. He understood, as his masterpiece, The Fur Trade in Canada, soon suggested, that government intervention and fur conservation in Canada’s northern areas was vital if fur-bearing animals were to have a future in the nation.56 But there is more in this long-overlooked 1924 memorandum. It suggests something of the “spirit” of Innis in his earlier intellectual years. He was clearly calling for greater study of the northern economy in order to understand the next steps of state expansion. A careful reading of this fascinating document suggests that, given the agenda of governance in the North, even wildlife conservation could become an exercise in “nationalism.” His experience of travelling

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through the North, and his selection of informants for his “confidential” memorandum was, at any rate, a formidable starting point to Harold Innis’s understanding of northern economic structures.

notes

The author acknowledges the assistance provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for the research and writing of this chapter. He thanks Doug Francis and Matthew Evenden for their valuable reading of this chapter as well as the comments of William Buxton and other participants at the Harold Innis Conference organized at Concordia University in July 2007. 1 Hoyes Lloyd’s work in the federal government is highlighted by Foster (1998, 159). Loo (2006, 89) highlights the nature of government ornithology and official conservation in her overview of federal conservation policies. See also Colpitts (2002). 2 The document is held in the Indian Affairs Files, lac –ia f, r g 10, fol. 6742, file 420–6, pt. 1. It was stamped by the dia, 5 February 1925. Lorne Hammond had found evidence of the document in the files of the Wildlife Advisory Board and, later, the rc mp commissioner’s office, which investigated the game offences Innis reported. Alan MacEachern, researching Innis’s Mackenzie journey, made an H-Net inquiry resulting in Hammond’s comments on the Wildlife Advisory Board. See Hammond’s and MacEachern’s H-Net archived exchange, 24 June 1996. 3 Although Innis did not keep a copy of the memorandum, he did save Lloyd’s correspondence, one item of which says that Innis’s report was “of great value, and I hope will assist in carrying out improvements in that area.” See Lloyd to Innis, 24 October 1924, uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (11). the report was then distributed to the Advisory Board, as acknowledged by another Lloyd letter to Innis, 8 January 1925, uta –pef, A1976–0025/002 (11). 4 “A Confidential Memorandum on the Conservation of Wild Life in the Mackenzie District” is chapter 4 of this volume. As Matthew Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, 73 points out, the journey made a sizeable impact on Innis: “The river would become a point of entry into a northern vision for Innis.” See also Evenden (1998, 36). 5 Innis ended his Fur Trade of Canada by acknowledging that Canada’s staples economy had depended not only upon geographic expansion but also upon the successive exhaustion of fur resources: The last line of his

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book reads: “The time would appear to have arrived for a competent survey of the problems of the trade looking to the conservation of one of Canada’s important natural resources” (Innis 1999 [1930]), 379; 1995 [1938]; 1942a). 6 See Baragar (1996); Stark (1994), and Berger (1986a, 88). Irene Spry remembered Innis’s having been influenced by such thinkers as Alfred Marshall, but: “He would not accept holus-bolus other people’s patterns of thought, such as those of the classical theorists and Karl Marx. He was intent on working out his own ideas, based on careful observation of what actually went on in the industries that he studies” (Spry 1999, 106). Francis (2009, 163–70) offers a valuable perspective on the technological mindset Innis derived from both scholarly works and experiential study, drawing on his northern observations. On the elaboration of “industrial circuitry” that seems to have interested Innis in the north at the time, see Piper (2009). 7 Evenden (this volume, xxx; Irene Spry (1980, 291–2) defined the “rigidities” of staples exploitation that helped explain Canada’s subsequent economic development, many of which can be located in earlier fur-trade and Aboriginal history. 8 Hammond suggested that perhaps Innis wanted to file a charge against officers and did so “confidentially,” later having his friend, Long, make the formal complaint. Hammond said that he had the sense that Innis wanted to keep the University of Toronto’s name out of the affair (Hammond and MacEachern, 24 June 1996). However, as the memorandum suggests, Innis likely believed that the event only underlined the inoperability of the game regulations in the North. Innis likely wanted his views to remain “confidential” because he did not want to alienate rc mp and Indian affairs agents upon whom he would rely in future northern visits. Most centrally, however, he had formed a friendship with one of the Indian agents accused, the “inimitable T.H. (Flynn) Harris.” See Innis’s mention of Harris (Innis 1940d, 201). Many thanks to Bill Buxton for pointing out the friendship between Innis and Harris as well as Innis’s dedication in the Pond biography to his friend John Long. See Foster’s (1998) description of the limited powers but significance influence of the board. 9 The board instructed Lloyd to have Innis identify those involved, but he refused, “after much delay.” John Long, however, did not refuse and came forward with incriminating photographs of the two moose shot. See Lloyd to D.C. Scott, 16 March 1925, LAC-I AF, R G 10, fol. 6742, file 420-1. 10 Loo (2006, 6–7, 26, 36) makes this point. See also Jacoby (2003, 29–39). 11 Cox (1995, 121) valuably highlights this issue. However, he also dismisses postwar conditions as fabricated by government officials for the purpose of extending the Northwest Game Act.

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12 Dick (2001) provides a good overview of the sovereignty issue played out in muskoxen conservation. 13 Innis provided details of the moose poaching in his journal (Innis 1924b). 14 O.S. Finnie was alerted to this practice in Alberta and did not want it applied in his jurisdiction by Indian agents and other government agents. See O.S. Finnie to John A.McDougal, district agent at Fort Smith, 20 July 1925, l ac , rg 10, vol. 4049, file 361, 714. 15 See the h b c ’s invoices to the department in lac , R G 10, vol. 3708, file 19, 502. I address the change in the di a’s priorities and defence of treaty rights during the period in Colpitts (2002, 95–7). 16 See l ac , r g 10, Vol. 6742, file 420–6 for nwt issues; and r g 10, vol. 6750, file 420–10, for examples in Quebec. 17 Maxwell Graham reprimanded Indian Agent Card, at Fort Smith, for extending hunting freedoms to any treaty Indian within Wood Buffalo National Park. See Graham Memorandum, 14 December 1926, lac , r g 10, vol. 4049, file 361, 714. 18 On the ministerial concerns for Wood Buffalo National Park, see Sandlos (2007, 47–9). 19 See Indian Agent R.B. Rioux’s observations to the dia , 17 December 1925, and Indian Agency Inspector C. Cunifer’s remarks on the sustained yield of Aboriginal hunting practices, 22 July 1926, lac , r g 10, vol. 6750, file 420–10, 22 July, 1926. A Fort Simpson agent doubted that regulations were even necessary for the Slavey “and their kindred tribes”: “a people so wanting in energy” that there was no danger in them “exterminating or even appreciably diminishing the quantity of Game in the country.” See Fort Simpson Indian Agency, Monthly Report, 1918, lac , r g 10, vol. 6742, file 420–6, 1. The same agent later said: “The Indians of this Northern country, instead of being restricted in their hunting, have much greater need of being induced in every way to hunt more than they do, as they are far too remiss in this respect.” At no times could they be in a state “not to be considered one of actual starvation … there is no time at which they have in their possession food enough for themselves and their families for more than a day or two.” See Harris to Scott, 27 February 1919, l ac , rg 10, fol. 6742, file 420–6–1. In 1920, another administrator suggested that Aboriginal hunters practise a “scheme for conservation for future years and generations” that clearly differed from anything practised by the people entering their territories. See Conroy to Scott, 1 March 1920, l ac , rg 10, vol. 6742, file 420–6–1. 20 For the circular letters produced in 1927, see lac , r g 85, C-1–a, vol. 768, file 5208.

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21 The Indian Hunting Reserves, including Wood Buffalo Park, were established by 1923. See O.S. Finnie’s letter to the superintendent of Indian Affairs, 2 August 1923, lac, rg 10, vol. 4049, file 361,714. The reserves included the Arctic archipelago, the Peel River, the Yellowknife Preserve, and Back’s River and Slave River preserves. See P.C. 1862, 22 September 1923, copy in lac, rg 10, vol. 4049, file 361,714. But Finnie’s Public Notices included the stipulation that “Treaty Indians, must … conform to Park regulations with respect to closed seasons.” See notices, in lac , r g 10, vol. 4049, file 361,714. On the politics of such reserves, see McCormack (1992) and Sandlos (2002). 22 The minister’s comments are found in “Fur Companies Fight ‘Gypsies’ for Business,” Edmonton Journal, 11 February 1926. 23 “Trippers” were often foreign or Native traders sent with goods to meet trappers in the bush. 24 See the correspondence on the issue in the nwt&y Branch’s file 5066 “Restrictions on Itinerant Traders, n w t,” lac , r g 85, vol. 764. Inspector Fletcher and James Ritchie, the superintendent of G. Division, opposed the policy. 25 On the concept of “governmentality” as developed by Michel Foucault, see Hannah (2000). 26 Veblen’s work is summarized by Innis (1929c). See also Evenden’s (chapter 3, this volume, 83) comments on Innis’s use of Veblen at this time. 27 Just outside of Fort Fitzgerald, Innis (1924b) noted: “Saw teams loading gasoline barrels on wagons. Tremendous amount of gasoline used down the river. Fitzgerald generally a transportation town. Tremendous advantage of swift current loaded provisions heavy material going in and light coming out – adaption of trade (furs) to river. Whole Arctic civilization a capitalization of advantages of a swift river.” And later: “The great bulk of commodities must be moved in summer, on boats adapted to the rivers – stern wheel steamers, with light draught, but capable of carrying heavy tonnage and supplemented by barges of a similar character” (Innis 1925a, 152). 28 “For various reasons fur is the important export. The rivers run to the north. The winters and forests are prerequisites of the fur trade. A population of 4,500 sends out about $3,000,000 worth of furs per year. Heavy, bulky supplies are brought from Edmonton, and, once started on the rivers, are carried down to the posts, which are located primarily for the handling of furs at the mouths of the tributaries and are about 250 miles apart. For export upstream, only light, durable, and valuable commodities such as fur will answer. The great bulk of commodities must be moved in summer, on boats adapted to the rivers – stern wheel steamers, with light

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draught, but capable of carrying heavy tonnage and supplemented by barges of a similar character” (Innis 1925a, 152). See excess capacity appearing in Innis (1999 [1930], 390). W.K. Hancock (1948, 113), reviewing Innis’s Political Economy in the Modern State (1946), wrote: “There is, for example, the theme of excess capacity in transport, here once again expounded in two masterful essays … This is a theme that runs as deep and strong as the St. Lawrence River.” 29 “The legacy of the fur trade has been an organized transport over wide areas especially adapted for handling heavy manufactured goods going to the interior and for bringing out a light valuable commodity,” Innis wrote in one summation of staples theory: “The heavy one-way traffic made the trade discouraging to settlement and in turn made the trade a heavy drain on settlement” (Innis 1931b, 171). 30 Innis (1924b) noted: “Lawrence began to buy furs – competed with Company. Sinclair [hbc manager] refused to buy further provisions and imported corn meal to store. Lawrence went into furs more than ever … noted food costs. 1886 – Flour $25 per 100 lb. wages $1 a day. Matches $1 a box … rice 3 lbs. for $1.” 31 I am assuming “Doherty” provided all of these observations to Innis, who did not clearly mark informants in this notebook. See Innis (1924b). 32 Ibid. Anderson’s own journal of 1923–24 does not mention Innis’s arrival. His papers are found in Glenbow Archives, M18, file 17–18. 33 See Innis’s (1924b) notes on “Morris,” a Northern Trader at Fitzgerald, comparing hbc and independent trader transport of food northward. The h b c’s criticism of its antiquated practices was an urgent issue. It hired marketers and business planners to streamline, above all, postwar requisitions processes that paled beside the innovative, rapid, and efficient transport of Canadian and American buyers. See, for instance, hb c a, Secretary’s Working Papers, 1909–1918 A.67/61, Memorandum on “Merchandise Bought in Canada for Fur Trade, 3 March 1914. War-time Imperial munitions buyer/expert W.S. Lecky was hired after the war to make h b c requisitioning and purchasing competitive. See his “Report on the Purchasing Methods of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Winnipeg, 17 December 1920, hbca, A.90/1. 34 One H B C post inspector, Lawrence Romanet, the acting director for the Mackenzie District, had written reports to that effect. He indicated that, by 1923, such changes had ushered in a “vast kaleidoscope moving briskly” in the business of the North and had changed the very colour of the

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fur trade forever. See L. Romanet, Annual Report, Mackenzie River District 1923, hbca, rg 3/2/1. 35 See Arthur J. Ray’s very useful analyses of fur-species pricing, which became more erratic by the late nineteenth century as it was swept by increasingly capricious international markets. His discussion of the impact of the war highlights price (Ray 1990, 96–111). hb c a annual reports, especially those made by area inspectors, detail the instability of wartime and postwar prices. These annual reports are found by Outfit in hb c a, A.74 series. Particularly relevant is Outfit 255 (1924) Annual Report of the Mackenzie River District, “Fur Prices in the District,” A.74/54. A valuable summary of the impact of the First World War on prices is provided by Zaslow (1988, chap. 5). 36 See Frank Tough’s (1990) valuable work on changing monopoly relations and economic motivation. See also Tough (1996). 37 The Métis claimed that “Indians” were careless in postwar trapping; a Northern Trader commented on the “Assyrian Jews” reaching forts Fitzgerald and Smith, saying they were “frowned on by H[udson’s] B[ay] Company” (Innis 1924b). The federal government’s opinion is best summed up in the title of a special file on the topic created by the nwt&y Branch: “Restrictions on Itinerant Traders,” Northwest Territories and Game Branch files, lac, rg 85, vol. 764, file 5066. 38 See Memorandum of the Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch, 25 February 1926, which counted 182 fur-trading licence issues in 1924–25, 138 to owners and managers of established fur-trading posts and fortyfour to itinerant traders. Only one of the licences was issued to non-resident, non-British traders. See Restrictions on Itinerant Traders, nwt, l ac , r g 85, vol. 764, file 5066. 39 Annual Reports from District Officers, Outfit 255 Mackenzie River, h b c a , A74/54, fols. 1–73. 40 Usher (1971, 28 and table 1). 41 h b c a Annual reports of the Mackenzie and Athabasca districts in the postwar years. The Mackenzie Valley posts, in particular, were the most difficult to manage. In 1923 the inspector reported the decrease in the company’s sales for a variety of reasons. See “Norman, Simpson and McKay, - loss of trade due to inability of the Post Managers to cope with opposition,” 16, hbca, A. 74/ 52. See also report for Outfit 254 (1923), hbca, A.74/53/. Particularly useful is Outfit 255 (1924) Annual Report of the Mackenzie River District, “Fur Prices in the District,” hbca, A.74/ 54, which attributed many of the high prices to post managers’ being “out of control and paid recklessly,” the large outlay in cash purchases, and the

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work of competitors in the district. A.J. Ray’s (1990, 96–111) overview of changing wartime conditions is also very useful. 42 Missionary, hbc records, and rcm p inspector reports make it clear that, after the war, upwards of a thousand newcomers, many of whom were trappers, were in places like Fort Chipewyan to cash in on postwar prices. See l ac , r g 18, ser. F-1, vol. 3172, file G846–8, Fort Chipewyan Patrols, 1923. See also ibid., Inspector G.F. Fletcher’s Report, 11 November 1922. On changing debt practices in the North, see John Bartleman’s comments on “Issue and Control of Credit,” in the company’s yearly conference in 1936, h b ca, RG 3/ 17E/ 4, Appendix “D.” 43 In 1923, the Fort Norman and Fort Resolution managers, who had been too liberal with prices, were fired. See discussion under “Competition,” in Annual Report, Mackenzie River District 1923, hb c a , r g 3/2/1 Saskatchewan. 44 Ibid. 45 Between 1922 and 1923 the hbc traders allowed stock increases at McPherson (20 percent), Arctic Red River (77 percent), Wrigley (45 percent), Simpson (60 percent), Liard (32 percent), Nelson (200 percent), Rae (300 percent), Resolution (80 percent), and Chipewyan (10 percent). See discussion under “Competition,” in Annual Report, Mackenzie River District 1923, hbca, rg 3/2/1 Saskatchewan. 46 Annual Reports from District Officers, Outfit 255 Mackenzie River, h b c a, A.74/54 fols. 1–73. 47 Annual Reports from District Officers, Outfit 252, hb c a , A.74/52, p. 40 Louis Romanet’s remark, from the Mackenzie District annual report from 1923, is worth highlighting: “This general remark will help in realizing the new importance of the merchandise sales on which rest the only possibility of finding a sufficient margin of profit to cover the operating expenses and allow a net gain.” See District Annual Reports, hb c a, r g 3/2/1. 48 “Tonnage tons,” a contemporary steerage measure, was used by Romanet in his “Competition” tabulation in Annual Report, Mackenzie River District 1923,hbca, rg 3/2/1, Saskatchewan. 49 An important essay in this context is Gray (1913, 497–519). See, in particular, his concluding comments, which call for very little government intervention but, rather correctives to the market, especially with regard to greater efficiencies in distribution (515–16). In the postwar period, the effects of transportation improvements and costs were reviewed by Greeley (1923, 352–62). Hammond’s (1924) summary of the overly competitive, and overproducing, American and Canadian coal-mining industry is very useful. The problem of debased prices in forest and oil industries, and the

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competition’s putting too much product on the market (at the expense of the future), is well described in Ise (1925). 50 The change is suggested in the northern analysis he had worked on in 1930. In the North: “No country has swung backwards and forwards in response to such factors as improvements in the technique of transport, exhaustion of raw materials and the advance of industrialism with such violence as Canada” (Innis 1930h, 163). 51 Ibid., 207. Innis was far more severe in his criticism in the article’s unpublished draft and margin notes. See the earlier draft in Innis’s reviews and publications files: Review, Parkins and Whitaker. n.d., uta –ir, B1972– 0025/024 (19). 52 Conservation economics made a visible shift in the 1940s as more optimism emerged regarding the power of the state to broker the needs of future generations with the desires of the present generation. Conservation, according to the new economics of the early 1950s, was a means by which a democracy countered pressure on the state to squander the next generation’s common resources on the present one. See Goundrey (1956). 53 See also distinctions between Innis’s pessimism and earlier developmental views of the Canadian economy, such as those held by W.A. Macintosh (Ferguson 1993). Also useful in highlighting the overall differences between Innis’s views and those of pertaining to progress, at least within the American and Canadian wests, is Francis (2003). 54 See Easterbrook’s (1944) use of Innis’s “economics of conservation” in his criticism of north Pacific fisheries conservation in the late 1940s: “Yet conservation as a phase of nationalism, and the ultimate ends of conservation, are among considerations which surely merit more attention in works on conservation than they have received up to the present.” See also Anthony Scott’s (1954) use of Innis. 55 Evenden (this volume, xxx). 56 “The time would appear to have arrived for a competent survey of the problems of the trade looking to the conservation of one of Canada’s important natural resources” (Innis 1999 [1930], 379).

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5 A Confidential Memorandum on the Conservation of Wild Life in the Mackenzie District, prepared at the request of Mr. Hoyes Lloyd, and submitted to him by Mr. Harold A. Innis of the Department of Political Economy, University of Toronto* harold adams innis

17

Any reference to this subject involves a careful survey of the whole economic development of the area concerned. This is especially true in the case of the Mackenzie River drainage basin where the principal export is fur, where agriculture is slight and to a large extent in the experimental stage and where, as a result, the population is scanty and sustained principally by food imported from outside, and by the products of fishing and hunting. These facts dominate the whole situation. In the first place it is necessary to state briefly the conditions under which observations were made. After leaving for Ft. Vermilion by canoe from Peace River [Crossing] on June 16 we saw ducks shot on the river and learned of at least one goose which had been shot. In each case care was taken that only the male should be shot, a precaution which would be usually successful in the case of geese but not in the case of ducks. The young geese had been hatched, but generally the ducks were still nesting. No great care was taken by any of the people concerned that the police should not be informed. *  Editor’s

note: Since this memorandum is an original document, it has not been edited. A version of this memorandum annotated by George Colpitts is available at mqup.ca/filebin/pdf/harold.pdf.

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Probably the police were not actually notified and they did not take particular pains to discover irregularities. It was all treated as a matter in which the people were not expected to interfere. From Fort Vermilion to Fitzgerald and from Fort Smith to Resolution we travelled in the same fashion and found that the same conditions prevailed. We went across Slave Lake and down the Mackenzie to Simpson and up the Liard to Fort Nelson on the “Liard River.” – gas boat. Returning we caught the Distributor at Simpson and made the return trip to Aklavik, and back to Smith and McMurray. The field was fairly well, though somewhat hurriedly, covered. It may have been that care was taken near the posts that the police should not discover any irregularities, but certainly such care was not conspicuous. The general condemnation of the Migratory birds convention act was the only evidence that the interference of the police was expected. This attitude was by no means limited to bird life. We saw two female two-year old moose shot, in which case a policeman and other officers of the law were present. And it is reasonably certain that the same thing would have happened had any higher police officials been present. It is generally considered as a common thing to shoot moose or bear on the boat trip on the Liard River and on the Mackenzie River. It may be said that the game laws throughout the district are practically inoperative. Because of the scarcity of the population and the distances covered, it is impossible for the police to give adequate supervision to prevent violation of the game laws. When the people must depend to a large extent on canned foods and imported products, a continual diet of which becomes intolerable, it can hardly be expected that they will refrain from violating the law. This is especially true because of the high prices of imported food stuffs incidental to heavy transportation charges. Legal enactments and coercive measures are not only of little avail but they may become, through the general attitude of hostility which they create, actually detrimental. It may be questioned whether the police can be expected to enforce the regulations. But the whole question of conservation of wild life is more vitally connected with the economic life of the country than these considerations suggest. The population consists largely of Indians and half breeds and to a less extent of missionaries, white traders, trappers, woodcutters, and government officials (Indian agents), police and the like. The food supply is obtained partly from the country itself, since nearly every spot and every

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mission as far down as Good Hope has its garden and its potato patch. At Simpson, Smith and in limited areas, farming is carried on to some extent. For the support of the white population alone probably a substantial quantity of supplies is brought in from outside. The Indians must depend to a very large extent on animal life, aside from the amount of food furnished by the Indian agent and that obtained from the posts. The animal life consists to a large extent of fish and rabbits and whatever game may be had. In exchange for one source of the food supply – that brought in from outside – furs are practically the only product sent out. From a short and business point of view it is to the interest of those purchasing the furs to supply as little in return as possible. Since transportation is limited to the summer season, requisitions of food supplies must be made out for the following year early enough to permit the importation of the supplies during that season. In the first place while it may be possible to judge after years of experience how many supplies will be needed during a season and while supplies of the Indian agent and of the missionaries may always be drawn on in cases of emergency, there is always the possibility of straitened circumstances before the boat arrives the next season. In fact, the general welcome which is accorded to the first boat of the season at every port partly results from the fact that such circumstances are regarded as a normal occurrence. The season may be unusually late, rabbits and game generally may have been scarce throughout the winter, the potato crop of the previous summer may have been less successful than had been anticipated, the fall fishery may not have been a success, under conditions of severe competition between the companies, the prices of fur may have risen unduly, the food supplies of the companies may have been bought and consumed early in the spring – these are factors which could not have been foreseen and provided against in the requisitions of a year previous. With the population running short of food during a season in which game laws are supposed to be most effective, it is slight wonder that difficulties occur. All this is of special significance when it is considered that, because of transportation costs, the companies concerned are not anxious to bring in larger supplies than will be absolutely necessary, that they will prefer to bring in lighter, more valuable and more profitable supplies than foodstuffs, and that the Indian Agents and the Missionaries are obliged to exercise every economy.

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The situation is further complicated by the fact that fluctuations in the food supply of the Indians – especially in the case of rabbits – are related directly to fluctuations in the supply of furs, when rabbits are scarce various fur bearing animals are also scarce and the people cannot purchase food supplies. Furs do not necessarily increase in price with scarcity, since factors on the demand side have little relation to supply. Various remedies suggest themselves. Greater coordination might be of some assistance, although such coordination between competing companies would be impossible. More regular distribution of the imported food supply throughout the year, improvements in transportation facilities and the general establishment of better communication – wireless, etc. – the elimination of irregularities in transportation rates, are among some of the factors which should improve the food situation and ease the strain of the game laws. A careful study of the food situation is essential – and this is the study of the conservation of wild life. Improvements in the storage and saving of fish and other supplies might be suggested. There are also questions as to population. Immigration from outside, increase in the clientele of the churchs [sic] and missions, duplication of hospitals, overcrowding of mission schools (Anglican and R.C.) are all part of the problem of the adjustment of population to food supply and of the problem of conservation of wild life. Education in conservation as it might be carried out in the mission schools, should prove effective. The enforcement of legislation prohibiting waste of wild life – shooting of gulls, etc. – is advisable. But on the whole the enforcement of game laws depends for its success on a much deeper problem. There remains the question of the conservation of fur bearing animals. This is being provided for in part by the establishment of preserves on which white men are not allowed to trap, but there are reasons for suspecting that those regulations cannot be rigidly enforced. This is regarded in many quarters as a regulation inspired by the Hudson[’s] Bay Co. and as contrary to the interests of the white man. Tax regulations have been thought of as the result of similar inspiration. And altogether there exists a generally hostile attitude to legislation of this character – an attitude which is not favourable to law enforcement. Arguments on both sides are advanced by both the Hudson[’s] Bay men and by white traders and trappers, missionaries and Indian agents. It is quite apparent that most of these arguments

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have little to do with the facts of the case and that there is serious need for a careful study of the fur trade which will make it possible to enact some intelligent legislation. Nothing can be done to eliminate the present ill-feeling until such a careful study has been made. Obviously these general statements are founded on inadequate information, but it is hoped that they may be of some value in the solution of what is admitted to be a very urgent problem.

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6 Innis, Biss, and Industrial Circuitry in the Canadian North, 1921–1965 liza piper

In the 1920s and 1930s, Harold Innis and his colleague and student Irene Biss (later Irene Spry) each took summer research trips into the Canadian North.1 For Innis, his experiences in 1924, 1926, and 1929 would substantially inform his publications The Fur Trade of Canada (1927), The Fur Trade in Canada (1930), Settlement and the Mining Frontier (Innis and Lower 1936), and more focused articles such as “The Hudson Bay Railway,” which appeared in the Geographical Review in 1930 (Innis 1930e). For Biss, her trip in 1935 represented the field component of her doctoral research into water power in Canada, a dissertation she never completed but that influenced her subsequent writings on explorers, the transformation of the Plains, and Canadian natural-resource development. Matthew Evenden and John Stuart Batts (1985) have examined Innis’s and Biss’s trips, respectively, as formative field experiences for each as an individual and professional (Evenden, chapter 3, this volume).2 This chapter considers these individual trips less as exceptional moments in the lives of Innis and Biss and more as instances of characteristic early twentiethcentury southern intellectual engagements with northern nature and society. Innis’s and Biss’s experiences can teach us about the broader phenomenon of southern researchers’ travelling to northern “field” sites in the 1920s and 1930s. Furthermore, reading their research notes in combination with subsequent publications that acted as forms of commentary upon the original, raw experiences of northern Canada offers insight into intellectual conceptions of the North while it was in the midst of an industrial transformation.3 It allows us to see how Biss and Innis translated their experiences and encounters into analyses of

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the North’s place in Canadian economic history and the character of natural-resource exploitation and development in Canada.4 Overlapping itineraries reflected Innis’s and Biss’s closeness in the 1930s. Innis travelled down the Peace and then the Mackenzie rivers to Aklavik in 1924, down the Yukon River in 1926, and to Churchill, the terminus of the Hudson Bay Railway, and along the western coast of Hudson Bay in 1929. Innis took three separate field seasons to cover much the same ground that Biss would cover in a single summer as she went by rail, canoe, and portage from The Pas and Flin Flon to Waterways; by air to Great Slave and Great Bear lakes, Aklavik, and the Mackenzie Delta; then over into the Yukon through Rampart House and Dawson, where she transferred first to steamer then back to rail; south to Skagway; and finally Vancouver. Biss took greater advantage of the well developed aviation network that crossed the western subarctic, where Innis, although his travels coincided with the rise of widespread bush flying, relied upon rail and steam travel and, to a lesser extent, upon a canoe, in gaining access to Canada’s North. Innis had considerable influence on Biss’s doctoral project as he hoped that her investigations would complement his own work on another modern resource, pulp and paper.5 She found an early outlet for her research on electrical power as part of the Report of the Royal Commission of the Provincial Economic Inquiry for Nova Scotia (Nova Scotia 1934), on which Innis sat as third commissioner. As her dissertation supervisor and colleague, Innis helped her to organize her 1935 field trip providing contacts to Hudson’s Bay Company (hb c ) and transportation agents who would facilitate her travels.6 Yet his role in her itinerary exceeded that of facilitator, much as their relationship in the 1930s went beyond that of colleagues or student and mentor (Watson 2006, 191–8). As Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, 73) notes, “the North served” for Innis “as a context for the redefinition of self: from ill health to vigorous manhood, from uninitiated scholar to renowned field researcher and economist.” Innis likely thought Biss could similarly benefit from a northern adventure, presumably not in developing a sense of manhood per se, but in the opportunity to assert both one’s self and one’s identity as a researcher. From a pragmatic perspective, Biss’s trip in 1934 to northern Ontario was a far more fruitful field research experience with regard to the draft material she produced on the dissertation than was her more northerly travels.7 Given the relative

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absence of major hydro-electric installations in the Northwest at this time, it seems likely that Innis was the principal impetus behind Biss’s chosen northern itinerary. The different modes of transport adopted by Biss and Innis reflected their different research interests as much as they did the different transport opportunities available in the 1920s compared to ten years later. Innis’s interest lay in the waterways and geography that acted as the highways of the fur trade. Biss’s project focused on water power (in particular) and power and energy (in general) as factors in the economic history of Canada. To a certain degree, Innis and Biss chose their particular modes of travel because of their interests; but, in turn, these ways of moving through the North shaped their interpretations. This relationship between the field and the findings speaks to how field research generates insights that go beyond the data collected to the visceral experience of being in the field itself. For Biss it was sitespecific research: investigation of power sites, their physical geography, and, where up and running, mechanical facilities as well as interviews with operators and personnel. Innis, by contrast, was more interested in the movement of goods over space and the consequences of the creation of transportation infrastructure to economic and social development. Although bush flying took off in the 1920s, when Innis made his trip into the Mackenzie District, its future was promising but still unproven. Water routes continued to dominate the economic infrastructure of the region, and, even as aviation became more established in subsequent decades, waterways continued to provide essential transportation corridors across the Northwest. The similarities in Innis’s and Biss’s northern field trips reflect not only their own closeness in the years before Biss married Graham Spry but also the extent to which they were part of a growing southern interest in northern resources. Historians, building largely upon the work of Shelagh Grant, emphasize how the 1940s were the period when southern interest in the North took off (Grant 1988, 240).8 This periodization is true in so far as interest accelerated in conjunction with the Second World War and the Cold War. But the intensity of activity at mid-century should not obscure earlier work and enthusiasm. From the beginning of the twentieth century, geologists as well as natural and social scientists, including George M. Douglas, A.E. Porsild, Joseph Dewey Soper, Edward A. Preble, Diamond Jenness, and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, expressed enthusiasm in northern Canada.9 Private enterprise, various branches of the Dominion government, and

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the American Smithsonian Institution supported annual pilgrimages to the North that would stand as a defining characteristic of scientific research in northern environments throughout the twentieth century.10 Agnes Deans Cameron, who travelled a route similar to Innis and Biss along the Mackenzie River, observed in 1909 that the North had been wholly “invaded by the scientific” (Cameron 1909, 133; O’Leary 2005). Increased scientific interest followed upon the well-publicized success of Roald Amundsen’s traversing of the Northwest Passage in 1903–06 and Robert Peary’s expeditions to the North Pole.11 By the second decade of the century there were growing expectations for northern development as a frontier of resource exploitation following upon the oil strike at Norman Wells in 1920, the conclusion of Treaty 11 the following year, and the identification of pitchblende deposits on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake in 1929. Ties between resource exploitation and scientific research were reinforced again at mid-century, when postwar reconstruction reflected increased demand for northern mineral and oil resources in a newly militarized context and stimulated another round of intensified research activity.12 In the 1920s, high expectations for resource development combined with the opportunities created by new transportation technologies. The large distances between southern centres of scientific research, including universities and government institutions such as the Biological Board of Canada, and the northern environments they purported to study required extended field seasons to accumulate data and evidence that could then be analyzed using the resources of southern institutions. The rise of bush flying in the 1920s greatly facilitated access to northern environments and, in combination with existing rail and steam infrastructure, allowed for summer research programs to fulfill scientific objectives that were the heirs to a long tradition of northern exploration and expeditions as pursued by Samuel Hearne, Alexander Mackenzie, John Franklin, and, later, James William and his brother Joseph Burr Tyrrell and Charles Camsell. Innis (1930h, 167) himself articulated this longer tradition and the impetus underlying increased scientific research into the Canadian North when, in 1930, he wrote: “With the opening of the new Northwest, Canada is faced with problems which can be solved only by the application of all the scientific knowledge she can command.” Industrial capital’s expansion across the Canadian North in the twentieth century would only proceed under the guidance of science, including economic science.13

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Both Innis’s and Biss’s involvement in field research was far from a direct, visceral engagement with northern nature (a representation most notably adopted by Innis); rather, it consisted of experiences mediated by professional ties to corporate and state power and to a nascent tourist industry developed, in part, to service the needs of southern researchers as part of the emerging industrial economy (see Evenden, chapter 3, this volume).14 The steamships that crossed Great Slave Lake and travelled the Mackenzie and Yukon rivers and tributaries provided transport and freighting service. Mackenzie River Transport (mrt ) took over from the Alberta and Arctic Transportation Company in 1924 to become the transportation arm of the h bc. mrt advertised holiday cruises on the ss Distributor as the vessel delivered freight and passengers to the dispersed posts along the Mackenzie River route. The voyage offered wild scenery in the midst of the luxuries and comforts of southern travel: “electric light … soft mattresses, comfortable feather pillows and gleaming white sheets … an unlimited supply of hot water … spring chickens and fresh vegetables.”15 While transportation networks freighted the products of southern industrial society into the western subarctic, the outfitting of steamers to meet outside demands created floating microcosms of this same society. Innis spent much of his 1924 trip on board the Distributor and the Liard River – a motor tug better equipped and used for travel across Great Slave Lake and along the Liard River. The missionary at Hay River, on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake, duly recorded that “Dr. Innis of Toronto University and many others came in on ss Distributor” on August 15th, alongside similar notes on the passing through of geologists, surveyors (including Guy Blanchet), tourists, and company executives.16 On board the Distributor and the Liard River, Innis viewed the Mackenzie District while being piloted by predominantly Métis transportation workers, enjoying the company of fellow southerners, and making brief station stops at fur-trade posts, missions, and emerging resource operations. These images heavily influenced Innis’s interpretation in the final chapter of The Fur Trade in Canada, “The Decline of Monopoly,” which should be read as much as a commentary upon what he observed along the Mackenzie as a reflection upon the evolution of fur trade in Canada.17 When Biss travelled North in 1935 she took regularly scheduled train and plane trips as well as unscheduled motor boat, canoe, and portage trips to reach her destinations. The flights she took bore

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6.1  Innis with T.W. Harris (Indian inspector at Fort Simpson), Northwest Territories, 1924. Innis had met Harris during his 1924 journey to the North and struck up a friendship with him as well as with his daughter, Rachel.

much less resemblance to a tourist cruise than did the trips available on the ss Distributor. Although Biss did not identify the specific planes in which she flew, she likely travelled in a Norseman or a Fairchild, the workhorses of the Northwest at the time, and shared the cabin with other passengers, mail, and freight for delivery.18 Conscious of the importance of transportation, Biss, during her travels, reflected upon the role of aircraft in superseding the sternwheelers, while trucks slowly

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replaced wagons and horses. Likewise, she drew attention to her own mobility and access in the aircraft, landing and taking off at Camsell River while “two big power barges tied up alongside waiting for navigation to open.”19 In a few short words – “Fueled up and away we go” – Biss captured the change in pace attendant upon the shift from ground to air transportation. Her departure by air was from Fort McMurray, by 1937 the largest commercial air base in Canada. Biss’s descriptions of the surrounding landscape adopted the new bird’s-eye perspective.20 Distances shrank from the air, not only seeming closer but, because of the access afforded by bush planes, actually coming closer to southern centres such as Edmonton or Winnipeg. The view from the air emphasized wilderness over human settlement and the shape and form of the environment. Biss remarked: “Lakes many shapes: one perfect round. Many shapes like water lily leaves.”21 Small northern communities were dwarfed by the wide expanse of rock, water, and trees that surrounded them. Biss observed bush fires and commented on how, from the air, glacial action was clear upon the rocks – suggesting how aerial perspectives introduced a new sense of orientation and scale to northern resource exploitation.22 A journey that took seven months by canoe and snowshoe in 1900, or a few weeks in the 1920s, could be completed in the 1930s in two days as newcomers now rushed in by air rather than traversing water, muskeg, and rock.23 Yet, even as the internal combustion engine changed how people understood and interacted with northern environments, whether from the air or from the deck of the Distributor, the prevailing views that were written, discussed, and interpreted were those held by outsiders – especially southerners looking in rather than residents reflecting upon themselves or looking out. Innis and Biss shared a common southern experience of northern nature and society. While bound together by geography and race, they were set apart by gender, with significant consequences regarding with whom they interacted in northern communities and how they engaged with northern spaces. Southern men’s experiences with the Northwest have received much more detailed study than have women’s, although more often than not they are seen as outsider experiences with the North in general rather than as specifically male experiences. In this fashion, and with relatively few exceptions, the experience of men has become normalized in northern history.24 Examined in conjunction with Evenden’s chapter (this volume) on Innis’s social encounters and expectations in the North as a non-Aboriginal man, Biss’s experiences

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on her 1935 journey can illuminate not just a woman’s perspective but also the more broadly gendered character of southern engagements with northern places. Women travellers to the North were fewer than male travellers. Their presence provoked comment, such as when Arne Lahti, the manager at Port Radium, remarked on 17 June 1934 that “Murphy, Fairburn and a woman insurance company representative came in on the plane” (the arrival of a male representative would have been signalled by name, not gender).25 The extent to which northern travel was characterized as a wilderness adventure, and as a masculine wilderness adventure at that, further obscured the presence of women wilderness travellers. Nevertheless, in the early decades of the twentieth century, women frequently travelled North. Those, like Agnes Deans Cameron, Clara Rogers, or Gwendolen Dorrien-Smith, who sought wilderness adventure were “eager to shed the identity of lady tourists” (Vyvyan 1998).26 Such a desire led Cameron to write and present herself in a distinctly androgynous fashion (O’Leary 2005, 20). Biss, similarly, intentionally sought to distance herself from other northern “ladies.” In her diary, Biss described a party of women visiting Fort Smith, then the capital of the Northwest Territories, who “looked as though they had stepped off a 1924 city street – high heels, furs, etc.” She also made note of the bridge players at Flin Flon outfitted in their dinner dresses. In place of the lady tourist, Biss presented herself as, and adopted the perspective of, the objective scientific observer. This was apparent in how she distanced herself from all those whom she met, male and female, in her diary: they were all part of the society and economy that she studied. Likewise, her diary is far more preoccupied with descriptions of transportation, power installations, and the physical environment than with her own social encounters. Biss thus sought to develop an identity as a researcher – a coming-intoself that, in some respects, mirrored Innis’s shift to “vigorous manhood” in the crucible of the North, although significantly, for Biss, this process involved obscuring rather than embracing her gender. Biss’s adoption of the non-gendered scientific persona did not change how northerners perceived her: Cominco managers refused her request for an onsite interview at Yellowknife on the grounds that “we have no opportunity at our property for making ladies comfortable. We, therefore, would not care to become responsible for your visit to our property.”27 As a woman, Biss had less independent mobility in the North than Innis, and she could not interact with northerners as freely could he. The letters of introduction that

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she carried from Innis attested to the social network that carried her through the Northwest. MacLaren described Rogers’s and DorrienSmith’s travels along the Rat River in 1926: “For three blissful days during the month of July, they enjoyed the wilderness entirely on their own. Otherwise, they were handed almost like mail from one settlement to another, one means of conveyance to another, one guide to another” (Vyvyan 1998, xv). Biss, similarly, experienced the Northwest through the hands of guides. This, in certain respects, gave her greater exposure to other women (at least non-Aboriginal women) in northern communities. Whether it was a matter of practicality (finding a woman’s toilet with the aid of the “Syrian trader’s wife” at Fort Chipewyan) or social expectations (visiting with the wives of the trading-post managers or the nuns at the schools in various settlements), Biss talked and moved about with far more women than were usually seen in the accounts of other researchers, Innis included, at this time. Although she gained access to one group – non-Aboriginal women – she had far less access to Aboriginal peoples than did Innis. Her diary records few if any personal encounters with Aboriginal or Métis men or women.28 When she did remark upon the indigenous inhabitants of the places she visited it was either through secondhand knowledge or through her presence at more public events, such as when she accompanied Dr Lewis when he visited with Aboriginals in advance of treaty day at Fort McMurray.29 On such occasions she was an observer rather than a participant. That Biss did not interact more or more freely with Aboriginal or Métis men or women speaks to the inextricability of social considerations of gender and race in the Northwest in this period. Gail Bederman’s (1995) work on the cultural history of gender and race in the United States in the early twentieth century suggests some of the prevailing currents at work in the Northwest, most notably concerns about the threat posed by virile, “primitive” men, including Aboriginal northerners, to white civilization. As a woman moving through the Northwest, guided by intermediaries who arranged for her contacts, it was mostly likely not seen as appropriate for Biss to engage socially with Aboriginal peoples. As the purpose of her trip was the investigation of new industrial power and hydro-electric installations, and as Aboriginal peoples were in the process of being excluded from this emergent industrial society (they were seen as unsuited to underground mine work and other “industrial” labour, for instance), meeting with them

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was also likely seen as unnecessary. That Biss did not write extensively about Aboriginal peoples on her 1935 journey did not mean that she saw a “white” North. She took care to detail her encounters with Syrians (the trader’s wife who is “very pretty and lightly coloured”), blacks (including Yukon Jess, a “square black substance moving heavily but cheerfully along”), Jewish northerners, Swedes, Scots, Englishmen and women, and French-Canadians. For Biss the industrial North was a multicultural society rather than one in which the prevailing racial categories distinguished between Aboriginal, Métis, or non-Aboriginal. Innis had more opportunities to speak and work with Métis men in particular and, to a lesser extent, with First Nations and Inuit men. Also, as a male social scientist travelling in the North and interested in the fur trade, he carried greater social expectations than did Biss regarding his ability and role to comment upon Aboriginal peoples in the North. Innis’s descriptions of Aboriginal northerners and, most important, the distinctions he drew between First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, are very much in keeping with widely held southern ideas about northern races and what was happening to them in the early twentieth century.30 Innis largely ignored First Nations men and women on his trip down the Mackenzie, reflecting the role of First Nations as labourers rather than as directors within the fur trade. This was also in keeping with expectations that, with the rise of industrial economies, the traditional Aboriginal way of life was in decline. Innis had greater access to and interest in Métis workers, who predominated within the transportation industry, and to Inuit on the coast during his trip to Hudson Bay. In each instance this greater interaction was also accompanied by greater attention to their perspective and a higher estimation of their skills than he ever gave to First Nations peoples (Evenden, chapter 3, this volume, 78–9; Innis 1930c, 353). Evenden emphasizes Innis’s belief in the importance of Inuit to northern colonization and his belief that the Métis were “the forerunner of [the] white man.”31 Here, Innis was echoing prevailing attitudes among southerners in the early twentieth century, who saw traditional indigenous cultures as distant from industrial modernity. Southerners created a racialized trajectory along which First Nations were seen as primitive and caught in a rapidly disappearing past, the Métis were thought to be racially equipped to act as intermediaries, and the Inuit were to provide the necessary expertise for the extension of industry into the Arctic. Many southerners

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also valued the exoticism of Inuit culture and saw the Inuit as better prepared than First Nations peoples for integration into a liberal society that valued independence – a cultural value that Inuit, unlike First Nations, were seen to share with southerners.32 Innis’s attitudes towards and commentary about Aboriginal northerners were so similar to those expressed by other southern sojourners in this period, ranging from the experienced traveller Viljhalmur Stefansson to the photographer Charles W. Mathers (who made one northern voyage), that they offer little insight into either Innis (except in so far as presenting him as generally sympathetic, albeit somewhat paternalistic) or Aboriginal northern populations;33 rather, they reveal the prominence of southern-based categories of racial difference and stages of “civilization” in early twentieth-century discourse about the North. The racial categories of difference break down when the 1920s and 1930s are looked at not from the perspective of southern visitors but, rather, from that of northern inhabitants. The 1920s was a particularly difficult decade for Dene, Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, and Métis in the Yukon and Mackenzie District as they faced, in particular, repeated epidemics of influenza, smallpox, and whooping cough, alongside rising rates of tuberculosis (McCarthy 1995; Abel 1993; Lux 1989).34 Inuit along the coast of Hudson Bay likewise faced measles and influenza outbreaks in this period.35 The 1920s also saw serious shortages of fur bearers, fish, and game animals as a result of intensified exploitation tied to the influx of non-Aboriginal trappers and population declines linked to independent environmental factors. Indigenous northerners who relied upon local ecosystems for sustenance and livelihood were also dramatically affected by the introduction of new wildlife conservation regulations.36 These regulations were but one example of the invigoration of the state’s presence in the North, particularly following upon the settlement of Treaty 11 in 1921. The well-being of northerners in the 1920s and 1930s depended primarily upon environmental factors and the character of community life, not upon “racial” distinctions. It remains to discern how Innis and Biss translated these southern engagements into economic analyses and what the consequences of their particular northern experiences were for their intellectual projects. Innis’s last trip to the North came in 1929 when he travelled out to Churchill and along the western coast of Hudson Bay. Arising from this trip came great enthusiasm for the Hudson Bay Railway (hb r), then reaching completion, across northern Manitoba. Innis

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assigned considerable potential, symbolism, and importance to the construction of the h b r , which provided “a base by which the Precambrian area [could] be successfully tapped” and was “the keystone in the arch in the development of northern Canada” (Innis 1930h, 166–7). Here Innis expressed a broader enthusiasm for resource development in the Precambrian Shield. By the early twentieth century, boosters emphasized how the thick forest cover of the Shield could sustain a long-term lumbering industry, how the rocks were a hidden storehouse of mineral wealth, and how the surface waters held in countless lakes, rivers, and ponds could generate hydro-electricity.37 Innis was preoccupied with rivers and railways as the foundation of economic organization across Canada, and they, in turn, served to focus his attention on the movement of resource exploitation onto the Precambrian Shield – a movement that was necessary to the industrialization of the North. Rivers and railways provided the corridors for transport, and, in his writings on the fur trade and mining, Innis gave considerable attention to the methods and means of exporting goods, the degree of handling, and the efficiency of motion.38 It is not surprising, then, that he was enthused by the construction of the hbr, which provided an eastward avenue that he considered to be on par with the natural access provided by the Mackenzie and Yukon rivers with regard to penetrating further North. The hb r was the biggest investment in a fixed transportation corridor that reached into the Canadian Northwest in the early phase of its industrial transformation. However, from a wider regional perspective, the example of the hb r was most instructive for what it failed to do. Innis (1930e, 18) expected the h br would “serve as an efficient base line for feeders extending to various mines”: an argument seemingly supported by the fact that the line had reached the mine development at Sherridon in the summer of 1929. In fact, additional planned branches did not come to fruition for another twenty years and even then failed to act as a stimulus to regional economic development. The railway did not readily open up new territories but, rather, followed upon planned resource exploitation that already reached into the Precambrian Shield. The same would hold true with the later construction of two more fixed transportation corridors: the Mackenzie Highway in the 1940s and the Great Slave Lake Railway in the 1960s, neither of which served broad industrializing ends. The length of time it took to build the h br (1908 to 1929) was equivalent to other northern railway projects in Alaska and Siberia and reflected the complications involved in constructing fixed iron

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and wooden paths in an environment characterized by permafrost, hard rock, muskeg, and climatic extremes. Nevertheless, the indecision at all stages of the hb r, which, by delaying its construction, ultimately limited its value to the early stages of mineral development in northern Manitoba, also reflected the uncertainty about alternative agricultural and industrial futures in the North.39 When Innis (1930e, 3) reflected upon the form of the h br in 1930 he commented that the railway was “physically a reflection of the political and economic conditions under which it was built.” This point suggests that the sharp turn to the North on the Nelson River, just past Gillam, inscribed into the railway’s path both the initial misdirection and the ultimate change of mind that characterized this particular project of nineteenth-century transportation infrastructure development in the twentieth-century subarctic. The effective use of unfixed transportation technologies, winter trucking, and airborne freighting, with higher fuel demands and greater reach, dwarfed the h br’s own accomplishment as a trunk along which subarctic settlement and mineral exploitation could flourish. Innis’s enthusiasm for the h b r reflected a certain ambivalence in 1930 as to the potential of alternative means of transportation in effecting the industrial transformation of the Northwest. Innis had focused much of his own research in the Northwest on the fur trade and the role of fixed transportation corridors – namely, the waterways – in providing the highways of commerce across vast, continental distances. He was at this time influenced by Patrick Geddes’s ideas regarding the evolution of technological innovation, which saw a transition from “the paleotechnology of coal, steam, iron, and water transport which leads into an era of neotechnology dominated by oil, hydroelectricity, steel, and rail transport.”40 Innis saw railways as key to the industrial and mining future of the North. Nevertheless, railways provided fixed corridors that were similar to those provided by waterways, and the construction of the h br had proved that such technology could reach across permafrost and muskeg. Innis had himself not experienced the possibilities offered by the new modes of transportation – planes and tractors in particular – in his trips North. He was, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, far less enamoured of the potential of aviation than he was of that of railways in economically opening up new territories. Although not an enthusiast, Innis was intellectually open-minded and honest, and, while he did not travel North again in the 1930s, his colleague, student, and close friend Irene Biss did. And, as noted

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earlier, Biss took advantage of the new transportation technologies, most notably bush planes, meeting, among others, the famed bush pilot Wop May. She also focused more closely than did Innis upon the new industrial economy that had emerged, specifically upon the subject of fuels and energy, which Innis had merely acknowledged in his writings before quickly moving on to focus upon flows, labour, and value.41 Just as Innis’s experiences in the North had immersed him in the physical geography and economy, Biss’s experiences, by contrast, distanced her from the geography of land and water. As she flew from site to site, she gained less of an appreciation of the northern environment and more of an appreciation of the need for technological expertise and high-energy fuels in powering the new industrial economy. Biss’s doctoral research thus complemented Innis’s own intellectual agenda, pursuing, in its focus upon power and energy, an important gap in his work on the North and Canada. In Biss’s draft writings, the coming of the internal combustion engine and the availability of water power matched with “raw materials … successive railroads, [and] transportation facilities” to provide the foundation for exploitation of the Shield and Cordilleras.42 Innis had originally, and with considerable insight, emphasized the centrality of motion to northern economic activity. His emphasis upon the natural dynamism of the North ran counter to prevailing cultural conceptions that equated the North with barren lands and saw wilderness in general as a desert (in contrast to the well-cultivated garden of civilization).43 It was Biss’s research that identified how twentieth-century staples could be put in motion. In her research notes and interviews she asked not just about hydro-electric possibilities but also about explosives, gasoline, diesel, and cordwood – where these fuels came from, their efficiency, and the ends to which they were put. This research revealed the importance of Norman Wells oil to the industrialization of the Mackenzie District and, more generally, the importance of local fossil fuel resources to frontier industries.44 Hydro-power was the focus of Biss’s research. Prior to 1960, the freshwaters that flowed over the Precambrian Shield were harnessed at six separate sites in the western subarctic: at the Seven Sisters power station on the Winnipeg River southeast of Lake Winnipeg; on the Churchill and Reindeer rivers two dams had been constructed, the Island Falls Dam and the Whitesand Dam (built to better regulate flow to the former); at Wellington Lake, on the north shore of Lake Athabasca; and at two sites north of Yellowknife: the Bluefish

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Lake hydro plant and the Snare River Station owned and operated by Cominco and the federal government, respectively. Of these, the Athabasca, Yellowknife, and Island Falls sites were directly tied to major industrial operations (Island Falls powered the Flin Flon mine). Drawing upon her research at these sites, Biss anticipated the major role of hydro-electricity in northern economic development in the twentieth century. She emphasized the dependence of metallurgical industries upon freshwater resources and argued: “Water has passed, in this instance from a merely controlling role to an initiating role, most clearly in the case of aluminium … Electro-chemical industries are developing on the same basis. In the emerging age of plastics, synthetics, non-ferrous metals and electricity Canada’s rich water resources are coming into their own.”45 Biss also, in her diary and later writings, recognized the pocket character of frontier development, which was partly the product of the rise and fall of resource towns (an extension of Innis’s “cyclonic” characterization of frontier community development) – a process that was intensified by the emergent patterns of northern aviation. As she passed through The Pas, for example, she reflected on how the community, which had flourished in the 1920s as the original supply centre for the district, had been supplanted by the new community at Flin Flon: “Morning at The Pas. Full of hotels. Substantial looking town with big solid buildings and wide handsome streets. Said to be disastrously quiet now: all activity has gone to Flin Flon as spear head of Northern development. Lumbering down and no more construction. Population is decreasing.”46 Biss’s 1993 observation that the northwestern resource frontier could not be delineated along a “single, simple frontier of settlement” can be traced back to her field experiences over half a century earlier.47 Biss’s trip, fully a decade after Innis’s own voyage down the Mackenzie River, provided her with closer access to the resource operations under way on Great Bear and Great Slave lakes. She also drew more directly upon the new tools and technologies that permitted improved southern visions of northern lands and waters. Innis had not experienced the North from the air, and, in his earlier writings, he focused his attention upon the ground and waterways that he had traversed and known. Yet when he came to write Settlement and the Mining Frontier in 1936, he recognized the importance of aviation as one technology that had grown out of the rise and spread of gasoline engines (Innis and Lower 1936, 390).

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Although Biss is acknowledged by name only in the preface, her trips North most surely contributed to Innis’s writings on the new industrial economy and, in particular, in his chapters on northern Ontario and the “New Frontier,” which concluded this work. In this final chapter Innis returned to the subject of the h br, but his description here is much shortened and tempered; it is joined by an extended description of power plants at Island Falls and the important role of gasoline transportation in northern Manitoba (Innis and Lower 1936, 392–3). Innis discusses development at the Bear Lake properties and describes how “the aeroplane and tractor have been supplemented in their effects on mining by rapid introduction of Diesel engines for their development of large numbers of small properties” (397). Biss visited and reported in detail upon operations at Island Falls and Bear Lake; she also dutifully noted the presence and capacity of diesel engines at each of the properties she visited. Although Innis’s evidence and analysis drew upon his own correspondence with mine engineers and managers, Biss’s research experiences, communicated to Innis in writing and in person, contributed to his greater appreciation of the transformative role of new technologies and power sources in the “extraction and recovery of metals” from the Precambrian Shield (Innis and Lower 1936, 405). Biss may have influenced this text, but Settlement and the Mining Frontier is nevertheless Innis’s most comprehensive examination of mining and the new industrialism. The geographical, environmental, and technological themes that inspired Innis in his work on the fur trade also appear in Settlement and the Mining Frontier. Transportation is again given a central role when he describes how “the effect of mining of precious metals on settlement was dependent in the main on the efficiency of mobilization of the resources of exploitation.” Innis’s continued search for rules and laws led to rather deterministic interpretations of nature, most apparent in his assessment that “the extent to which mining tended to ease the burden of transportation on settlement was dependent on the size of the ore body and its rate of exhaustion” (Innis and Lower 1936, 402). His understanding of mobilization remained grounded in the movement of materials over land and water, whereas Biss was more able to see how hydro-electricity and high-energy fuels powered wider movements. In the 1930s, Innis’s work on mining, in contrast to his work on the fisheries and the fur trade, remained caught up in contemporary events. As W.T. Easterbrook (1953, 291–2) noted in a 1953 essay, by 1934

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Innis had moved away from his study of the antecedents of industrialism in Canada to displaying a greater interest not only in the “new industrialism” but also, more specifically, “in the limitations of the pricing system and the economics of disturbance.” This latter preoccupation related to the effects of the Great Depression, the most pressing economic problem of the time. In keeping with this new interest, Settlement and the Mining Frontier closes with Innis’s observation that diversification through mining activity provides a cushion against sharp swings in the business cycle – an observation reinforced by the economic opportunities created by the Northwest gold and pitchblende mining boom in the 1930s. Innis offered many insightful and careful observations of the new industrial economy then emerging across the Northwest. To make the rather obvious point that his great syntheses of the fur trade and fisheries were never matched by a similar work on the mining industry demands that we recognize the circumstances of his research on the northern industrial frontier in the 1920s and 1930s. Although Innis travelled to the Yukon and northern Manitoba to witness the mining operations under way in those locales, his trip into the Mackenzie District – the centre of the 1930s mining boom predicated upon new gasoline technologies – was focused upon the older fur-trade economy. In 1935, Irene Biss did much of the dirty work in the mine and industrial operations along the Precambrian Shield and the Mackenzie basin. Unfortunately, her collaboration with Innis ended in 1938 with her marriage to Graham Spry. Biss’s research trips continued to inform her later work on natural resources and the Great Plains, although she never published substantially from her doctoral research. Innis’s studies of the “New Frontier” did not ultimately move beyond the “new” perspective. He saw the changes under way in the Northwest and anticipated many of the more significant influences at work, but by the late 1930s his interests changed – abruptly so by 1940, with the beginning of his work on communications. The integration of disparate industrial operations across the Northwest in the first half of the twentieth century came not through the creation of fixed infrastructure (roads, railways, or canals) but, rather, through the adaptation to northern environmental extremes and reliance upon flexible modes of transport (planes, tractors, and ships). Transport nodes such as the air base at Fort McMurray or the shipyards at Fort Smith demonstrated the character of this new order and distinguished them from isolated outposts of resource

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exploitation. Overlapping transportation routes and methods present a means of visualizing the network that drew these sites together and tied them to distant market, supply, and metropolitan centres. There also existed an imagined network that exploited new sources of energy. Industrial energy eclipsed the former solar economy that had lasted, largely intact, until the early twentieth century. Workers in the fur trade continued to consume local food resources, although they supplemented this diet with imported products. Transportation into the region continued to use either food fuels for animate power (dogs and horses) or cordwood for steam power. Now fossil fuels and hydroelectricity fuelled extraction and processing operations intended to transform resources into commodities, specifically harvesting offshore fish populations on the large lakes and extracting gold- and uraniumbearing ores. This imagined network served as the industrial circuitry that mobilized greater quantities of materials towards the production of more efficient, versatile, or specialized forms of energy. The transformation of Canada’s subarctic between 1921 and 1965 involved the shift from low- to high-energy economies. This shift occurred as the production of wealth from northern environments involved much larger energy expenditures. While this is readily apparent in the fact that productive activities went from relying on food energy to fossil fuels, it is best illustrated by tracing the ways in which different sources of power were harnessed and put to work across the subarctic region. As Innis and Biss travelled across the North in the 1920s and 1930s, they were witness to and part of the changes that brought industry to the subarctic. Neither Innis nor Biss fully anticipated the character or consequences of the industrial transformation because of the ways in which they themselves were caught up in it. Yet precisely because of their involvement, we can use their experiences to better understand the context of southern engagements with northern nature and peoples in this period. Recognizing that these were not individual encounters with a frontier but, rather, encounters that were influenced and formed by a wider society with two geographical tethers (one inside and one outside the region) helps to dispel enduring attitudes towards southern experiences with northern environments as rare and exceptional – attitudes that have become inscribed in these environments. As a non-Aboriginal man and a non-Aboriginal woman travelling in the North in the early twentieth century, Biss’s and Innis’s experiences were shaped by racialized and gendered encounters that influenced what they saw

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and how they interpreted it. The ways in which Innis’s vision was blinkered reveal that he shared in broad southern intellectual attitudes towards the North, its economic potential, and its inhabitants. He, like his contemporaries, argued for the importance of science as a guide to the new industrial enterprises, which functions as a means of bridging the vast distances between southern metropoli (and minds) and unfamiliar northern environments. Innis’s and Biss’s respective travels, by water or by air, influenced their respective emphasis upon the significance of ground and air transportation in northern industrial development. Biss’s subject and her field experiences brought her closer to the industrial frontier and to the underlying character of twentieth-century change, and she helped Innis to see the significance of aviation and the gasoline engine. Yet she also remained distanced from the land, water, and peoples of the North, in part as a result of the objective research persona that she wished to emulate. Innis never fully synthesized his interpretation of mining and the new industrialism, although he came close in Settlement and the Mining Frontier. As a careful observer, he perhaps recognized that his closeness to the subject kept him from appreciating its full significance.

notes

The research for this chapter was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and by the Faculty of Graduate Studies at York University. 1 The biographical sketch accompanying the Irene Spry Fonds at Library and Archives Canada (lac-i s), R2268–0–6–E, states that Biss enrolled as a doctoral student with Innis in 1934, the same year as her promotion to assistant professor at the University of Toronto. See also PhD Registration, l ac - s f, m g 30, C 249, R2268–0–6–E, box 28, file 4. 2 Spry (1982) reflected herself upon the trip. 3 For a fuller exploration of this process, see Piper (2009). 4 The focus of this chapter is the comparison of Biss’s and Innis’s experiences in the North and their influence on interpretations; the intellectual trajectories that Innis and Biss each brought to bear on their interpretations of Canadian political economy, as it pertained to the North, is largely beyond its scope.

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5 William Buxton, personal communication, 29 December 2007. 6 L A C – S F , M G 30, C 249, R2268–0–6–E , Research and Scholarship Series, Field Research N W T (see also box 38, file 30, “Questions for Field Trips,” 1935). According to Watson (2006, 192), Innis further advised her “on how to put questions devoid of economists’ jargon to ordinary people.” Although, from reading her notes and interview transcripts, it seems that Biss had a strong vernacular grasp of her subject of study. 7 See Travel Diary for Northern Ontario, lac -sf, mg 30, C 249, R 2 2 6 8 – 0 – 6 – E box 28, files 36–7. 8 For social scientific research, specifically, see also Zaslow (1988); Rea (1968); and Evenden (1998). 9 For recent important work on early twentieth-century northern exploration see Adcock (2010). For later twentieth-century northern scientific research and its significance see Bocking (2007). 10 In this early period there was a greater mix of privately supported research, particularly in geological exploration (See Piper 2007). For the longer role of the Smithsonian in subarctic science see Lindsay (1993). For similar developments in Sweden, see Sörlin (2002). There were many other northern travellers, of course, with less overtly scientific objectives, such as Ernest Thompson Seton, Helge Ingstad, and Agnes Deans Cameron. 11 The Canadian North had long served as a field site for scientific research, but the turn of the century was a period of greatly intensified interest in the region. For more on Peary, see Dick (2001). 12 See, for example, Jones-Imhotep (2004). 13 For Innis’s thoughts on economic science see Innis (1936a). Interestingly, Carl Berger (1976, 88) was unwilling to go as far, describing Innis’s History of the Canadian Pacific Railway as having only a “‘scientific’ flavour.” 14 Field Research n w t (Hal M. Powell) 1935–1939, lac –sf, mg 30, C 249, R2268–0–6–E, Research and Scholarship Series, box 29, file 2. 15 Description of the Distributor taken from lac -df, R4897–0–8–E, vol. 3, file 3–12, [hbc publication] “Down North,” (1937), 9. See also Interview with Julian Mills, February 1978 and January 1979, ua a –pf, acct. 82–46, box 2, file 56; Interview with Noel MacKay, September 1978, ua a –pf, acct. 82–46, box 2, file 66. 16 Anglican Diocese of the Mackenzie correspondence with Alberta and Arctic Transportation Company, paa, m r 4/5, box 1; St Peter’s Hay River, Mission Journal, paa , acct. 70.387, box 8 - mr 200/5; Robert Legget’s Report, hbca, Mackenzie River Transport, Alberta and Arctic Transportation Company, 1924.

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17 The more appropriate sequel to Innis’s final chapter on the “Northern Department” is Ray (1990). 18 For the most effective recent discussions of northern aviation and bush flying in particular, see the work of Marionne Cronin, including, “Northern Visions: Aerial Surveying and the Canadian Mining Industry, 1919–1928” (Cronin 2007). 19 Diary, June 1935, n w ta–s f, acc. N-1992–139. 20 Ibid.; m rt Annual Report 1937, 2. 21 Diary, June 1935, n w ta–s f, acc. N-1992–139. For further discussion of bird’s-eye perspectives. see Cosgrove (2001, 242). 22 For an interesting discussion of the relationship between modern technologies, ideologies, and conceptions of space in western rather than northern Canada see Bantjes (2005). 23 See, for example, “Aerial Mineral Exploration in the North,” Toronto Mail and Empire, 9 May 1930, clipping found in lac , r g 85, vol. 808, file 6774, pt. 2, reel T-13312, “Preliminary Report on the Aerial Exploration of Northern Canada”; McFarlane (1931); Cameron (1935); Watt (1980, 1). 24 Important exceptions include Rutherdale 2002 and Kelcey 2001. 25 1934 Diary, 17 June 1934, n w ta–lf, acc. N‑1989‑025. 26 Rogers and Dorrien-Smith met Innis while in the North and kept up a correspondence with him in later years. See also Buxton (chapter 1, this volume, note 9), Buxton (introduction note 8), Buxton (chapter 9, this volume, note 21), and Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, note 54). 27 Letter from Cominco to Biss, 1935, lac –sf, mg 30, C 249, R2268– 0–6–E. 28 In some cases it is difficult to say as many of the wives of fur-trade post managers, among others, were Métis or Aboriginal. But, as Biss did not make note of such, it seems unlikely that she met many Aboriginal women. 29 Diary, June 1935, n w ta–s f, acc. N-1992–139. 30 For further discussion of northern races and southern scientists, see Bocking (2011). 31 As cited in Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, xxx). 32 Stefansson was one of the most vocal advocates in defence of Inuit culture and incorporation into a new industrial economy. See Stefansson (1921), among others. For discussion of the “white man’s burden” in the North, see Grant (2002, 34–5). See also Huhndorf (2000). 33 For Mathers, see Opp and Dyce (2008). 34 McCarthy (1995); Abel (1993); Lux (1989); Canada (1920, 28). For influenza in the Mackenzie region in 1920–21, see Interview of Noel MacKay, uaa–pf, Daily Journal of Activities - St Paul’s - Fort Chipewyan,

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Anglican Diocese of Athabasca, 1920–21, A. 13, item 11, box 14, paa ; “Influenza Among Eskimo in the Arctic,” May-June 1919 correspondence, l ac , r g 18, vol. 567, file G6. For tuberculosis rates, see Anglican Church, Burial Registers, 1862–1970. YA. 35 nwt–Chroniques, s g m -s tej, L099. 36 Not to mention the voluminous government correspondence on the subject in this period. For an overarching discussion, see Sandlos (2007). 37 For discussion of the Precambrian Shield’s potential (in practice and imagination), see Nelles (1974); Roby (1976, esp. 15–17); Mochoruk(2004); Radforth (1987); Manore (1999); Cavell (2002, 367). 38 See Innis 1970 [1930], 82, 200–1, 219, 295, 351–3. 39 Sutherland (1894), 519, as cited in MacEwan (1975); Fleming (1957, 1). See Grant (1988, 6) for a discussion of Charles Tuttle’s 1885 publication, Our Northland: Being a Full Account of the Canadian North-West and Hudson’s Bay Route, and its promotion of northwesterly progress. For the political context and early construction, see Zaslow (1971, 78–80); Morton (1967, 325); and Mochoruk (2004, 139–142, 198–200, 222–3). 40 Watson (2006), 183; 114. 41 See, for example, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/6 (7), p. 15, as cited in Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, xxx). See also Innis 1970 [1930], 348–9. 42 PhD dissertation, “Introduction: History of Water Power and Its Uses,” 10, l ac - s f, mg 30, C 249, R2268–0–6–E, Research and Scholarship Series. 43 For the wilderness as desert, see Coates (1998). 44 Field Research, n w t, interview with Gavereaux, El Bonanza, 4 July 1935; notes on interview with Hal M. Powell, Consolidated Mining & Smelting Co., Great Bear Lake, 2 July 1935. Both in lac -sf, mg 30, C 249, R2268–0–6–E, file 29–2. 45 PhD dissertation, “Introduction: History of Water Power and Its Uses,” 11, l ac – s f, mg 30, C 249, R2268–0–6–E, Research and Scholarship Series. 46 Diary, June 1935, n w ta–s f, acc. N-1992–139. See also Mochoruk (2004, 265). 47 See Spry and McCardle (1993, 1).

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7 Harold Adams Innis and Northern Manitoba jim mochoruk

It is clear that Harold Innis developed an enthusiasm for the Canadian North at a crucial juncture in his academic career. Having recently published his University of Chicago PhD dissertation as A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and still just a lecturer at the University of Toronto, in 1924 Innis turned his attention to the northern reaches of Canada and began a series of summer sojourns to various northern destinations. As Matthew Evenden (chapter 3, this volume) points out, this shift, particularly as represented by Innis’s first trip along the Mackenzie River, has been mythologized by Donald Creighton and a few others. For Creighton (1957, 63–4) in particular this trip constituted a type of personal and intellectual rebirth for Innis: in effect, the North made the wounded veteran of the Great War whole, both physically and psychologically, and seemingly inspired a new vision of Canadian history in his subsequent works. Evenden (chapter 3, this volume), however, takes a somewhat more cynical view. He sees Innis’s northern shift as part of a calculated career move, essentially a well-planned ascent into the not so “wild North” by a man who (largely in the interests of career advancement) was consciously reinventing himself as an economic-historical geographer and as a public intellectual who could comment knowledgably upon what seemed to be Canada’s most important new economic frontier, the middle and far North. Conversely, Innis’s most recent intellectual biographer, A.J. Watson, actually has little to say about the young scholar’s northern trips. Watson tends to view them in a very different fashion than either Evenden or Creighton, portraying these journeys simply as exemplars of Innis’s core research methodology in the staples-commodity phase

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of his career – that is to say, “dirt research” conducted both in archival sources and in the field. The fieldwork was important largely because it allowed Innis to develop an appreciation of the physical reality of the environment and industry (or industries) under study, while simultaneously gaining a more profound appreciation of the “oral tradition” and culture of the area under examination (Watson 2006, 124–6). For Watson, the work and interests that flowed at least partially from these field trips – notably the two fur-trade books, the new interest in mining, forestry, pulp-and-paper, hydro-electric development, new transportation technologies, and new frontiers of settlement – were all part of a consistent and massive intellectual project that, according to Watson, Innis pursued with a dogged determination from the 1920s until his death in 1952. In this reading, the North did not so much make Innis as provide a canvas for his unfolding paradigm of Canadian economic and political development – and proof for his case concerning the way in which the “margins” became the areas where the most dynamic innovations – be they intellectual, technological, or economic – took place (7). There is much to recommend both of these later views – indeed, even Creighton’s hagiographical treatment of his old friend is of some value, although not as critical as the work of Watson and Evenden. The work of these later commentators has the virtue of locating Innis’s thought and approach in the major intellectual currents that influenced the young scholar – the “Chicago School” of economics, the work of Thorstein Veblen on industrialization, and the rise of a particular brand of economic and political nationalism in postwar Canada. However, what Evenden’s work does that Watson’s does not – making it the more useful interpretation for those interested in the North – is to place Innis’s northern work in the context of northern boosterism; indeed, Evenden (chapter 3, this volume) sees Innis not as a dispassionate social scientist but as a booster himself, particularly as witnessed by his less scholarly and therefore less temperate public presentations on the north in the late 1920s and early 1930s. I certainly do not disagree with this interpretation; in fact, I would deepen it and point out that once Innis committed himself to studying and visiting the North in the 1920s – no matter what his reasons – he would have had to have been made of steel not to be infected with some degree of the northern boosterism that was so prevalent in the 1920s, both in the North itself and in the more southerly sub-metropolitan

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centres that hoped to benefit from northern development. Winnipeg, Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, and some of the smaller service centres, such as Prince Albert, The Pas, Cobalt, and Haileybury, are notable in this regard as they all possessed business communities and government representatives who consciously sought public support in their various efforts to harness the new-found wealth of the resource frontier to local, provincial, national, and international economies. And, of course, along with his northern ventures, Innis visited all of these submetropoli and could not help but notice the enthusiasm in these centres for development of the new frontiers. In this context, Innis emerges both as a man of his times and as the “organic intellectual,” if you will, of a particular postcolonial, profoundly capitalist nationstate. It was in this role that he helped to recreate, or rather reconstruct, a vision of Canada as a northern nation, in a far more sophisticated fashion than had earlier exponents of Canadian nordicity, as a defining trait of Canadian identity.1 Still, for all that I obviously agree with Evenden, having spent far too much time reading the newspaper reports, mining company publications, and the pamphlets and other documents put out by the Government of Manitoba’s Department of Mines and Natural Resources, the Office of the Commissioner of Northern Manitoba, the On-to-the-Bay Association, the Industrial Development Board of Manitoba, and a whole series of other such agencies,2 I am struck by just how temperate Innis was in comparison to most other northern commentators of the 1920s. And here I am not just referring to mine promoters, land speculators, the peddlers of penny mining stock, and the other “usual suspects” of economic boosterism. Rather, I am thinking of trained specialists, and supposedly dispassionate experts working in the service of the state, not of capital: people like J.S. DeLury, Frank Kitto, and R.C. Wallace (the last not only the chair of the University of Manitoba’s Department of Geology and one-time commissioner of northern Manitoba but eventually the president of two Canadian universities) who were all far less critical than Innis in many of their publications on the potential of Manitoba’s north.3 In comparison, Innis almost comes across as a naysayer; indeed, his analysis of the Hudson Bay Railway (h br), which according to most sources was supposed to have a major impact upon the shipment of Prairie grain, was both accurate and caustic. He saw the hb r for what it was: a political sop to western farmers and politicians, whose real economic value would only arise (if ever) through

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the process of mine development and other northern industries that might develop in its wake, not the shipment of western grain (Innis 1930e, 28–9).4 Thus, while he may have been quite enthusiastic concerning the technological breakthroughs made in the building of this line and its allied branch-line project to Flin Flon in northwestern Manitoba (see below), he was far from certain about the railway’s long-term economic viability. It is also important to note that, while Innis did come to the North with many preconceived ideas – for which he found support during his research – it strikes me that what he saw and heard in the North did change his thinking in some regards. It would seem, particularly upon reading both his field notes and the most often overlooked of all his scholarly productions, Settlement and the Mining Frontier (Innis and Lower 1936), that Innis’s northern experience helped to alter his view of “cyclonics” – a notion that was central to much of his work during the staples-commodity phase of his research. This was ironic, because the North was a prime example of how rapid and unpredictable the impact of economic development could be along a new resource frontier – hence the analogy of the cyclone. Indeed, Innis (1929e) mused in his field notes that “a mine is an economic explosive.”5 Still, for all of the rapidity and unpredictability of northern development in the 1920s and early 1930s, Innis also noted that the North, unlike other staple-producing regions of Canada, seemed to offer the potential for a more balanced form of economic development than the single-export product model of fish, fur, timber, and wheat had done heretofore in Canada. In fact, as the rest of the above quote on mines indicates, Innis (1929e) saw that a substantial mine was an economic explosive in a very positive sense, “developing in its train lumbering, agriculture, hunting, industry, [and] transport facilities in a remarkably short period of time.”6 In his later work on mining for the Canadian Frontiers of Settlement series, he delineated the very close ties between mining and railway development in Canada (Innis and Lower 1936, 171). But when he moved beyond the placer-mining industry – which he argued had hastened the building of the first Canadian transcontinental rail line – his argument became more sophisticated. In effect, because of the high overhead costs inherent in relatively new industries such as hard-rock mining – which Innis clearly viewed as the enabler of other northern industries such as fishing, forestry, hydro-electric development, pulp-and-paper production – and the necessity for government aid in providing

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infrastructure for northern development (this is yet another mild irony, for the supposedly anti-statist Innis had relatively few qualms about the Dominion or provincial governments aiding northern development via the provision or subsidization of rail line and roadway construction), far more planning went into modern northern resource extraction than had ever been the case before. Owing to this, and to the possibilities inherent in simultaneous and inter-linked developments, Innis believed he was witnessing the creation of what might turn out to be relatively stable northern economies, which would serve the larger Canadian economy – and hence Canadian unity – quite well. As he observed in his chapter on the “New Frontier” – which included Manitoba: Whereas a wheat economy involves seasonal movement of traffic, mining largely implies continuous year-round movement of important revenue-producing traffic. In industry, in finance, and in railway traffic the mining industry implies a more-rounded, better-balanced economy and introduces additional types of development, which in the main reduce the evils of dependence on a staple commodity. The industry promotes a highly-integrated advanced type of industrial community. The trend towards stability has been evident in the expansion of mining during the present depression. The industry has served as a cushion softening the effects of dependence on wheat. Metropolitan growth in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver has been in the main rounded out and made more stable with the addition of mining. (Innis and Lower 1936, 403) In this regard, Innis’s field trips to northern Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, and the interior of British Columbia – as well as his larger research work – had made it clear to him that, once the state had agreed to engage in the provision of transportation infrastructure (whether it was done specifically to aid northern development or, as in the case of the hb r, for other political and economic reasons) the door was opened for the establishment of capital-intensive mining operations. This, in turn, led to the harnessing of hydro-electric sites in order to lower the energy costs associated with multi-million-dollar mining and smelting operations, such as those at Flin Flon in northern Manitoba. As a natural result of the availability of relatively inexpensive power supplies and locally available smelting and

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concentration facilities (a key factor in reducing transportation costs for mining companies), more mines would almost certainly be developed in the area. The availability of power and transportation services could also lead to the development of pulp-and-paper operations, assuming appropriate stands of pulp wood existed within a reasonable distance of the power source and rail line. Even “older” industries, such as lumbering, fur-trapping, fresh-water fishing, and whaling and fishing in Hudson Bay might also undergo a renaissance owing to the availability of transportation services that opened up new areas to exploitation and brought more people north to harvest these resources on at least a part-time basis. This particular renaissance, however, was a far more problematic matter for Innis, whose work on the fur trade made him recognize the fragility of these resources. Still, as Innis surveyed the contemporary reality of such development in the 1920s he was clearly impressed; indeed, he recognized that the overall impact of the developments he was witnessing first-hand would also create large human populations in the North. Aside from the short-term construction jobs and the provision of service-sector employment in these new northern towns, mining and smelting centres that contained several thousand persons also created markets for locally produced goods – yet another stimulus to the local economy. However, given the limitations of agricultural production on the Precambrian Shield, Innis argued that these towns would also be markets for goods produced at the closest point, in this case along the northern fringe of the Prairies – a subregion that had never been as fully integrated into the national wheat economy as had the southern Plains (Innis 1930e, 18). This economic interaction would be of value to both the mining and agricultural frontiers. Thus, the creation of well-balanced, multifaceted industrial economies in the North was a very real possibility to Innis. Beyond this, based partially upon the research undertaken by his University of Toronto students, and what he saw first-hand on his field trips, he also believed that, with careful conservation practices and some innovative approaches, such as expansion of fur-farming for fine furs and reindeer “ranching” (borrowing techniques from circumpolar neighbours), older northern enterprises could be kept going, even as the new industrial economy developed.7 Finally, Innis saw the possibility of northern tourism emerging as a distinct and valuable addition to the northern economy – and in this regard he was clearly ahead of his time for he was contemplating not just the

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American hunting or fishing-party brand of tourism that had already made an impact in more southerly portions of Canada,8 but he also saw the possibility of historical tourism at Fort Prince of Wales and other fur-trade sites and a brand of eco-tourism at pristine locations such as Wager Inlet on the western shore of Hudson Bay. As he put it in his notes: “[The] possibilities of tourist trade to Hudson Bay [are] not to be disregarded (1929e, 79).9 In many regards, the most intriguing part of Innis’s northern career comes as he is investigating northern Manitoba in general and the hb r in particular. By this time, late in the summer of 1929, Innis was a force to be reckoned with. As all of his biographers would agree, Innis was near or at the very top of his game. His position at the University of Toronto had been greatly solidified since his first northern sojourn in 1924, first with a regular appointment as an assistant professor and then with a hard-won promotion to associate professor in the spring of 1929. Perhaps more to the point, his second book, The Fur Trade of Canada, had been published in 1927; the completed manuscript of what is usually recognized as his most important work of the staples period, The Fur Trade in Canada, was revised and set to be published by Yale University Press in 1930; while volume one of his massive Select Documents in Canadian Economic History, 1497–1783 (Innis 1929d) was already at the printer. Moreover, in an organizational and institutional sense, Innis was emerging as a key player in the academic fields of Canadian political science, economics, geography, and history. Finally, in terms of his fieldwork, he was by now an experienced traveller of the North, with well-established contacts and an easy familiarity with many of the leading figures in northern development. As a result, his field notes reflect both a more polished style (if one can ever apply that term to the writing of Harold Adams Innis) – as if he now knew exactly how he would be using them – and considerable “homework” having been undertaken before he got to his destination. As for northern Manitoba itself, Innis could not have chosen a more propitious moment for a visit; indeed, he very consciously wanted to get to northern Manitoba just as the great railway project that was the hb r was being completed. As he would later put it: “If any one date may be chosen as epoch-making from the standpoint of the Canadian north it will be that of the year just closed [1929]. It must be regarded as an historical height of land” (Innis 1930h, 166). More to the point, it was the completion of the h br that he saw as

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being the watershed event. Talked about since the 1870s, planned since the 1880s, under construction – in one fashion or another – since Mackenzie and Mann took over a defunct railway charter in the 1890s and began constructing what would become the Canadian Northern Railway, the hb r had finally been commenced in a serious fashion when it was built forward from Mackenzie and Mann’s branch line to The Pas as a federal government project between 1911 and 1917. However, the project had then been abandoned again for almost a decade and was only given a new lease on life – and a new port (Churchill instead of Port Nelson) – in the latter half of the 1920s.10 As Innis also knew, even as the hbr project was nearing completion, a series of major mines was finally coming on stream in northwestern Manitoba: after approximately fifteen years of development work, experimentation with mineral separation techniques, and hard-bargaining with two levels of government, the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company (hbm&s) was almost ready to commence copper and zinc production at Flin Flon. Partially as a result of this $27,000,000 development project – which included a branch-line railway, a hydroelectric power plant at Island Falls, Saskatchewan, and enough excess capacity to undertake “custom smelting” for other producers – SherrittGordon’s large-scale camp at Cold Lake (Sherridon) was also being turned into an active mine site, while a host of smaller properties in the surrounding region were all under active development. Further east, in the central Manitoba mining district, San Antonio Gold Mines was about to start its forty-year run at Bissett, while a series of smaller mines was also being developed. In all, by the close of the year, Manitoba’s new Department of Mines and Natural Resources could boast that the province had eight metal mines up and running. Meanwhile, a little further south, but still on the edge of the Precambrian Shield, and therefore northern in a functional sense, Manitoba’s first pulp-and-paper mill had finally commenced production at Pine Falls in 1927, while a new series of hydro-electric installations on the Winnipeg River was being constructed at Seven Sisters and Slave Falls. In all, during the latter half of the 1920s Manitoba’s resource frontier had witnessed approximately $120,000,000 worth of private and public expenditure and had benefited from the creation of over thirty-five thousand seasonal and full-time jobs (Mochoruk 2004, 292–6). In short, Innis travelled into a perfect storm of developmental activity when he headed to northern Manitoba in 1929 – a cyclone, if you will.

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Given all of this, in reading over his field notes for this trip one might expect some of the palpable sense of excitement that surrounded him to be present in the text. But this is not the case. Indeed, along with his careful observations of the impact of gasoline-powered engines on the agricultural districts through which he passed on his way north,11 Innis (1929f, 10) begins his northern observations by raising an interesting question for himself as he contemplated the eighty-seven-mile (140–kilometre) long rail line built from the h br to the new mining town of Flin Flon: “Is the Precambrian shield culturally a curse?” Hardly the typical musings of a booster, and his answer to this question may well have been “yes” for he immediately commented upon the “Monotony of conditions,” and he concluded the note by observing: “Le Pas – excitement – movie by Zane Grey – no inherent culture in mines” (ibid.). A bit harsh, but as these field notes indicate, Innis was not overly romantic about most aspects of northern development. Indeed, he was highly critical of certain aspects of the social impact of development and paid careful attention to what he saw as the typical social problems of northern camps: the presence of bootleggers, gambling, “and whorehouses” (12). And, as we shall see later, he was also very concerned with the fate of First Nations and Inuit populations – although the language he used to describe them does not sit well with the modern reader. What did excite Innis were the innovations in transportation, hauling, and construction technologies that he witnessed and heard about from the practitioners of these techniques. But, once again, he was not an uncritical supporter of every new technology. Thus, while he paid very careful attention to the impact of airplanes in the North, Innis provided what can only be viewed as a mixed review. While still in Winnipeg he made contact with the management of James Richardson’s Western Canadian Airways, which was providing mail and transportation services throughout the Northwest and the mining districts of northwestern Ontario, and which hoped to attract even more business by servicing the needs of prospectors and mining syndicates (Innis 1929e, 9–10). Here Innis was at great pains to explain the high cost of air service (based upon the high insurance premiums charged by Lloyds of London), the problems of flying onto lakes, the impact of bad weather on flying schedules, the lack of proper meteorological services, and the like. He also noted the reality that passengers travelling one way actually paid for the return flight – unless the airline could be guaranteed freight for the

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return trip (ibid.). Once into the North, and able to talk to several different mining men and engineers about the practicality of airplanes in the North, Innis formed a fairly negative opinion of the value of airplanes for certain key functions. In particular, he found that exploration companies such as na m e (Northern Aerial Mineral Exploration) and Dominion Explorers were throwing good money after bad by relying upon aerial surveys of mining districts – money that would have been better spent by putting experienced prospectors on the ground with canoes (Innis 1929f, 51–2, 61, 97). Innis did, however, see some value to this new technology, particularly in support of shipping operations on the Bay, through the provision of accurate data on ice conditions (12). What really impressed Innis in technological terms, then, was not the airplane but the various tractors that were being utilized in the North. Indeed, there was no doubt in Innis’s mind that winter hauling over ice roads, using gasoline-powered tractors, was revolutionizing the North (Innis 1929f, 12). In fact, these northern solutions offered a stunning answer to what Innis saw as “Canada’s problem – capitalizing [on] winter conditions – turn old idea of winter season upside down – work in winter and do little in summer” (89). Of course, he was well aware that the tractor, like the airplane, did have its drawbacks: coastal ice conditions could wreak havoc with tractors, mechanical breakdowns were always possible, and gas-and-oil supplies had to be hauled in and cached. But, at the end of the day, Innis was convinced that gas-powered tractors would not only revolutionize work in the North, and potentially replace dog teams in most northern work, but might also very well hold the key to unlocking an overland Northwest Passage (69, 78–9, 84–5, 87, 89, 97). Indeed, when linked to the new hbr line and improved shipping facilities on the Bay and through the straits, Innis postulated that this set of innovations in northern transportation might foster not only more northern development but also create a natural set of linkages between the far northwestern frontier, the central interior, and the Atlantic provinces (69, 78–9, 84–5, 87, 89, 97). And in this final regard, Innis came to believe quite strongly that the experience of Newfoundland’s fleet with northern ice conditions and northern commerce (whaling, sealing, fishing, lumbering, etc.) should be harnessed to the cause of Canada. Finding that some of the Newfoundlandbased sailors he came across in the North were already in favour of Confederation (52–3), Innis later noted to himself: “Canada should

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try to bring about confederation with Newfoundland to take advantage of Newfoundland sailing man reserve and knowledge of Hudson Bay. Hudson Bay and Newfoundland work together” (65–6). In effect, in much the same way that Innis had seen the rivers and lakes that were explored during the fur-trade era as providing a natural basis for the physical unity of Canada, he now saw the new breakthroughs in northern-transportation technology as creating the possibility of a new, northern-oriented unity for Canada – a unity that would finally include Newfoundland. Yet another technological breakthrough that impressed Innis, and that reinforced his emerging view on the potential for a new, northernbased physical unity for Canada, was the new technique of railway construction first pioneered on the Flin Flon branch line and then replicated on the final stage of the h b r project. The laying of track during the winter, on frozen muskeg, followed by lifting and ballasting in the spring was a novel solution to northern construction problems that elicited considerable comment and even praise from Innis (1929f, 14, 29–32). In fact, when commenting upon this process as applied to the hb r proper, where the work of ballasting was being conducted in both directions at the same time, he almost gushed. As he put it: “Genius of organization rearranged whole plan of railroading. Communication came first. Despatching [sic] important” (32). Innis was quite taken with the man whom he saw as being responsible for the brilliant plan of action that had incorporated the new methods of northern railway construction with a disciplined approach to coordinating the various components of such a complex undertaking – the engineer, whom he (mis)identified simply as Mr McLaughlin (Innis 1929f, 22).12 Innis, who always enjoyed getting the inside story on how arrangements came to be made in government and business circles, recorded in great detail McLaughlin’s take on how Churchill came to be chosen as the new harbour site and terminus of the hbr and how internal political bickering caused many delays and bad decisions (46–7). But what Innis seemed to admire most about this engineer was that he combined broad vision with indepth knowledge of the minutiae of railway building. As Innis reported in his field notes: “McLaughlin a tremendous knowledge of detail – men asking him about trivial points but at the same time a genius in working out a policy and striking out new lines” (34). This admiration was perhaps understandable as surely Innis saw a kindred spirit here, for while Innis (like McLaughlin) always paid

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attention to the big picture, no detail seemed too small for him to note. Thus, Innis commented upon the size and price of sleeping accommodations for workers at Flin Flon – even providing a small sketch of the bunk beds in a Chinese restaurant-cum-boarding house. He also noted the propensity of white workers engaged in railway and other seasonal construction work to supplement their incomes by engaging in trapping on a part-time basis. And he paid close attention to the use and over-exploitation of nearby lakes for fish, noting how, after the supply was “wiped out,” the fishers simply moved on to new lakes and larger supplies of fish. Indeed, he seemed intrigued by the operation of these nearby fisheries and a small local sawmill as examples of full “utilization of [available] resources” (Innis 1929f, 15). Of course, Innis was not infallible and could get some of his facts wrong. Thus, the Whitney family that financed the mine at Flin Flon (h b m& s) was confused with some Boston interests who had taken out an earlier option on the property (16), but for the most part, despite the brevity of his visit to Flin Flon, his reportage was quite accurate. The young scholar was also a keen observer of the many unique “characters” who seemed to populate the North. He apparently spent many happy hours in the company of Captain Mack – an endless source of stories and gossip about the great, the good, and the not so good in the north country; a man, moreover, who employed a colourful vocabulary that Innis clearly appreciated and probably had not been much exposed to since his army days (Innis 1929f, 98).13 There is an amazing level of attention paid in these field notes to the salacious details of the personal lives of well-known fur traders, missionaries, miners, prospectors, and “sporting women” – all provided by men like Mack and other local informants. But if these entries sounded more than a bit judgmental at times, Innis also demonstrated that he had a soft spot for some of those who had fallen upon hard times – especially if they had some interesting or salacious stories of their own to tell. Thus, when he ran into the former federal minister of the interior, Frank Oliver, in Churchill, Innis not only noted that Oliver was hard-up for money and was having trouble trying to make a living through his old trade as a newspaperman but also took the time to record Oliver’s take on his time in political office. Whether or not Innis agreed with Oliver’s interpretation is hard to tell, but he clearly valued it enough to note that, after Oliver succeeded Clifford Sifton as minister of the interior, Oliver

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“changed Sifton’s policy [on homestead lands] and protected his [Sifton’s] rear without any thanks” (41). Oliver also confided to Innis that Sifton had not resigned from office on any point of principle in 1905, as had so often been reported, and, even more to the point, that he had personally benefited from the activities of the colonization companies that he had encouraged to form between 1896 and 1905. As to Sifton’s recent death (in April of 1929), Innis rather pithily described Oliver’s reaction as being “like [that of the] man who refused to go to enemy’s funeral but approved of it” (41). It was, however, the hbr and its namesake Hudson Bay that captured the vast majority of Innis’s attention on this trip. From 6 August until 19 September Innis travelled the hbr, and from the end of steel at Churchill he went by ship to various points on Hudson Bay. Again, he was careful in his observations of building techniques, various transportation innovations, the role of airplanes in mineral exploration, and various economic activities such as marble quarrying and commercial fishing along the route of the rail line – and the potential for future activities such as pulpwood-cutting (Innis 1929f, 19 and passim).14 Nor was he reluctant to record the stories of the dissolute at mining camps such as Herb Lake – where he found a distressing number of illegitimate children, “bushed” ministers, u s army deserters, and a whole host of those “soured on life” (20–1). Gambling and bootlegging were also problems as far north as Churchill (34, 39), but it was the state of health care, both for workers and for First Nations and the Inuit whom he encountered, that seemed to perturb Innis the most. Indeed, for all of his commentary upon what one expects of an economist – the efficiencies and inefficiencies of various construction projects, the capital costs associated with dredging the harbour at Churchill, and the role that the hbr might play in opening up the entire Arctic to further economic development – it is his notes upon the Inuit that are the most impassioned. While it is true that he utilized terms such as “Husky” when discussing what were then still referred to as “Eskimos,” and “halfbreed” for people of mixed European and Aboriginal ancestry, Innis saw these people as intelligent, hardy individualists who were the key to any future development of the Arctic. Indeed, as Innis (1929f, 58) saw it, in the far North it would be “impossible for white man to get along without reliance on Husky [Inuit].” The language that he utilized to express his concern and regard for the Inuit and other Aboriginal peoples was sometimes questionable and can easily be

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7.1  Innis at Churchill, Manitoba, 1929. After arriving in Churchill, Innis spent over a week there while he was waiting for the s s Ungava to arrive.

misread to imply that Innis thought of them as little more than animal stock. For instance, much might be made of his comment (in a prelude to this particular set of field notes) that the Department of Indian Affairs should “spend less time on cruelty to dumb animals and more on cruelty to dumb Indians” (Innis 1929e).15 It is also easy

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to take exception to comments that implied that “Eskimos” needed to be “conserved” in much the same way as did animal populations (Innis 1929f, 61). However, Innis was very much concerned with their fate as a people, and while he knew that change was coming – this he saw as an inevitable process that was already well under way – he also found their way of life, skill sets, and cultural traits quite laudable. Indeed, Innis saw them as possessing a “great genius for adapting themselves to [the] country” they inhabited, as witnessed by their elaborate navigational systems and the practicality of their clothing and transportation techniques (63). He also wanted them to have access to proper medical care and to be spared the interference of missionaries – many of whom Innis clearly detested (61). Of course, because he was caught up in the project of developing the North and was, after all, an economist, Innis was in the habit of describing these people in economic terms. Thus, he had no qualms about viewing the Inuit as “assets” – observing: “[The] Eskimo [is] of fundamental importance to opening up of North. [They are] Canada’s most valuable asset in the north. Everything possible must be done to protect them if Canada is to take advantage of the north country” (66–7). However, even as Innis was emerging as an advocate of northern development – and there can be no mistake in this regard, for he was an advocate – what these notes make clear is that he was not an uncritical advocate. He saw the baleful effects of industrialization both on animal stocks and on the Inuit along the Arctic coast line and he wanted steps to be taken to protect both (Innis 1929f, 82). Indeed, near the end of these field notes, in a paragraph that may well be read as a list of what Innis believed to be his most important thoughts on the North, he wrote: “Develop Arctic – minerals, reindeer etc., furs, fisheries.” But it is also the case that this terse paragraph began with a two-word imperative: “Save Eskimo” (92) – a sentiment echoed in at least five other places in these notes. Of course, Innis has recorded these views in other places and in other ways, for example in his brief pieces of 1930 in the Canadian Engineer, the Canadian Railway and Marine World, and in the University of Toronto Quarterly, as well as in his lengthier and more scholarly article on the h b r for the Geographical Review.16 However, for the immediacy and sense of urgency – and a lack of pandering to any particular audience (Innis was clearly “pandering” to engineers in the first two articles mentioned above) – the field notes are among our best guides to Innis’s take on the North. And on the whole, I

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would argue that it is a remarkably balanced account. I would also point out that there is one aspect of these notes and of Innis’s work on the North in general that has not been commented upon by any scholar to date – and that I hope to address more fully in a subsequent work. And that is quite simply this: Innis’s northern vision was quite consciously produced in a larger historical context that had presented the Canadian North as a wasteland – a wilderness suitable only for fur-bearing animals and the Aboriginal populations that harvested them.17 Acutely aware of this historical construction of the North by dint of his own research on the fur trade, Innis was one of those who, with younger colleagues such as W.L. Morton, would provide the intellectual underpinnings for a new and sophisticated northern vision of Canada – a vision that avoided the most mindless aspects of self-interested economic boosterism but that did see tremendous use value and cultural significance in the North.18 For the time being, however, I will conclude simply by noting that, if Benedict Anderson (1991, 6) is correct in observing that all nations are “imagined communities,” then Harold Adams Innis must be credited as one of those whose imagination was crucial to the construction of a modern – and northern – understanding of Canada.

notes

1 For examples of these earlier forms of a northern vision for Canada, see Berger (1966). 2 See Mochoruk (2004). 3 DeLury and Kitto both worked, at various times, for the Geological Survey of Canada, while Wallace was a professor of geology at the University of Manitoba and later president of both the University of Alberta and Queen’s University. For examples of their writing see, DeLury (1927); Kitto (1929); Wallace (1919, 1921). 4 Innis (1930e, 28–9). In this article Innis not only concluded that the success of the railway depended upon mining development but actually suggested that wheat might help in this regard by serving as “ballast”! 5 Innis (1929e, n.p.) (Page following handwritten notation, “Wpg”.) 6 Ibid. 7 Innis (1927b). See “Author’s Preface” [n.p.] and part 3, “The Production of Furs.”

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8 Innis was well aware of this type of tourism and had commented in his notes upon the lavishness of American fishing parties towards their Aboriginal guides in the Vermillion Lakes region. See Innis (1929e, Goldpines section, 7). 9 See also Innis (1930e, 28). 10 Innis was well aware of this tortuous history of the hb r project before he headed north. See his synopsis of the history of the hb r project in Innis (1929f, 39[a]). 11 Innis (1929f, n.p.). 12 Innis misspelled the name as this was actually Major J.G. MacLachlan, at the time the division engineer for the hbr project. Innis’s spelling has been retained throughout for consistency. 13 Captain George E. Mack had served as the commander of various hb c vessels – most notably the supply ship the ss Nascopie -– for over two decades by the time he met Innis. By 1929 he was no longer serving aboard h b c vessels, acting instead as a northern superintendent for the hb c. As a result of his many years of northern service for the hb c he seemed to know virtually everyone in the trading posts, missions, police outposts, and communities that dotted the shore of Hudson Bay as well as those in the interior. It is of some note that Mack was also an avid photographer and that hundreds of his northern photographs, taken circa 1910–27, are housed in the McCord Museum in Montreal. 14 Ibid., 19 and passim. Most of these comments were later utilized, often as direct lifts, for his 1930 article on the hbr in the Geographical Review as well as in several of his public presentations of 1930. 15 “Hudson-Goldpine Notes,” 14. 16 See Innis (1930f, 225–6); and Innis (1930h). 17 For a discussion of this older construction, see Mochoruk (2001). 18 W.L. Morton is the most obvious example of a scholar who, like Innis, developed a very sophisticated understanding of just how important the North was to Canada. His book-length study for the government of Manitoba (Morton 1950a), his classic provincial history (Morton 1957), and several key sections of The Canadian Identity (Morton 1972) are perfect illustrations of a new appreciation of the North in Canadian history – and its potential role in the Canadian future. While some will quite correctly see Morton as fighting against the stream of what was then the dominant historiographical tradition in English Canada, the Laurentian School – which had, rather ironically, been heavily inspired by Innis – that does not mean that he was in disagreement with Innis’s ideas on the importance of the North. In much the same way, Morris Zaslow, for many

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years Canada’s only serious scholar of the modern (meaning post-fur trade) North, was also deeply influenced by Innis. And like Innis, it was not just a bookish or purely scholarly interest that drew him northward. Spending time in Edmonton as a young man, Zaslow could not help but be struck by that city’s role as a centre for northwestern resource development, particularly in the area of mining – a point he made on the dust jacket of Reading the Rocks (Zaslow 1972). Zaslow, to an even greater extent than Morton, would keep alive the flame of Canadian northern studies with his works for the Canadian Centenary Series (Zaslow 1971), The Northward Expansion of Canada (Zaslow 1988), and, perhaps even more importantly, with his training of an entire generation of northern specialists. Of course, Innis, Morton, and Zaslow were all profoundly “southern Canadian” in their orientation, which is problematic. But having said that, these three – and a small handful of other scholars – paved the way for a new generation of scholars who focus upon the North and northerners. Without them, it is doubtful that Canada would have produced northern scholars such as Ken Coates, Bill Morrison, Kerry Abel, or a host of other northern specialists.

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8 The Newfoundland and Labrador Fieldwork of Harold Adams Innis jeff a. webb

In June 1930, the Canadian economic historian Harold Innis travelled by train across the island of Newfoundland and along the northeast coast of the island and the coast of Labrador on the government-owned steamship the Kyle.1 This trip was prompted by two things. First, Innis was working on the history of the cod fishery, and visiting the region to examine production methods was important to his method of understanding an industry. The trip allowed him to survey possible archival resources, discuss the organization of a complex trade with knowledgable informants, and examine the fishery first-hand. Second, during his 1929 trip to Hudson Bay, Innis came to believe that Newfoundlanders could play an important role in the development of the Canadian North and that bringing the people of that colony into Confederation would benefit Canada. Just as he valued the Inuit for the skills and expertise they could bring to the development of the North, so he thought that Newfoundlanders’ skills in ice navigation could enable the development of transportation to northern Canada (Innis 1929f, 54 and 66).2 This chapter reviews the place Innis has had in Newfoundland historiography and shows that, until recently, his work on the cod fisheries has been undervalued. It then examines Innis’s Newfoundland and Labrador 1930 fieldwork as a part of his intellectual engagement with the North. It also provides a different window onto reconstructing Innis’s view of Newfoundland and Labrador than does the text of his magnum opus The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (Innis 1940b). That book is concerned more with establishing international trade and communication linkages

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than with the fishery itself. I suggest that this northern journey deserves attention for what it reveals about Innis’s conception of the economic development of the North and of his staples approach. He initially took field notes and photographs and, later that year, drew upon this material in an insightful article in the Toronto-based Financial Post (Innis 1930g). As William Buxton suggests, Innis tried to use that newspaper to shape the views of those with power in Canadian society. The views expressed in his article were informed by both his conversations with fellow travellers and his first-hand impressions from the vantage point of the deck of the Kyle. The information he gathered from these sources fit with his long-term interest in transportation and communications. After publishing studies of the Canadian Pacific Railway (Innis 1923) and the fur trade (Innis 1930c), he was alert to the effects of trade routes – an awareness that would have been reinforced by the fact that he was travelling on a vessel that was itself both part of a transportation revolution and a conduit for the transhumance of the Labrador fishery. The Financial Post article provides a key to understanding the field notes by revealing the connections he made between what otherwise might seem random observations. That article also shows how the Labrador trade fit into Innis’s ideas for the development of the Canadian North. Despite the historiographic importance of his 1940 study of the cod fishery, his Newfoundland and Labrador fieldwork and his remarkably interesting newspaper article are little known among historians. This chapter examines these documents for what they reveal about Innis’s view of the North and the place that he saw Newfoundland and Labrador could have in Canada’s northern development. the place of innis in newfoundland history

One historian has pointed out that scholars in the Maritime provinces during the 1970s were too quick to dismiss Innis based upon other scholars’ use of the staple thesis in ways that sustained the stereotype of the Maritimes as conservative. He comments that Newfoundland economic historians, such as David Alexander, Rosemary Ommer, and Sean Cadigan, on the other hand, found the staple thesis fruitful for two reasons. Newfoundland did not industrialize in the nineteenth century as did Nova Scotia (so the notion of a staple trap did not have a glaring exception), and, since Newfoundland had not been a part of the Canadian National Policy, the Canadian state could not be blamed for

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deindustrializing the economy (Bickerton 1999). It is true that Newfoundland historians have continued to find relevance in the staples approach, but they have, as with the case of Canadian scholars, had to account for a couple of perceived characteristics of Innis’s body of work. First, Innis, perhaps unfairly, had been understood to be a geographical determinist, something that was out of fashion in the 1970s. The two most influential historians of that decade, Keith Matthews and David Alexander, left a legacy for those who would read Innis while thinking about Newfoundland. Matthews’s compelling critique of what he called the traditional Newfoundland historiography became the new starting point for the understanding of Newfoundland in the period before 1815. In the midst of this devastating analysis of the work of earlier historians he made the following comment: Innis’ monumental work on the cod fisheries was concerned with the overall development of the fishery in the northwest Atlantic and even with the effects upon society of that development. It is, accordingly, not surprising that he used almost no primary sources. This inevitably left him dependent upon the researches of others and his general theory of metropolitan-outport conflicts certainly predisposed him to accept their conclusions regarding Newfoundland. Whatever the reasons for his conclusions, his fame ensured that the dogmatic explanation for Newfoundland development was accepted by a wide range of scholars and others who knew and cared little about the internal history of the Island. Thus an interpretation of history which had commenced as local mythology, finished as part of the holy writ of scholarship. (Matthews 2001, 155) By lumping Innis with nineteenth-century amateur historians as devotees of the “conflict thesis,” Matthews encouraged readers to assume that Innis was obsolete if one’s concern was to understand the seventeenth- or eighteenth-century fishery. The other influential scholar, Alexander, was an economic historian whose focus was the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite his necessary emphasis upon the staple cod, Alexander (1983, 4) also dismissed Innis as one of a group of historians who “imply that the stagnation of Atlantic Canada was the outcome of technological changes that left its endowment marginal to the pattern of growth in twentieth century North America.” Alexander relied upon cultural factors, such as entrepreneurial

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weakness, marketing failures, and low levels of literacy, to explain economic disparity. Despite his interest in the limits of an economy based upon exporting a staple, he did not engage Innis directly. After Matthews and Alexander both died young, the new generation of historians at Memorial University during the 1980s worked more explicitly within the traditions of English-Marxist social history. Many Newfoundland historians now believed that class relations were the primary factor that explained economic and social history. Innis’s oeuvre was mute on the role he saw for class relations, and he had little interest in Marxist interpretations or theory. Innis belonged to an earlier generation of historians, and he had written Cod Fisheries in the passive voice. His tone emphasized his lack of interest in the concept of “human agency” (let alone class struggles) as the new generation of social historians used it. The 1980s fashionable focus upon class relations reached the point of absurdity in the work of the American anthropologist Gerald Sider (1986). Sider dismissed the notion that geography determined aspects of economic development and argued that the nature of merchant capitalism accounted for everything from the means of production to the ways people celebrated Christmas. While Sider received a cool reception, his emphasis upon merchant capitalism was consistent with the approach of other Newfoundland scholars. In the 1980s and 1990s scholars such as Rosemary Ommer and Sean Cadigan revived an interest in Innis. Ommer, who wrote primarily about the Gaspé Peninsula, drew upon the staples approach to develop an argument that emphasized the nature of economic linkages that came with each staple.3 Cadigan remained committed to Thompsonian social history and was the first Newfoundland historian to explicitly combine a Marxist concern with class relations with the non-Marxist but materialist staple thesis. As he put it: Although the staple model offers the single most persuasive explanation for Newfoundland’s dependence on the fishery, Newfoundland’s 19th-century social development cannot be understood without considering the manner in which the island’s comparatively restricted resource base influenced the development of class relations … Without a flourishing agricultural base, or even other staple trades to complement the fishery, Newfoundland society was doomed to domination by merchant capital. (Cadigan 1992, 49)

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He went on to conclude: “The usefulness of the staple model [lies] … in a consideration of the influence of the resource base upon the shaping of social relations of production in particular colonial settings” (68). Cadigan’s work marked a return to understanding how the environment circumscribed the choices available to people. Such a reappraisal of the continuing relevance of reading Innis can only be encouraged by an examination of his fieldwork in Newfoundland. t h e n at u r e o f i n n i s ’ s f i e l d n o t e s

Innis’s field notes of his trip to Newfoundland and Labrador are, not surprisingly, consistent in character and point of view with the notes of his earlier forays into the Canadian North as described by Matthew Evenden (chapter 3, this volume). The notes are sketchy: they are a sort of aide de memoire that included first-hand observations and reminders to himself of sources he would later consult. They are not ethnographic field notes. Interwoven with the text is material that he clearly gleaned from conversations with people with whom he travelled, the identity of whom he rarely noted. As in the notes of his earlier trips, some portions of his travel are recorded with only a single note or two in point form, while other sections include description of things he observed. He paid little attention to either the natural landscape or the people. Innis also took a number of photographs and made small drawings of architectural features as a visual record of the methods of production and physical infrastructure of industry. These should be considered in tandem with the textual notes. Rarely were aesthetic concerns foremost in prompting him to take a photograph. Several of the photographs show the method of off-loading fish from motor boats and cod drying on flakes or on the beach. I have seen no photographs of people either catching fish or splitting or salting them. Those two aspects of fish production were hidden from him as he travelled on the Kyle. He photographed a few sailing vessels and motor boats and the Kyle itself, but most of his collection reflects his interest in the houses, sheds, and wharves he could see from the deck. In a few places, such as Battle Harbour, he had the opportunity to get off the vessel and adopt a different vantage point. In that community he climbed a hill to get a photograph that reveals the community’s geography. He noted that Battle Harbour was under the control of Baine Johnson Ltd., but what interested Innis was its communication with other

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places rather than the nature of the place itself. There are few people portrayed in the photographs, despite how busy the wharves must have been as the Kyle unloaded freight and people. The people captured in Innis’s camera viewfinder are almost always engaged in some productive activity such as pronging fish from the boat up on to the stage. They seem incidental to Innis’s purpose for taking the photograph – the movement of fish from one stage of production to another. Aboriginal people as well as settlers of European ancestry are absent from his photographs. He likely had little interest in an anthropological record of their lives, and, although they had a role in the production of furs, they were marginal to the industrialization that he predicted would come in the future and the marine-orientated transportation system that interested him.4 As Evenden reveals of the earlier trips, the Aboriginal people of the North are referred to only when Innis is discussing a white institution such as the Moravian Church or the Hudson Bay Company (Innis 1930j, 53). Women are mentioned only a couple of times, one of which consisted of a remark upon immorality.5 (It might be mentioned that the participation of women in the floater fishery had long been a matter of moral concern in Newfoundland.) innis’s journey

Innis arrived in Port aux Basques on 17 June 1930 and proceeded across the island by railcar (Innis 1930j, 19). He paid close attention to the small amount of agriculture visible from the train windows as well as to the architecture of the houses and barns and the many piles of pulp wood. Several photographs of piles of pulp wood and railway tracks are extant within his collection. He commented that railway stations were “small islands in desert of mountain, hill forest and swamp” (21). Innis observed topography, and the geology of land and forests, noting the “effects of railroad on country in which lumbering is difficult because of rough water” (22). His interest in the railway and paper industry are not surprising given his earlier work, and he perhaps prefigured some interest in communications in his notation of telephone wires near train track and the number of telephones in St John’s (25). With his arrival in St John’s he walked around the outskirts of the town observing agricultural efforts. He took a couple of scenic photographs of the town and harbour, and a photograph of the statue of The Fighting Newfoundlander (a First

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8.1  Innis likely took this photograph of a fresh catch of lobsters during his visit to the Newfoundland north shore and to Labrador in the summer of 1930. Unlike most of his photographs, it contains an image of a human being.

World War soldier) in Bowring Park. While in St John’s, Innis paid close attention to fishing vessels and the architecture and technology associated with the fishery. Based upon his conversations with local informants he also made a few notes about the organization of the fishery, a description of cure and supplies, and the bank and bait fisheries (26–32). The extant photographs of stages and motor boats

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also reflect his interest in transportation, communications, and staples production over other aspects of life. He left St John’s by coastal boat and made his way along the northeast coast and the Great Northern Peninsula of the Island of Newfoundland and then along the coast of Labrador. The Kyle carried mail and cargo as well as picking up fishing families from Newfoundland and dropping them off along the coast of Labrador, so Innis had an excellent opportunity to observe the organization of the Labrador fishery and discuss it with participants. His trip was early in the season of the annual migration northward, so he shared the vessel with boats and fishing crews. After taking the boat to its northern terminus, he remained on board for its return trip as far as Bay Roberts in Conception Bay, from which he took the train back to Port aux Basques and returned to the Maritime provinces. The following year he also toured the “Canadian Labrador,” or the north shore of Quebec, observing the trade and reflecting upon the themes he had developed the previous year. Innis’s notes are idiosyncratic. In one of the Kyle’s first ports of call, Bay Roberts, Innis commented on the transatlantic commercial telegraph cables and how the architecture of company buildings affected the architecture of the town. He expressed some views on the problems of Newfoundland society, such as the detrimental effects of the denominational school system. As he put it: “[The] curse of Newfoundland [is] religion and politics; non-secular education [is] almost non-existent. Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists. Consequent illiteracy” (Innis 1930j, 41). As he travelled northward Innis continued to observe transportation technologies. Not surprisingly, he noted the relatively recent adoption of the technology of gasoline-powered motor boats; he had discussed the effects of the internal-combustion engine on the North in the previous year’s trip to northern Manitoba as well.6 Not only did he note that new transportation technologies allowed the exploitation of new resources, but he also saw a connection between (1) the rapid economic growth created by access to new fish stocks and (2) a boom-town mentality. It reminded him of a gold rush, prosecuted by people who took risks in the hope of making a lot of money quickly: “Use of motor boats made possible discovery of new fishing banks – could go farther out. Horse Harbour – boats can go beyond Bull Rock without risk; discovered several new large banks – a regular Klondyke.” This attitude seemed to him to extend to gambling: “People enjoy sweepstakes, have sweeps on numbers of seal taken in

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each boat and on total. Most northern areas enjoy gambling of this character. Klondyke – when river goes out” (51). The development of motorized transportation technology also created problems that Innis’s contacts likely pointed out to him. Not all fish was shipped through St John’s: more than half of it was sent directly to Europe on chartered vessels. Innis reported: “[One of my informants] claims that large steamers generally Norwegian chartered in this way dump Labrador fish on market and bring low prices. [Fish was] formally taken over [to market] by small schooners; [this] kept market gradually supplied and prices were maintained. Large steamers said to be killing Labrador fishing” (Innis 1930j, 50–1). Other changes seemed to be under way as well. Conception Bay fishers had abandoned schooners because people were unwilling to sign on for a share of the profit of the voyage (rather, they wanted set wages regardless of the success or failure of the year’s fishing). And fishers now used the Kyle to travel North to a particular harbour and took their families with them for the summer. The diminished number of schooners in the Labrador fishery provoked social and economic changes. It was a “further step from planter system by which one merchant hires several crews” and, in turn, the “rise of [the supplier] Ayre and Sons who work only on cash basis [which was] probably the result of breaking up of credit system (56).” Since fishing families were no longer mobile after the steamer had dropped them off on the coast, they were confined to fishing in one area even if the fishery in that area failed. Unlike those in Conception Bay, people in Notre Dame Bay continued to use schooners, Innis observed, and their fishery benefitted from the mobility and the fact that they could bring in salt less expensively than it could be purchased on the Labrador coast. Innis discerned a number of other profound social changes that were provoked by the motor boat and steamer: [There are] still a large number of planters who have made a large amount of money but [there is a] feeling they may be [in a] decline as against small individuals who have their own motor boat. Wealthy merchants move out of fishing – sons sent to university and go to professional jobs. Standard of education and of living rising, people refuse to work as hard. Motor boats have made fishing easier, can prosecute it farther from shore with less risk. Formally women came to Labrador to cook for husband and men who refuse to undertake hardship at present. (Innis 1930j, 57)

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When the Kyle entered Hamilton Inlet, Innis noted places that were primarily fur-trading posts rather than cod-fishing communities. By 29 June, the vessel was in the Inuit town of Makovik, where Innis noted the Moravian church, Hudson’s Bay Company buildings, frame houses, and so on. A short time later he was in Nain, which was the northern terminus of the Kyle’s journey. In addition to his comments upon the local geology, he photographed structures, noted efforts at agriculture, and pressed some plants. On his way south he continued to reflect upon the economic structure of trade, credit, and markets. He left the Kyle at Bay Roberts, taking the train back to Port aux Basques. A journey up the north shore of the St Lawrence River the following year reinforced his sense of the transitions that came about with such combinations of technologies for freezing fish for transport to market. innis’s financial post article

In the fall of 1930, Innis drew upon his field trip for an article in the Financial Post. He articulates his view of Newfoundland and Labrador more clearly in this article than he did in his field notes; yet it is little known among historians. The article was part of a supplement about Labrador, which, in the aftermath of the decision of the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council that set the boundary between Canada and Newfoundland, argued that Canadian businesses should be interested in the region. The editorial statement set the tone: “What was Canada’s loss was Newfoundland’s gain. And Labrador means more to Newfoundland, in ensuring that Dominion of great industrial and commercial expansion, than it could ever mean to Canada, for we have other maps to unroll that will keep our developers and capitalists busy for a few generations to come.” The supplement also included an essay upon Labrador by the noted medical philanthropist and booster of Labrador, Dr Wilfred Grenfell.7 Innis’s newspaper article is consistent with this interest in promoting northern development, and it reveals more of the connections he made between different phenomena than can be reconstructed from his notes (Innis 1930g). (Some of Innis’s 1930 observations on the Labrador fishery were also published in a footnote in Cod Fisheries.)8 Much as he had started his study of the fur trade with a discussion of the beaver, he started this essay with the comment: “In Labrador the exploitation of animal life has dominated the economic development

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for centuries.” And he suggested: “It would be difficult to find an area in which a basic activity has had such continuity over so long a period of time.” This reveals one of his motives for the fieldwork. This assumed continuity allowed Innis to understand modes of work in the past even as he thought about future industrial development. Certainly the method of curing salt fish that Innis observed had not appreciably changed since the seventeenth century. As we have seen, Innis’s field notes discuss the physical infrastructure of the fishery far more than they do the people with whom he travelled, and his photographs show far more of the capital infrastructure than of labour. This lack of interest in the social lives of people, as noted, was one factor that led to Innis’s being out of fashion among two generations of social historians for whom the social relations of merchant capital was of primary interest. His Financial Post article displays far more concern with the economic structure of social life than is suggested by the character of his field notes or Cod Fisheries, however. He was effusive in his praise of the knowledge and skills of those who participated in the industry. In the exploitation of animal life that has been and continues to be the basic economic activity of the people whose livelihood depends on Labrador, the character, intelligence, courage, and skill of the population is of first importance. Whether in fishing, sealing, the fur trade, or whaling, these qualities are essential to success. It is only by virtue of the experience of the population as acquired over a long period that animal life can serve as a basis of economic development. Fishers who proceed from Newfoundland to Labrador for the summer in schooners must be familiar with every turn of a coast, which is in many places uncharted, with every possible change in the weather, with every locality in which fish traps can be set with the prospect of success, and with every difficulty that may arise from the time the fish are caught until they have been sold on the market. Beyond question the people are Labrador’s most valuable asset. (Innis 1930g) Innis’s article sets out each of the social groups that exploit Labrador resources. He describes the “livyers,” those who lived yearround on the coast, fished in the summer, and trapped furs in the interior in the winter. He also discusses “floaters,” those who travelled north for the summer and lived on their boats before returning

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to the Island of Newfoundland in the fall. Innis mentions the Inuit and Innu. As he put it: “From Hopedale, north, reliance is placed chiefly on the Eskimo.” Here his use of the passive voice underlines his focus upon the development of the trade – not upon the lives of the Inuit. The Inuit mattered to Innis, as was the case among most Newfoundlanders, because they had skills that enabled them to play a positive role in production. The key to understanding Labrador and, more important, the lessons that it had for those who wanted to develop the Canadian North, was, in Innis’s view, transportation. The Moravian missions had leased the right to trade with the Inuit to the h bc, which then, Innis argued, controlled the trade through its monopoly over transportation to the other parts of the world. South of Hopedale, where the Newfoundland government operated a steamer (the Kyle), Innis reported, individual traders were able to compete with the h bc. “As everywhere in the fur trade,” he wrote “improved transportation increases competition.” This article was perhaps the first to discuss the interaction between steam-powered vessels and the various industries and regions of Newfoundland and Labrador. Innis points out that steamers based in St John’s had displaced schooners that were based in the outports in the annual harvest of seals. These coal-powered vessels and improvements in cold storage had allowed large companies based in the metropolitan centre to expand into shipping fresh-frozen salmon. The great amount of capital required for this industry, particularly when the resources were distant from the markets, required large quantities of salmon to be profitable. Innis admired the joint effort of Job Bros. of St John’s and the hbc in using the ss Blue Peter as a floating freezer that could transport frozen fish from Labrador to market. The fishing families and the merchants involved in the cod fishery had not adopted frozen technology but, rather, continued to produce salted cod. He believed that, since Newfoundland had advantages in producing salt cod over some of its competitors, there was no reason to expect that Newfoundland would develop a frozen-cod industry.9 The potential to use new technologies did allow fresh-frozen salmon to be shipped from the coast, however, creating a new industry. During his 1931 trip along the north shore of Quebec he had observed: “Salmon require different development for cod; [the industry is] forced to build up [an] ample communication system for fresh product” (Innis 1931c). Yet Innis recognized that the

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development of motorized vessels in the annual seal harvest prompted several changes in the cod fishery. The steamships employed by the large firms in St. John’s in the sealing industry has [sic] been responsible for the decline in importance of the schooners. As the schooners declined in the sealing industry an important source of revenue [to schooner owners] was cut off. Additional factors responsible for the decline of the schooner, especially in Conception Bay ports, have been the increasing scarcity of timber for ship building and the construction of branch lines of the railway to the outposts which made schooners unnecessary to acquire supplies from St. John’s. The decline in population of Harbour Grace and the abandoned beautiful old houses are evidences of the disappearance of the days of prosperity. Undoubtedly the serious difficulties of the Labrador fishery in the nineties precipitated the changes which have characterized the increasing use of steamers. (Innis 1930g) Innis had not only constructed a sophisticated understanding of the interplay of a number of transportation and resource factors in the economic geography of Newfoundland, but he had also used as evidence of economic change such things as the housing he observed in Harbour Grace. This helps to explain the seeming inordinate interest in houses and roofs that he displays in his field notes. In the absence of statistical economic data, he used the quality of housing as an index of prosperity. Innis believed that the improvements in transportation, annual fluctuations in the catch of cod, and the unpredictability of prices had all encouraged several trends. First, these factors favoured the larger firms that had greater access to capital. Second, he believed that fishers now had a higher standard of living as a result of their increased use of cash (as opposed to barter) and the benefits of motor boats. Innis knew that he was observing a complex transition in transportation technologies. While wooden-hulled sailing schooners remained important in the Labrador fishery, steamers were becoming ascendant. One unintended consequence of this, people told him, was that, because the fishing season in the North was so short, the cod fishery was rushed. Steamers loaded large cargos of fish quickly and then dumped large quantities on the market, which caused prices to collapse. In earlier decades, schooners had arrived at market at greater

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intervals of time and with smaller cargos, so prices remained more stable. The transition to steamers also provoked greater concentration of marketing in the hands of a smaller number of firms. “The establishment of a regular fortnightly [coastal boat] service to Labrador has contributed to the displacement of schooners,” Innis observed, by lowering the cost of transportation to the point at which families no longer travelled north on schooners. The fishermen going down on the early steamer may be employed by these firms on a share basis or to a much less extent on a cash basis. A planter, who has been described as a man “with a schooner’s crew on shore without a schooner” may secure his outfit on a share basis from the large firm, or he may purchase his outfit for cash and sell his fish to the highest bidder. In the main, the large merchant appears to be having less direct relations with the fishermen but rather supplies middlemen who in turn supply various crews. But in contrast to this tendency small families take their motor boats and assume a more independent stand thus being able to engage in the fishery on a cash basis. The aggressiveness of large merchants interested in the use of the motorboat tend to favour this line of development. (Innis 1930g) A number of profound changes were under way. The improved transportation of the steamer threatened the schooner fishery and encouraged the increased use of motor boats. These gasoline-powered boats allowed fishers to harvest resources at a greater distance from shore and encouraged a transition from truck to cash in the family economy. After this insightful parsing of the structural changes in the transportation of the Labrador fishery, Innis turned to a prediction for the future. The next section of his article most explicitly sets out his view of how the development of Labrador fit into the future he saw for the Canadian North. Innis believed that the use of the steamship in the sealing industry, the fresh-frozen salmon fishery, and the shipping of cod and furs had provided the basis for the expansion of business from the coast into the interior of the peninsula. “The large firms of St. John’s have combined the salmon, the seal and the cod and the partnership between Job Bros. and the Hudson’s Bay Company has added fur,” he wrote, “[and] on this organization and on the efficiency and industry of the people of the Labrador, will be based the next move of expansion to the interior.” The logical consequence of

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this synergy, he predicted, would be the development of electric power, pulp and paper, and mining. This succession of staples will be familiar to those who know the influence of Innis’s early work on Canadian history, but there are a couple of aspects of it that can be underlined. First, it is the transportation system built by the people who develop each staple that would provide the necessary ingredients for the next development. Second, future industrial development would be founded on “the efficiency and industry of the people of Labrador,” by which he meant residents of the Island of Newfoundland, who were engaged in the northern trade as much as were the permanent residents of the coast of Labrador. His idea is that the exploitation of the northern staples gave people the qualities that were required for the next development(s). In a clear reference to his fieldwork in Hudson Bay the previous year, he observed: The peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador have been the first to succeed in the establishment of a permanent economic structure in the areas exposed to ice in Northern North America. They stand supreme in their knowledge of ice conditions and ice navigation. It is not surprising that Hudson [sic] Bay posts on Hudson Bay are in many cases manned by men from Newfoundland and the Labrador. And it is significant that the first ocean-going steamer to visit Wager Inlet and Repulse Bay and to take the first cargo of wheat from Port Churchill to England in 1929 was a sealing vessel chartered from Job Bros of St. John’s and manned and captained by men from Newfoundland. (Innis 1930g) This passage reveals the place that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians had in Innis’s conception of the development of the Canadian North.10 The expertise and the personal qualities Newfoundlanders had developed though their industry in the North would allow them to help Canada open transportation to its northwest. As he concludes: “The great gap through Hudson Bay between Western Canada and the Labrador will be bridged largely through the experience and skill of the fishermen of Newfoundland and Labrador.” conclusion

A reading of The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy shows that Innis saw Newfoundland as part of a complex

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North Atlantic economy involving the Iberian peninsula, the Caribbean Islands, and Europe. Yet his fieldwork in Newfoundland and Labrador was part of his intellectual project of understanding northern development. At a latitude just farther south than Paris, St John’s is not “the North”; however, as a town that coordinated the exploitation of natural resources it seemed northern, and it had a northern hinterland upon which it drew. Northernness is as much a position within a relationship as it is a measure of latitude. The Island of Newfoundland, and St John’s in particular, had a relationship with Labrador that paralleled the relationship that Montreal had with the Northwest or Winnipeg had with Hudson Bay. Innis’s notion of how the state and capital, based in southern metropolitan centres, administered and organized the development of the northern resources paralleled the prevailing view of Labrador on the part of his Newfoundland contemporaries. Newfoundlanders often paid little attention to the people living in Labrador (except to the extent to which they aided development), conceiving of the region as a set of resources. In his Financial Post article, Innis’s characterization of the changes under way in the fishery is insightful, but his prediction of the future of Labrador development did not consider a couple of factors that, to be fair, he could not have seen. Writing in 1930, he did not know how devastating the Great Depression would be to the communities and businesses that he observed. Trade withered, prices for staples collapsed, families were impoverished, and capital was lost. Of greater long-term effect was the ecological damage of development, something of which Innis’s notes and article reveal an awareness. This is not the place to discuss the over-harvesting of cod, salmon, and fur-bearing mammals, but Innis noted that the population of species fluctuated from year to year and that, over the previous centuries, some species of animals had disappeared. The “basic industry of cod fishing,” he wrote, “continues, with fluctuations from year to year, depending on the weather and on conditions which are unfortunately not understood.” And he, like all of his contemporaries, did not imagine the forthcoming commercial extinction of the cod. The collapse of the populations of many of these species undermined the synergy that he saw in 1930. Later in the century, mining and hydro-electric power generation were developed, as Innis foresaw, but the large amount of capital required for these projects meant that they were not developed by Newfoundlandbased businesses but, rather, by international ones.

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Innis’s research was shaped by established communications and transportation networks in addition to his intellect and training. As he travelled the trans-island railway he noted the paper industry, sawmills, and small-scale agricultural developments, all of which were themselves peripheral effects of the railway. He spent his days in the St John’s area walking the farming hinterland that depended upon easy transportation to the urban market and examining the docks that existed for importing and exporting products. So it is not surprising that he emphasized the exchange and production of commodities while commenting little upon other aspects of local life. Innis then made his way north on the coastal boat as it served the floater fishery. He was not following his own itinerary or research strategy. The Kyle carried freight and passengers: its primary role was picking up fishing families from the Island of Newfoundland and bringing them to Labrador to fish. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that Innis’s encounter with the North was part of his orientation towards communications: his later intellectual concerns had broad roots. But his first-hand experience of Newfoundland and Labrador was circumscribed by his being an observer on a communications and transportation conduit. In the case of the coastal boat, he mostly observed the industry from its deck. He rarely went ashore and certainly had no opportunity to direct its voyage. It would be easy to find Innis at fault for lacking interest in the lives of Aboriginal people and the residents of the North who were of European ancestry. While he was aware of the medical-missionary activities of Wilfred Grenfell and befriended a doctor on board the Kyle, for example, he made little comment upon them in his notes.11 His interest in Labrador paralleled the interests of residents of the Island of Newfoundland in their North. It was a place that contained a set of resources that was available to be exploited for the benefit of the southern metropolitan centre. The livyers were incidental to that, except to the degree to which they helped foster development. Merchants in St John’s saw themselves as involved in the fish trade and the business of supplying the fishing families with the necessities of life; they were not in the business of producing fish. Innis’s view was similar. As an economist, he was concerned with trade, credit, and competition; he was not a social historian interested in the lives of rural people.

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1 I thank William Buxton for encouraging me to examine Innis’s fieldwork in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Mel Baker for providing me with copies of Innis’s photographs from the 1930 trip. Arn Keeling read an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 I thank James Mochoruk for providing me with a copy of the relevant sections of these notes. 3 See, for example, Ommer (1991). 4 Despite a few iceberg images, Innis’s photographs seem different in intent and content from many of the contemporary images of the North taken by those who wanted to catalogue and take possession of the land and who viewed the Inuit as an object that was part of the discourse of northernness and thus merited being photographed (Geller 2004). 5 Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, 80) points out that his observations reflect Innis’s class basis, his Baptist background, and the early twentiethcentury discourse of the North “as sexually depraved social space.” 6 See James Mochoruk (chapter 6, this volume); and Innis (1930j, 49). 7 Sir Wilfred Grenfell, “Great Pioneer Is Optimistic for Labrador,” Financial Post, 13 November 1930. 8 See Innis (1940b, 459n21). 9 He went on to comment upon the increasing link between the island of Newfoundland and Labrador, pointing out that it was “Newfoundland fishermen who go down, year after year, to the coasts of Labrador” (Innis 1930g). It is interesting that he chose to use Newfoundland colloquial speech here in referring to traveling North as going down north, a usage he likely picked up on the trip. 10 Although Innis may have favoured a Canadian nationalism as a counterweight to the aspects of the United States that he disliked, he did not feel that Canada had any manifest destiny regarding Newfoundland or Labrador. He felt it was “perfectly obvious that Privy Council decision should go against Canada [since] Labrador more easily administered from St. John’s” (Innis 1930j, 56). Innis (1937a) also displayed considerable empathy towards the small country to the east in his critique of the Amulree Commission report and the suspension of democracy. 11 The physician in question was Dr Nigel Rusted (1907–2012), who served as health officer for the s s Kyle for two summers while he was attending Dalhousie medical school in Halifax: “On 12 return trips to Labrador from St. John’s in 1930 and 1931, Rusted treated hundreds of patients in

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coastal communities and in the onboard ‘hospital,’ mainly for common ailments and injuries such as infected or crushed fingers, fractured legs and ribs (often a result of fishermen falling over the side of a boat)” (“Dr. Nigel Rusted” 2011). Rusted went on to have a long and distinguished career in medicine in Newfoundland. He was particularly known for his dedication to the people of Newfoundland, his pioneering work in reconstructive surgery, and his contributions to Memorial University (as a member of its first Board of Regents and its building committee) (“Dr. Nigel Rusted” 2011). While Innis (1940b, xiv) did not mention Dr Rusted by name in his field notes, in the preface to The Cod Fisheries he did include him among those to whom he was indebted as one of his “discursive” sources – a form of information “not found in the documents of state and church.” Evidently, this acknowledgment was considered by Dr Rusted to be one of the “publishing highlights in his career” (“Dr. Nigel Rusted” 2011).

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9 Bringing Nordicity to the South City: Harold Innis as Reviewer of Books on the North, 1928–1944 william j. buxton

During the 1920s and early 1930s, Innis travelled extensively in the North as well as in Canada’s hinterland regions, compiling a compendious archive of notes and reflections.1 Beginning in 1928 – and continuing until 1944 – his engagement with the North took on a different dimension. During this period he took it upon himself to write reviews on books about the North. These included eleven review essays for the Canadian Historical Review (c h r ),2 along with seven reviews of single books that dealt with issues related to the North.3 What is particularly striking about this body of work is not only its bulk (157 books discussed) and variety (numerous genres) but also its duration (sixteen years). The core of the reviews – namely, the eleven review essays on the North that he wrote for the c h r – was likely an outgrowth of three earlier endeavours: the compilation of reviews that he had produced for Contributions to Canadian Economics (c c e ),4 the two volumes on Select Documents in Canadian Economic History (edited by Innis, with the assistance of Arthur Lower) that appeared in 1929 and 1933 (Innis 1929d; Innis and Lower 1933),5 and his burgeoning interest in biography, most evident in his writings on Peter Pond and Thorstein Veblen (Innis 1928a, 1928b, 1929c, 1930a).6 More generally, the review essays could be viewed as part of a broader practice of consolidating knowledge of key areas such as the fur trade and early exploration. This involved working with others to improve knowledge about archival sources as well as to locate and map historical sites with greater precision.7

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More specifically, Innis’s reviews of the North can best be viewed as a more broadly developed version of the “northern boosterism” identified by both Evenden and Mochoruk in their contributions to this volume (chapters 3 and 7, respectively). Evenden describes how this boosterism was evident not only in Innis’s writings in semi-academic publications, newspaper interviews, and teaching and policy work but also, and above all, in a myriad of presentations on the North that he delivered largely under the auspices of the Department of Extension at the University of Toronto. Mochoruk traces how Innis’s northern boosterism took a somewhat more detached and critical form in relation to northern Manitoba and western Hudson Bay after Innis’s visit to the area in 1929. It was directed towards not just a local audience but also towards specialized professional groups.8 Innis’s reviews on the North – most of which were written for the c h r – can be seen as his taking his northern boosterism to a national level, his intent being to reach a large educated audience, including academics and policy makers. Innis’s motivation for choosing the c h r as the site for his series of review essays was most probably linked to the central role that the journal had come to play in the production of knowledge about Canada. From its founding in 1920, its editors saw it as a repository for knowledge about Canada, containing not only articles but also book reviews, reviews of articles about Canada, and notes and commentary (Shore 1995). It is evident from his involvement with the founding of both the c c e and the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science (c j e p s ) that Innis and his colleagues viewed the c h r as a model for how a journal could combine scholarship with issues of relevance to public life (Bladen 1978). That Innis’s reviews were quite in line with the c h r ’s scholarly/public mandate is evident in an editor’s note preceding Innis’s review essay of 1942: In its reviews and bibliographies, the can ad i an h i s to ri cal r ev ie w has for a number of years followed closely the writing on the Canadian North, since the development of this region, although it has been a matter of contemporary interest, has also been of the greatest historical interest for Canada. Before 1934, books on the subject were reviewed separately; but beginning in that year the writing has been so extensive as to require treatment in a series of review articles … Taken together these articles provide a survey of a body of historical literature whose

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importance is rapidly increasing … the literature of the Arctic has been profoundly affected by the outbreak of the war and the intensity of interest is evident in the request for access to these articles by members of the armed forces of Canada and the United States. (Innis 1942c, 401) The “contemporary interest” to which the editor refers had been shared by Innis from an early date. However, beginning in the late 1920s, he began to understand the North differently, reflecting the major transformations that were under way in its regions. Innis (1930h, 166) was particularly struck by the extent to which the North was now in a position to undergo rapid growth and development: “The basis for expansion has been firmly laid. But the possibilities of expansion depend on the events of 1929. If any one date may be chosen as epoch-making from the standpoint of the development of the Canadian north it will be that of the year just closed. It must be regarded as an historical height of land.” The promontory in question was of course the Hudson Bay Railway (h b r), which Innis viewed as the “keystone of the arch in the development of northern Canada.” Not only would it “bring together the hitherto isolated and independent areas of the Northwest” but it would also mean that the “northern part of the Canadian shield” could now “be approached by the Arctic and Hudson Bay.” For Innis (1930h, 166–7), the building of the hbr was part and parcel of a new and unprecedented wave of industrial development that would have a particularly strong impact on Canada’s North: “Certainly the new industrial revolution with its demands for base metals, its scientific knowledge, its contribution of gasoline, air transport and water power utilization, combined with cheap transport at tidewater over a long coast line and the conversion of the long winters to open seasons will have a tremendous influence on the vast continental area of northern Canada.” More generally, Innis believed that, by virtue of the expansion in the North, Canada as a whole would be better integrated and would have a “more sane and balanced growth.” Indeed, as a result of these developments, western agriculturists would become less dependent on a single crop and the west’s industrial growth would be hastened. Innis did not confine himself to examining how the new industrial revolution would be grounded in technology, transportation, raw materials, and hydro-electricity; he also stressed the centrality of human

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resources to the process. By virtue of its Aboriginal population and its skilled personnel, the North, in his view, was in a good position to become a leading force in industrial development. Innis’s observations about the transformations under way in the North were grounded in his direct experience; there was a strong performative element to the claims that he was making. In developing a close familiarity with river and rail transportation between Edmonton and the Mackenzie River delta, in practising placer mining in the Yukon, and in travelling on the hbr as well as the Nascopie in western Hudson Bay, the knowledge Innis had gained about the North was bound up with the changes that he had experienced. Arguably, this same relation between knowledge and practice continued when he was writing his reviews on books about the North. The successful consolidation of the North through settlement, transportation, and industrial development, as he pointed out, was contingent on the development of a solid foundation of knowledge. By the same token, by helping to shift the “contemporary interest” in the North towards informed public opinion and enlightened public policy, his reviews could potentially help mitigate the cyclonic development under way in Canada’s northern regions.9 Innis’s practical concerns, grounded in a particular vision of how the North should develop, were evident in the reviews that he produced. His first two single reviews on northern subjects, written in 1928 and 1930, respectively, found the texts in question to be generally inadequate (Innis 1928c, 1930i).10 His eleven review essays on the North for the c h r , written over the period from 1934 to 1944, were similarly framed by his evaluative standpoint, albeit with much more texture and nuance. Moreover, they not only gradually increased in size but also became more differentiated and interdependent as Innis began to increasingly refer to earlier reviews as points of reference. His first three review essays (Innis 1934b, 1935c, and 1935d) included mostly memoirs of life and travel in northern Canada. Beginning with his review essay of June 1935, Innis (1935c) made his evaluative standpoint explicit, introducing thematic groupings. In this instance, he framed a discussion of “the development of transportation to the Eastern arctic,” using a “useful handbook” produced by the Dominion government as a point of departure. The backdrop to this volume, as Innis noted, was the fact that “the depression ha[d] tended to obscure the efforts of the completion of

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railway lines to Moosonee and Churchill, the development of air transport, and of the consequent accessibility of the Arctic (197, emphasis mine). He then evaluated the next five volumes under review (those of Bartlett, Sutton, Robertson, Macaulay, and Hutchison) as well as the final volume he considered (that of Stern) from this standpoint. Despite the fact that the other three volumes under review (those of Brouillette, Godsell, and Grey Owl) dealt with various aspects of the fur trade, Innis (1935c, 199–200) used the conclusion of the review to restate his contention that the Arctic was becoming much more accessible, drawing on six of the volumes as evidence: Seldom is a reviewer faced with a more delightful series of volumes to read and to review … Scientific expeditions by Americans and English and by women conducted with the comforts of civilization; canoe trips, pleasure trips, and grand tours in Hudson Bay and the western Arctic. All these are the result of the opening of the north in the last decade. These volumes mark one of the most momentous developments in Canadian history. The inaccessible Arctic has disappeared overnight. By contrast, all of the books examined in the review essay of December 1935 dealt with the same general subject matter, namely, memoirs of Alaska and the Klondike (Innis 1935d). A number of the books included in the review essay, as we shall see, became points of reference for subsequent works that dealt with the same region. The review essay of June 1936 represented a new departure as the books it covered were only germane to a particular theme – the development of reindeer herds in the North – but was given a title: “re i ndeer tr e k ” (Innis 1936b). Subsequently, all the review essays on the North that Innis wrote for the c h r would bear a title. By virtue of its form and structure, the review essay of December 1936 served notice that Innis’s commentary on books about the North had become an integral part of the c h r ’s offerings. For the first time, the article led off with a statement from Innis about the emerging body of work that the review essays represented, along with an explanation of how the books under review were linked to a growing interest in the North: During the past eighteen months the can ad i an h i s to ri cal r ev iew has given special notice to over a score of books on the

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Canadian north … and still the number of publications on this theme shows little signs of declining. The aeroplane has hastened exploration and economic development by government and private enterprise. Increasing interest in the north has provided the market for books of an autobiographical character, and those who participated in the first opening up of the Klondike and the Arctic in the nineties have reached the age of reminiscence. The subject has, however, much more than romantic interest. The Canadian arctic is gradually taking a large place in the economic life of the dominion, and the books reviewed in this article are striking evidence to this effect. (Innis 1936c, 431) While the majority of the books addressed in the review essay were memoirs of various kinds, Innis also included a number of academic and policy reports. The 1938 review essay continued on with more or less the same theme (recent books on the Canadian northland and the Arctic) but highlighted three books from 1937 and 1938 that “threw fresh light on three arctic tragedies” (Christian 1937; Gibson 1937; and Ellsberg 1938). Innis (1938) also included a final statement summing up the themes addressed by the books under review and highlighting the diversity they represented: All of these books are exciting indications of the gradual unfolding of Canada’s northern frontier. We can see more clearly the points of difficulty and the causes of tragic defeat, the success which comes with recent scientific achievements, the possibilities of adventure, the methodological search of “scientific” investigators in the natural and social sciences, the easy haunts of the tourist, the systematic compilations of governments, and the gradual spread of literacy among the inhabitants to the point of writing books. The 1939 review continued this pattern of reviewing books on the North representing a broad range of genres (Innis 1939). However, rather than concluding his review with an overview of the various works he had covered, Innis focused on the significance of one particular volume, namely, Taracouzio’s Soviets in the Arctic.11 Increasingly, this concern with geo-political matters came to frame Innis’s subsequent review essays, which not only covered many more books than did his earlier efforts but also included books about wartime

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policy and politics. While some thematic clusters identified – such as that of aviation (Innis 1941b) – were closely aligned with geo-political concerns, others, such as a set of works that Innis termed “ecclesiastical biographies,”12 diverged from this pattern. Innis even took a stab at reviewing fictional work on the North, including the novel Sick Heart River by the then governor general of Canada, John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir). Drawing on a review of the book that had appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Innis departed from his usual descriptive approach in providing an interpretation of what Buchan was trying to accomplish with the book: “Buchan would hold that salvation comes not from escape from civilization, not from the ministrations of the church, not from the state represented by the police, but from the sensitiveness and courage of the individual” (192). In examining the books that appeared in Innis’s various review essays, one can conclude that he was liberal if not quite idiosyncratic in choosing books that had relevance to the Arctic and the North. A number of them considered the North only tangentially or peripherally. Some seemed to have connection to the North whatsoever, except perhaps in a broad contextual sense. What is particularly striking about Innis’s conception of the North is the way it had expanded to include Newfoundland and Labrador, which, geographically speaking, lie in an eastward rather than in a northward direction from Innis’s Toronto-centric point of reference. What this suggests is that, for Innis, the North was largely determined by the transportation and communication vectors that connected it to the South. In this regard, because, historically, it had served as an important point of departure for whaling expeditions and explorations of the North, Newfoundland was viewed by Innis as not simply linked to the North but, rather, as of the North. And because it lay just north of Newfoundland and had close ties to it, Labrador was included in the North as well. Indeed, of the seven books in his first review, four dealt with Labrador and Newfoundland (Innis 1934b). This is undoubtedly because Innis had visited this area in 1930 and 1931 and had kept detailed diaries. It also reveals that, for Innis, the North was not simply a geographical designation: it was the sign for wilderness, for the absence of civilization, and it came to be used almost interchangeably with “the frontier.” In this respect, for Innis, Canada, differed from the United States. While the United States supposedly no longer had a frontier after 1893, Canada, according to Innis,

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could still be defined by its frontier – namely, the North. It was then just a smaller leap to claim that areas were relatively undeveloped and connected to areas deemed to be part of the North (like Labrador) were themselves the North. This was certainly the case with Blanc Sablon, on the lower north Shore of the St Lawrence River. Innis included a book about that settlement in his reviews, though it was actually part of Quebec rather than of Labrador. Indeed, because Innis viewed the North in terms of its vectors to the South, in his reviews he tended to make frequent mention of the various jumping-off points to the North, including not only St John’s but also Moose Factory, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Seattle – the points, as it were, from which the strands of civilization extended northwards. The reviews were organized both diachronically and synchronically. Various thematic accounts were punctuated with stock-taking. Innis revealed that the books, his reviews of them, policy, public opinion, and developments in the North were all bound together. At various points, his commentary spoke to this interdependence. Organizing the works into clusters allowed him to compare and contrast different treatments of the same general subject matter, which could then lead him to determine which accounts were more meritorious. Moreover, after having established a number of different genres of books about the North, Innis was subsequently able to use them as the basis for examining newly released books that fell into the same general area.13 Along the same lines, major events such as the Karluk expedition become points of reference.14 He also continually referred back to earlier works by the same author or to similar issues that had been dealt with in an earlier review. A major leitmotif running through his reviews was that of autobiography and biography. Innis was fascinated by the lives of those who ventured into the North, and he devoted considerable space in his reviews to tracing their movements and trajectories.15 In this regard, Innis’s reviews are marked by his obsession to use the texts to strengthen the fixity of time and space in relation to northern travel. The more detailed and accurate the discussions of time/space coordinates, the greater the contribution of the volume to our understanding of the North. Innis was concerned with an accurate accounting of what places were visited, which routes were taken, and what was observed. He was obviously irritated when time and place distinctions were vague or omitted entirely. In this respect, he

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found the account of Lowell Thomas (1932) to be quite wanting: “It is a pity the routes are not clearly stated, that the volume is not accompanied by a map, and that the dates are not given distinctly. It appears to be a valuable account sacrificed on the altar of romance” (Innis 1934b, 321). What Innis was looking for, it appeared, was “objective” and “accurate” observations of what was experienced, in which there was little variation in the phenomena in question. A travel account by Helge Ingstad (1933), for instance, “contains valuable information on trappers, Indians, dogs, caribou, and wild game generally” (1934b, 320). Behind this obsession was likely his concern to see the integuments of civilization fall into place through tracing routes and repeating names of places that could then better serve as points of reference for making sense of northern reality. Innis was particularly fond of books that had clear photographs, detailed indexes, and well-drawn maps. Conversely, he had no use for books with bad illustrations, inaccurate maps, and poorly conceived indexes. As someone who had spent a good deal of time in the North, Innis was not averse to judging the merits of a work on the basis of his own experience. In reviewing The Nearing North by Lewis Ransome Freeman (1928),16 after taking the author to task for failing to have met such well known northern figures as T.W. Harris and Captain George E. Mack, he asserted that he would “never recover from the bias created by the statement that wooding up on river steamboats ‘is not especially hard or tiring.’” He concluded by noting that “the author ha[d] failed to see the north – the north that is always beyond haste and mechanization” (Innis 1930i, 275). His extended visit to northern Manitoba and the western Hudson Bay region came to inform the standpoint he brought to bear in assessing the books he received. In reviewing Sails over Ice by Captain “Bob” Bartlett (1934), he argues: “The various accounts show clearly the possibilities and limitations of exploration with a small wellbuilt fishing schooner in Arctic ice, in the hands of a Newfoundland navigator trained in the strenuous school of the north-east Atlantic and the eastern Arctic” (Innis 1935c, 197).17 This expanded purview of what constituted the North and the Arctic was mirrored by a selection of books that seemed to span all known genres of writing, including recollections, biographies, autobiographies, government reports, travelogues, novels, and, of course, both professional and amateur historical studies. Given that the self-proclaimed

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ethos of the c h r was to elevate the standard of historical scholarship in Canada, it would seem quite odd that it would expose its readers to works such as The Reign of Soapy Smith, Monarch of Misrule in the Last Days of The Old West and the Klondike Gold Rush; and Arctic Night’s Entertainment: Being the Narrative of an Alaskan-Estonian Digger, August Maski, as told during the Arctic Night of 1933–34 near Martin Point, Alaska. Many of the books that the c h r ’s reviewer-designate examined were not only quite unscholarly but also very ahistorical in nature. Innis’s role in reviewing them, one might surmise, was to evaluate the contributions of these works in terms of the standards of scholarship that were gradually becoming more entrenched in Canadian universities (Wright 2005). In line with his insistence that the books be specific in terms of spatial and temporal references, Innis chided authors who misspelled names, got their dates wrong, had sloppy indices, and provided images that were fuzzy or maps that were inaccurate. The books that strayed from the path of spatial/temporal specificity, factual accuracy, copiousness of detail, and effective organization and indexing, would thus serve as an object lesson for both would-be authors of books about the North and the c h r readership.18 Given the extent to which Innis has been taken to task for his graceless writing, it might come as a surprise that he had no bones about passing judgment on the literary styles of those who wrote books about the North. What he evidently preferred was plain and accurate descriptive writing that captured the way things were. Hence, he was very impatient with those whom he felt had produced fiction rather than fact. Notable among works of this kind was Jack O’Brien’s (1935) account of David Irwin’s extended trip through the North. Careful checking by those acquainted with Irwin and his movements suggests that much time will be spent in the north detecting the fictitious elements and cursing the author and his ghost writer. It is unfortunate that an accurate account was not written as it would have brought out clearly the ease with which the journey can be made with the assistance of police, trading posts, and natives. This is not to belittle Irwin’s capacity for taking punishment but to register further complaint of the dangers of hack writers. (Innis 1936c, 197–8) What seemed to bother Innis was that O’Brien’s book was not able to adequately reveal the extent to which the North had become

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accessible to the general traveller: “The time has arrived when it is possible ‘to hobo’ across the northwest passage and one of these days when cheap excursion rates are provided to the Canadian people perhaps Canadians will become alert to its possibilities” (Innis 1936b, 197–8). One can detect in the reviews a growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the way that Canada was proceeding in the North, particularly in relation to what other countries were doing. To be sure, Innis believed that the two volumes issued by the government containing information about the eastern and western arctic, respectively, were quite solid.19 He also had high praise for two official reports (Canada 1922; Porsild 1929) on reindeer and musk ox in the North (Innis 1936b, 194). But, in general, Innis was of the view that Canada was beginning to lag behind other nations in terms of exploring and understanding the North. In his discussion of Henry Toke Munn’s memoir based on his experience as a trader in the eastern Arctic (Munn 1932), Innis drew attention to “valuable comments on the Danish experience in Greenland which are not flattering to Canada” (1936b, 195). Along similar lines, Innis concluded that Peter Freuchen’s (1935) recollections of his time in the Canadian Arctic reveal “ a contrast between the attitude of Denmark toward Greenland and of Canada toward the Arctic. Denmark has made significant contributions to the development of the Canadian Arctic, in mention only the work of Rasmussen and his associates and of the Porsild brothers in connection with the reindeer experiment” (Innis 1936c, 435). To be sure, while Innis believed that Canada also had a great deal to learn from the Soviet Union, he was of the view that the Russian approach also left something to be desired (435–6). This was evident in the contrast he made with Captain Bartlett’s attempted rescue of the Karluk (Bartlett and Hale 1916) and Captain Schmidt’s handling of the Chelyuskin: “The achievement of Schmidt, the leader of the Russian expedition, offers striking contrasts with that of Bartlett. The Canadian expedition had the advantage of skill and long experience with ice conditions, the Russians of modern scientific achievement” (Innis 1936c, 436). Overall, in Innis’s view, the Russian approach should be given a mixed assessment: The unity of support from the government, the organization of the expedition, and the writing of the book are suggestive of the possibilities and limitations in the contributions of communism

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to scientific work. To the present reviewer the most terrifying feature of the expedition was the organization of the people on an Arctic ice floe for the purpose of indoctrinating dialectical materialism. There are numerous photographs and maps but no index. (436) After acknowledging the contributions made by Lord Tweedsmuir to the Canadian North,20 Innis (1941b, 192) gloomily concluded: “Still there are no Canadians to follow the lead he has given.” Innis, in a sense, used the exercise of writing the reviews to challenge and correct the texts on the North that would potentially detract from the formation of a well grounded public opinion about northern matters. In particular, he took issue with works that were geared to the needs and tastes of tourists who wished to visit the western arctic. In Innis’s view, books of this kind gave the misleading impression that civilization in the North was much more advanced than it actually was. Moreover, revealing his strong gender biases, Innis dismissed these works as little more than “chatty” accounts whose authors, it would seem, were primarily women, who had a penchant for producing texts about the North that were overly romantic and sentimental.21 The true North for Innis was decidedly a man’s world, whose coarse humour, salty language, and exaggeration was captured pithily by Angus Graham’s (1935) The Golden Grindstone: The Adventures of George M. Mitchell: The significance of the work is … from the literary rather than from the historical point of view. For the first time an author has succeeded in capturing the atmosphere of the north. We are in grave danger of losing much in the disappearance of the men who are the north. Unless readers catch the tang of their picturesque profanity and characteristic exaggerations, the north will never make its full contribution to Canadian literature. A book like this should be read by every Canadian and made compulsory in all theological colleges! (Innis 1935d, 439) This uniquely masculine atmosphere was inaccessible to the likes of the Scottish botanist Isobel Hutchinson (1935), whose book on Alaskan-Estonian digger August Masik was discussed in the same review essay: “Miss Hutchinson, and not possibly any woman, has not the hand to note the life of a man who has lived on sea and in the north. The Rabelaisian touch which brings to life the account of

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George Mitchell is lacking” (Innis 1935d, 442). For Innis, Graham’s account, with its humour and insight, came to stand as a benchmark for accounts of the everyday life in the North. In this regard, a book written by Merrill Denison (1943) on Klondike Mike was found wanting: The volume is comparable to that of Angus Graham … but has much less of the humour of that entertaining volume. The author has attacked the problem of writing a realistic biography for a puritanical community. Whether the blasphemy scattered throughout the work is sufficiently realistic may be open to question. It has little of the imagination which is characterized by the French Canadian and the troops of the last war. I am told that this has disappeared in the present war and it may be that the imperial sergeant major has been less in evidence. The full power of blasphemy cannot be achieved without the use of a rich obscenity and Mr. Denison has not dared to reach this height. It is only necessary to contrast this book with the works of Ralph Connor to appreciate the vast gulf between puritanical romanticism and the realism of the frontier. While the frontier has been essentially man’s territory in Canada the vast literature of the mounted police, the fur trader, the lumberman, the prospector, and the soldier has been essentially romantic because of the abstemious publisher and reader. Mr. Denison has made an attempt to bridge the gulf. A study of the vast untouched field of obscenity and blasphemy ranging from academic halls to the lumber and mining camps and the army would throw interesting light on the problem of realistic literature in Canada. (Innis 1944a, 57) This masculinist world, which Innis found so intriguing and inspiring, included “the experience of what is called in northern parlance being ‘bushed’ or reaching the point at which women of the country become attractive.” This phenomenon, Innis notes, was described in “great detail” in the “important and unique book” by Gontran de Poncins (1941) entitled Kabloona, which was an account of a winter spent among the Inuit, chiefly of King William Island and Pelly Bay, in 1938–39: “The author does not become a squaw man but he gives a fascinating psychological description of how men become squaw men. First there is the sharp contrast between the Parisian and the Eskimo culture in which the Eskimo appear most repellent.” Later,

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however, the Inuit would “appear much more pleasant,” and finally they would “become attractive people” (Innis 1941b, 191). Hence, the masculinist world of northern life, for Innis, as revealed in accounts such as that of Graham, was the equivalent of a Canadian legion club writ large, in which men could escape women’s chatty romanticism and engage in blasphemy and obscenity untrammelled by the abstemious Puritanism of everyday life. Innis also took issue with the Arctic boosterism that had largely been provided by the inveterate explorer, self-promoter, and writer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who, in Innis’s (1941b, 187) view “fully earned the title of the Arctic’s greatest real estate agent for which Canadians must ever be grateful to him.” While Innis readily acknowledged the contributions that Stefansson had made, he was also of the view that the latter had painted a far too rosy picture of the prospects for settlement in what he termed “the friendly north,” largely through paying far too much attention to the “banana belt” of the western arctic and far too little attention to the much more wild and inhospitable eastern arctic. In effect, Innis wished to temper Stefansson’s enthusiasm with realism. Indeed, he continually used Stefansson’s work as a negative point of reference for advancing a sounder account of what was happening in the North. For instance, in his review essay of June 1935, after having discussed a number of texts that pointed to advances in transportation in the eastern Arctic, he remarked: “How strangely out of date have become the works of Mr. Stefansson!” (Innis 1935c) And towards the end of his final review essay, Innis expressed the view that Igloo for the Night by Mrs Tom Manning (1943) “is important in giving a detailed account of the hardships of the region [the eastern Arctic] as seen through the eyes of a woman. We have waited long for a book of this character and it will long serve as a counter weight to The Friendly Arctic” (Innis 1944a, 59). All the same, despite his reservations about Stefansson, Innis believed that he would have been the ideal person to undertake a comprehensive study of Canadians in the Arctic, comparable to the volume on Soviet activities in the North written by T.A. Taracouzio, which he praised in his review essay of 1939:22 The volume on Soviets in the Arctic, includes chapters on geography, exploration, economic development, social and cultural reconstruction, as well as appendices of decrees and statutes, lists

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of mineral sites and polar stations, a bibliography, maps, and an index. It might well be taken as a model for a book on “Canadians in the Arctic.” A vast amount of research has been done, as this and previous reviews of the can ad i an h i s to ric a l re v i e w have indicated, and there is urgent need for a second single volume. As author this reviewer nominates Dr. [Vilhjalmur] Stefansson. (Innis 1939, 48).23 Innis’s suggestion that Stefansson undertake a volume of this kind proved to be the catalyst for a chain of events culminating in an extensive and well funded research project that mirrored the American initiative. Indeed, subsequent to the mention of Stefansson in his March 1939 review essay, Innis’s discussions of books in the c h r became increasingly performative: they became an important and ongoing aspect of his efforts to recruit someone to undertake a comprehensive study of the Canadian Arctic. Upon reading Innis’s review essay, Stefansson responded almost immediately. He was of the view that Innis’s suggestion about producing a volume on Canadians in the Arctic “should be led to action,” but he felt that he was not in a position to be “a central figure” in a venture of this kind; rather, he believed that this sort of project could best be taken on by “the history department of some Canadian university” through endowed fellowships to graduate students. This would be along the same lines as a study on “the history of human diet,” with which he had become involved and that had been sponsored by the Institute of Meat Packers of Chicago. This organization had established three fellowships, “one at Harvard and two at Columbia.” The material collected by the doctoral students would be used by them not only for their dissertations but also “for a general study in a book called The Lives of Hunters.”24 Given that a Canadian version of Soviets in the Arctic would be “a much smaller subject in time and space though otherwise broader in scope,” he believed that “considerably less than three fellowships running two years each ought to get together the material you need.”25 In his response to Stefansson’s letter, Innis evidently broached the possibility of approaching researchers at Harvard (who had put together Soviets in the Arctic) to do a volume along the same lines for Canada.26 Stefansson agreed with Innis’s suggestion but asked that he not make any mention of the fellowships that he (Stefansson) was already supervising as Harvard might then agree to cooperate

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only on the condition that Innis “find [it] the money for the historical research.” Instead, he was in agreement with the approach that Innis had outlined, namely, to restrict himself “to analogizing from what they have already done for Soviets in the Arctic, to what they might do for the non-Soviet countries in the arctic. For that, I think, is the best plan of all – to have a volume covering Alaska, Canada, (Danish) Greenland, and (Norwegian) Svalbard.”27 Innis subsequently wrote to Sidney Fay, chairman of the Bureau of International Research, informing him of his review of Soviets in the Arctic and inquiring as to whether Harvard could undertake a comparable study. Fay was not entirely clear what Innis had in mind but informed him that a joint endeavour was out of the question because the grants allocated by the bureau were “limited to members of the Harvard-Radcliffe Faculty.”28 Fay’s non-committal response to Innis did little to dampen the latter’s enthusiasm for using Soviets in the Arctic as a point of reference for further work. In his subsequent review essay in the c h r , Innis placed the Harvard study within the context of a body of work that was emerging about the Soviet North: The consolidation of the exciting work which has marked the adventures of the last few years is well at hand. The thorough work by Taracouzio, Soviets in the Arctic (reviewed C.H.R., XX, 48) has been extended in Louis Segal’s The Conquest of the Arctic, which not only describes the chief features of the scientific work of the Russians in the Arctic but also traces the history of Arctic exploration and the work of various nations. There is a brief account of the expedition of the Chelyuskin, of which a detailed description was given in The Voyage of the Chelyuskin (reviewed C.H.R., XVII, 435) and also the effective work of Papanin and three others who drifted on a polar ice floe from the North Pole beginning May 21, 1937, to the east coast of Greenland where they were picked up on February 19, 1938. (Innis 1940d, 197) Innis was of the view that the Harvard study formed the centre point of a cluster of work demonstrating that research on the Canadian North could develop in a cumulative manner. In his efforts to put a project on the Canadian North in place, Innis was very much aided and abetted by Stefansson. Following a

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discussion with Bruce Hopper of the Government Department at Harvard University, Stefansson wrote to him, noting that, through his conversation, he now realized “Soviets in the Arctic was financed through a research appropriation made by a body connected with Harvard which could equally well finance projects outside the University.” He then asked Hopper whether “they would feel like supporting a parallel study which would be done in [his (i.e., Stefansson’s)] workshop and would cover those parts of the Arctic which were not included by the Soviet research?” In his effort to persuade Hopper that he (Stefansson) was uniquely qualified to take on a project of this kind, he referred to the “Arctic and sub-Arctic library … unequalled in the world so far as the English language is concerned … [and] a small research staff … employed by the War Department to make a report on living and operating conditions in the Arctic … second only to Britannica for volume.” Stefansson concluded by asking Hopper if he were “sufficiently interested to find out whether there [was] a chance of securing through Harvard, for Professor Innis to use in Canada or [himself] down [t]here, the kind of financing which he had in mind?”29 Stefansson also brought the project to the attention of two other colleagues who had a considerable involvement with the Canadian North, namely, A.E. Porsild and Richard Finnie.30 As he noted to Porsild: “Professor H.A. Innis of Toronto has suggested that there ought to be published a book on Canada and Alaska similar to Soviets in the Arctic which he has been reading. He was good enough to suggest me for the chief editorship, but I had to say I was too busy with other things. I urged him to carry the idea forward by one means or another in Canada.” Stefansson not only informed Porsild of the potential project but also outlined the policy implications of such a venture: Even the most friendly presentation of what our two northern districts are doing will not make much of a showing as compared with the gigantic enterprises of the Soviets. Even so, we ought to know what is being done – there ought to be a book where those who want to learn can find out … [T]he comparison of an unbiased presentation of the Soviet North by, say, Harvard University and an unbiased presentation of Alaska and Alaska by, say, Toronto University, might bring the administrations of Alaska and Canada to face the issue whether they could not

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profit a good deal by studying Soviet procedure and by adopting at least a few of the resulting ideas.31 In his letter to Finnie, Stefansson suggested that he consider taking part in the project, financing his research by selling articles to magazines based on the chapters he was writing. He also encouraged Finnie to get together with Innis. Finnie heeded Stefansson’s advice, meeting Innis for lunch, during which they seemed to have discussed the possibility of Finnie’s contributing to a “book on northern Canada … resembling Soviets in the Arctic.”32 Whether Innis became more interested in Finnie’s work as a result of their meeting, one can only speculate.33 But Innis included Finnie’s next two works (Lure of the North and Canada Moves North) in the review essays on books about the north that he wrote for the c h r in the early 1940s.34 He found Lure of the North to be “an interesting and sensible book describing [Finnie’s] life in the Western Arctic in the winter of 1930–31.”35 In his view: “The book is a powerful argument for insistence by the Canadian government on a working knowledge of anthropology on the part of all those having dealings with the Eskimo. There are numerous descriptions of personalities, Eskimo, white, and half-breed and the book will serve as a useful bench mark in the western Arctic for the highly interesting year of 1930–31” (Innis 1941b). In reviewing Lure of the North, Innis prophetically paired it up with a review of Stefansson: Prophet of the North by Earl Parker Hanson (1941). In Innis’s estimation: “[Hanson’s book] has little to offer. It makes no pretence at a balanced criticism of the numerous controversies in which Mr. Stefansson has been engaged and in which he has defended himself with great skill.” In particular, Innis was of the view that “a balanced study” of Stefansson’s work along with “the conditions under which he carried it out” was needed: “He was largely concerned with the Canadian western Arctic and has had very little experience of the much more hospitable portions of the eastern Arctic” (Innis 1942c, 401–2). He then moved on to his review of Canada Moves North, noting: “Mr. Richard Finnie has been influenced appreciably by the Stefansson school.” Nevertheless, Innis found the text to be “a far more competent book” than that of Hanson and believed that it could “be recommended wholeheartedly.” Quite possibly because of Innis’s interest in the development of a general study of the Canadian North, he was impressed by the

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scope of Finnie’s text, which had chapters on “geography, exploration, fur trade, missions, administration, transportation and communications, minerals, farming and stock raising, tourists, civilization, and the reflection of the Arctic in literature and the arts [as well as] valuable maps and photographs.” Allowing his own predilections to seep into his review essay, Innis concluded his review of Canada Moves North with the following plea: “Mr. Finnie, since Mr. Stefansson will not undertake it, should present us with a detailed authoritative study of the Canadian Arctic comparable to the work of Taracouzio on Russia (Soviets in the Arctic, New York, 1938, reviewed C.H.R., XX, 48)” (Innis 1942c, 402). Finnie, like Stefansson, decided not to take on this project. But the fact that neither he nor Finnie was willing may have convinced Innis that the study was too ambitious for a single individual and that it would make more sense if it were done collectively. As chapters 10 and 11 (this volume) demonstrate, Innis pursued this course of action and was able to orchestrate a study of the Arctic in Canada under the auspices of the newly formed Canadian Social Science Research Council with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Given that Innis eventually came to focus the c h r review essays on building support for a research project on Canada’s northern regions, the inauguration of the Arctic Survey in December 1943 may have left them without any further raison d’être. It also may have been the case that he believed a solid foundation of knowledge about the North, that would enable the formation of public opinion in Canada about northern matters, had been established. In any event, his eleventh and final c h r review essay, written in March 1944, did not signal an abandonment of an interest in the North; rather, it heralded a shift towards other means of contributing to the development of knowledge about the North. The Arctic Survey resulted in a report, a collection of essays on the North for the c j e p s , as well as a volume of essays on the North edited by Carl Dawson and published as The New North-West. The Arctic Survey was designed to fill the wide gap in knowledge about the North that Innis had detected in his review essays for the c h r . Innis’s engagement with the North through his stint as c h r reviewer also arguably had a significant impact on his own work, particularly in relation to his evolving views on monopolies of knowledge. Some insights into his changing outlook can be found in a letter that he wrote to the editor of the c h r in 1944. He was

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responding to a request (made to a number of prominent Canadians) that he express his views on the current state of the c h r as well as the direction that it should take over the course of the next twentyfive years. This survey was occasioned by the twenty-fifth anniversary of the c h r , and its editors thought that it was an appropriate time to reflect on the state of the journal and to chart its course for the future. Innis, who had of course been a frequent contributor the c h r , did not mince his words: The task of the next twenty-five years will be one of maintaining and improving on the advance since the beginnings in 1896 in the face of very great problems of personnel and an intense pressure from the state. Already there are tales of trainloads of material with numerous trained historians and the interest in the mechanics of archives will increase with the size of the archives. The Canadian Historical Review must somehow try to keep the philosophical interest alive in spite of the threat of the avalanche of documentary material. It should systematically foster and cherish an interest in new points of view and interpretation.37 Innis feared that, by virtue of the state increasingly using the archives for its own ends (through expanding archival collections and mechanizing their organization and use), historians would become more like technicians. Moreover, scholarly journals (such as the c h r ) would face new pressures to publish technically oriented reports, thereby curtailing philosophical discussion and closing themselves off from fresh perspectives.38 In making this suggestion, Innis was likely drawing upon his experience as the reviewer-designate of books on the North for the c h r . It is evident that Innis viewed this body of work as providing a foundation of knowledge about the North that would not only increase public awareness of the North but also produce more enlightened public policy. With the Arctic Survey well under way and the review essays attracting the interest of both specialists and those in need of knowledge about the North for their everyday activities,37 Innis could give more attention to both his own “philosophical interests” and the subject for which he had developed a passion during the 1940s – the history of paper and printing in relation to the rise and fall of civilizations.39

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1 These notes can be found in u ta-i r, B1972–0003/006. Notes made by H.A. Innis during research field trips in Canada. (01) Yukon Alaska Trip, 1926. (02) Mackenzie River Trip, original, 1924. (06) Red Lake and Hudson Bay, original, 1929. (08) Maritimes, Newfoundland and Labrador, original, 1930. (10) Maritimes and Canadian Labrador, original, 1931. (11) Maritimes, original, 1932. (14) Toronto to British Columbia, original, 1932. 2 These appeared in the following issues of the Canadian Historical Review: September 1934; June 1935; December 1935; June 1936; December 1936; June 1938; March 1939; June 1940; June 1941; December 1942; March 1944. 3 These included Innis (1928c, 1930i, 1935a, 1935b, 1940a, 1942b). The PhD thesis by Bériault was also among those books examined in the c h r review essay of December 1942. Morrell’s book examined gold rushes that took place in northern parts of the world within a broader comparative perspective, along the lines of Innis’s analysis of Canadian mining in the book he co-wrote with Arthur Lower (Innis and Lower 1936). 4 It was published from 1928 to 1934 through the Library at the University of Toronto. As E.J. Urwick (1928, 5), chair of the Department of Political Economy, noted in the preface to the inaugural issue of the journal, c c e was founded as a “medium … for the pooling of information on subject matter of particular interest to Canada.” In the first issue of the journal, Innis wrote reviews of the theses produced by graduates of the commerce and finance course, along with those of postgraduate students (c c e 1 [1928]: 69–85). He also compiled a bibliography of publications on Canadian economics produced in 1927–28, which consisted of a few short reviews, along with a list of works (organized into various categories) accompanied by brief research notes (c c e 1 [1928]: 86–100). In the 1929 issue of c c e , Innis (1929a) provided a comprehensive review of texts that had been written about Canadian economic history and was also responsible for compiling a bibliography of recent publications on Canadian economics (98–144). After the first two issues, it appeared that others took on the bibliographical responsibilities for c c e . The journal was published until 1934, when it was incorporated into the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science (c j e p s ), which began operations in 1935 with Vincent Bladen as managing editor and Innis as one of the editors

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(Bladen 1978, 63–7). c j e p s continued c c e ’s practice of including a bibliographical section on recent publications in Canadian economics. 5 Innis (1929d); Innis and Lower (1933). The first volume was organized around two major staples industries (the fishing industry and the fur trade) with other endeavours (such as agriculture, labour, trade, etc.) treated as ancillary aspects. By contrast, the second volume organized its material by regions, using the drainage-basin frame of reference that Innis had developed in his A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1923). This involved an analysis of how various sub-civilizations had developed around particular drainage basins within Canada, namely, the St Lawrence, Hudson Bay, and the Pacific Coast. However, having perhaps recognized the glaring absence of the Mackenzie River drainage basin in his account, one of the purposes of his first visit to the north in 1924 – in addition to studying the fur trade – was to examine more broadly the subcivilizations that were developing in both the Mackenzie River drainage basin as well as in the Peace River region (See Evenden, chapter 3, this volume). While Innis’s second volume of Select Documents contains some material on Canada’s North, it does not include a section based on the Mackenzie River drainage basin per se. Given that Innis’s review essays on the North began almost immediately after the second volume of Select Documents was published, it may have been the case that he viewed the series of review essays as a means of putting together a coherent body of “Select Documents” about the North in line with his earlier edited volumes. 6 See also Innis (1933b, 1933c). As Heyer points out (chapter 2, this volume), Innis’s biographical studies reflected a commitment to doing “history from the inside,” an aspect of his work that has gone largely unrecognized. 7 See, for instance Innis 1928d, 1928e, 1935b, 1937b). As noted in the introduction to Innis (1940a), Innis had met with J.B. Tyrrell in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in August 1934 to establish the location of old trading forts. He also worked with Judge Frederic W. Howay of the Monuments Board of Canada to precisely determine the original site of Fort Maurepas in Manitoba so that a commemorative plaque could be placed in the right location. See Howay to Innis, 10 and 27 February 1933, ubca–hf. 8 In particular, the readership of the Geographical Review, the Canadian Engineer, and Canadian Railway and Marine World, presumably geographers, engineers, and transportation experts. 9 As van Wyck points out in chapter 15 (this volume), in the wake of the Second International Polar Year of 1932–33, it would have been a

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propitious time to undertake a project of consolidating knowledge about northern issues. 10 Innis judged the work of Brown to be “by no means a compendium of information on the Canadian Arctic” (1928c, 86) and that of Freeman to be of “necessarily limited” value, because “the author ha[d] failed to see the north – the north that is always beyond haste and mechanization” (1930i, 275). 11 This leitmotif of how much Canadians could learn from what the Soviets had done in the North was a common one in the review essays. The relevant works included Weber (1936); Hudson (1937); Hutchison (1937); Brown (1935); Chevigny (1942); and Segal (1939). 12 After reviewing a number of works of this kind, Innis (1944a, 55) concluded that “however enthusiastic the authors may be about their subjects, they do not pay them sufficient respect in writing a carefully arranged, full-breadth description of the contributions which they have made. Ecclesiastical history is worthy of better scholarship than is shown in these and other volumes which might be mentioned.” 13 See for instance, the mention of the Last of the Karluk in (Innis 1938, 194). 14 In his discussion of Elliot Merrick’s Northern Nurse, he refers back to his novel “Frost and Fire (reviewed C.H.R., XXI, 201)” and to “his earlier book, True North (reviewed C.H.R., XV, 320) (Innis 1942c, 403). 15 For instance, he devoted considerable space in his reviews to describing the biographies of those figures whom he found to be particularly fascinating. These included Henry Toke Munn (Innis 1936b, 195; 1934b, 321); Jefferson Randolph (Soapy) Smith and August Masik (Innis 1935d, 440– 1). The entire review essay of December 1935 was given over to biographical and autobiographical works (Innis 1935d). 16 Innis was reading this book while he was undertaking fieldwork in the western Hudson Bay region. 17 During his visit to the western Arctic, Innis had travelled from Churchill up to Wager Inlet, Repulse Bay, and Chesterfield Inlet on the ss Ungava, which was operated by a crew from Newfoundland. He was quite impressed by their ability to navigate through difficult ice conditions. 18 He noted, for instance, that in Thomas’s Kabluk of the Eskimos “the routes are not clearly stated … the volume is not accompanied by a map, and … the dates are not given distinctly. It appears to be a valuable account sacrificed on the altar of romance” (Innis 1934b, 321). 19 Canada (1931, 1935). 20 In addition to writing Sick Heart River, he had been president of the Oxford Exploration Club, which undertook an expedition to Ellesmere

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Island in 1934–35. This was discussed in Edward Shackleton’s Arctic Journeys and David Haig Thomas’s Tracks in the Snow. 21 One notable exception to Innis’s assessment of women in the North involved the travelling duo that he met on the boat to Seattle in returning from Alaska and the Yukon in 1926 – Clara Rogers and Gwen DorrienSmith. He found Rogers’s account of the portage from the Peel River to the Porcupine River, unlike that of Lewis Ransome, to accurately capture its difficulty (Innis 1934b). Innis struck up a strong friendship with the two women, arranging for Dorrien-Smith’s watercolours to be displayed at Hart House (buying two for himself), and he stayed with Rogers and her mother at their estate in Cornwall during his visit to Britain in the summer of 1928. 22 Timothy Andrew Taracouzio (1897–1958) was a Russian refugee who came to the United States in 1923. He studied at the University of Southern California and completed a PhD at Harvard in 1928. He was in charge of the Slavic department of Harvard’s law library from 1928 to 1942. He was a fierce anti-Soviet who later was enlisted in the campaign to attack Owen Lattimore (Newman 1992, 467). 23 Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879–1972) was a Canadian-born Arctic explorer and ethnologist of Icelandic descent. In his capacity as reviewer-designate of the c h r for books on the North, Innis had become quite familiar with Stefansson’s activities in the North as well as with his considerable literary output of texts related to the North, a number of which he reviewed, including: Unsolved Mysteries of the Yukon (1939), (reviewed in c h r 20, 1939); Ultima Thule (1940) (reviewed in c h r 21, 1940); Greenland (1942); The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions (1943) (reviewed in c h r 25, 1944). He also made regular mention of Stefansson in his reviews and reviewed a biography of Stefansson at some length (Hanson 1941), in c h r 22, 1941. 24 While this book never materialized, Stefansson (1956, 14) drew on this project in The Fat of the Land. 25 Stefansson to Innis, 10 April 1939, uta –pef, A76–0025/10 (07). 26 Stefansson refers to Innis’s letter to him of 12 April 1939 in a letter to Innis of 15 April 1939, uta–pe f, A76–0025/10 (07). 27 Stefansson to Innis, 15 April 1939, u ta–pef, A76–0025/10 (07). In the margin next to Stefansson’s advice about approaching Harvard, Innis wrote “Bureau of International Research Professor S.B. Fay,” indicating that he had decided to go ahead and approach Harvard with a proposal. 28 Sidney Fay to Innis, 24 April 1939, uta –pef , A76–0025/10 (07). Fay’s letter was in response to Innis’s letter to him of 18 April 1939. The Bureau

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of International Research was a joint venture of Harvard and Radcliffe: “Funded by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (1924–1942) and administered by a joint Harvard-Radcliffe committee, [it] gave grants to Harvard faculty and scholars from other universities to study contemporary problems in law and international relations and in anthropology.” See http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch01122. 29 Stefansson to Bruce Hopper, 26 June 1939, u ta–p ef, A76–0025/10 (07). 30 Stefansson quite generously sent Innis carbon copies of this correspondence. 31 Stefansson to A.E. Porsild, 26 June 1939, uta–p ef, A76–0025/10 (07). 32 Richard Finnie to Innis, 25 April 1939, uta–p ef, A76–0025/10 (07). 33 Finnie had written to Innis a few years earlier. See Finnie to Innis, 3 December 1932, uta–pe f, A76–0025/4 (13). 34 Finnie’s Lure of the North (1940) was included in his review essay of June 1941, and his Canada Moves North (1942) was included in his review essay of December 1942. 35 Stefansson described Lure of the North as “the best general book about Northern Canada.” Richard Sterling Finnie was born in 1906 and died in 1987. See http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic40–3–236.pdf (viewed 11 September 2009). Stefansson was undoubtedly aware that this book was under way when he made the effort to have Finnie meet up with Innis. 37 Harold Innis, “Letter to the Editor,” Canadian Historical Review, December 1944, uta–c hr, A1986–0044/005 38 That Innis viewed the reviews as having an important bibliographical function is evident in the fact that he sent a copy of them to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, United Kingdom. In his letter accompanying the reviews, Innis informed the institute’s director, Brian Roberts, that an extensive bibliography on the Arctic was in preparation. See Innis to Brian Roberts, 7 October 1944, uta –ir , B1972–0025/021 (09). See also chapter 11 (this volume). 39 In particular, see Buxton, Heyer, and Cheney (forthcoming).

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10 North-South Networks of Knowledge: Harold Innis, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Canadian Social Science Research Council’s Arctic Survey jeffrey d. brison Canada now finds herself, almost overnight, situated at the front door of the North American continent. What most people had come to regard as a sealed barrier – not even a back door – seems destined now to become a great world highway and therefore an area of great strategic and economic significance … If Canada, for any reason, should fail to do a proper job on its Arctic areas, it would undoubtedly have undesirable and unfavourable repercussions on relations between the United States and Canada … especially in the light of the great range of American activity currently being carried on for war purposes in the Canadian North. G. Raleigh Parkin to Joseph Willits, 24 June 1943.1 Not long ago this vast Canadian Arctic territory was considered to be little more than a frozen northern desert, without any great economic value or any political or strategic importance … We know better now. Canada, like Russia, is looking to the North as a land of the future … The war and the aeroplane have driven home to Canadians the importance of their Northland, in strategy, in resources and in communications … We realize now … the responsibilities and the opportunities that attach to our ownership of this vast area. Lester Pearson (1946)

Taken together, these two passages reveal the geo-political significance of Canada’s North and preview the series of concerns that led

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to the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Canadian Social Science Research Council’s Arctic Survey of the mid-1940s. The first epigraph is drawn from a letter written in the summer of 1943 by Raleigh Parkin, vice-president of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, to Joseph Willits, director of the Social Science Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (r f ). Parkin, Vincent Massey’s brother-in-law, and a trustee with the Crane Foundation of New York, was a trusted adviser on matters Canadian to both the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation (cc). The letter resulted from Willits’s request that Parkin put down on paper a suggestion the Canadian had made in an informal meeting earlier that year (10 May 1943) that the Rockefeller Foundation might support research in the Canadian Arctic.2 Willits made the request because, with Parkin’s knowledge and permission, he wanted to circulate the still informal and vague proposal to other foundation advisers on both sides of the Canadian-American border. Parkin’s letter was subsequently sent by the r f to Harold Innis, who was at this time Chair of the Canadian Social Science Research Council’s (cs s rc’s) grantsin-aid committee, for consideration and advice on what action the foundation might take.3 It was Parkin’s proposal that the rf fund research in the Canadian Arctic region that led not only to the foundation’s support of the c ssrc’s Arctic Survey but also to its sponsorship of Dartmouth College geographer Trevor Lloyd’s study of the region for the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (ci i a) and to c c funding for the Arctic Institute of North America based at McGill University and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. That Parkin would turn to an American foundation for support for Canadian research into the Arctic is not surprising. Since the late 1920s, the r f and its near New York City neighbour, the cc , had been providing invaluable financial support and, at times, direction and leadership to Canadian scholars and cultural producers. Examples of Canadian activity sponsored by private American philanthropy abound and include the Frontiers of Settlement series of studies of the Canadian west, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s texts and conferences on relations between Canada and the United States, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, the Canadian Social Science Research Council (cs s rc), the Humanities Research Council of Canada (h rcc ), the cc’s Canadian Museums Committee, the Banff School of Fine Arts, chairs of fine arts at major Canadian universities in the 1920s and 1930s, and the

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Kingston Conference for Canadian Artists in 1941.4 In short, in the era that preceded the formation of the Canada Council in 1957, it was common practice for Canadians scholars and artists to call on American foundations for support. In the 1930s and 1940s, American foundations served Canadian intellectuals and cultural producers in much the same way as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canada Council do today (Brison 2005). Given the specific political economy of knowledge production that existed in the pre-Canada Council era it is also not surprising that, when approached by Parkin, the rf turned to Harold Innis for his thoughts and advice. Looking back, one explanation for the consultation is obvious. Innis was a leading scholar of the region – a fact evidenced by his extensive list of publications devoted to the area. His Fur Trade in Canada, one of the key components of the staples thesis, was, in the words of Arthur J. Ray (1999, 1), “arguably the most definitive economic history and geography [of Canada] … ever produced.” As Ray also points out, Innis’s 1924 research journey through the Athabasca/Mackenzie districts was both pivotal in the making of the fur-trade study and a defining point in his career. In all, Innis devoted about a quarter of the fur trade study to the transportation networks of the North. It is fair to say that Innis clearly saw the book not only as a key element in a grand narrative of nation-building but also as a regional study of the North. The book established Innis as a historian, economist, and geographer of the North all rolled into one. Innis’s interest in the region did not end with Fur Trade in Canada. Following that 1924 trip, he continued to develop his interest and expertise with a series of research trips to various parts of northern Canada, Newfoundland, and Labrador between 1926 and 1931.5 Through this field research Innis put together what William Buxton refers to elsewhere in this volume as an archive of “hands-on” material on Canada’s North.6 His objectives in establishing this archive were not purely academic in nature. As Buxton notes, Innis believed strongly that the northern territories were Canada’s final frontier and that the region should be absorbed into the national imaginary.7 Scholarly research and dissemination – particularly when resulting in such “great works” as Fur Trade in Canada – were certainly important to that process, but so, too, was bringing knowledge of the northern periphery to popular audiences in the metropolitan South. In consequence, throughout the later 1920s and early 1930s, Innis

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gave public lectures and published articles in the popular press about his excursions to the North, playing the role, as Matthew Evenden suggests, of “public intellectual.”8 In the 1930s, as he became more and more consumed with administrative responsibilities related to his efforts to establish the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Economy as a national centre for scholarship, and with organizing the social sciences in Canada and the United States generally, Innis’s interest in the North shifted but did not wane. Undoubtedly too busy for lengthy forays to the North, between 1934 and 1944 Innis published eleven review essays in the Canadian Historical Review (c h r ) that addressed 157 books written about the region. Buxton argues that these reviews collectively form an interpretive archive of work on the North – a body of work Innis wrote in order to continue educating readers in the South and to serve as a guide for future research and administration.9 According to Buxton, Innis combined his excursions to the North, his own extensive archival work on the fur trade, and his comprehensive review of the secondary material on the North for the c h r to help transform this area of wilderness into civilized space all in the service of the Canadian nation-building project.10 The archival record confirms Innis’s deep curiosity in the idea of a broad-based social science survey of the Arctic and that his interest in Parkin’s proposal was genuine and intellectual in nature. As Buxton suggests, Innis conceptualized the body of work he reviewed for the c h r as providing a “foundation of knowledge about the North.”11 Given that foundation, Innis seems to have believed that it was time for more thorough and scientific studies to take place. Like Parkin and (later) Pearson, Innis feared that Canada was falling behind other Arctic nations in both scientific knowledge and administrative capacity. Of particular concern was the us s r, which had established its own Arctic Institute in 1930 and had conducted extensive naturaland social-scientific research in its Arctic territory. Soviet experience not only spurred Canadian interest but, to Innis, also served as a guide to Canadians. In this respect, Innis was particularly impressed by Soviets in the Arctic, a study written by T.A. Taracouzio (1938) for Harvard University’s and Radcliffe College’s Bureau of International Research. In a review essay for the c h r Innis noted approvingly that, in its wide-ranging and multidisciplinary approach, the Soviet volume made an excellent model for a

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Canadian Arctic study.12 When approached by Willits for comments on Parkin’s proposal in July 1943, Innis was definitive in his interest and again referenced the work on the Soviet Arctic. “What is badly needed,” he advised the officer, “is a study such as Taracouzio did on Russia for the people at Harvard.” Summarizing his long-standing interest in the Arctic for Willits, he noted: “The subject is very near to my heart and during the past twenty years I have spent much time and energy visiting the more accessible regions of the North and trying to keep up with an ever increasing literature.” Indeed, he “felt even more strongly than Parkin that the whole North ha[d] been shockingly neglected by Canada … [and that he] would like very much to think that the way might be opening now.”13 In October of 1943, in a letter written while she was doing a factfinding survey for the r f on the state of the social sciences in Canada, Anne Bezanson, associate director of the rf Social Science Division, confirmed to Willits that Innis was “very much interested in the study of the North … [and that he would] gladly head it up if it [were] a long-time task which would set out to do thorough work.” When she asked Innis whether “the study would divert him from work he has already planned, … he answered that it would facilitate work in a field that he had long nibbled at.” She concluded her commentary by observing: “Innis has been thinking, indeed dreaming, of what could be done with the planning of such work, but would have hesitated to step up and offer his services as the leader of the work.”14 As was so often the case for Canadian scholars in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, the interest of the r f and the material support that came with that interest were all that was required to overcome any reluctance to lead. I would argue that the r f officers turned to Innis as an academic builder and their primary advisor on Canadian scholarship in the social sciences and the humanities as much as to Innis the scholar of the North. By the early 1930s, Innis’s journeys to the Canadian North had given way to his immersion in North-South networks of a different nature. Put another way, the painstaking fieldwork in the North of his early career had been replaced largely by missions of intellectual diplomacy and train travel south to Manhattan and other centres in the United States. A veteran of the full slate of Canadian scholarly activities supported by American philanthropy in the 1930s,15 Innis also served on the American Social Science Research Council’s influential Programs and Policy Committee. In

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this capacity he had established close working relationships with Willits and Bezanson. Innis, in short, was a valued member of the American intellectual community, which included, in its higher councils, leading American social scientists and members of the philanthropic elite. In the late 1930s, Willits and Bezanson worked with Innis, John Robbins, chief of the Education Branch of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, and Queen’s University historian Reginald Trotter to create the Canadian Social Scientific Research Council (cs s rc), and from the start the Americans sought to establish the research council’s leaders, particularly Innis, as the legitimate representatives of the social science community in Canada. When, in September 1940, the research council met for the first time, it did so with financial support from both the r f and the c c. As had been the case in the late 1930s, Innis was key in securing the backing of the Americans. “With his prestige,” Bezanson noted following his death in 1952, “the advice of Innis was sought without his initiative, because he was thought of as ‘Innis of Canada’”16 It was this “Innis of Canada,” and Innis the builder, whom I see as most operative in facilitating an American-sponsored survey of the Canadian Arctic. The Rockefeller officers were clear, too, that turning to Innis meant turning to the c ssrc and thus strengthening the position of the young research council. In this they also knew that they were integrally involving themselves in the internal and infrastructural politics of knowledge in Canada. In summarizing her 1943 observations of the social sciences in Canada, Bezanson advised that the rf should “continue to work, aid and encourage the Canadian Social Science Research Council, depending on them for advice, for discovery and aid to young scholars, [and] for recommending young scholars for fellowships.”17 In another internal document, Rockefeller officers noted that assisting the c ss rc was “the most effective means of supporting social science research in Canada.”18 In short, Rockefeller interest and support for social science research in the Canadian Arctic was part of a broader escalation of support for the c ssrc under Innis’s leadership. At the same time as Willits and Bezanson were negotiating the Arctic study, the rf was endorsing and funding a c ssrc study of the west and of the social credit movement.19 Most significantly, the foundation and the cc were jointly footing the bill for the entire operation of the research council and for its sister council, the Humanities Research Council of

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Canada, which was formed in 1943. The giants of private American philanthropy had done this from the founding of the councils in 1940 and 1943, respectively, and they continued to provide this support up to the formation of the Canada Council and the advent of federal support for scholarship in the social sciences and humanities in 1957. In a nutshell, I argue that one cannot begin to look at the Arctic Survey without also exploring the cultural power/knowledge relationship that existed between Innis, the cs s rc, and the rf. I now move away from this broad discussion of American philanthropy, Canadian social science research, and the integration of a continental network of intellectual production and return to a more specific discussion of the reasons Parkin, Innis, Pearson, Willits, and a host of others (on both sides of the border) felt that there was a pressing need for a social science survey of the Canadian Arctic in 1943. Conditions specific to the Second World War context and longerterm concerns about resource development, northern administration, sovereignty, and security all led to what historian Shelagh Grant (1988, 1989) describes as a flurry of interest in the Canadian North during the early 1940s. Of particular concern to many Canadians was the vast American presence in the region. Under the guise of joint American-Canadian continental defence and – after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 – leadership of the Allied war effort, American military and capitol dominated the Canadian Arctic, establishing bases throughout the region, building the Alaska Highway, developing oil reserves with the Canol Project, and mining uranium oxide at Port Radium on Great Bear Lake. The fear raised by these and other initiatives that brought Canadian territory and resources under the American footprint was simple. Justifying this activity as a military necessity, American interests were establishing a substantial administrative and infrastructural foothold in the Arctic. These fears seemed to be confirmed when Britain’s high commissioner to Canada, Malcolm Macdonald, reported that Americans posted in the Canadian North had been referring to themselves as part of the “Army of Occupation” (Grant 1988, 102).20 Of equal and related concern was the presence of the Soviet Union as a neighbour in the region and what this might mean in a postwar world. Already by 1943 it was becoming clear to many observers that Allied victory over Japan and Germany was not going to put an end to arguments of military expediency and to the need for joint American-Canadian continental defence – arguments that, despite

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the cloak of bilateral language, seemed to be deeding the Arctic to the United States. As Parkin put it in his letter to Willits: It has taken the crisis of the Second World War and especially, perhaps, the very recent developments in aviation, to wake people up to the new realities … The important thing, from the longer-term point of view, is that there should be orderly, co-ordinated thought given to the Northern-Arctic areas as a whole … Canada’s greatest Polar neighbour is the u s s r. For about 20 years Soviet Russia has, by all accounts, been doing remarkable things in the study and development of its own Arctic area … This development of the Soviet North, set against the relative lack of development in the Canadian (North American) North, creates a situation of unbalance, which is unsatisfactory from any point of view. I need not enlarge on this point further.21 Speaking with a harder edge of real politique and from the American strategic perspective, Canadian-born geographer Isaiah Bowman, president of Johns Hopkins University, advised Willits of the urgent need for research and development in the area. Bowman wrote that, in the new era of air travel and “the paratrooper,” the “almost empty north land” presented a “dangerous military vacuum.” Warning Willits about the “menace” of “Russian expansion” and the threat it might pose in the Western Hemisphere, he noted: “What we do in Alaska could not prevent it.” He continued: “From this standpoint it is of great moment that Canada be fully developed as fast as possible.”22 It was this type of argument – that the United States might have to act unilaterally if necessary to defend the Western Hemisphere (and “the West” generally) in both world war and Cold War contexts – that raised fears for Canadian sovereignty. After all, as recently as the summer of 1938, in a now famous speech at Queen’s University, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt informed Canadians “that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other empire” (Granatstein and Hillmer 1991, 103–4; Granatstein 1989, 24; Thompson and Randall 1994, 147).23 With the Ogdensburg Agreement of 1940 and the Hyde Park Declaration of April 1941 tying the Canadian war effort to the embryo of the United States’s military industrial complex through joint defence and coordination of production, it appeared that Canadian sovereignty was under attack. As Innis’s friend and University of

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Toronto colleague Donald Creighton (1976, 43) later argued, the wartime shift in the balance of power within the North Atlantic triangle seemed to condemn Canada to absorption into the American Empire. At the same time as the r f was receiving strong advice on the urgency of the situation in the Canadian North, voices from both inside and outside the organization were stressing the need for Canadian leadership. Advising Willits about foundation policy with respect to the creation of a joint Canadian-American Arctic Institute, Innis warned of the “political implications” of any initiative that seemed to be dominated by American interests. According to Innis, there was already “a good deal of restiveness about American imperialism in Canada” as a result of “the Alaska Highway and so on.”24 After discussions with Brooke Claxton, parliamentary secretary for domestic affairs, and several other Canadians, John Marshall, associate director of the r f ’s Humanities Division, told Willits that he believed that the time was right for a study of “long-range and fundamental importance, so that in effect Canada might not again be caught short by lack of essential knowledge of her own territory and resources.” Noting that “[American] bases are being developed, and habit patterns are being created which are quite the opposite to that which the Canadians desire and the real facts would indicate,”25 he concluded his advice by observing: “[Since] she [Canada] is now so caught short through American activity, I think there might be something like a moral case for the Foundation to help her in remedying the deficiencies under which she now labors.”26 The arguments for a Canadian-based study proved compelling. While the r f also lent mild support for the bilateral Arctic Institute of North America27 – seeing it as an institutional base for scientific study of interest to both the United States and Canada – and to Dartmouth College geographer Trevor Lloyd’s research in the Arctic, the foundation focused its support for social science research on Innis and the c ssrc. And so it was that in December 1943, just seven months after Parkin first broached the topic with Willits, the r f trustees took action. Noting that the “intellectual foundation for the consideration of the many vital issues into which Canada and the United States will be projected after the war is extremely spotty and generally inadequate,” and that “Canada needs a more comprehensive knowledge of its Arctic North,” the foundation granted ten thousand dollars to the c ssrc to conduct a broad-ranging social science survey of the region.28

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In keeping with r f practice, by the time the trustees made the formal decision to grant funds to the cs s rc, Innis, cs s rc chair Robert Coats, Willits, and Bezanson had already collaborated extensively on designing a course of action for the survey. The style and terms of the grant’s negotiation are revealing both with regard to the mixture of informal and formal channels American foundations employed to influence the Canadian scene and with regard to Innis’s importance to the enterprise. Even before the rf formally pitched the idea of the survey to Coats, Innis had already dictated the form it should take and had agreed to take leadership of it. The foundation, in fact, only contacted Coats after Innis advised it to do so. The c ssrc, in large part, gained its legitimacy in American eyes because it was seen as Innis’s show. Also typical of foundation practice in Canada, when she made her formal approach to Coats as cs s rc chair, Bezanson was at pains to convince the Canadian that her organization was in no way attempting to initiate a project in Canada – even though, through discussions with Innis, it had already done just that. It had been explained at Parkin’s initial meeting with Willits that the r f would not start a project but that “it would be glad to transmit it for discussion by Canadian scholars.” To ensure that she and the rf were not seen as exerting influence – as even the hint of American foundation funding inevitably would in a cash-strapped system of support for scholarship in the humanities and social sciences – Bezanson concluded by advising Coats: “[The cs s rc should] deal with [Parkin’s suggestions] in the way you would consider [them] had [they] gone to you directly instead of to Mr. Willits [and the Rockefeller Foundation].”29 The format arrived at for the Arctic Survey involved a series of preliminary studies in which aspects of the North would be surveyed in order to stimulate and direct future research. Innis, as chair of the c ssrc’s grants-in-aid committee, was charged both with deciding on the topics of study and selecting appropriate individuals to carry out the surveys.30 Innis settled on a range of topics that went far beyond the traditional boundaries of the social sciences and included a broad swath of Canadian institutions. Bridging the natural and social sciences, the survey examined a varied array of issues and concerns, including public health, education, governance and administration of social services, wildlife conservation, natural resources, fisheries, geology, and transportation networks. The wide range typified what would become, according to geographer Matthew Evenden (1998,

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61), “a continuing institutional bond between the natural and social sciences in northern studies.” Included in the final roster were McGill sociologist C.A. Dawson’s sociological study of the Northwest, University of British Columbia geographers W.J. and J.L. Robinson’s work on fur production; Department of Agriculture researcher William Dickson’s study of northern agriculture; University of Toronto geographer Griffith Taylor’s consideration of settlement patterns in the Mackenzie and Yukon regions; University of Saskatchewan scholar B.W. Currie’s study of meteorology; Queen’s University geologist E.L. Bruce’s study of mining industries; Dalhousie’s Stewart Bates’s survey of fisheries in the eastern Arctic; Manitoba secondary school inspector Andrew Moore’s work on education; a study of public health and medical services in the Northwest Territories by G.J. Wherett of the Canadian Tuberculosis Association; LieutenantCommander T.H. Manning’s study of wildlife conservation; University of Alberta’s H.W. Hewetson’s study of transportation; a study of territorial administration by C.C. Lingard, research secretary of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs; and former medical health officer J.A. Urquhart’s study of the Inuit in the western Arctic. Within a year most of the investigators presented preliminary reports at a meeting at Hart House on the University of Toronto campus. Singling out Hewetson, Taylor, Currie, and Dawson, the Rockefeller brain-trust observed: “Arctic Study of the cs s rc has [already] awakened an interest in the Far North at several Canadian institutions which will be permanent.”31 While Innis felt that the publication of the full studies was still well off in time, he emphasized that the “time value and importance of the Eskimo and Education Studies recommend their publication immediately.” Innis also informed the foundation that there would be no need for another grant “and that the study [would] mainly justify itself by illuminating Dominion arctic problems on which governmental mass action [was] likely.”32 Following the outline for dissemination laid out by Innis, Wherett’s public health study, along with Moore’s consideration of education, were published in the February 1945 edition of the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science (j c e p s ) . In his foreword to the articles, Innis (1945a, 48) noted “the urgency of the problems [addressed by Moore and Wherett] and the need for early publication.” For his part Wherett noted that mortality and morbidity rates in the Northwest Territories – particularly among the indigenous population

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– were far in excess of those for the rest of Canada. To reviewer Gerald Graham (1949, 218), Wherett painted a particularly “frightening picture of the ravages of tuberculosis.” Calling for immediate action and noting that his “recommendations could be put into practical operation with a moderate expenditure of funds,” Wherett recommended that a full-time director of medical services be appointed to “formulate a health policy to be carried out in all districts.” He suggested, as well, a sweeping enhancement of services made possible by additional appointments of medical personnel, including regional medical officers, doctors, and nurses, by increasing the number of hospitals, nursing stations, and first-aid centres, and by enhancing government provision of dental care and nutrition education (Wherett 1945, 59–60). Moore was similarly critical of education in the region. Although he bowed to pressure from Deputy Minister of Mines and Resources Charles Camsell and rescinded his recommendation that separate denominational schools be abolished in the territories,33 Moore called for the same sorts of far-reaching reforms in structure, infrastructure, and personnel for education as had Wherett for the public health field. His chief recommendations included the appointment of a director of education for the territories, a “middle-of-the-way curriculum” that emphasized occupational training, and pursuit of the “general principle of taking suitable white man’s education to the natives in their own environment as much as possible” (78). The education and public health studies were followed in the j c e p s with the publication of five other component studies of the survey (Taylor 1945a, 1945b; Hewetson 1945; Dawson 1945; Lingard 1946). The seven j c e p s studies were repackaged and, along with five others, published in 1947 in Carl Dawson’s edited collection The New North-West. Meeting the objectives set by Innis and the officers of the r f, the collection was, in the words of Queen’s University historian Gerald Graham (1949, 217): “The first attempt to survey the history, administration, economic resources, social conditions, and future prospects of, what might be aptly termed, Canada’s colonies.” As Matthew Evenden (1998, 62–5) points out in his study of the c ssrc Arctic survey, the Canadian state actively resisted the survey, first by denying many of the investigators access to vital information and then by insisting on the strategic deletions to Moore’s education report. In consequence, according to Evenden: “What had begun as

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an academic effort to make sense of a region undergoing rapid change had turned into a thinly veiled policy statement for the Department of Mines and Resources” (64–5). Only marginally less scathing in her assessment, historian Shelagh Grant (1988, 142) states simply: “Despite the urgency of the recommendations and the support of the influential research council, … [the survey] had no immediate effect on the territorial government.” For its part, the r f was happy with the immediate results of its grant to the c ssrc. It had been one of its goals to establish a broad base of institutions to promote research in the region. The officers felt that they had not only strengthened the cs s rc but had also aided the development of the social sciences at universities across Canada. Expansion of a Canadian social science research presence in the North as a result of the Arctic survey – along with Lloyd’s research for the c i i a and the establishment of the Arctic Institute of North America in 1944 – also increased pressure for administrative reform, especially in public health and education. As noted above, the immediate results of this pressure were less than impressive, and social science research alone didn’t win the day for massive administrative reform. More immediately compelling were the twin threats of Soviet aggression and American military dominance of Canada’s North and the more generalized development of Canada’s welfarestate capacities – the same forces that led to the Arctic survey itself. Nonetheless, the postwar era eventually witnessed a revolution in Canadian northern administration that swept away Canadian state’s laissez-faire approach to the northern territorial governance (Grant 1998, 157–64). The experience of leading the Arctic survey affected Innis’s career in a number of ways. Planning for the survey, conceptualizing its disciplinary targets and boundaries, and, more generally, imagining the Canadian Arctic expanded his knowledge of the recent history of Soviet Arctic development. His growing knowledge of and interest in the Soviet experience, coupled with the connections he made with members of the Canadian state while negotiating the terms of the Canadian survey, likely led to his inclusion in the Canadian delegation at the 220th anniversary celebration of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which took place in Moscow and Leningrad from 15 June to 28 June 1945. In this sense the survey was an integral part of Innis’s continued intellectual engagement with the Arctic. Following the completion of the survey, Innis’s relationship with the rf continued to flourish, and

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the r f supported his research in communications on a more or less open-ended basis. The relationship was also pivotal in the rf’s work to solidify the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Economy under Innis as the primary centre for the advanced study of the social sciences and humanities in Canada (Brison 2005, 191). The c ssrc’s Arctic Survey weighed most heavily in the political economy of knowledge production in Canada. For Innis and the c ssrc , the Arctic Survey grant proved to be a pivotal moment of growth and development. r f support for Arctic research was meant to test the mettle of the c ssrc. Impressed with what Innis and the c ssrc had done with limited funds, the rf and the cc both steadily increased funding to the c ssrc and its twin, the h rcc , from the mid-1940s to 1957, when the research councils were absorbed into the federal infrastructure with the formation of the Canada Council. By 1955 the r f had given the c ssrc $541,195 and the h rcc $112,750.34 Along with C C funding this investment provided the life-blood for the councils and for their aid to scholarly research programs and publication grants until the federal government took over the job of funding research in the academic social sciences and humanities. Significantly, the pattern of support served as a model for the new Canada Council. As I argue in my book, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Canada, the support of private American foundations was critical for establishing the legitimacy and intellectual power of so many Canadian cultural and intellectual projects in the era before the advent of sustained publicsector support for the arts and letters in Canada. In this way, private American philanthropy played a crucial role in the process whereby Canada’s private, localized system of cultural, intellectual, and academic patronage was transformed into a complex, nation-based system of incorporated public patronage – a system in which the major patron was the federal state. I argue, in short, that collaborations between American philanthropies and Canadian culture-makers and their institutions led directly to the formation of the Canada Council for the Encouragement of the Arts, Letters, Humanities and Social Sciences in 1957 and, more broadly, to the federal policies of public support for cultural production, higher education, and scholarship that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. My work thus situates the American philanthropic factor in the equation of Canadian cultural and intellectual development and in larger debates about Canadian identity, American imperialism, and American/Canadian

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difference. In doing so it complicates essentialist notions of contrasting national identities and the now mythologized juxtaposition of an American culture fuelled by the free market and a Canadian culture sustained by state support. It is in this context in which Innis’s activities as an academic power-broker and a key member of what might be termed North America’s intellectual “power elite” – the chief mediator between American foundations and Canadian social science and humanities scholarship from the early 1930s to his death in 1952 – have their greatest impact.

notes

1 r ac - r f, rg 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 2 Record of Interview, Parkin and Willits, 14 May 1943, rac –r f, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 3 Willits to Innis, 7 July 1943. rac –rf, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 4 See Brison (2005). See also Fisher (1993); Berger (1972, 1993); Tippett (1990); Brison (1993); Bell (1983); and Litt (1991). 5 Innis’s 1924 trip north was followed by trips to Alaska and Yukon in 1926, to northern Ontario and Quebec in 1927, to northern Ontario again in 1928, to Red Lake and Hudson Bay in 1929, to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1930, and to Labrador again in 1931. 6 Buxton (chapter 9, this volume). 7 Ibid. 8 Evenden (chapter 3, this volume, 84). 9 Buxton (chapter 9, this volume, 187). 10 Ibid., 189. 11 Ibid., 204. 12 See Buxton and Evenden’s contributions to this collection. 13 Innis to Willits, 12 July 1943, rac– rf, rg 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 14 Bezanson to Willits, 12 October 1943, rac –r f, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 15 Innis wrote and edited several volumes in both the Frontiers of Settlement and the Carnegie Canadian-American relations series and was chief Canadian editor for the Carnegie series. See Brison (2005). 16 Bezanson to Willits, 18 November 1952, rac –r f, r g 1.2, series 427S, box 16, fol. 160. 17 Bezanson to Willits, 12 October 1943, rac–r f, r g 1.1, series 427, box 32, fol. 327.

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18 Grant Record, rf 44978–cs s rc, 16 June 1944, 1–2, rac –r f, r g 1.1, ser. 426S, box 31, fol. 319. 19 The Social Credit grant, over the long term, turned out to be particularly influential in establishing a body of critical literature on Canadian social, economic, and political development. Works published by the University of Toronto Press under this Rockefeller grant represented a wide range of perspectives and ideologies and include such standards as Morton (1950b); Macpherson (1953); Mallory (1954); Fowke (1957); Clark (1959); and Irving (1959). 20 See also Matthew Evenden’s (1998, 39) assessment of the various considerations that led to increased focus on the Canadian Arctic region during the Second World War. 21 Parkin to Willits, 24 June 1943, rac–rf, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 22 Bowman to Willits, 6 October 1943, rac–r f, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 23 For detailed analysis of the development of continental defence arrangements see Perras (1998). 24 Innis to Willits, 23 April 1944, rac –rf, rg 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 328. 25 Interview: Marshall and Willits, 3 May 1943, rac –r f, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 328. 26 Marshall to Willits, “Subject: Sauer’s letter of May 20th,” 1 June 1943, r ac – r f, rg 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327, Inter-Office Correspondence. 27 The institute, which was founded in 1945, had offices at both McGill University and at Johns Hopkins University. 28 r f Grant Record 43117, 1 December 1943, rac –r f, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 29 Bezanson to Coats, 20 July 1943, rac – rf, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 30 Coats to Willits, 4 November 1943, rac –r f, r g 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 327. 31 Bezanson to Willits, Subject: Arctic Study-c ssrc, 15 December 1944, r ac– r f, rg 1.1, ser. 427, box 32, fol. 328, Inter-Office Correspondence. 32 Interview: Willits and Bezanson, 16 November 1944, r ac -r f, r g 1.1, ser. 427S, box 32, fol. 328. 33 Andrew Moore to Charles Camsell, 18 January 1945, uta –ir, B1972– 0025/010 (21). 34 “r f grants to Canadian Research Councils,” August 1955. r ac –r f, r g 1.1, ser. 427R, box 9, fol. 82.

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11 Arctic Surveillance: Innis, the Arctic Survey, and Canadian State Agencies william j. buxton

The grand narrative that has come to define Innis’s work has not been confined to his supposed decade-long research projects, which culminated in major staples monographs. It has also informed interpretations of how Innis viewed the production of social scientific knowledge in relation to practical interests – particularly government agencies. Innis’s conception of social scientific practice, according to some commentators, can be seen as his own approach writ large. His own work is characterized as that of fiercely independent scholarship, largely untainted by the demands of external forces, “persistently carrying on his fundamental researches in Canadian economic history” (Creighton 1957, 83).1 By the same token, his broader vision for social scientific research – as rooted in universities – is considered to be one that is free from instrumental pressures and underpinned by scholarly criteria of objectivity.2 However, while much attention has been given to Innis’s pronouncements about how the social sciences ought to be practised in relation to state agencies, there has been little discussion of his own involvement in collaborative research projects that closely intersected with the immediate concerns of funding and government bodies.3 Jeffrey Brison’s chapter (this volume) can be seen as a corrective to this tendency in that it examines the extent to which the Arctic Survey – as the first major research project conducted by the newly founded Canadian Social Science Research Council – was shaped by its funding agency, the Humanities Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (r f ). In this regard, Brison’s chapter reveals a good deal about how Innis, as chair of the research committee of the cs s rc,

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played a central role in the formulation of the project. This chapter extends Brison’s analysis by examining how this venture – under Innis’s guidance – was linked to the designs of various Canadian state agencies that had interests in the production of knowledge about the Canadian North, particularly in light of developments during Second World War. Upon receiving word that the r f had approved funding for the Arctic Survey, the Executive Committee of the cs s rc almost immediately began to make preparations for the study.4 John Robbins, president of the council, wrote to D.C. Harvey, asking him to get in touch with Innis if he had any suggestions about whom the latter might contact for advice about the project. In addition to suggesting Raleigh Parkin and J.B. Harkin, ex-commissioner of national parks, Harvey recommended that Innis contact Charles Camsell, “who had an article in the last [Canadian] Geographical Journal “Planning the New Northwest” (Camsell 1946). Camsell, according to Harvey, as “first president of the Geographical Society and Deputy Minister of Mines and Resources probably knows more about the Northwest and of possible researchers in that field than anybody else.”5 Harvey’s response to Robbins proved to be propitious, as Camsell, working closely with Innis and other members of the cssrc Executive Committee, gave the Arctic Survey its shape and direction. This was particularly evident in the interest shared by the cssrc and the Department of Mines and Resources in the Soviet Union’s northern activities. In preparing the ground for the Arctic Survey, the cs s rc executive sought to secure information about what the Soviet Union was doing in the Arctic. Such information was considered to be important as it would allow the committee to better organize its study of Canada’s Arctic region. To this end, committee member Reginald Trotter conferred with his Russian-born colleague of the Queen’s biology department, Gleb Krotkov. According to the latter: “The only way of getting any material through without long and uncertain delay is to have our ambassador get it and send it in the diplomatic pouch by air mail.”6 This insight from Trotter appeared to have prompted Robert Coats, chairman of the cs s rc, to ask the Department of External Affairs (de a ) how the cs s rc could secure information about Soviet activities in the North. Specifically, he wrote to Norman Robertson (under-secretary of state for external affairs). Robertson noted a shared interest in Russia held by the c ssrc and the Department of Mines and Resources. A few months

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earlier he had been forwarded a set of questions, posed by Camsell, about the Soviet Arctic. Accordingly, Robertson played the role of putting the groups together by suggesting to Camsell that the two organizations shared some common interests and should arrange to meet.7 Camsell informed Robertson about the developments of which he was aware, including a meeting that had been held with officers of the c ssrc, in which he had learned, among other things, that Innis was planning to go down the Mackenzie River once again.8 Based in part on what Camsell had told him, Robertson informed Coats: “The Canadian Ambassador in Moscow, Dana Wilgress, had submitted a set of detailed questions regarding the Soviet Arctic to the Soviet authorities in Moscow. These questions were prepared by various Government departments – Fisheries, Agriculture, Transport, etc., and they deal with problems in which these departments are specially interested. The answers to these questions have not yet been received and it will probably take some time for the Soviet authorities to gather the information.” In the meantime, Robertson suggested that the cs s rc establish contact with vok s, the “Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, which deals with inquiries from research organizations abroad.” Specifically, it was recommended that Coats contact “Mr.  S.M. Koudriavtzev, First Secretary to the Soviet Legation in Ottawa,” who was the “Liaison Officer for the Society.”9 Norman Robertson also kept Camsell abreast of developments: With reference to your letter of December 16th in which you forwarded a set of questions relating to the Soviet Arctic. I enclose herewith a copy of a letter of March 18th from R.H. Coats … interested in very much the same field of inquiry as that covered by your questionnaire … [You] may … wish to get in touch with Mr. Coats to arrange for an exchange of information … you may have some material on Canadian problems which would be useful to the Council. [Y]ou may … wish to make some suggestions regarding the scope of the project.10 Camsell was not only working closely with the cs s rc executive to acquire information about the Soviet Union’s northern activities, he was also very involved in the development of research about the Canadian North. Indeed, he was the director of an initiative that was very similar to the Arctic Survey, namely, the North Pacific

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Planning Project, an international venture that began in 1942. As was noted in an internal d e a document, “it [was] completed insofar as the Canadian part of the work was concerned with the publication of ‘Canada’s New Northwest’ in 1947” (Canada 1949). In effect, the project for which Camsell was responsible, which culminated in the publication of Canada’s New Northwest (North Pacific Planning Project 1947), was a project parallel to that of the cssrc, dealing with an overlapping geographical area, namely, “the Mackenzie District of the Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory, and the northern parts of Alberta and British Columbia” (ibid., 1947, title page). (Camsell was also responsible for the survey of the eastern Arctic.) The study had its origins in the “treacherous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour [sic]” followed by the “occupation of Kiska and Attu by Japan.” Canada and the United States “suddenly realized the extent of the threat to their sovereignty in the North Pacific region by the Japanese.” They responded with a number of measures, including the further development of the airway from Edmonton to Whitehorse and Dawson; the construction of the Alaska Military Highway from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks (to service the airway); the development of oil in the Lower Mackenzie through the Canol project; and the construction of a number of “landing fields between Edmonton and Norman Wells, and a number of winter roads.”11 Moreover, as it became evident that these wartime developments had implications “reaching beyond defence interests,” it was thought that the two countries might consider undertaking “studies of problems of mutual interest in the economic development of this section of the North American continent.” The suggestion for a study was passed on to the “joint economic Committees organized by Canada and the United States.”12 Given the past success in jointly managing natural resources in the area, it was believed that “the two nations could go further in developing satisfactory solutions to problems in which they ha[d] joint or parallel interests.” Accordingly, the committee decided to “sponsor a joint study designated as the ‘North Pacific Planning Project.’” The study was launched by “collaborating study groups” from Canada and the United States, headed by a director. The Canadian group was led by Camsell, with R.K. Odell, o be, serving as assistant director. Its initial task was to “carry out a careful inventory of the natural resources of the region and to assess their potentialities in the future development of the northwest coastal section of North

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America.” To this end, under the direction of the Department of Mines and Resources, surveys of geology, natural resources, and “water power possibilities” were undertaken, and the mapping of the region was accelerated. Moreover, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Fisheries, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, and the Meteorological Division of the Department of Transport all organized studies of the area. Finally, “the Government of British Columbia undertook studies of the mineral and forest resources of northern British Columbia.” The American side of the project was under the direction of the United States Resources Planning Board, which made its Alaska regional office staff available; James C. Rettie of Portland, Oregon, was designated as US co-director of the North Pacific Planning Project (North Pacific Planning Project 1943, 275). However, when the war situation in the Pacific improved in 1944, the United States withdrew from the project. Nevertheless, it was decided that the Canadian group would not only continue its study but would also considerably enlarge the area covered. The final report consisted of a preface, foreword, and conclusions followed by nine chapters addressing various aspects of the area.13 Unlike the American study, which was undertaken by the international committee, “the Canadian section continued its studies through the various government departments concerned with the administration and development of this portion of Canada” (Lingard 1947, 34). Strikingly, the volume culminating the Arctic Survey, edited by C.A. Dawson, bore virtually the same name, and appeared in the same year, as the North Pacific Planning Project volume (Dawson 1947). Moreover, the c ssrc study, as Innis emphasized, had benefitted greatly from Camsell’s support. In the section that Innis wrote on the “Northlands study” for the final report of the cs s rc for 1943– 44, he expressed the indebtedness of the study’s researchers to Dr Camsell, who had made the facilities of the Department of Natural Resources and Mines available to them.14 Indeed, Innis (1945a, 48– 9) concludes his introduction to the series of summaries of the study’s projects (which appeared in the c j e p s in 1945) with the following statement: “In the work which has been done the Committee is under heavy obligations to Dr. Charles Camsell for his sympathetic and lively interest.”15 In acknowledging Camsell’s “sympathetic and lively interest” in the Arctic Survey, Innis was in fact understating the extent to which

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the deputy minister and his department had shaped the cs s rcfunded study. That the volume bore the same name as the one resulting from the project directed by Camsell – using a term that the latter had previously deployed in an article in the Canadian Geographical Journal – was not coincidental (Innis 1946, 265–78). Indeed, it was likely the case that Camsell viewed the Arctic Survey as complementary to the North Pacific Planning Project. The area covered overlapped considerably, and the Arctic Survey provided insights into the social and cultural elements that the North Pacific Planning Project only covered tangentially. In particular, since one of the key issues was the prospects for settlement in the North, the Arctic Survey addressed important questions related to settlement, such as health and education. There was, moreover, some overlap in personnel: in addition to Camsell, R.A. Gibson and J.L. Robinson were involved with both projects.16 Camsell was more than just a person with a “lively interest” in the Arctic Survey; he became closely involved in the implementation of at least two of its studies, namely, those of Dr G.J. Wherett and Andrew Moore, playing a key role in the planning of the trip to the North that the two contributors took together. It is evident in a letter to Wherett that the knowledge to be produced through the survey of health conditions in the North was considered to be of practical relevance to the federal agency responsible for Aboriginal peoples. While it was the cssrc that had officially selected Wherett to undertake the research, it was Camsell who determined the conditions for the project. Wherett’s research, according to Camsell: “provides an excellent opportunity for us to obtain a great deal of the information we need for the further study of the health and welfare of the white, Eskimo, and half-breed population as well as of the Indians who are wards of the Government.” Camsell made it quite clear what the study’s administrative framework was to be. The Northwest Territories Administration was to cover the expenses for the project. Moreover, Wherett was instructed not only to confer with persons involved with “medical, hospital and other health agencies in the Mackenzie District of the Northwest territories but also to consult reliable people in these territories whose names [would] be given to [him].” Wherett was also to be provided with pertinent information from officials based in Ottawa. Moreover, Camsell made arrangements for the transportation of Wherett and Andrew Moore through the Northern Transportation Company Limited in Edmonton and the rc a f. He noted that, should they need

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to use the Canadian Pacific Airways Company for transportation, they should make the arrangements themselves and “have the account for the transportation sent [to the Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources in Ottawa].” For the return journey, Camsell informed Wherett that “Mr. Gilbert Labine [sic] of the Eldorado Company ha[d] promised transportation from Eldorado Mine on the return journey.”17 Finally, reflecting the dia’s interest in the study, Camsell told Wherett: “Every effort should be made to contact the Indian Agents and if possible to be present when Treaty is being paid. In this way you will see the greatest number of natives and be able to observe the practice of the local doctor at the time he is carrying out his examinations.” Camsell concluded by emphasizing: “All government officials will co-operate with you to the very best of their ability in furthering the work that you have in mind.”18 The following day, almost the identical letter was sent to Moore. However, some of the phrasing was slightly different because Moore’s project was concerned with education rather than with health.19 In September, following his return from the North, Wherett sent Camsell “a report of the survey of the health services in the Mackenzie River district, which was made during the summer.” He took the opportunity of expressing “his appreciation of the help received by [Camsell and his] office in connection with this undertaking.” He also acknowledged the assistance of other persons and noted the “excellent co-operation which was given by all the officials whom [he and his colleagues] met in the Territories.” Wherett stated: “[I hope] that this report may be of some service to your department in solving the health problems of the Northwest Territories.”20 After acknowledging that he had received the report, Camsell conveyed to Wherett that he thought he had “covered the subject pretty fully” and told him that he expected “to read it more carefully and to derive a good deal of benefit from it.” He continued: “It would seem that you have done a good job, for which I am very grateful indeed.”21 In the case of Moore’s study, as Brison points out in his chapter, Camsell was much more critical. In response to Camsell’s criticisms, Moore was to eventually back off from his recommendation that separate denominational schools be abolished in the territories.22 In his capacity as chair of the research committee of the cs s rc, Innis largely worked within the terms and the conditions that emanated from the Department of Mines and Natural Resources. Nevertheless, he not only made key decisions about the direction

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and the content of the project but also mediated between projects and government officials and acted as a liaison between the Arctic Survey and other initiatives. For instance, following a request by Innis, c ss rc president John Robbins called a “conference of the people who ha[d] been taking part in the Council’s northern studies project, Hart House, November 3rd [1944], immediately preceding the annual meeting of the Council.”23 Innis not only decided who would be invited to the meeting but also the form that it would take and what would follow from it in terms of the broader venture. Innis also assisted researchers in dealing with some of the hurdles imposed by government officials. Most notably, T.H. Manning, who was undertaking a study of caribou populations in the North, was unable to gain access to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Zoological Reports for the Labrador Peninsula, which was filed with the Bureau of Northwest Territories and Yukon Affairs. According to Manning, its deputy minister, R.A. Gibson, maintained that “any information in the Northwest Territories files can be used only by the members of his branch.”24 In an effort to help Manning gain access to the material, Robbins asked Innis to sign letters written to both Camsell and the h b c, requesting that Manning be allowed to make use of the material.25 While Innis’s intervention did not bear fruit immediately, it may have contributed to Gibson’s eventually reversing his position as Manning reported to Innis a little over a year after the issue arose.26 That the Arctic Survey – under Innis’s leadership – was well received by government officials is evident in the remarks of Kaye Lamb (a c ssrc committee member) to Innis when reporting on what he had been told by Robbins: “He is not exaggerating the favourable impression made on the departmental people by the Northern Studies Survey … The department seems to want data as ammunition that will enable it to act wisely, and arouse public opinion to enable it to act effectively.27 Innis not only effectively mediated between the Arctic Survey and government agencies, he also made some headway in coordinating the research efforts of the project with those of other agencies. Particularly noteworthy in this regard was the amicable relationship that Innis helped to develop between the Arctic Survey and the nascent Arctic Institute of North America (ai n a). Given the origins of this organization, Innis’s willingness to work hand-in-hand with the a in a was surprising, if not ironic.28 The institute can be traced back to Raleigh Parkin’s exchanges with rf officer Joseph Willits about

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finding ways to systematically study the North, in part to catch up to the Soviet Union, which, in Parkin’s view “ha[d] gone further than any other country in the world in developing knowledge of Arctic problems and in making use of Arctic areas and resources. The development in the Canadian North[,] set against the relative lack of development in the Canadian (North American) North, create[d] a situation of imbalance, which [was] unsatisfactory from any point of view.”29 Innis took issue with the plan’s biases towards geography and pushed forward his own views, which led to the Arctic Survey. Meanwhile, Parkin’s ideas came to resonate with those of others interested in the North American North.30 Less than a year after Parkin and Willits discussed the prospects for the study of the Canadian North, L.M. Gould (chief, Arctic Section, Army Air Forces), in a letter to Willits, informed him: “The present widespread interest in the North has led to much thinking and some consideration concerning means whereby this interest can be directed into useful channels after the war [and the] possibility of establishing an International Arctic Institute.”31 A planning meeting was held in New York in May 1944, with nine Americans and eleven Canadians participating, which resulted in a proposal for the formation of “a private binational organization, the Arctic Institute of North America.” The proposal was approved at a follow-up meeting held in Montreal in September, and offices for the new organization were established at McGill University. It was chartered by an Act of Parliament in December 1945 (McDonald 2005, 440) and was funded by “grants from the National Research Councils of Canada and the United States and by donations from private sources.”32 For 1945–46, Charles Camsell was elected as its chair; other members of its Board of Governors for that year included Colonel J.T. Wilson (assistant to chair), Raleigh Parkin (secretary), Dr A.L. Washburn (director), and Vilhjamur Stefansson.33 The rationale for establishing aina was that little progress had been made in settling Arctic North America and exploiting its resources, largely because of the “lack of adequate knowledge of the region.” Development of this kind “should be based on careful planning,” which, in turn, “demands … the best and broadest scientific study that can be brought to bear on the Arctic region.” The model for developing research that could help bring about intelligent and orderly development of the far North could be found in the Soviet Union:

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Facing a similar problem in Arctic Siberia, the Russians established a ussr Arctic institute in the 1920s. Staffed by capable specialists, the Institute, a government agency, has carried out extensive research, the results of which are clearly evident in the vast development of the Soviet Arctic since the Institute began to function. The Institute’s publications, a mine of information, plainly reflect the dual program of pure and applied investigation … An institute similar to the ussr Arctic Institute, in its scientific makeup, but smaller in size and free of government affiliation, is proposed for North America.34 The parallels between a i na and the Arctic Survey were quite striking. Both had emerged out of ideas that had been discussed by Raleigh Parkin and foundation officials a few months earlier, and both had been spearheaded by Canadian-based groups. Both had Soviet-related initiatives as points of reference: the Arctic Survey was modelled on Taracouzio’s Soviets in the Arctic, and ai n a was inspired by the ussr Arctic Institute. Both were premised on generating knowledge using methods from both the natural and the social sciences that could serve as the foundation for planning “intelligent and orderly development of the far North.” Both had as their central goals the production of systematic and comprehensive studies of the North American North and making the general public more aware of northern issues.35 Given the extent to which i a na’s mandate corresponded with that of the Arctic Survey,36 it was perhaps inevitable that representatives of the two ventures sought to work together and find common ground. In November 1945, Colonel J.T. Wilson, assistant to the chairman, a in a (and also director of operational research, Department of National Defence) wrote to Innis.37 Obviously impressed by the number of researchers that the Arctic Survey had been able to support, Wilson asked Innis whether he had “any suggestions for two or three fellowships of up to $2500, [which a i n a would be offering] for a year’s research work in the Arctic, starting in 1946.” Along the same lines, he requested that Innis recommend researchers who might be interested in working at a i na’s station at Baker Lake, which would be opening in the summer of 1946. It was Wilson’s hope that Innis could meet with him and Washburn the following week, when the two would be in Toronto. He concluded by stating that he was “sure that the cssrc and the Institute [could] work together to their

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mutual benefit.” Accompanying Wilson’s letter was information about the institute, along with “a statement by Professor [Richard Foster] Flint of scientific work to be done.”38 While a meeting of all three could not be arranged, Innis and Wilson met in early December in Toronto. In addition to discussing the possibility of “joint action,” Innis showed Wilson pictures that Porsild had taken during the visit he and Innis had made to Russia earlier in the year.39 Wilson also provided Innis with the press release for Exercise Musk-Ox,40 which he thought might be of interest to him (though noting that it was “not at all connected with the Arctic Institute).”41 Evidently undeterred by Wilson’s dual role with ai n a and Exercise Musk-Ox,42 Innis continued to work in a collaborative manner with the institute. He not only sent its director, Lincoln Washburn, “thirty-five copies of Article VII of the Arctic Survey Series,”43 but also sought to make the bibliographical work of W.F. [Elaine Allen] Mitchell available to the institute, an offer that found favour with Washburn.44 While the Arctic Survey had its own integrity and purpose, it could best be seen as part of a broader array of like-minded ventures that took shape in the mid-1940s, with the aim of producing knowledge of practical relevance to the development of the North. These included the North Pacific Planning Project, the Arctic Institute, and Exercise Musk-Ox. The close involvement of the Arctic Survey with these other initiatives belies Donald Fisher’s (1999, 149) claims that the c ssrc, established on the basis of Innis’s image for it, was a “body of university researchers whose views were not distorted by the administrative stance.” While this might have been the case rhetorically, in practice, through the work conducted by the Arctic Survey, the members of the c ssrc’s executive, including Innis, revealed themselves to be quite willing to have their research directed by the needs of the government bodies. I largely agree with Evenden’s (1998, 65) assessment that the Department of Mines and Resources was able “to capture the research agenda” of the Arctic Survey and that The New Northwest (the most extensive statement of the Survey’s research findings) “had turned into a thinly veiled policy statement for the Department.” However, I would contend that there was much more acquiesence – if not outright support for – the department’s designs on the part of Innis and other members of the cssrc executive than Evenden seems to suggest. If they wished to resist the department’s control (in line with Innis’s earlier negative reponse to both Parkin’s proposal and the Arctic Institute initiative),

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then Innis would surely not have been willing to work on a cooperative basis with a i na and to turn a blind eye to its tacit advocacy of Exercise Musk-Ox. Moreover, if Innis and the other members of the cssrc executive had been true to their often stated convictions that the council should remain autonomous from governmental priorities, then they would have done more to ensure that they retained control of the Arctic Survey’s research agenda rather than allowing the Department of Mines and Resources to take it over. Instead, rather than openly admitting that the project had been effectively usurped by the department, they consistently understated the extent to which government agencies were orchestrating the initiative.45 The willingness of Innis and other members of the cs s rc executive to allow the Department of Mines and Resources to dictate the terms for the Arctic Survey has implications that go beyond the merits and limitations of the initiative. It raises questions about a key component of the grand narrative that has dominated accounts of Innis’s intellectual practice, namely, that he resolutely championed the independence of the social sciences from government control and interference.46 If anything, the case of the Arctic Survey demonstrates that he not only acquiesced to the designs of state agencies but also worked actively with government officials to organize and implement the study. While Innis’s actions as the chair of the cs src ’s research committee were at odds with the conventional grand narrative that has come to define his life and career, they were quite consistent with the previous phases of the micro-narrative of his northern engagement. His initial forays to the North during the 1920s were heavily informed by his close working relationship not only with dominant institutions such as the h bc and religious orders but also with officials from the Department of the Interior and the Federal Wildlife Advisory Board. The review essays on books about the North that he produced for the Canadian Historical Review demonstrated an appreciation of government efforts to produce knowledge about Canada’s North as well as a strident advocacy of even more thorough and wide-ranging ventures of this kind. Within the broader arc of Innis’s northern engagement, his involvement with the Arctic Survey would best be seen as a natural progression of his northern activities rather than as an anomalous departure from his supposed view that “the ideal social science was scholarly, pure, and academic” (Fisher 1999, 152).

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notes

1 According to Salter and Dahl (1999, 117), Innis “began each of his studies by amassing enormous numbers of facts, by developing a painstaking catalogue of details.” He then sought to establish connections between the various factors he had identified: “Basic research characterized by such an approach could provide a different perspective from that offered by disciplinary specialists, governments, and industry. It could provide the balance of perspectives necessary for democratic life.” 2 As Noble (1995, 47) characterizes Innis’s views on the relationship between universities and the production of knowledge: “Because of their traditions, universities provide disinterested, non-specialized knowledge, which challenges the existing monopolies of power and knowledge.” Along the same lines, Stamps (1995, 47) writes of Innis’s concern about the growing willingness of the academy “to collude with the powers that be,” which could potentially result in the “loss of intellectual independence.” 3 While both Watson and Berger do address Innis’s role in the Carnegiesponsored publication series of the 1930s, they confine their attention to Innis’s relations with the American-based administrators, the contributors, and to the publishers (Watson 2006, 199–215; Berger 1972). 4 On 1 December 1943, the RF trustees approved a grant-in-aid of ten thousand dollars to the Canadian Social Science Research Council (cssrc) “for exploration and definition during the year 1944 a program of research on the problems of Arctic Canada.” The research was to be coordinated by Innis, as chairman of the council’s Grant-in-aid Committee. It was to take the form of a “comprehensive exploratory study” that involved ascertaining the “general state of research on the problems of the area particularly the outstanding gaps in knowledge.” The survey was to culminate in a “preliminary volume entitled ‘Problems of the Canadian Northland.’” This text was to consist of “specific studies” of aspects of the Canadian North such as “agriculture, settlement, geology, and minerals. Grant-inaid, Canadian Northland Study, 1 December, 1943, rac–rf, rg 1.1 Projects, ser. 427S-Canada, box 32, fol. 322. 5 Harvey to Innis, 3 January 1944, u ta– pef, A1976–0025/018 (03). 6 Reginald Trotter to Innis, 8 March 1944, uta– pef, A1976–0025/18 (03). 7 Robertson to Camsell, 27 March 1944, l ac , r g 22, vol. 100, box 24, file 84–12–5. 8 Camsell to Robertson, 16 December 1943, lac , r g 22, vol. 100, box 24, file 84–12–5.

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9 Norman Robertson to Robert H. Coats, 12 April 1944, uta –ir, B1972– 0025/18 (03). See also Coats to Robertson, 18 March 1944; Robertson to Charles Camsell, 27 March 1944; Camsell to Robertson, 3 April 1944. All in l ac , r g 22, vol. 122, file 84–12–5. 10 Robertson to Camsell, 27 March 1944, lac , r g 22, vol. 100, box 24, file 84–12–5. Given the extent to which the Department of External Affairs was engaged with Innis’s trip to Russia, it was likely the case that this agency – in consultation with Coats of the cs s r c – played a role in Innis’s being invited to the 220th Anniversary Celebrations of the Soviet Academy of Science. 11 Camsell (1947, 5). 12 The Joint Economic Committee was one of a number of similar bodies that had been formed in the wake of the establishment of the Permanent Joint Board of Defence, which “coordinated and directed the defence of the northern half of the western hemisphere.” This body had been set up following the meeting of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister King in Ogdensburg on 17 August 1940. The other joint bodes established were the Materials Coordinating Committee and the Joint War Production Committee (Hughes 1943, 29). 13 These were physiography and geology, agriculture, forests, fisheries, waterpower resources, transportation, wildlife conservation, population, and meteorology. 14 Canada (1943–44). 15 Innis (1945a, 48–9). See also Evenden (1998, 36–67). 16 Robinson assisted Odell and Camsell in the writing of Canada’s New Northwest and was the “unnamed civil servant” responsible for the chapter on population (Robinson 1987, 240). For the New North-West volume, Robinson was responsible for “checking data presented and helping to make necessary corrections” (Dawson 1947, vi). 17 Given that LaBine may have been able to make the discovery of pitchblende because of Camsell’s earlier research, he also may have been only too happy to provide the Arctic Survey researchers with transportation: “East of Fort Norman, on the shore of Great Bear Lake, are the pitchblende deposits from which radium is obtained. How these deposits were uncovered makes interesting reading. The first report was made nearly 45 years ago, when the late James Mackintosh Bell and Dr. Camsell surveyed the country. They recorded cobalt bloom stain on lakeside rocks, and thirty years later Gilbert LaBine read the account, associated the stain with his experiences in Ontario, arrived at the conclusion that there was silver in the rock, and in May 1930 made the great discovery.” (R B C

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Letter [Royal Bank of Canada Monthly Letter], August 1944, vol. 25 [no. 8]). Available at http://istrbc.com/responsibility/letter/august1944.html (viewed 23 January 2010). 18 Camsell to Wherett, 19 June 1944, lac, r g 22, vol. 100, box 24, file 84–12–5. 19 Moore’s research, in Camsell’s view: “provides an excellent opportunity for us to obtain a great deal of the information which we need for the further study of the opportunity which would be available to the white, Eskimo, and half-breed population as well as to the Indians who are wards of the Government, for acquiring a suitable education.” In the case of those with whom Moore was to confer, Camsell substituted education for health, adding: “We would ask you to call on Dr. [G. Fred] McNally and other officials of the Department of Education in Edmonton, for most of the those who are taught through correspondence courses secure service from the Alberta Department.” Again, as was the case with Wherett, Moore was to be “furnished with information from out department officials.” Camsell finally noted: “Mr. Wherett, who will be with you, has conferred freely with the departmental officials here and no doubt will be able to supply you with considerable further information. He will be leaving this week for the west and will be getting in touch with you at Winnipeg.” See Camsell to Andrew Moore, 20 June 1944, lac , r g 22, vol. 100, box 24, file 84–12–5. Changes in the letter have been italicized. 20 Wherett to Camsell, 25 September 1944, lac , r g 22, vol. 100, box 24, file 84–12–5. 21 Camsell to Wherett, 29 September 1944, LA C , R G 22, vol. 100, box 24, file 84–12–5. 22 A compromise was worked out, which basically involved the department totally distancing itself from Moore’s report, which was to make no mention of the department’s original involvement with it. Rather, the report was only to mention that it was supported by the c ssrc as part of the Arctic Survey. It was on this basis that a condensed version of the report was published in the c j e p s in February 1945 and in The New Northwest in 1947. 23 John Robbins to T.F. McIlwraith, 28 September 1944, uta–ir, B1972– 0025/021 (09). See Brison (chap. 10,this volume) for a more detailed account of what transpired at this meeting. 24 T.H. Manning to Dr F. Butler, 9 January 1945, uta – ir, B1972–0025/021 (12). Evenden (1998, 56) observed that both Gibson and Camsell “imposed rigid authority on their departments and reportedly treated the administration of the North as if it were their personal fiefdom.”

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25 Robbins to Innis, 23 November 1944, uta– ir, B1972–0025/021 (09). Earlier that year, R.A. McKay noted in a letter to Benoit Brouilette (circulated to other c ssrc executive members, including Innis and Robbins) that Gibson’s division was “rather perturbed about [The Arctic Survey], since they heard about it only through a report of the Rockefeller Foundation … We should go carefully so as to ensure their cooperation, which will be necessary, both to secure access to the Territory and access to their files” (Evenden 1998, 56). 26 Manning to Innis, 29 December 1945, uta –ir, B1972–0025/021 (12). Ultimately, however, as Evenden (1998, 63) notes: “Innis was told unapologetically by Camsell, Gibson’s superior, that his department had barred Manning from access to the files ‘for a number of reasons.’” Evidently, there was concern in the department that members of the Arctic Survey were in the process of “‘scooping’ governmental material,” which had been earmarked for use in the volume Canada’s New Northwest, edited by Camsell. 27 Lamb to Innis, 11 September 1945, u ta–ir, B1972–0025/021 (12). Along the same lines, Richard Finnie, who had been approached by Innis to undertake a systematic study of the Canadian North, was enthusiastic about the papers that appeared in the c j e p s : He noted that they gave him «particular satisfaction because their findings and recommendations are along lines similar to my own in ‘Canada Moves North,’ … One of the aims of this book – like that of your … Committee – was to stimulate a wider interest in the Canadian far north. I like to think that this aim is being achieved.” Finnie to Innis, 8 August 1945, uta –ir, B1972– 0025/021(12). 28 As Brison notes in chapter 10 (this volume), Innis warned that a Canadian-American Arctic Institute would have political implications if it appeared that it was dominated by American interests (219). 29 Parkin to Willits, 24 June 1943, rac–rf, ser. 427, r g 1.1, box 32, fol. 327. 30 Initially, as Parkin recounted, the discussion about the possible formation of an arctic research institute had initially been confined to a group of Canadians. However, members of the Army Air Force’s Arctic, Desert and Tropical Information Center (a dt i c ) In New York heard about the discussions under way through Trevor Lloyd and suggested that, since “Canada and the United States had many common interests in the North,” it would be best if something were done “on a joint CanadianUnited States basis.” The Canadian group (J.R. Beattie, W.F Hanna, Diamond Jenness, Lloyd, Parkin, and Porsild) met in Ottawa on 31 March

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1944 to discuss its initiative in light of the American interest, and it agreed that “a meeting of a substantially wider group form both Canada and the United States should be held to pursue further the idea of an international Canadian-United States organization” (Parkin 1966, 5). When asked by the r f for his advice about whether the formation of an institute was warranted, Innis replied that, though it might have a role to play if it focused on the natural sciences, “it could suitably acquire funding elsewhere” (Evenden 1998, 58). 31 Gould to Willits, 15 April 1944, uta–pef, A1976–0025/018 (08). Willits had been invited to attend but (perhaps because of Innis’s lukewarm response to the institute) decided to “stay away from the conference” as it looked to him “like a conference all set so far as the decision is concerned.” See Willits to Innis, 19 April 1944, uta–pef, A1976–0025/018 (08). Among those accepting invitations to attend were Camsell, Jenness, Porsild, Lloyd, N.A.M. Mackenzie, Parkin, and Stefansson as well as Flint, Carlson, Washburn, and Gould of the a dt i c . See “List of Names to whom invitations have been sent out for informal meeting concerning formation of International Arctic Institute,” u ta–i r, B1972–0025/021 (09). 32 The Arctic Institute of North America, Progress Report, 20 December 1945, u ta–i r, B1972–0025/021 (14). 33 The Arctic Institute of North America, Board of Governors, 1945–1946, u ta – i r, B1972–0025/021 (14). 34 Proposal for a North American Arctic Institute, 1944, uta–ir, B1972– 0025/021 (10). 35 The Arctic Survey largely fulfilled its research goals, with the publication of articles in the c j e p s and the 1947 volume. The ai n a announced that a volume it had sponsored, The North American Arctic edited by Dr L.M. Gould, was to be published by the University of Chicago Press in the fall of 1946. See Arctic Institute of North America, Progress Report, 20 December 1945, u ta– i r, B1972–0025/021 (14). While the collection never materialized, the a i na did launch a journal, Arctic, which first appeared in 1948 and continues to be published as a quarterly. 36 As well as with Camsell’s North Pacific Planning Project. 37 In his civilian guise, he was James Tuzo Wilson, the celebrated University of Toronto geophysicist, who was the founder of the Ontario Museum of Science and is credited with the discovery of plate tectonics. 38 Wilson to Innis, 13 November 1945, u ta–ir, B1972–0025/021 (14). 39 See chapter 12 (this volume). 40 This was a “non-tactical exercise, developed to test the maintenance and the mobility of a small moving force travelling across almost the entire

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Canadian Arctic.” Made up of forty-five men travelling in twelve motorized snow vehicles, the expedition left Churchill, Manitoba, on 15 February 1946 and arrived in Edmonton on 6 May 1946, after having travelled some 3,100 miles by a circuitous route. “Because most of the journey was through remote frozen desert, the operation relied exclusively on air support, the Royal Canadian Air Force (rc a f ) spinning a supply web over the vast Canadian north” (Thrasher 1998, 1). 41 Wilson to Innis, 10 December 1945, uta, Innis Papers, B1972–0025/021 (14). That Wilson believed Exercise Musk Ox embodied the spirit of the a in a is evident in the way he invoked the institute in the midst of a speech given on the 1946 initiative. After asserting that there would be “continuing and increasing civilian interest” in the venture, he notes: “In order to concentrate the interest in this Arctic work and to make available to people who are interested the information that has already been gathered there has recently been formed in Canada an Arctic Institute of North America, which has been set up in Montreal. It has its officers there and a Director, and the object of this, just like a Mining Institute or an Historical Society, it [sic] is to collect together people interested in the Arctic, in the same way as a Mining Institute collects together people interested in Mining, or an Historical Society gathers together people interested in historical matters. I think that is a worthwhile development. It is an international society, set up with people interested in the United States and some interested from Greenland and Alaska and Newfoundland” (Wilson 1946). 42 Shortly thereafter, in a letter to Innis, T.H. Manning noted: “[I] may be interrupted for a while to visit the m us k -o x operation after they get started. I was very strongly pressed by both the Geodetic Service and Army to make the whole trip, but it would only be a waste of time. They are certainly spending a great deal of money which will produce very little result.” Manning to Innis, 29 December 1945, uta –ir, B1972–0025/021 (12). 43 Washburn to Innis, 25 April 1946, uta– ir, B1972–0025/021 (14). 44 Innis to Washburn, 7 October 1946; Washburn to Innis, 25 October 1946. Both in u ta – i r, B1972–0025/021 (11). In a letter accompanying copies of his c h r book reviews, sent to the Scott Polar Research Institute, Innis had also informed its director, Brian Roberts, that an extensive bibliography on the Arctic was in preparation. See Innis to Brian Roberts, 7 October 1944, uta – i r, B1972–0025/021 (09). The results of Mitchell’s (1947) work were published as “Bibliography of the Canadian North.” In June 1947 (the year the Dawson volume was published) the a ina set up its own bibliographic project “as a three-year program to produce a

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comprehensive bibliography of Arctic research publications” (Tremaine 1948, 84–7). See also Tremaine (1953–75). 45 It is instructive that, in the c ssrc’s official account of the Arctic Survey, the role played by the Department of Mines, and Natural Resources was mentioned only in passing, and the financial backing given by the Northwest Territories government was not mentioned at all. As the project was described in the Council’s Fourth Annual Report, 1943–44: “The detailed study of the geography and resources of the Canadian northland, instituted last year and constituting the largest project yet to be undertaken by the Council, has made good progress and is now at the initial stage. To determine the lines on which the study should concentrate, visits to the Northland were arranged on grants for travelling expenses, by the following scholars … Moore, Wherett, Griffith Taylor … Dawson, Hewetson, Currie, Bruce … Manning … [It was] decided that certain of the reports in progress should be published, both separately and in a general volume which it is hoped will appear in 1945 … The success of the year’s operations was made possible by the facilities placed at the disposal of the Council’s grantees by the Dominion Department of Mines and Natural Resources” (Canada 1943–44, 5). 46 For instance, Donald Creighton goes so far as to claim that the wartime circumstances were critical to the formation of both the Social Science Research Council and the Humanities Research Council because Canadian scholars wished to defend themselves from the pressures to provide instrumental knowledge to the government: “This coincidence in time [the war] was the necessary consequence of a much deeper and more important relationship. The inquiries into the state of Canadian studies in the humanities and social sciences and the attempts to give organized support and encouragement to research were all part of the defence of Canadian scholarship in time of crisis” (Creighton 1957, 115).

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12 Northern Enlightenment: Innis’s 1945 Trip to Russia and Its Aftermath william j. buxton

In May 1945, Harold Adams Innis received an invitation from Nikolai D. Belokhvostikov, chargé d’affaires of the u s s r in Ottawa, to be a delegate to the 220th anniversary celebration of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, to take place in Moscow and Leningrad from 15 to 28 June 1945.1 The expenses were to be covered by the academy. Innis was honoured to accept the invitation but modestly attributed it to the fact that the Department of Political Economy (of which he had been chair since 1937) was highly regarded and that one of his predecessors, Professor James Mavor, had had a “deep interest in Russia.” Noting that his acceptance “must be contingent on numerous arrangements,” he requested information about “the details of transportation in Russia so that [he] could undertake certain negotiations regarding possible connections from Canada.” He also pointed out that he needed to clear up “details such as passport changes and questions of University administration.”2 Innis was part of a Canadian delegation composed of himself, Hans Selye,3 and Alf Erling Porsild.4 Selye represented the Royal Society of Canada, and Porsild represented the Canadian Geographical Society. However, it is not at all clear what body Innis was supposed to represent, nor indeed why he was chosen. Since his invitation came from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa rather than from the Soviet Academy, it was likely the case that Innis’s contacts in Ottawa played a role in his selection.5 Innis’s trip to Russia was evidently a topic of conversation in the Department of External Affairs (d e a) on the eve of his departure.6 Moreover, Innis was given a copy of the notes that assistant ambassador to the Soviet Union, Léon Mayrand, had

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made on what he had experienced when travelling the same route between eastern Canada and Moscow in January 1945.7 During the time that the three delegates were in Moscow, Mayrand, the acting Canadian ambassador to Moscow in the absence of Dana Wilgress,8 went out of his way to squire the Canadian delegates to various diplomatic receptions, where they could meet socially with the notables in the Moscow scene. Following his return to Canada, Innis stopped in at the de a and provided some of its members with an account of his visit to the Soviet Union.9 He also sent a copy of a diary he kept of his Russian journey to G.T. de Glazebrook of the d e a.10 Glazebrook circulated it to his colleagues in the d e a and also had extracts sent to Canadian ambassador Wilgress in Moscow.11 Finally, when Innis asked the Soviet Embassy about how his trip was to be reimbursed, he learned that the de a had generously volunteered to pay for the Canadian portion of his trip.12 This suggests that this agency – in conjunction with Robert Coats, head of the Canadian Social Science Research Council – likely played a role in Innis’s being invited.13 The tacit understanding may have been that Innis would use the trip as a fact-finding mission to provide information about the Soviet Union to Canadian officials, with particular reference to what Russia was doing in its Arctic regions. There appear to have been similar considerations involved in the selection of Porsild as a delegate. Officially, the invitation from the Soviet Academy had been extended to the Canadian Geographical Society, of which Porsild was a Fellow. However, the invitation to attend the Jubilee Meeting actually came to Porsild from Dr Charles Camsell, the deputy minister of mines and resources (who also served as commissioner of the Northwest Territories and Indian Affairs).14 According to Porsild, Camsell wanted him “to keep the interests of the Department of Mines and Resources in mind and to make useful contacts with Russian scientific institutions and with individual Russian scientists.” In particular, because of Porsild’s extensive experience in the Arctic, Camsell wanted him to “inquire into the development, exploration, and administration of National resources, in boreal and arctic parts of the U.S.S.R.” Indeed, Camsell thought that the visit to Russia would also be a good opportunity for Porsild to undertake a similar investigation in Finland and Sweden to “study methods of forest management, land use, administration of natural resources and game management.” The request by Camsell that Porsild undertake research in Finland and Sweden

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explains why the latter flew to Stockholm with the Swedes and the Finns following the end of the Jubilee Celebration rather than accompanying Innis and Selye on the return trip to Canada via Siberia and Alaska (Porsild n.d., 1, 53). Innis, to be sure – as he was frequently to admit – had no particular expertise on the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, given that his early work on transportation and staples dealt with Canada in a global context, it was almost inevitable that he would give attention to Russia, which was a major actor on the world scene. He had a longstanding interest in the country, going back to his early staples research. By virtue of his rural upbringing, coupled with his experience of living on a farm in Alberta, Innis sought to understand how the production of wheat in Canada compared with that of other countries in the world, including Russia. He began to explore this issue in his historical examination of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which gave considerable attention to the complex interplay between agricultural development in western Canada and the building of a national rail system (Innis 1923). While Innis did not directly pursue this line of research himself,15 he encouraged his student, George Britnell, to undertake a comparative study of wheat production in Canada, Australia, and the Soviet Union (Innis 1936d). In his study of the contemporary fur industry in Canada, he used data on the “Euro-Asian” and Russian fur trade to help place the Canadian fur industry within an international context (Innis 1927b).16 His broader history of the fur trade, published three years later, also made extensive mention of the interplay between Russian fur traders and the development of the industry in Canada (1930c).17 As noted in chapter 9, Innis’s interest in Russia, as deepened through his review essays in the c h r , provided the basis for the rf -sponsored Arctic Survey, under the auspices of the Canadian Social Science Research Council. In effect, probably more so than any other country in the world, the Soviet Union served as a point of reference for Innis in his efforts to understand Canada. To be sure, Innis (1930b) used Western Europe as a basis for comparing “young countries” such as Canada with older, more established countries. And he was continually at pains to distinguish Canada from the United States, particularly in terms of their respective frontiers of settlement. But the Soviet Union, unlike Europe and the United States, did not represent the negative background to Canada’s more positive foreground; it was viewed as a country that, by virtue of its similarity in its northern geographical

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location, in its size, in its resource base (particularly fur and wheat), and in its transportation and communication challenges, could be usefully compared to Canada in terms of its path of development. Indeed, because its northern regions were comparable to Canada’s in terms of climate and topography, Innis was of the view that Soviet practices of engineering, transportation, and agriculture provided insights into how Canada might address broadly similar issues. In the same way that the Soviet Union had been faced with the challenge of “developing” Siberia, Canada was now beginning to address how northern areas – ranging from provincial norths to the High Arctic – could be opened up to settlement, agriculture, industry, and new forms of transportation and communication.18 Independently of Innis’s work related to the Soviet Union, The University of Toronto was making an effort to put issues related to the country on its agenda. In the fall of 1944, a series of lectures on Russia was held at Convocation Hall.19 Working with Sidney Smith (then principle of University College who was to become president of the University of Toronto), Innis sought to collect information about how the Americans were organizing programs for the exchange of students with the Soviet Union, with a view to developing a similar program at the University of Toronto.20 To this end, he contacted Seymour Harris of Harvard, who informed him of the American programs.21 While Innis had become increasingly involved with matters pertaining to Russia, it still came as a surprise to him when he received the invitation to attend the Jubilee Celebration. Nevertheless, he was quickly able to make all of the necessary arrangements for his visit.22 The group left Rockcliffe airfield in Ottawa on an rcaf Beechcraft airplane in the late afternoon of June 6. They reached Edmonton early the next morning, leaving for Fairbanks, Alaska, around 4:00 pm , after having changed planes. In Fairbanks they were met by the Russian colonel who was responsible for the Soviet Trans-Siberian Air Staging Route.23 They stayed at quarters in the American Officers Club until the afternoon of 9 June, at which point they boarded their wellappointed Douglas C 47 aircraft with a crew of four.24 After refuelling in Nome, Alaska, they flew over the Bering Sea, landing at Morokovo on the evening of 10 June,25 spending the evening in a guesthouse there.26 The following day they proceeded to Moscow with stops at Yakutsk (12 June),27 Kirensk, Omsk (13 June), and Sverdklosk, arriving in Moscow on 14 June, where, after “much photographing and

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12.1  Innis (left), Selye (middle), and Porsild (right) at a train station in the Soviet Union.

the like,” they were taken by taxi to the Savoy Hotel (Christian 1981, 21).28 Since part of the celebration took place in Leningrad, Innis and the other delegates travelled there by train, leaving on the evening of 24 June and returning on 28 June.29 He and Selye left Moscow by plane on 30 June, this time accompanied by some of the American delegation. Aside from a stop in Novosibirsk, they took the same route as they did when they had originally flown from Ottawa via Edmonton and Nome, Alaska. Porsild returned via Sweden. While the official reason for Innis’s trip was to attend the meetings of the Soviet Academy, these turned out to be a relatively minor aspect of his visit. Indeed, all of the delegates met together formally only on three occasions. These consisted of “Celebration Meetings,” comprised of three academic presentations by members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, followed by “Messages of Greeting.”30 The first presentation was at the Bolshoi Opera House in Moscow on 16 June to open the sessions; the second was at the House of Unions in Moscow on 17 June; and the third was held in the Concert Hall of the State Philharmonic in Leningrad on 21 June, on the evening of the day that the delegates arrived from Moscow. As these meetings

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consisted mostly of official presentations and the reading of long papers, Innis and the other delegates seemed to have found them quite boring.31 To be sure, Innis was very impressed by the large official functions, such as the visit to the Kremlin and the victory celebration. In addition to the three “Celebration meetings,” delegates were invited to participate in sittings of the various sections of the Academy of Sciences. Innis seemed to find these meetings of much greater intellectual value than the plenary sessions as they gave him an opportunity to engage with what the Russians were doing in the field of economic history. As he noted in his diary entry for 18 June 1945: Drove out to branch of Academy with humanities and met Russian historians and graduate students and heard papers. One paper emphasized Marxist dialectic but two other papers very interesting on the early Slavs. Probable that learning will survive demands of state for constant recognition of Marxist dogma and latter will become part of ritual rather than belief and excellent work according to modern standards will continue though it may be subordinated to demands of state i.e. building up Slav tradition of study of enclosures in England as throwing light on their land problem. The enormous emphasis on the natural sciences and the relation to utility may influence the humanities in the same direction. (Christian 1981, 28) All the same, Innis was generally positive about the practice of economic history in the Soviet Union because he felt that the Marxist approach was losing its grip. This was evident in his reflections on a “Saturday night special session of [the] history section interested in English history – particularly enclosure movement and revolutions”: “Great interest in ikons – veneration of writers and students – Marx, Engels, Tolstoi, Lenin – revolution created by writers – especially with restrictions of old regime in newspapers. Marxist ideology driving people to do excellent work on English history or subjects foreign to Russia – lip service to Marxist approach” (Christian 1981, 31). Innis’s engagement with the practice of economic history in Russia spurred him to reflect upon how Western economic theory was biased in its own way: Inability of classical theory to write [about] diversity of economic development leads to emergence of ideologies designed to

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accentuate differences with classical tradition. Economic history offers wider approach. Classical theory emerging from AngloSaxon background designed in simplicity for wide extension – too close an association with development of industrial revolution and insufficient effort to extend development – significant that Webbs on fringe of economics became interested in Russia. (Christian 1981, 30) In Innis’s view, Russian scholarship in economic history had a good deal to offer the West and deserved to be supported. As he noted to his economic history colleague Anne Bezanson (who was also an officer of the Social Science Division of the rf ): I wanted to talk to you about the problems of Russian scholarship but that can wait. We did find a determined effort to continue the Vinogradoff tradition in the study of English land tenure. They presented a seminar to Tawney and myself in the work that they had in mind and they listened most attentively to a long series of comments by Tawney on agrarian problems in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My guess is that they have a few graduate students ready to take up work in England as soon as the resources are available. I am sure that any efforts in that direction would be greatly appreciated in Russia and would greatly strengthen the position of scholars in Russia. They appeared to me to only pay lip service to Marx and the better of them not even that and it is important that we should try to encourage them. I have not written N.J.W. [Joseph Willits] about this but I would be grateful if you discussed this with him. I would even say that there is something to be said for having one of your representatives visit Russia and get in touch with their work. The American Embassy in Moscow might help but they are so busy with other matters that one can expect little.32 All the same, Innis did not benefit from meeting other foreign delegates as his colleagues apparently did. Fields outside of the natural sciences were poorly represented by international participants. The so-called “Sciences of Man” was largely confined to physical anthropology and archaeology, with only a smattering of delegates outside of the sciences attending.33 Nevertheless, Innis was able to get a sense of how the humanities and social sciences were practised in the

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Soviet Union and the dangers they faced in becoming overly directed towards issues of utility. But, more generally, he evinced great enthusiasm for Russian science, the extent to which it was supported by the state, and the status that it enjoyed among the Russian people.34 Shortly after his return from Russia, he noted in an interview conducted jointly with Selye: “Development of science within the social structure of the country is far more advanced in Russia than in the rest of the world and the status of the scientists in the U.S.S.R. is higher than anywhere else.” The two delegates were impressed with the “science consciousness of everyone in Russia down to the people on the street.” Indeed, as they observed: “Sessions of the Academy of Sciences were an important national event – Front page stuff in Russian newspapers.” They pithily noted that, unlike some countries, in which Royal Academy of Science members were “treated like garbage collectors,” academicians in Russia had “high … social status. They receive[d] excellent pay, free travel everywhere, and other special privileges with the same ratings as Commissars or Canadian Cabinet ministers.”35 Along similar lines, Innis noted in his diary: “Tremendous prestige of academicians – ballet and science great interests of Republic 220th anniversary a magnificent contribution to reconstruction using science as first step toward common approach – all countries represented except Germany and Italy and Japan and apparently it was considered that Germans might be invited” (Christian 1981, 30). He noted further that the Soviet Union had gone through “twentyfive years of preparation for war and eventual success.” The Jubilee Celebration was “Russia’s way of asking everybody to celebrate and singling out science as the point on which general concurrence could be reached” (Christian 1981, 43). In the interview with a Globe and Mail journalist upon his return, Innis noted “the fact that the Russian [sic] academy of Sciences was aware of the need for resumption of consultation on scientific problems with other countries was an encouraging augury for the future.” Innis was also pleased that the wartime ban on the interchange of scientific material had been lifted. Noting that Russia had embarked on a “tremendous publication program,” he called attention to the fact that “about 100 translators were at work” and reflecting the relaxation of wartime restrictions, “the 20 volume Life of Lenin already had gone to twenty editions of 15,000 to 20,000 copies each.” Innis was quoted in the article as saying that “Russia’s greatest scientific achievements … appear to be

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in physiology, botany, some branches of physics and mathematics, but most outstanding has been in soil analysis.” Indeed, “scientific accomplishments,” according to Innis, “played a great part in the amazing success of the Red Army.”36 In addition to learning a great deal about the sciences in the Soviet Union, along with the social rituals involved with them, Innis benefited from extensive artistic events,37 visits to museums, excursions,38 research institutes,39 and attendance at embassy receptions organized by the Canadian legation in Moscow.40 The social events permitted Innis to meet numerous persons from the worlds of diplomacy, journalism, and the academy.41 Above all, Innis valued the opportunity to meet with Russians, although he needed to rely on Porsild and the translator assigned to the Canadian delegation to communicate with them. But Innis’s main preoccupation – in line with the concerns of the Department of Mines and Resources, the d e a, and the Social Science Research Council to find out more about the development of natural resources in the Soviet Union with particular reference to the North – was to better understand how science had been brought to bear by the Soviet Union to develop its northern tier. To this end, he piggy-backed on the itinerary arranged by Porsild, who had a clear mandate to examine how the Soviet Union was developing its natural resources, particularly in the northern regions. Hence, Innis’s diary, media interviews, and later publications made prominent mention of issues pertaining to the Russian North. Innis claimed that “freer interchange of scientific knowledge between Canada and Russia as an aftermath of the war [was] destined to play a notable part in the opening up of the Canadian Arctic as well as the advancement of agriculture through more extensive soils study.” Moreover: “Russia was leading in Arctic development, and Russians could now, at certain seasons, traverse their entire area, whereas Canada, as yet, could not. Both, however, had a great deal to learn about the frozen north, and exchange of ideas would be mutually beneficial”42 Fortuitously for Porsild and Innis, the route they took to and from Moscow was via the route over Siberia, which featured stops in a number cities in the Russian North (including Novosibirsk on their return journey). In Yakutsk, they visited the telegraph and post office “both operated entirely by girls.” They saw the museum that featured both natural and historical displays (Porsild n.d., 15). In Omsk, the Canadian delegates visited the Omsk Agricultural and Experimental

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Station “situated a few miles south of the city.” They were met by the Station’s director, Professor Kisurin, “the well known plant breeder,” who took the visitors “through his 25 acres of experimental garden where he claimed he had 6,000 different kinds of winter-hardy apple crosses.” In addition to the apple trees, they were shown “Siberian crabs,” “Manchurian walnuts, as well as grape vines, all adapted to bear up well to winter freezing” (20). While Innis did not describe the experiments in the same detail as did his botanist colleague Porsild, he was nonetheless extremely impressed by what he observed at the “elaborate agricultural institute”: Perennial grasses as basis for wheat – apple trees developed along ground to enable covering by snow and protection.43 Great interest in improvement of agriculture by experiment. Canada probably has much to learn from work in Siberia – vast area of similar characteristic means development of special varieties of plants and experiments will probably be of considerable advantage to Canada. (Christian 1981, 21) In relation to the North, one of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Arctic Institute in Leningrad on 28 June 1945.44 They were met by the director of the institute, Admiral Bunitsky (W. Kh. Buinitzki), who had won the “Hero of the Arctic” as a member of the Polar drift in the ice-breaker Sedov,45 along with “the Assistant director – Professor Wiese, [Professor Vladimir Vize] who obviously was the scientist of the institute.” Much of the visit was taken up with a presentation of charts “indicating the work of the Russian ice patrol along the Arctic coast shipping route where the institute operated numerous weather stations.”46 The meeting, however, also featured a presentation that undoubtedly intrigued Innis, given his interest in northern exploration and settlement. As Porsild described the visit: Bunitsky … showed us some relics recently discovered by an expedition led by Professor Alexi (Pavlovich) Okladnikov to the east coast of the Taiymr Peninsula which amongst other results had proved that in the early part of the 17th Century Russian prospectors and fur-traders had penetrated and wintered that far north. Part of the discovery consisted of a bag of silver coins, the earliest dating back to the year 1505 AD. Shortly after returning to our hotel we each received a letter by special messenger from

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Bunitsky enclosing a set of 6 of these coins each mounted on a card and properly labelled. (Porsild n.d., 45).47 The visit to the Arctic Institute was followed by a visit to the new Soviet Geophysical Institute, which consisted of a two-hour presentation by its director, Professor Mikandroff, on a range of topics related to geophysics and meteorology, including subjects more specifically related to the North, such as icing of aircraft in flight and the study of frozen soils (Porsild n.d., 46).48 In Innis’s view, it was the Soviet Union’s advancement in science and technology that made its expansion into its northern territories possible. This suggested that, in order to go down the same path, Canada would need to vastly upgrade its programs in scientific and technological development. Innis’s impressions of science in Russia led him to reflect on the role of science in relation to nation-states, with particular reference to institutions and practices in Canada: Sociology of Science – Dangers of nationalism to science – inability to get universal view – no longer adequate check on standards by international reviews – possible for each nation to hide itself under its own verbiage … Danger of science adapting itself to the market place and selling for what can be got … Function R.S.C. [Royal Society of Canada] to offset influence of universities and of departments with universities pressing claims at expense of whole. National Research Foundation and Ontario Research Foundation in main responsive to industry or to industry with votes … Universities no guarantee to protection of science with weakness of administration and dominance of boards of governors. (Christian 1981, 41–2) As Innis was quite involved in the affairs of the Royal Society (he would be elected its president in 1946), his visit to Russia helped him to gain insights into how the organization could work more effectively to advance the cause of science in Canada. Continuing a practice that he had established with his research trips during the 1920s and 1930s, Innis kept a detailed diary of his visit, which consisted of notes, data, commentary, and observations.49 His early diaries were largely used as repositories upon which he drew in preparing works for publication.50 However, the fate of the Russian diary proved to be much different. In response

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to the enormous interest in the visit of the three delegates to Russia generated by the media,51 Innis made use of the diary to reach the general public, publishing excerpts of it in the Financial Post. Upon reading the interview with Innis published in the Globe and Mail, Financial Post editor Ronald McEachern desperately sought to reach Innis in order to secure commentary from him about the trip: Confirming my wire of July 7 and my telephone call to Mrs. Innis on June 9, this is our formal request that at our early convenience you write for the Financial Post and perhaps also MacLean’s magazine or grant us exclusive major interview other than casual comment to the general press on your Russian trip. You will understand my immense eagerness on this matter, so would you be good enough to telephone me on your return. We obviously do not want to be beaten on such an important and outstanding story possibility.52 Innis suggested, rather, that the newspaper publish extracts from his diary. These appeared in a series in August, were extremely well received, and served as the basis for a number of subsequent publications (Innis 1945b, 1945c, 1945d).53 Innis also made mention of his trip to his friends and colleagues, many of whom expressed interest in learning more about his travels. In response to this expression of curiosity about the trip, Innis prepared a list of persons to whom copies of his diary would be sent, and he began circulating the document in the fall of 1945.54 Indeed, the document attained something of a Samizdat quality as his colleagues, rather than returning it as they had been instructed, loaned it to their friends before sending it back to Innis.55 Innis was also inundated with invitations to speak about his journey, many of which he accepted.56 These talks, in turn – in conjunction with the newspaper coverage of his trip – served to generate invitations to write further articles.57 It was evident that Innis’s encounter with Russia had an enormous impact upon him. He recorded his thoughts on the Soviet Union in what he called his “Idea File,” which he began in 1945 (the same year as his voyage). In particular, he made numerous entries about the Soviet Union in the two years after his return to Canada (Christian 1981). He also made reference to his experiences in his correspondence. For instance, as he noted in a letter to Anne Bezanson:58

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The whole venture … was a tremendous shock to me … It may seem ridiculous to think that Marx should be used to open up Russia to the industrial techniques of the West, but so it seems. I have felt the necessity for a much broader approach in economic history and the very great danger of a very narrow approach such as we seem to get nothing else but. Somehow we must work out approaches in the social sciences which will include the Russian situation now that it has become part of the West. I think I learned a little about the necessity of being tolerant and to be a little humiliated that I knew almost nothing about the situation. Innis also expanded on the ideas that he had jotted down to develop an analysis stressing the differences between Russia and the West in terms of civilizations. These were first articulated in the speech that he gave at Queen’s University in February of 1946. He stressed that the “necessity of cutting away the underbrush and of enabling us to see each other ha[d] become imperative.” While Russia shared the heritage of the West, it had “been dominated by the Greek or the Eastern rather than the Latin or western branch of Mediterranean civilization.” This eventually led to a situation whereby “political power was monarchical and spiritual power democratic in the east, and political power was democratic and spiritual power monarchical in the West.” This configuration became entrenched, as “more and more effectively each nation developed its own narrow outlook, and the possibilities of breaking through the ever-rising and ever-widening walls disappeared. The problem still remains acute, as the study of the views of other nations found within the bounds of another nation will show.” He faulted the media for exacerbating this situation: “Limitations on the press and dependence on the headline inevitably make for superficial information and an unstable public opinion which can be dominated by political leaders in control of the parliament or radio.”59 It is also noteworthy that Innis’s position in relation to the Soviet Union shifted from a rather idealist point of view to one that was more realistic and circumspect. This was evident in a talk that he gave at the Men’s Canadian Club in Brandon, Manitoba, in June of 1946. He underscored the fact that the “greatest obstacle in establishing relations between Russia and the Western World was the difficulty in establishing a basis of communication.” Because of the

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great differences in law, language, tradition, and history, it was “almost impossible to establish contact with the Russian people.” The setting up of “propaganda screens” by the Western world and Russia “in regard to the other” made for a further division. Moreover, the Soviet Union differed from Western countries in its lack of traditions of common law and compromise and was largely untouched by the Reformation and the Renaissance. There was also a geo-political factor that affected the outlook of each: the Anglo-Saxon world, with its maritime orientation, thought in terms of attack; Russia, as a land power, thought in terms of defence.60 After his trip to Russia, Innis’s ongoing work on communications took a decided shift, expanding from a study of the history of paper and printing to an examination of civilization. It may have been his exposure to a whole different world that helped place his historical study of media in comparative perspective. Upon his return to Canada, he began to frame his work more in terms of how communications related to empire. Pivotal, in this regard, was understanding how the trajectory of the West was different than that of the Byzantine Empire, from which modern Russia had emerged. The change of direction of his communication work underscores the fact that there was a strong reflexive aspect to his visit as his observations led him to examine comparative issues in Western countries and in Canada. Indeed, he appeared to use his diary not just as a record of his observations and his experiences but also as a sounding-board for his thoughts about the implications of the Russian experience for Western civilization, with particular reference to Canada. More specifically, his encounter with the Soviet Union served to put wind in the sails of the Russian-related ventures that were under way at the University of Toronto. As noted, prior to receiving the invitation to attend the Jubilee Celebration, Innis was already engaged in trying to procure more information about the Soviet Union’s northern activities – as part of the Arctic Survey – and was looking into ways that Russian students could study at the University of Toronto. In the fall of 1945, a special committee on Russian studies was formed at the University of Toronto. By December, it had produced a report and had sent a copy to the d e a in Ottawa. Innis was closely involved with this initiative, as was evident in the fact that he received a long letter from Arnold Smith (whom he had met in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow) about the report soon after he had received it.

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As Smith noted to Innis: “This morning I mailed President Smith a letter, with some I fear voluminous enclosures, commenting on the report of the special committee on Russian Studies. As you know, I am very interested in the proposal. I feel however that the direction of Russian Studies, if the matter is organized as the committee suggested, would inevitably be in an undesirably vulnerable position – from left and right.”61 As part of its planning for developing Russian studies at the University of Toronto, the special committee “decided that part of the sum of $5,000, which [was] provided in the budget for 1945–46, should be devoted to purchasing Russian books … Sergius Yakobson, consultant in Slavic History at the Library of Congress in Washington” was invited “to come to the University and make recommendations with respect to purchases of Russian books.”62 Yakobson was pleased “to assist the University in assessing its collection of materials on Russia.”63 He arrived at the University of Toronto on 19 March 1946 and spent a few days surveying the library’s Russian collection, with a view to advising the university about how it might best proceed in developing its holdings in this area.64 Soon after Yakobson’s visit, Sidney Smith wrote to Norman Robertson, under-secretary of state for external affairs, about some issues related to the development of Russian studies at the University of Toronto. He noted that Yakobson had confirmed their sense that “it [was] exceedingly difficult to get out of Russia material printed since 1917, and he informed [them] that a procurement officer [was] being attached to the American legation in Moscow whose duty it [would] be to promote the export of printed material for use in libraries and universities in the United States.” Smith then asked Robertson if something along these lines was in the works for the Canadian legation in Moscow.65 Shortly thereafter, Innis, who was privy to the efforts made to survey the library collection and to approach the d e a, raised the issue with John Marshall, associate director of the Humanities Division of the rf. He noted to Innis that he had received his letter “about the ‘problem’ of developing an interest in Russian studies” but confessed that he did not feel competent “to answer all the questions … proposed,” suggesting that Innis consult with Mortimer Graves of the acl s.66 There is no evidence that Innis did so, but he did have further correspondence about the issue with Joseph Willits, director of the Social Science Division, in the summer of 1946.67 Innis’s efforts were eventually to bear fruit as, in the spring of 1949, the rf provided a

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grant to the University of Toronto for the establishment of a department of Slavic studies, under the direction of Professor E.B. Shore.68 Innis’s postwar activities in relation to the Soviet Union were premised on the need for greater mutual understanding between Russia and the West within a relationship that, it was hoped, would be an increasingly cooperative one. However, while he was successful in getting Slavic studies off the ground at the University of Toronto, his pleas for greater cooperation between Russia and the West largely fell on deaf ears. While, initially, government officials and opinion-makers appeared to have been quite receptive to the approach that Innis proposed, the Gouzenko Affair, which broke just after his return, put the relations between Canada and the Soviet Union on a much different footing. That Innis had become increasingly frustrated with the entrenchment of Cold War Manichaeism is evident in the comments he made in an address given to representatives of the United Church in Canada: From both groups (Great Britain and the United States) we are increasingly subjected to pressure and in turn to bureaucratic tendencies dictated by external forces. We have no sense of our limitations. On the question of Russia we are constantly pushed into a position in which it is assumed that we take sides. We have little chance to raise questions as to the dominance of military authorities of the United States, or as to the political needs of the Labour Party of Great Britain. We seem destined to occupy in North America the place of Czechoslovakia as a show window in relation to Russia in Europe, first as in the British Empire and now as in the American Empire.69 Unfortunately, the impressive body of work that Innis produced on Russia fell prey to the “taking of sides” to which he alluded. Given that the approach Innis advocated was resolutely opposed to the polarization that was occurring, it fell out of favour and received little attention. To be sure, his writings on Russia were later collected and published, but they have been largely ignored, most likely because they fell between the poles of Innis’s early work in Canadian economic history and his later work on the history of communication.70 By drawing attention to how this body of work was closely bound up with Innis’s long-standing interest in the North, it is hoped that this chapter will help to underscore how Innis’s interest in

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northern issues intersected with his broader concerns regarding how a rapprochement between Eastern and Western civilizations might be effected – an issue that is as crucial today as it was when Innis made his memorable visit to Russia.

notes

1 It is not entirely clear why the 220th anniversary was considered to be of significance (as opposed to more typical choices, such as the 200th or the 250th). It may have been the case that Soviet officials sought to link the academy to the milestones in world science that had been celebrated during the Second World War. As Vucinich (1984, 2005) describes this practice of “commemorating great dates in the history of scientific thought”: “In 1942 it [the Soviet Academy of Sciences] observed the three-hundredth anniversary of the death of Galileo and used the opportunity to enrich Galilean Studies in the Russian language. In 1943 several festive convocations marked the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Newton … In the same year, the academy celebrated the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus. The purpose of these and similar celebrations was both to honor the masters of classical science and to point out Russia’s intellectual debt – and extensive affiliation with – world science.” It could also be conjectured that the number 220 was appealing because when the year is written in Roman numerals (CCXX), it has a pleasing symmetry. 2 Harold Innis to N. Belokhvostikov, 31 May 1945, uta –ir , B1972– 0025/003 (06). 3 Hans Hugo Bruno Selye (1907–82) was born in Vienna, the son of an Austrian mother and a father who was a Hungarian military physician. His mother was Austrian. After having received his basic schooling in Komárno (now in Slovakia), he studied at the medical faculty in Prague (also visiting the universities of Paris and Rome), graduating from the German University in Prague in 1929. He worked as assistant to the Institute of Experimental Pathology and the histological laboratory until 1931, when he was awarded his PhD. At that point he received a Rockefeller fellowship to study at Johns Hopkins University, where he undertook research in biochemistry and hygienics. The following year he accepted a lectureship of biochemistry at McGill University, becoming professor of histology in 1941. From 1945 he was the first director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery, Université de Montréal,

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a position he held until 1976. Perhaps best known as “the father of stress,” in 1979, he and Alvin Toffler founded the Canadian Institute of Stress. His commentary on the meetings in the Soviet Union can be found in Selye (1945). 4 Alf Erling Porsild (1901–1977) was born and educated in Copenhagen, Denmark. He served as assistant botanist at the Danish Biological Station at Godhavn, Greenland, from to 1922 to 1925. In 1926, the Canadian government invited Porsild and his brother Robert to conduct a study of the potential for reindeer grazing in northern Alaska as well as in Canada’s North. To this end, he spent the next decade working on this project. He not only oversaw a reindeer research station in the Mackenzie Delta but also brought in a number of Lapps to help teach the Inuit reindeer-herding techniques. He became a member of the National Museum of Canada in 1935 and bore the primary responsibility for the National Herbarium, which expanded considerably under his leadership. Indeed, his work involved extensive fieldwork in the North collecting specimens. From 1941 to 1943 he was Canadian consul in Greenland, and in 1946 he became chief botanist of the National Museum of Canada. In his capacity as reviewer of books on the North for the Canadian Historical Review, Innis was quite familiar with Porsild’s work in the Canadian North. Indeed, in a 1936 review essay, Porsild’s book on reindeer grazing in the North was among those he included (Porsild 1929; Innis 1936b, 197–8). Porsild, moreover, as a friend and colleague of Stefansson, had been involved in the deliberations about developing a research project on the Canadian North (see chapter 11, this volume). During the course of the trip to the Soviet Union, Porsild took numerous photographs (copies of which he later gave to Innis), prepared a report based on his journey, and wrote an article on it for the Canadian Geographical Review. See Porsild (n.d.) and Porsild (1945). 5 In particular, as chairman of the Research Committee of the Canadian Social Science Research Council, Innis was instrumental in the council’s receiving a grant-in-aid of $10,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation in December 1943 to undertake a study of Canada’s northern regions. As discussed in earlier chapters, the study had its origins in Innis’s efforts to put in place a study of Canada’s Arctic modelled on research initiatives that had been undertaken in relation to the northern reaches of the Soviet Union. 6 H.R. Kemp to Innis, 16 July 1945, u ta–ir , B1972–0003/037 (02), B1972–0025/004 (05). Kemp was a friend and colleague of Innis, who had just left the Department of Political Economy to take a position in the Department of Trade and Commerce in Ottawa.

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7 In a cover letter to the document, addressed to Norman Robertson (under secretary of state for the dea ), Mayrand noted that he would “be glad if these notes could be useful to others who might have to undertake the same journey while conditions remain[ed] the same.” Mayrand to Robertson, 4 January 1945 (either the date of the letter is incorrect or Mayrand drafted the letter on the day of his departure), uta –ir, B1972– 0003/031 (20). 8 Wilgress was attending the Conference on International Organization held in San Francisco. The conference took place from 25 April 25 to 26 June 1945. The Charter of the United Nations was signed on the final day of the conference. 9 As G. P. de T. de Glazebrook noted to Innis in a letter to him shortly after the latter’s return from the Soviet Union: “We were very much interested to hear of your account of your visit to the Soviet Union when you were here on Tuesday. I understand that Mr. Read had mentioned to you before you left the possibility of writing a brief and informal report for the Department on your visit to the Soviet Union and you consented to do so. I hope you can see your way clear to letting us have such a record of your experiences. Anything you say will, of course, be regarded as confidential, and you may, therefore, feel free to address any aspect of your contact with the people of the Soviet Union (De Glazebrook to Innis, 13 July 1945, uta–i r, A1976–0025/012 [04]).” De Glazebrook was a former student of Innis’s who later became a University of Toronto colleague (Department of History) of Innis who had joined the dea in 1941. 10 de Glazebrook to Innis, 30 October 1945, uta –ir, B1972–0025/04 (04). 11 That this material was to wind up in Wilgress’s hands gives credence to the notion that one of the purposes of Innis’s trip was to secure answers to the questions that Wilgress had posed but that had remained unanswered. 12 N. Belokhvostikov to Innis, 22 August 1945, uta –ir, B1972–0025/004 (03). 13 Coats, it should be noted, was not only on the executive of the c ssrc with Innis but also, in his capacity as Dominion statistician, he had had a working relationship with Innis since the early 1920s. 14 Camsell had founded the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 1929 and had been its president for eleven years. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the organization’s Canadian Geographical Journal, for which Porsild agreed to contribute an article based on his trip to Russia. 15 To be sure, he did frequently refer to agricultural issues in his work, and he prepared an edited edition of the diary of the Wheat Pool director, A.J. McPhail (Innis 1940c).

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16 In order to place the production of furs in Canada within a global context, Innis included an abundance of data on the supply, production, and value of fur elsewhere, including extensive figures on the fur industry in Russia. He also gave close attention to the marketing of furs in Russia and the role played by Leipzig in transferring furs from Asia to Europe (Innis 1927b, 128–9). In assembling the data on the Russian fur trade, Innis relied heavily on an extensive bibliography of works in German sent to him by Professor Melchior Palyi of the Handelshochschule in Berlin. See Melchior Palyi to Harold Innis, 27 May 1924, uta –pef, A1976– 0025/002 (08). Innis found Lomer (1864) and Klein (1906) to be particularly useful accounts of the Russian and Euro-Asian fur trades. 17 In particular, as with his introductory chapter to The History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Innis makes frequent mention of the Russian fur-trade activities on the west coast of North America. 18 By virtue of having travelled back and forth across the vast expanses of the Soviet Union by aeroplane, Innis developed a greater appreciation of how this form of transport had served to open up the North, both in Russia and in Canada: “Looking back over the route it would appear to have great possibilities as it has been developed during the war for traffic from North America particularly for passengers from Europe. Longer than Atlantic but more interesting and I should think much safer. One begins to see what air transport means to the opening up of the North and the back doors of the Asiatic and North American continents. The standard of skill in flying in Canada and Russia appear [sic] to me to be high and the problems of covering the most difficult areas to have been solved. Air transport has of course been linked to industrial expansion in Siberia” (Christian 1981, 50). 19 “Lectures on Russia at Varsity,” Toronto Star, 13 October 1944, uta –dr, A1973–0051/227 (018). 20 Smith had a long-standing interest in the Soviet Union, as was evident in his earlier activities at the University of Manitoba. 21 Seymour Harris to Harold Innis, 8 May 1945; Sidney Smith to Harold Innis, 23 May 1945. Both in u ta–i r, B1972–0025/3 (07). 22 External affairs processed his application very quickly. 23 On 3 August 1942, the Soviets and Americans agreed to open the AlaskaSiberia air route. On 4 September 1942, the first Russian aircraft arrived in Alaska. The route was in operation for thirty-one months (Weeks 2004, 113–40). 24 The plane had a Russian air crew of four (two pilots, one woman navigator, and a “crew man”) (Christian 1981, 17). (Originally, they were

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supposed to share the aircraft with the American delegation, but the latter had decided to travel via the southern Atlantic route instead, leaving the plane entirely to them.) It took four days because the airplane landed for meals and to rest the crew. “The Russians,” according to Innis, “were very considerate and flew at high elevations to miss the bumps, and also flew in the evenings when it was cooler.” See “Dr. H.A. Innis Returns from Visit to Russia,” unknown newspaper, 16 July 1945, uta –ifr B1991–0029/001 (02). “The navigator of the plane,” as Selye noted, “was a brown-haired, soft spoken girl in her early twenties named Mushenko. She had more decorations than any member of the crew. Her name is legion among the men who fly along the top of the world.” One of the other passengers was “Ivan Ivanovich Burmostroff, a twenty-five year old captain in the red air force who was returning to the Soviet Union after three years abroad.” See Hans Selye, “Peace No Empty Word in Russia: Canadian Just Back, Toronto Daily Star, 17 July 1945, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/37 (02). 25 They had lost a day in crossing the International Date Line, which runs through the Bering Strait. 26 As Porsild noted in his report, the three delegates only began to get to know one another once they were in Soviet air space. They were to spend a good deal of time together and seemed to have developed friendships as a result of the trip. According to Porsild (n.d., 6): “[It is] difficult to imagine two men so entirely different. Innis … is past 50, tall and gaunt and rather quiet; a somewhat dour looking Scot with an extraordinarily keen sense of humor … The younger, Hans Selye … is a vivacious and interesting talker. His father is Czech, his mother Hungarian; he was brought up in Vienna by a French governess and speaks half a dozen languages fluently. He is widely travelled and speaks about himself without inhibition; is of mercurial temperament, soaring when interested, only to become completely lethargic when bored, which is often. In the plane he sleeps by fits and picks up the conversation where he had left off half an hour before.” 27 After describing their sumptuous dinner at the guest house (supplemented by a good deal of alcohol and punctuated by frequent toasts), Porsild (n.d., 12) noted: “On a sideboard stood a magnificent confectioner’s replica of the Kremlin, which our host explained had been made by the cook on the occasion of Mr. [Viacheslav] Molotov’s visit following his recent return from San Francisco.” Foreign Minister Molotov had been attending the United Nations Conference on International Organization that had led to the founding of the United Nations. 28 Christian (1981, 21). On 19 June the Canadian delegates “were moved on very short notice to the National [Hotel] with the French, Hungarian,

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Swedish delegations.” Innis noted: “[The menu was now] table d’hôte rather than à la carte suggesting that we were abusing the à la carte privilege by demands for vodka, caviar and wine” (Christian 1981, 29). 29 While in Leningrad the delegates stayed at the Astoria Hotel, which Innis described as having “hot and cold water, excellent service – a first class as compared to the National [Hotel] a second or third class” (Christian 1981, 34). 30 Around twelve hundred Soviet scientists attended the celebration. They were joined by “127 foreign delegates representing Canada, the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Iran, India, China, and Australia” (Porsild n.d., 2). 31 See Ashby (1947). 32 Innis to Bezanson, 31 August 1945, rac -wp, box 1. 33 That this area was given prominence is evident in the fact that a number of leading figures, such as Henry Field, V. Gordon Childe, and Arthur Upham Pope, were invited. Both Childe and Field provided glowing accounts of their sectional meetings and were also very impressed by the work that was being done in the Soviet Union. See Field (1946) and Childe (1946). 34 In this respect, he shared the views of many of the delegates. After having just returned from the Jubilee Celebration, twelve of the British delegates (considered to be among the country’s top-flight scientists) “turned a press conference into a two-hour testimony meeting in which they paid tribute to Russian science, Russian hospitality and Russian good-will. They spoke almost with envy of the way science in Russia is supported by the state and of the privileged place scientists hold under the Soviets.” See “Everything for Science Russia’s Basic Policy,” Toronto Star, 10 July 1945. uta – i r, B72–0003/37 (02). See also “Soviet Science Gaining: British Savants Report on Trip – Skill, Equipment Praised,” New York Times, 10 July 1945. American scientists were of a similar view, as was evident at a reception under the auspices of the American-Soviet Science Society attended by three hundred scientists (held at the Men’s Faculty Club of Columbia University) that honoured six of the sixteen American delegates to the Jubilee Celebration. “All six praised the hospitality they had received and urged further exchanges of information between the two countries.” See “Dr. Langmuir Predicts Full Cooperation in Showing Progress in World,” New York Times, 22 August 1945. See also Langmuir (1946a, 1946b); Kuznetsov (1945, 358); Field (1946). 35 “Science in Russia ‘Page One Stuff’ Canadians Find,” 7 July 1945, source unknown, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/037 (02).

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36 “Russ Discoveries Seen Aiding Canada in North,” Globe and Mail, 1945 (day and month unknown), u ta–i r, B1972–0003/003 (07). 37 These included Aleksandr Pushkin’s “Last Days”; the playing of Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” by the orchestra of the Bolshoi Opera House of the u s s r; the opera Ivan Susanin by Mikhail Glinka performed at the Bolshoi Opera House (a retitled version of A Life for the Czar, first performed in 1836); Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters performed at the Moscow Art Theatre; The Last Sacrifice by Alexander Ostrovsky, performed at the Moscow Art Theatre; the ballet Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, performed at the Leningrad Opera House; People of Stalingrad by Captain Yuri Chepurin (who had taken part in the Stalingrad battles), performed at the Red Army Theatre; and a farewell concert performed at the Bolshoi Opera House. 38 These included visits to Red Square, the Kremlin, Leo Tolstoy’s house at Yasnaya Poliana, the Moscow Art Gallery, a book exhibit at the Soviet Academy of Science, attendance at the Victory Parade in Red Square (all in Moscow); the botanical gardens in Leningrad and Peterhof in Petrodvretz (a suburb of Leningrad); the university museum, a city park, and the Agricultural College and Experimental Station in Omsk; the telegraph office, post office, city prison, waterfront, and museum in Yakutsk. 39 The Plant Breeding Institute (Yakutsk), the Marx-Lenin Institute (Moscow), the Geophysical Institute and Arctic Institute (Leningrad). 40 These included visits to the Australian Embassy, the Canadian Embassy, and the British Embassy. 41 These included the contingent at the Canadian Embassy (Leon Mayrand, Arnold Smith, and Powers), Robert C. Tucker (attaché at the American Embassy), Archibald Clark Kerr (British ambassador), R.H. Tawney, Eric Ashby (Australian-born scientist), Raymond Davies, Tolstoy’s granddaughter (Sofia A. Tolstoy-Esenin), Marcel Chapelon, Ralph Parker (Moscow correspondent of the New York Times), and Dr Jacob Heiman, Sydenham Hospital, Columbia University (editor of the American Review of Soviet Medicine). 42 “Russ Discoveries” (1945). 43 Innis elsewhere provided more detail, remarking on “frost resistant apple trees, stunted varieties small enough to be protected by snow covering and capable of surviving in such areas as Siberia” (“Russ Discoveries” 1945). 44 Given that the Arctic Institute of North America (founded in September 1944) had been modelled on the Arctic Institute of the ussr, the purpose of Innis’s and Porsild’s visit may have been to gather information for a i na. Charles Camsell, who had chosen Porsild to attend the ussr

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meetings and helped to organize his itinerary, had also been elected chair of a i na. Porsild had attended its organizational meeting, and his brother was on its Board of Governors. See chapter 11 (this volume). 45 Innis was well aware of this episode as it had been recounted in Louis Segal’s Conquest of the Arctic (1939). Segal’s text called attention to “the effective work of Papanin and three others who drifted on a polar ice floe from the North Pole beginning May 21, 1937, to the east coast of Greenland where they were picked up on February 19, 1938” (Innis 1940d, 197). 46 Of the visit to the Arctic Institute, Innis obliquely noted in his diary: “Problems of Arctic – published Arctic Institute Central Geophysical Observatory … Arctic Institute – careful study of ice conditions by use of aeroplane and maps produced month by month as to state of ice. Navigation opened across North late July, August, or early September – difficult conditions at various capes. Tendency of climate of Arctic to warm up. Ice result of wind conditions – temperature on continent – effect of river water. West of Greenland evidence of warming up of Arctic” (Christian 1981, 38). 47 The coins are likely the same ones that can be found in the Innis Papers. They are described as “Coins. – six Russian coins 1584–1645 on paper backing; with 1945 purchase certificate and 1991 appraisal.” Innis’s daughter-in-law, who lived in Geneseo, New York, had the coins appraised by Southern Tier Antiquities of Hornell, New York, in August of 1991. Their value was assessed at twenty to thirty dollars each. See uta –ifr, B1991–0029/054(02). That they were accompanied by a bogus purchase certificate suggests that the donor, Buinitzki, felt that its inclusion was necessary if the coins were to be taken out of the country. 48 Innis noted in his diary that the institute was concerned with: “Study of weather and forecasting services. Measurement of snowfall and relation between snow and river runoff. Plan enormous development of a weather station linking stations of republic. Well-trained young men” (Christian 1981, 38). 49 Notes made by H.A. Innis during research field trips in Canada, UTA , Harold A. Innis Personal Records, B1972–0003 (see also chap. 9, this volume, n1). 50 See in particular, Innis (1927b, 1930c, 1940b). 51 When the visit was first announced, the media coverage was extensive (“Varsity Economist Invited to Russia,” Toronto Telegram, 7 June 1945; “U. of T. Professor on Way to Moscow,” Toronto Star, 7 June 1945; “Canadian Scientists Flying to Moscow,” unidentified source, Canadian

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Press, 8 June 1945). It reached a crescendo upon their return, with a number of in-depth articles appearing. “Russ Discoveries”; Jack Karr, “Soviet Feeling to Allies One of Gratitude: Dr. Innis,” Toronto Star, n.d.; “Science in Russia ‘Page One Stuff’ Canadians Find,” 7 July 1945 (source unknown)); “Women Carry Brick to Build New Stalingrad,” Toronto Star, 9 July 1945. “Everything for Science Russia’s Basic Policy,” Daily Star “; (Innis) Goes to Russia,” u ta–i r, B1972/0003/003 (7); “Russia Is Like Canada, Dr. Innis Finds on Visit,” u ta–i r, B1972/0003/037 (02). Judging by the letters Innis received, readers were very interested in his trip to Russia. Among those who wrote to Innis regarding the trip after reading one of the newspaper articles were his former supervisor at the Khaki College, D.A. MacGibbon; J.P. de Wet (secretary, Manitoba Chamber of Mines, Winnipeg); W.J. Donald (National Electrical Manufacturers Association, New York); Ivan Wright (National Association of Manufacturers, New York); W. Dent Smith (Terminal Warehouses Limited, Toronto); and a relative of his colleague, Vincent Bladen, in Romford, Trentham, Stoke-on-Trent. All of this publicity was not welcome. Selye generated a good deal of controversy when he revealed that he had exchanged a pair of trousers for some artefacts, circumventing currency controls. See “Dollar Not Worth Many Roubles But Pair of Pants – That’s Wealth,” Toronto Daily Star, 11 July 1945; “The Professor’s Pants,” Time, 30 July 1945, u ta–i r, B1972/0003/037 (02). 52 Ronald McEachern to Innis, 7 July 1945, uta –ir, B1972–0003/004 (05). 53 The Financial Post articles were revised and published as “Comments on Russia” (Innis 1945e). That article, in turn, became the first part of an essay (Innis 1946b) that appeared in an edited volume of Innis’s writings. The second part of this essay was a revised version of the speech that he had given in Convocation Hall at Queen’s University on 11 February 1946 as part of the principal’s lecture series. The speech was also published as “The Problem of Mutual Understanding with Russia” (Innis 1946a). A further article, “Iron and Gold Curtain,” was published in the Commerce Journal (1949). Some of this material was collected in Innis on Russia (Christian 1981). 54 These included Joseph Willits (director of the Social Science Division of the Rockefeller Foundation); Norman Mackenzie (president, University of British Columbia); John U. Nef (University of Chicago); Earl Hamilton (Northwestern University); Glazebrook (dea); Fred Landon (University of Western Ontario); Sidney Smith (University of Toronto); and Arthur Lower (United College). 55 For instance, Mackenzie loaned his copy to Stanley McLean, and Willits shared the diary with other officers of the r f as well as with Bart Brebner

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of Columbia University and Bob Warren. Hamilton shared it with Chester Wright, Innis’s former advisor at the University of Chicago; Glazebrook circulated it internally in the dea and also had extracts sent to Canadian ambassador Wilgress in Moscow. That this material was to wind up in Wilgress’s hands gives credence to the notion that one of the purposes of Innis’s trip was to secure answers to the questions that Wilgress had posed but that remained unanswered. 56 These included presentations given to the University of Toronto Nursing School Alumnae Association, the University of Toronto Fraternity of Innis’s former student Kenneth Gibb (who had accompanied Innis on his trip to Yukon and Alaska in 1926), the Staff College of the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Agricultural Institute of Canada in Guelph, the University Women’s Club in Oshawa, a meeting of Toronto teachers organized by the Ontario Department of Education, and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. Innis also chaired a presentation given at the Ontario College of Education on 15 November 1945 by the foreign correspondent (for Saturday Night) Raymond Arthur Davies. Innis had met Davies at a reception at the Australian Embassy in Moscow on 14 June 1945. Davies was the author of a number of works on the Soviet Union, including Inside Russia Today (1945) and “The Awakening of Soviet Central Asia” (1946). 57 In one instance, Innis responded to an invitation to submit an article to the new “international journal” to be published by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs by suggesting that he rework one of his Financial Post articles. C.C. Lingard (the journal’s editor – and contributor to the New North-West volume) agreed, as long as Innis cut out the references to the Financial Post. The article was published in the first issue of the journal in January 1946. See Lingard to Innis, 3 October 1945, uta – i r, B1972–0025 (05). 58 A Canadian-born economic historian, Bezanson was a consultant to the Social Science Division of the rf and was closely involved with r f programs for developing the social sciences in Canada during the 1940s. 59 “Dr. H.A. Innis Gives Opinions, Impressions, History of Europe,” Kingston Whig-Standard, 12 February 1946, uta–ir, B1972–0003/037 (03). 60 “Many Barriers to Understanding with Russian People: Difficult to Establish Basis of Communication,” Brandon Sun, 6 June 1946, uta –ir, B1972–0003/037 (02). 61 Arnold Smith to Harold Innis, 2 January 1946, uta -ir, B1972–0025/004 (06). 62 Sidney Smith to W.S. Wallace, 19 December 1945, uta -ir, B1972– 0025/004 (06).

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63 Sergius Yakobsen to Sidney Smith, 4 December 1945, uta –ir, B1972– 0025/004, (06). 64 Smith to Wallace, 14 March 1946, u ta–ir, B1972–0025/005 (01). 65 Sydney Smith to Norman Robertson, 26 March 1945, uta –ir, B1972– 0025/004 (06). 66 Marshall to Innis, 1 April 1946, u ta–i r, B1972–0025/004 (06). 67 Willits to Innis, 19 July 1946, u ta–i r, B1972–0025/005 (01). 68 “$90,000 to U of T for Slavic Studies,” Globe and Mail, 26 April 1949, uta – s f, Slavic languages and literature, occupational therapy, press clippings. 69 “Social Truths Feared in Canada, Church Told,” Globe and Mail, 19 March 1947, u ta–i r, B1972–0003/037 (02). Innis’s (1947) speech was published as “The Church in Canada, in Time of Healing.” 70 The large and diverse body of work that Innis produced on Russia has largely escaped the attention of commentators, most of whom tend to dwell on these two aspects of Innis’s work while neglecting his other less easily categorizable writings. To be sure, in his brief but insightful biography of Innis, Donald Creighton (1957) underscores the importance to Innis of the visit to Russia. But he largely fails to address how his encounter with the Soviet Union affected his subsequent works and activities or how it had an impact on his views of civilization. Quite surprisingly, in his much more massive biography of Innis, Watson (2006) mentions the Russian journey only in passing, giving it all of one paragraph. While Heyer (2003) lists Christian’s volume in his biography of Innis, he makes little mention of it. For the most part, those writing about Innis’s work tend to concentrate on either his staples writings or his communications writings, giving little attention to his miscellaneous work on universities, education, and his travel writings.

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13 Towards the “Second Renaissance”: A Russian Perspective on Innis’s Russian Diary1 sergei arkhipov and william j. buxton

With the publication of excerpts from his Russian diary, – along with a few other related articles – Harold Innis joined a long list of authors who had published memoirs about Russia.2 Indeed, the travelogue has long been a genre favoured by writers native to Russia. There are, for instance, masterpieces of fifteenth-century literature such as Walking for Three Seas, written by the rich merchant Afanisiy Nikitin (1960), who started his commercial trip in the northern Russian city Tver in 1466 and walked as far as India; The Letters of the Russian Traveler, published by the eminent historian and writer Nikolay Karamzin (2003); the collection of stories about the horror of the lives of Russian serfs by Aleksandr Radishev (1989); the impressions of the Caucasus from a trip along the Military-Georgian Road by Aleksandr Pushkin (1974); and the description of roundthe-world travel by Ivan Goncharov (1987). Numerous Russian authors, then, have written about their trips both within the country and abroad. Indeed, cosmonauts Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin (1981) as well as Ghermain Stepanovich Titov (1982) wrote accounts of their travel in space. In the twentieth century, countless writings from visitors to Russia were published, including letters, diaries, and memoirs about the revolution, civil war, and massive purges. Harold Innis’s writings on Russia can be viewed as an important contribution to this tradition. However, what distinguishes his body of work from that produced by his predecessors is the comparative-historical sensibility that underpins his analysis and reflections.

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There are a number of other reasons why Innis may have wished to visit the Soviet Union. First, he was interested in comparing the Russian way of life with that of Canada, with a view to understanding how the latter could better develop its northern sectors. Second, by virtue of the fact that the Soviet Union was a member of the alliance that defeated the Axis powers in Europe, it was likely to play an increasingly important role in both the North Atlantic Basin and the Arctic region. Third, in light of the shift in his research away from the studies of staples in Canada towards the examination of the history of civilizations – with particular reference to their communication technologies – his attention was drawn to the extent to which Russia could be seen as an offshoot of ancient Greek culture. Indeed, his desire to learn more about the origins and development of Russian civilization proved to be a leitmotif of his visit and of his subsequent reflections upon it. Innis was particularly interested in how the regional economy of the Russian North had been developed in comparison to that of Canada. He saw this development as differing not only from Canadian patterns but also from the Western classical examples. As a follower of Adam Smith, Innis was aware of the shortcomings of an industrial evolution based on the neglect of economic theory. He also noted the geographical fact that the well-being of many Canadians depended upon the free maritime trade in staples across the North Atlantic as well as the dense network of the means of communications. By contrast, the economy of the u s s r was largely based upon the exploitation of natural and human resources on land rather than on sea. Another circumstance that affected Innis’s perception of Russia was the shift in his attention from economics to technologies of communication. In his later publications, beginning with his investigations of pulp-and-paper industries, Innis concluded that the growth of newspapers in North America stimulated economic advancement, social changes, and cultural diversity. By the time that he came to visit the Soviet Union in the summer of 1945, he was thus primed to pay particular attention to the relationship between print media and public opinion. Innis’s home country stood in sharp contrast to the one that he was visiting. The Soviet Union had been the product of a revolutionary movement. On the other hand, Canada, in Innis’s view, had become a centre of counter-revolution because it sheltered French, English, American, and Russian aristocratic families who had fled

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the radical crowds in their homelands. Moreover, each region in Canada was distinguished by the political, economic, and social structures that were the products of European economic activity in North America. Specifically, within the territory that bordered the North Atlantic Basin, European powers – namely, Great Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal – were not only engaged in the production of staples but also had established an imperial presence in North America through particular sets of rules, customs, and regulations. Despite its strong monarchic traditions, the press in Canada was free from the influence of government, receiving support from the private sector through advertising. In the ussr, however, there was neither advertising nor a free press. Noting that the rapid rise of advertising had been largely responsible for the growth of pulp, paper, and related industries in North America, Innis wrote with a bitter taste in his mouth that advertising in Russia was limited to vitamin B and the appeals to save money in governmental departments. It was evident from Innis’s diary that he did not have any sympathy for communists. He was critical of the Soviet Union’s suppression of civil rights and freedoms. He made it clear that he condemned the Soviet authorities for their widespread use of repressive measures against dissidents. He also called into question the Soviet Union’s inefficient economic structure: all of the instruments for controlling trade and industry were concentrated in the hands of government officials, who were unable to cope with the complexity of the tasks that had been assigned to them. All the same, they were in no hurry to refuse this excessive power. In his view, the ideological exercise of economic policy by government officials served to keep the majority of the population in conditions of permanent poverty and despair. It was evident to him that the people in the Soviet Union lacked a democratic procedure for challenging and replacing incompetent officials. Nevertheless, he viewed the historical tradition of the Soviet Union in very positive terms as he considered Russia to be the successor state of Greek civilization. While he was critical of how Moscow had self-righteously adopted the doctrines of Marx, Innis also warned that all of Western civilization could collapse under various Marxist and nationalist movements. Innis’s fascination with the Soviet Union comes through in his clear and detailed descriptions of his travels. Innis not only admired the masterpieces of pre-revolutionary Russian culture and art but was also appreciative of the

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kindness and hospitality of the ordinary people whom he met during his travels in the Soviet Union. There are few superficial judgments about Russia in Innis’s diary. His impressions were not those of a tourist; rather, they were framed by his conviction that academics like himself could contribute to Canada’s foreign policy. In his diary, which was addressed not only to the Canadian establishment but also to the general public, he addressed the major problems that Russia was facing at the time. These included the postwar devastation, the shortage of technical equipment, political repression, mass purges, widespread violence, and xenophobia. To be sure, the fact that his journey was only thirtydays long limited his ability to analyze some events. Therefore, some of his commentary (such as his views on why the German army was not able to seize Leningrad during the war) is open to challenge. The Canadians visited Moscow, Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Kazan, Omsk, Yakutsk, Yasnaya Polyana, as well as a number of cities and villages in Siberia and the Far East. In his diary, Innis mostly refers to the Soviet Union as “Russia.” He systematically describes the physical terrain of the districts he visited, along with the social conditions of life, foodstuff, the houses in villages, urban architecture, and the customs of the people. Innis observed that the stability of the Russian economy depended on agriculture and that the Russians were very skilful in cultivating the land in the northern part of the country. He was also struck by the extent to which the Soviet Union developed agricultural techniques through a process of experimentation. This led him to reflect on how much Canada could learn from the Russians about cultivating wheat in its northern regions, which are climatically similar to what one found in Siberia. He did not, however, comment on Russia’s lack of development in the area of agricultural technology. He also mentioned the very low standard of living of the majority of people in Russia, the heavy cost of transportation by air or by the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the great dependence on deliveries of American machines and equipment. He and his travelling companions encountered mostly horses and oxen on the roads, and he noted the absence of American dredges, bulldozers, and tractors. Innis also observed that there was a surplus of labour, made up mostly of women, that was largely unskilled and poorly paid. He did note that those whom he met in these circumstances did not complain about their situation.

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The basic question that Innis recurrently posed was: How could the Russian government solve the problems linked to its vast size, particularly that of nationalism? He was of the view that this could be done through tempering regional ambitions. The symbol of the country – the red flag – was devoid of national references. Innis also noted how the Russian language helped to bring cohesion to the country. Children coming from families of different ethnic origins, upon learning Russian in their schools, would then become interpreters for their illiterate parents. Permanent inhabitants of the Russian North chiefly engaged in hunting, handicrafts, and fur trading. Russian military air bases served not only as centres of trade with the northern indigenous population but also, and simultaneously, carried out various cultural and educational functions in Siberia and in the Far East. In this respect, he noticed a tension between the efforts of the state to develop the North and the impoverishment of the people who lived there. To be sure, he was impressed by the extent to which the Soviet Union had been able to increase the population of Novosibirsk.3 But it was evident to Innis that some of the other places they visited had not enjoyed the benefits of urbanization. As a result of the suppression of individual commercial activity in Russia, its northern territories lagged behind in development; their streets were dirty and their houses had been built with wooden logs. One could find “cartage” everywhere, and the widespread Marxist propaganda not only deceived Soviet citizens but also led them to rely on the government to meet their needs. The lavish treatment the members of the Canadian delegation received stood in sharp contrast to the poverty they witnessed.4 In Yakutsk, they rode out to their quarters “in the worst conceivable Ford bus run by the worst conceivably dressed boy.” Roads were “very muddy and uneven.” He noted that, while the district had expanded with the “immigration of Irkutsk people,” there was “probably little change in people’s living.” Indeed, the cost of transportation was high, as was shown in the “prices of manufactured goods brought by air or by road from [the] Trans-Siberian railway.” Moreover, there was “little evidence of planning in laying out of streets or houses” (Christian 1981, 19). The museum was “poorly done,” and the obvious care given to locking the doors of the local penitentiary “suggested danger of stealing.” In comparing Russia with Canadian territories located approximately at the same latitude, Innis concluded that the northern

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13.1  Bird’s-eye view of Yakutsk, in background the Lena River. Through centre of photo the road from the airport leading to the city and main street of Yakutsk.

provinces of Canada were far more developed and populated than were their Soviet counterparts, despite obvious attempts by the authorities to increase settlement in the area. This could be explained by Canada’s support of private initiative and business entrepreneurship. As for Moscow, Innis characterized the city as a sprawling metropolis with high prices (Christian 1981, 21–2). He remarked on the heavy security for all embassy buildings and foreigners. He recounted the amusing incident of a Swedish geologist’s being arrested twice in Moscow for walking too slowly down the streets, a practice that turned out to be attributable to his having heart problems (18). According to Innis, the strict control imposed on foreigners had been introduced to protect the Russians from the possibility of gaining knowledge about the rest of the world. He also gave attention to the problems of international relations that were current at the time. After a conversation in the Canadian Embassy with Arnold Smith5 – who had travelled in Estonia, in the Near East, as well as in Russia (Christian 1981, 22) – Innis argued that the Soviet Union tried to strengthen its position in the Balkans with the help of Orthodoxy. To this end, it had closed anti-religious

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13.2  Our hotel in Yakutsk, outside the city on the way to the airport.

museums and newspapers within the country. In his opinion, the Church had traditionally been a tool of imperialism. At the same time, he wrote that the Russian army was completely under the control of party leaders, many of whom were in the military. During the postwar period, they carried out a lax internal policy, which stood in stark contrast to the former massive reprisals, purges, and violence. Nevertheless, someone could have his/her daily ration of bread cut for minor transgressions like coming to work late. In his conversation with Great Britain’s ambassador to Russia, Archibald Clark Kerr, Innis had the impression that he was dissatisfied with his posting (Christian 1981, 22). In an effort to clarify what he meant, Innis remarked that the Red Square and the Mausoleum of Lenin were located not far from the British Embassy in Moscow. Most likely, the remains of “the leader of the proletariat” had been returned to their burial chamber after the recent evacuation. He wrote with obvious sarcasm that Russian authorities established rigid control over public opinion and used Marx’s ideas about manipulation to manipulate the population.

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13.3  Street in Yakutsk with tea kiosk. Children playing game with straws in the street.

Innis observed that Soviet newspapers were filled with criticism – of poor management, bad work, and misuse of funds – but that inside every communist there sat a Gestapo officer who only allowed him or her to criticize to a certain extent. All journalists were compelled to state the point of view closest to that of the government. There were no advertisements in the newspapers, even though commercial stores had already appeared and were selling a better selection of consumer goods than could be found in state shops (albeit at a higher price). However, in his view, the absence of information about prices in the newspapers only served to promote the rise of prices in the market. Innis responded quite critically to the Soviet idea that strict control of the press was necessary to limit journalists’ tendency towards irrationalism and sensationalism. He noticed that those writers and journalists who were loyal to the regime had both a monopoly on disseminating information in public and high salaries. At the anniversary assembly of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Innis noted that all of the persons in attendance spoke about the outstanding history and contributions of the academy as well as

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13.4  Main street of Yakutsk showing watercart and man on horseback. In background government food store.

their obligation to Stalin. However, no one touched on any issues related to philosophy or to the natural and social sciences. He was surprised that all of the speakers applauded their own speeches. Summing up, Innis argued that, since the academy’s budget came entirely from the government, the discussions of the academy’s contributions were geared towards ensuring an increase in its funding. In his diary, Innis also touched on more general issues. He asserted that the Russians had adopted Greek philosophy while the West had accepted the idea of the legitimacy of Rome. In his opinion, while conference organizers in the West were more pragmatic, submitting a schedule for the entire day, the Russians had a broader view of events. This was evident in how the latter prepared the tables for the celebratory banquet. Cold hors d’oeuvres, desserts, salads, fruits, and cakes were piled on the table in disorder, while a vast quantity of bottles of liquor – including enough for the many toasts – was made available. He observed that Russian banquets frequently ended earlier than planned. A pile of empty bottles was the mute explanation as to why this should be so.

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13.5  House in Yakutsk. The ubiquitous water wagon. Mail box on corner; at extreme right, Innis.

Innis also noted that the desire to overcome the real problems of the economy in Russia had to deal with dogma and rituals. The inability of economic theory to explain real difficulties stimulated the growth of ideology. He noticed that people’s entrepreneurial spirit had been completely destroyed. Nevertheless, there were illegal (“black”) markets everywhere (Christian 1981, 33). Government half-commercial shops were organized to struggle against them, but they carried out their function rather poorly because their goods were sold only to the best workers – farmers in agricultural cooperative, milkmaids, and so on who had been recommended by the director. Having visited an art gallery, Innis remarked on how Soviet painting, in contrast to pre-revolutionary masterpieces, was redolent of dilettantism. With particular reference to Kazan on the Volga River, Innis observed a common absence of delicacy and taste, which, in his view, was attributable to the recently concluded war as well as to the Soviet education system. He believed that the majority of published books in the country in those years could best be used for packing paper. Recognizing that civilizations are closely linked to the arts, Innis attended “an old ballet revived [belonging to] early works of Petit

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13.6  Government food store. Innis, Selye, and our guides just entering.

Pas” (Christian 1981, 31), Swan Lake, Glinka’s opera Ivan Susanin (A Life for the Tsar) first performed in 1836, and Chekhov’s play Three Sisters. Speaking about his impressions after the attending the performances, he wrote in his diary that Bolsheviks frequently draw on masterpieces of pre-revolutionary authors to bring into play the products created in the “old regime” (28). Having arrived in Leningrad, which Innis characterized as a perfect metropolitan city, he saw the visible traces of war, which to him offered an index of the extent to which modern civilization was vulnerable to mass battles. They not only take away the lives of soldiers but also destroy the means of communication, along with electricity and the water supply. At the same time, he sought to explain why German troops were unable to seize the city. In his view, this could be accounted for by the mercantilism of the military, impassable mud, poor roads, the impossibility of collaborating with the local population (because of Soviet self-isolation), and the discrepancy in the widths of railway tracks (Christian 1981, 34–5). Upon leaving Leningrad, he noticed a group of marching and singing girls, all of

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13.7  Street on waterfront in Yakutsk. Professor Innis and Selye our Russian guide.

whom appeared to be under eighteen years old and who carried rifles with fastened bayonets. He viewed this as being indicative of a “weakening civilization” (35). Along the same lines, he felt that the growth of military schools that were open only to children of officers would result in the formation of a closed caste. In his diary, Innis posed some sharp questions about how the North should develop. He was apprehensive about science’s emphasis on utility rather than on theory, the decline of the philosophy of science mirrored by the growing emphasis on mathematics, as well as the destructive effects brought about by the military’s aspiring to distribute and control funds related to northern research. Innis was of the view that the natural sciences would inevitably decline in the absence of support by the government and by private capital. He called for investigations into why the Arctic was warming up, and he saw more precise weather forecasting as one of science’s primary tasks. He noted with regret that, during Stalin’s purges, many outstanding scientists had been killed in the Soviet Union and that now there were not enough trained people to replace those who had lost their lives.

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13.8  Girl who was captain of motorboat, in which she offered to take us for a trip on the Lena.

The result was that Soviet science essentially lagged behind that of North America as well as Europe. Innis continually remarked on the extent to which, as foreigners travelling in Russia, he and his entourage were warmly welcomed by the population, particularly on their visit to the northern sectors of the country.6 More generally, he was appreciative of the fact that local people presented them with bunches of flowers as a sign of gratitude for the delivery of American, Canadian, and English equipment during the Second World War. He was also impressed by Russian cuisine, which he found to be diverse and tasty. He described in detail the dishes he was served during his travels. The menus included salmon, sardines, red and black caviar, veal, mutton, chicken, wiener-schnitzel, sour cream, cheese, baked potatoes, rice, eggs, beer, vodka, Crimean and Caucasian wine, Champagne, cake, chocolate, and fruits. The names of these foods not only had an exotic ring for Canadians but were also largely unfamiliar to Russians, who were enduring a very limited food supply in the postwar period.

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13.9  Waterfront. Crew of river barge.

Upon his return to Canada, Innis was quick to disseminate his impressions of the Soviet Union. In an article entitled “Contacts with Russia,” published by the Financial Post on 25 August 1945, he reflected – deeply and insightfully – on what he had observed during his one-month visit (Innis 1945d). He wrote that his branch of science – economics – was not of deep interest to 180 million Russians because of the overwhelming dominance of ideology in their country. Innis confessed that he, along with others in the West, had a poor understanding of Russia – a county that was extremely complicated because it was comprised of so many different languages, races, and religions. In the wake of the Allied victory over fascism in Europe, Innis was likely one of the first North American scholars to speak out about the need to search for greater cooperation between the Anglo-Saxon world and Russia. In his opinion, the primary agency for establishing such cooperation should be a free press. He did not believe that differences in the languages spoken should be an obstacle to collaboration: he wrote, with obvious irony, that, in Canada, political parties frequently spoke “different languages” and hardly ever understood one another.

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The real obstacle to a rapprochement between the inheritors of the Western and the Eastern traditions of ancient civilization was rooted in how the Russian government sought to resolve problems. The Soviet tradition of imposing violent reprisals on opposition groups and the free press could not serve as the basis for future cooperation. Innis believed that one of civilization’s main attributes should be a government’s willingness to take into account various point of views in both domestic and foreign policies. He concluded his Financial Post article with the warning that Russia, by virtue of political instability and its dependence on migration flows, would be a “storm centre” for years to come. Nevertheless, people in both the West and in the East, in his view, should continue to search for ways to cooperate. According to Innis, the main obstacle to a rapprochement between Russia and the West was their differing institutional practices. Russia deployed an army and naval fleet noted for their unproductive use of human resources. Moreover, the state was characterized by total bureaucratic control, suppression of the free press, and rigid political and economic institutions. The Western model, by contrast, was based on a free press, a small army, and flexible national institutions. Optimistically, he concluded that, in the future, these differences could easily be overcome. Innis elaborated his comparison between Russia and the West in a speech – simply entitled “Russia,” – that he gave in Convocation Hall at Queen’s University on 11 February 1946 as part of the Principal’s lecture series (Innis 1946a). He maintained that one of the modern world’s basic problems was the relationship between Russia and the Western world. Russia is the heir of the Greek branch of antique civilization, while the West is heir of the Latin branch (Christian 1981, 63). The West constructed a monarchical hierarchy based on Roman law (64), while the East constructed a hierarchy based upon the spiritual authority of the Greek philosophers. The monarchic organization of spiritual authority in the West served as a means of restraining totalitarianism, while the democratic organization of spiritual authority in the East suffered from massive state violence. However, recognition of human individuality formed the foundation of both Western and Eastern branches of Greek civilization. Different nations have worshiped multiple gods, kings, and spirits; the Greeks alone came up with “a new conception of the value of the individual” (65).

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However, ancient civilization split into Western and Eastern branches. In the West, the ideas of both Plato and St Augustine regarding original sin were widely adopted and became powerful political and religious tools that could and would be used against the absolute power of the emperors. To be sure, the concept of individualism took root in Russia as it did in the West. However, because it adopted Marx’s notion of class struggle and revolution, Russia set itself apart from the Western world both ideologically and culturally. In Innis’s view, the Byzantine tradition did not disappear after the fall of Constantinople; rather, it enjoyed a revival in Russia through the spiritual authority of the Orthodox Church, which always aspired to remain dominant over the monarchy (Christina 1981, 64). According to him, this tendency served to strengthen absolutism and meant that the doctrines of Marx and Lenin had favourable ground upon which to fall. Hence, because of the absence of the tradition of Roman law, because of the frailty of public opinion, and because of the lack of a free press, whenever it felt threatened the political and religious hierarchy in Russia was able to implement massive and violent reprisals. At the same time, Innis spoke positively about the beneficial influence of Greek civilization on development in the West: “The transfer of Greek philosophy to the West had brought the Renaissance and the modern world and it remains to ask whether the return movement of Greek philosophy to the East will bring a second renaissance” (66). If we accept that, from the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries, “the first Renaissance” touched all countries in Europe as well as every discipline, from philosophy and the arts to medicine and architecture, it follows that Innis’s proposed “second renaissance” should have the potential to grow into an international cultural and humanitarian movement accompanying industrial globalization, technical advancement, and social innovation. In Innis’s view, this second renaissance had the potential to benefit people in both the East and the West. In a chapter on Russia published in Political Economy in the Modern State, Innis (1946b) continued to develop his views on the second renaissance. His interest in this theme arose out of his interest in the Byzantine Empire and his effort to understand its influence on the history of Western art and culture. As opposed to those who argued for the North-South orientation of foreign relations, Innis saw general benefits in developing trade relations between the West

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and the East. He proposed that the core of this alliance should be the rapprochement between North America and Russia (Christian 1981, 83). All the same, he was well aware of the fundamental differences between the Russian and the Western approaches to organizing economic life. The Russian production system was at that time a command economy, primarily oriented towards the manufacture of military armaments through huge state subsidies. This meant that it was characterized by shortages in the production of major consumer goods, little attention being given to advertising, and an underdeveloped system of mass communications. By contrast, in the AngloSaxon world the focus of the economy was on the manufacture of consumer goods. Hence, state investments in the economy were insignificant, with the industrial engine fuelled by advertising as well as by a large and effective system of mass communications (Christian 1981, 74). Along the same lines, Innis noted that Russia differed markedly from the West in its approach to organization. While its reliance on conscription during times of peace as well as during times of war could serve as a temporary measure for the absorption of surplus labour, and even for increasing the general standard of living, it could not provide an alternative to industrial growth on a long-term basis because it promoted the expansion of the bureaucracy, which, in turn, led to administrative inefficiency. Innis also maintained that there were striking differences between Russia and North America in terms of the circulation of information and its impact upon public opinion. In countries with a free press, the major vehicles for the formation of public opinion were periodicals, advertising, and the news media. In Russia, by contrast, public opinion was, more often than not, shaped by rumours. The result was that the way in which people understood current events and issues of public importance in the West differed markedly from how they understood them in Russia. Indeed, because they lacked objective information, even Western diplomats who had been working in Russia for several years were unable to make sense of what was happening in the country. Hence, the degree to which governments were able to influence public opinion in Russia differed markedly from the degree to which they were able to do so in North America. With specific reference to Germany, Innis emphasized that, because it had been subject to so much ideological manipulation, it would easily become vulnerable to new forms of indoctrination. Its

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ability to resist this onslaught would depend on its ability to pragmatically solve the problems it confronted in the postwar period. North American societies, in this regard, were distinct from all other societies in their ability to rapidly created, abandon, or adjust their institutions in relation to shifting circumstances. With regard to Russia, Innis noticed how press propaganda exerted a large influence on people (Christian 1981, 82–3). He observed that the censors not only examined materials found in the country but also those produced by foreign journalists writing about Russia from abroad. He observed that the effectiveness of propaganda inside the country was a consequence of its ineffectiveness abroad. Total censorship meant that people believed neither the news from Russia nor the reports of journalists who had visited the country (regardless of whether the information they provided was positive or negative). This could be seen as people’s resistance to widespread propaganda. It inevitably comes about whenever there is large-scale state intervention in the process of the formation of public opinion. Innis’s writings on Russia reveal very little about the political character of Stalin’s system. In this sense, they are not in the same vein as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (1974–78). Nevertheless, his body of work sheds a good deal of light on the economics, culture, and communication system of Russia. They can be reasonably compared with another well known publication, Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Aleksandr Radishev (1989). Both works successfully describe reality as it was. Both travellers engaged not only with the minds of their readers but also with their feelings. The writings they produced were remarkably similar, consisting of short monologues, witty deliberations, and moral reflections, along with colourful and detailed descriptions of the places that they visited. Both gave particular attention to the hard life of rural and urban citizens in the Russian North, providing insightful reflections on people’s character, habits, and ways of thinking. Both the eighteenth-century Russian novelist and the twentieth-century Western intellectual demonstrated the extent to which ordinary people were able to retain their dignity and goodwill despite the insults and denigration suffered at the hands of state authorities. All the same, neither author idealized the common people; rather, they showed how the long-term oppression they experienced negatively affected both their personal characteristics and the broader social order.

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It should of course be noted that the Soviet authorities only showed Innis and his companions the aspects of the country that they considered to be positive. Nevertheless, Innis did not avoid contentious issues. He sought to draw the attention of his Canadian readers to how the two northern countries differed in terms of their respective ways of life and their economic development. Upon his return to Canada, he did not dwell on what was unpleasant about his visit; rather, in a thoughtful and attentive manner, he noted that reforms in the Soviet Union had proceeded slowly and inconsistently. Innis’s writings on Russia have taken their place among the best accounts of Russia written by a foreign observer, inspiring historians, researchers, and curious readers alike. Above all, there is a good deal of interest in this body of work because it offers some powerful suggestions about how industrial and cultural growth can best be achieved. Although one cannot predict the evolution of complex systems with any degree of accuracy, a number of the issues Innis raised are of great relevance to northern societies – such as Russia and Canada – in the twenty-first century. First, Innis maintained that economic development in the North was contingent upon the state’s supporting its industries by stimulating trade and accelerating economic diversification. He underscored the importance of such measures as ensuring tax benefits, cultivating multiple merchandise systems, and developing the infrastructure needed for settlement. Second, through his studies of the staple economy, communication technologies, and foreign cultures, Innis continually emphasized the growth of human capital in such forms as knowledge, traditions, the arts, and new media as the basis for advancing civilization and ensuring the adaptability of the population. He believed that the successful development of the North depended upon increasing education and ensuring that intellectuals had access to the levers of power. At the same time, he was of the view that the further expansion of industries into high latitudes should not lead to the decline of values, customs, and modes of communication practised by the indigenous peoples of the region. Third, Innis did not view the Russian economy as self-contained and self-sufficient; rather, he repeatedly discussed the need for a balance between freedom and constraint, and advocated the development of trade and competition among industries, states, and private enterprises. He also accurately predicted the decline of authoritarian

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economic regulation, reflecting his own conviction that the trading system should be free from government involvement. Fourth, despite the rapid industrialization – based on limited private ownership and individual enterprise – that he observed in the Russian North, Innis still maintained his belief in the classical economic theory that had emerged from the fundamental Anglo-Saxon principles of free trade, market forces, and labour mobility. He also strongly advocated the building of cross-border human networks as a means of promoting consumerism and increasing the profit of North Atlantic regional industries at the expense of international markets. In his view, it was urgent to take some steps towards building an East-West axis along these lines. Fifth, he was of the view that, while the central regions of a country produce centralized structures of economic activity, the northern, mountainous, and other peripheral districts are characterized by decentralized structures. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop complex systems and balanced relations between centre and margins in order for sustainable economic growth to occur. In this sense, it is important that all regional industries have access to large capital markets in order to increase their profits. He articulated the need to avoid monopoly control over commercial activity and to develop economic relations in the North based on dialogue and collective deliberation rather than on coercion. The people of Russia, in becoming acquainted with Innis’s diary, can see it as a mirror of their strengths and weaknesses as reflected back at them by a careful observer. Most of his statements continue to be relevant. It is remarkable that Innis not only provided insights into how relations between Russia and North America could be improved but also shed light on the broader configuration of the world after the Second World War and how a partnership between the East and the West could be established. He even coined the term “second renaissance” to stimulate thinking about this process within academic circles. In Innis’s view, Russia played a key role in this renaissance because of its rich historical heritage and its close connection to the Eastern world. Innis’s Russian diary (Christian 1981) and the articles he wrote on Russia were made available to the public at approximately the same time as the breaking of the widely known Gouzenko affair. Igor Gouzenko (1919–1982) was a cipher clerk at the Soviet legation in Ottawa, who defected in the first week of September 1945, just a

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month after Innis and his companions returned from the Soviet Union (Sawatsky 1984). Gouzenko left the Soviet Embassy with documents that indicated the presence of a well developed espionage network in Canada. His revelation of the spy ring that had been transmitting intelligence information to Moscow stifled Canada’s intentions to establish a cooperative relationship with the Soviet Union in the post-Second World War period. The Gouzenko affair impeded relations not only between Canada and the u s s r but also increased tensions between other Western countries and the u s s r. At a time of increasing anti-communist Cold War rhetoric, Innis did not abandon his idea of working with the Soviet Union. The idea of the second renaissance – grounded in a cooperative relationship with Russia – was largely ignored by his colleagues and by the general public as the Cold War became further entrenched. However, in the wake of the breakdown of the Soviet Empire and the rise of globalization, Innis’s conception of a second renaissance has a chance of resonating in the contemporary world.

notes

1 Research for the publication was supported in part by the grants from the Fulbright-Kennan Program in 2006–07 (The Institute of International Education, u sa), the Canadian Studies Faculty Enrichment Program in 2003 (Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada), the Junior Faculty Development Program in 1998–99 (American Councils for International Education actr/ accels, usa). None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed. 2 Among the early writings on Russia by Western authors are Coxe (1971 [1785]); Fortis (1971 [1778]); King (1970 [1772]); Ledyard (1966); Richardson (1968 [1784]), Philippe (1859). See Wolff 1994). In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great invited the French scholar Voltaire to live in St Petersburg. Although he decided not to take up the offer because of the Russian capital’s cold climate, he did advance a number of interesting ideas about the development of the Russian Empire in numerous letters that he addressed to her. The twenty-six letters exchanged between Catherine the Great and Voltaire were recently sold for $400,000. See Gorbatov (2007). 3 Innis was obviously quite impressed that, since 1930, the city had “increased its population from a modest 100,000 to 900,000

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inhabitants.” See “Soviet Feeling to Allies One of Gratitude: Dr. Innis,” source and date not known, uta- i r, B72–0003/003 (07). 4 For instance, in Omsk, their breakfast consisted of “caviar, the eternal vodka, pickled herring always spiced with chives, eggs fried, chocolate cake and tea.” In Sverdlovsk, they were served a lunch of “sardines, pickled salmon, a sort of wurst, eggs, chocolate, sardines, and beer” (Christian 1981, 20–1). 5 Arnold Cantwell Smith (1915–1994) served in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow twice from 1943 to 1945 as the third secretary and from 1961 to 1963 as a Canadian ambassador to the ussr. He finished a long and distinguished diplomatic career as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1984. He was the author of Stitches in Time (1981) and The We-They Frontier: From International Relations to World Politics (1983). 6 This was evident during their visit to the Siberian city of Yakutsk, where the Canadian delegates had one of their more memorable encounters with the Russian people. While visiting the waterfront of the Lena River, they were invited to come aboard a motor boat by its captain, a “husky redheaded girl in blue overalls and bare feet,” who was accompanied by her sister. “They immediately proceeded to start up the motor, explaining that they wanted to take us sightseeing on the Lena. Innis was somewhat startled by this prospect; at any rate he showed signs of genuine relief when the motor, after a few spurts, refused to start” (Porsild n.d., 16). That the incident made an impression on the delegates is revealed by a query Porsild made to Innis following their return to Canada: “Did you have any occasion to look up any of our friends in Siberia? In particular I should be interested in my red-headed girlfriend in the motor boat on the Lena River.” See A.E. Porsild to Innis, 12 September, 1945, uta –ir, B1972–0025/004 (06). (See also image 13.8, 285)

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14 Innis and Environmental Politics: Practical Insights from the Yukon shirley roburn

In my transition from executive director of a Yukon-based community environmental group to a doctoral student researching northern Canadian experiences of climate change, I have often struggled to bridge gaps in how knowledge is assessed, applied, and experienced. Northern perspectives can be so radically different from the approaches favoured by academic research traditions that it is, at times, difficult to stitch the two together, to envision a meeting place where these ways of knowing can speak with each other productively and in mutually beneficial ways. Harold Innis’s work has been one of my few consistent guides in attempting to bridge Western and Northern ways of knowing. Even knowing where to start is a struggle. The standard essay follows a set form, laid out clearly so all intellectual paths radiate out from the introduction and converge upon conclusions, feeding the core theme of the paper. Yet the standard repository of northern knowledge, for thousands of years, has been Aboriginal forms of storytelling, which express ideas differently. In his preface to Empire and Communications, Innis put forward that “all written works, including this one, have dangerous implications to the vitality of an oral tradition and to the health of a civilization, particularly if they thwart the interest of a people in culture and, following Aristotle, the cathartic effects of culture. ‘It is written but I say unto you’ is a powerful directive to Western civilization.”1 Kulchyski (2005, 262–3) argues that institutional forms of writing, such as government policy papers, play a key role in enforcing dominant modes of centralized governance and infrastructure, effectively

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constraining the ability of northern Aboriginal communities to achieve autonomy and healthy local governance. His concern is shared by many northern Canadian scholars. Irlbacher-Fox, for example, describes how difficult it is for northern Aboriginal storytelling, and the experiences and values such tellings carry, to enter fully into governance forms such as land claims and self-government negotiations. Research reports, statistics, policy papers, and other institutional writing forms define issues, determine parameters of negotiation, and validate which analyses will hold sway as representative or legitimate (2009). To take up the essay form without question is to render invisible its taken-for-granted conventions and the ordered, hierarchical, and formal language that is part and parcel of a particular worldview regarding what constitutes serious and thoughtful communication. It is to mask the story of the essay form and how, in Rancière’s (2004) terms, to adopt the essay is to adopt a particular framing or partitioning of the sensible in which certain forms, positions, communities, social positions, and functions are part of the aesthetico-political field and others are not. In his later life, Innis became increasingly concerned that a bias towards technologies of writing was gradually colonizing language and governance, leaving little room for the oral tradition and its particular weaving together of knowledge and social relationships.2 Innis’s key contribution to northern studies – the insight whose relevance holds firm, no matter the vantage point within the academy or in day-today northern life – is the need to undo unconscious biases and to understand how they have materially constructed economic and social relationships. Innis very clearly linked the sedimentation of economic and intellectual regimes, connecting economic domination and the evolution of governance regimes to forms of knowledge communication. He was particularly concerned with the role of the academy and academics as a counterpoint to a growing “space-based” cultural and technological bias that he believed marginalized local communities, sacrificing cultural continuity and diversity to the homogenizing and centralizing influences of an obsessively present-focused society (Innis 1951, 61). Following Innis, and drawing on what my personal experiences with northern issues have continuously reinforced, this chapter draws on story and governance models from oral traditions (First Nations and non-First Nations) to explore the long history of unequal exchange between Yukon First Nations and the Canadian state and its colonial precursors, and to suggest how Innis’s insights can be

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applied to shift modern northern politics, recalibrating the equilibrium between centre and periphery, and between oral and literate protocols for organizing, experiencing, validating, and expressing knowledge and political realities. t h e pa s t i s n o t fa r b e h i n d

A few days before I first set about preparing this chapter, I received a recruitment message sent by a colleague on behalf of the Government of Alberta. Using her personal networks, she was seeking to hire environmental professionals to help assess and mitigate the impacts of northern industrial development. Her tone was approachable and encouraging, as befitting an engineer who is also a community organizer and has devoted dozens of hours to setting up a mentoring program for high school students in a small Yukon community. I clicked on the web link to the official recruitment poster. It had an etching of Christopher Columbus’s three ships. “He discovered a new world,” the caption read, “now it’s your turn.”3 From a point of view steeped in postcolonial studies, it’s hard to believe that a present-day government recruitment poster – seeking professionals to work in rural-resource management, of all things – would so blithely call upon the legacy of five hundred years of exploration and conquest in the Americas as a way of appealing to candidates. Yet this poster slipped through several layers of Alberta government bureaucracy. The work of many theoreticians, from Frantz Fanon to Edward Said to Trinh T. Minh-ha, can help explain the recruitment poster, or any number of equally significant (if less blatant) vestiges of colonialism that pervade present-day institutions. But I find Innis’s work particularly useful for addressing such situations because it recognizes bias and the problems it can produce while, at the same time, acknowledging that such biases are often unconscious. One can thus avoid the polarizing, oppositional responses that may arise when one points out something that seems obvious but that shocks or upsets a party who was unaware of how his/her actions or communications might be understood. Instead, Innis’s approach opens up spaces for asking productive questions, such as: “What is the political culture here?” “Where are the cracks and opportunities?” “Where are the blocks?” “What is required to cause a shift?” Answering these questions can help in formulating a strategic approach to addressing

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cultural bias. In the poster example, it is clear that there are varying levels of awareness within the Alberta government as far as First Nations are concerned. It also seems likely, as the more detailed advertisement lists the ability to work effectively with Aboriginal communities as part of requested job experience and skills, that the failure to take Aboriginal sensibilities into account is an omission arising more from ignorance than from a deliberate desire to exclude. So the way forward in this case is two-pronged: (1) recognizing my colleague as a change agent worth connecting to others not only with regard to this recruitment campaign but also as a more general go-to person within government concerning issues to do with northern Albertan industrial development issues and (2), then, over time and through multiple strategies, working to address the deep-seated problems that the official recruitment campaign reveals. The poster is a clear illustration of cultural bias: its imagery and wording unmistakeably draw upon capitalism’s heritage within the age of exploration/mercantilism, when remote/non-European regions of the world were seen as empty of civilization and waiting to be discovered and exploited for their riches. Innis deepens our understanding of the assumptions and social constructions behind such a bias because he is a rare theorist who offers both a detailed, fieldwork-based, material analysis of the economics that structure patterns of empire/centre-periphery relationships in Canada and a concomitant analysis of how such patterns are tied into patterns of communication and ways of knowing. As Charles Acland (1999, 258) points out, alluding to Innis’s The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy: “Geography, methods of extraction and transportation, and untapped resources do not in and of themselves explain social structure, as though every cod holds the seeds of its own commodity and labour market.” Acland goes on to credit Innis for contributing to cultural studies an understanding of “the epistemic dimensions of uneven development.” Innis’s numerous studies tracing the evolution of trade routes, and the flow of communication and goods from northern outposts to the administrative and economic centres of upper Canada, carefully delineate the materiality and day-to-day functioning of Canadian staples-based economies, linking up geographies, technologies, and methods of production and distribution with the political and social constructs – regulation, structures of governance, and knowledge systems – that support them. In introducing Innis’s Staples, Markets, and Cultural Change, Daniel Drache (1995, xxxiii) comments: “The constant factor in his [Innis’s]

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thinking was his scepticism about the capacity of grand economic theory, particularly of a liberal variety, to understand complicated issues … What he saw instead was that the principal mechanism of wealth creation was an incredibly complex social institution, the product of history, collective practice, and social convention.” The predominant narratives of Canadian history, with their focus on nation-building, on economic factors such as the growth of the fur trade, and on the construction of the cross-Canada railway, arise from within the “space-biased” paradigm that Innis describes as cementing a system of centre-periphery economic, political, and social relationships. Canadian northern scholarship has an obligation to challenge the authority of this history in order to begin to undo the sedimentation and social reproduction of this unbalanced worldview: changing knowledge systems is an important step in the shift towards greater equity for northern regions and northern peoples. Innis’s own work recuperated elements of the oral tradition from within Western culture in order to trace a path towards what more balanced knowledge systems might look like. To complement this work and to apply it in a northern context, it is important to consider the histories and knowledge systems of indigenous northern cultures. Groundbreaking communications scholar Gail Valaskakis, herself a First Nations woman, began such work in the 1980s, drawing on Innis’s insights in order to analyse the impact of satellite television on Inuit communities of the eastern Arctic. Valaskakis helped to pioneer collaborative, community-based processes that have since become the norm for northern social science research. She documented how satellite technology, which could have been applied to support two-way forms of communication between Inuit communities, had instead, without community consultation, been formulated mainly as a vehicle to allow southern programming and the English language to enter Inuit homes. Building on Innis’s theories that the implementation of new communication technologies created “monopolies of knowledge” that displaced existing knowledge economies, Valaskakis became one of several academic researchers and consultants to work with Aboriginal broadcasting and communications societies to advocate for the recognition of Aboriginal peoples’ right to take part in modernizing communication infrastructures. Such advocacy led to a new Aboriginal television network and a new northern Aboriginal broadcasting policy. Also as a result of this advocacy, Aboriginal peoples’ right to communicate and gain access to broadcast television was enshrined in law through Canada’s Broadcasting Act, 1991.4

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In the present day, northern communities must again confront southern Canadian biases as Arctic security and access to Arctic resources are increasingly becoming matters of national and international concern. To the extent that local northern knowledges, histories, and contexts are not brought to the fore, northern policy risks neglecting the priorities of northerners, subsuming them within the strategic priorities of the Canadian state. Following Innis and Valaskakis, a better balance of societal priorities can only be achieved by changing the tenor of communication and exchange between northern communities and the Canadian state and its institutions. Academics and educational institutions have an important role to play in cultivating openness towards distinct local knowledges and contexts. t h e h i s t o r i e s o f way s o f k n o w i n g

To flesh out some of Innis’s theories in the context of the Yukon, I draw on the work of Julie Cruikshank. Her two most recent books build on theoretical frameworks from Innis, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Walter Benjamin to explore forms of local indigenous knowledge in southwest Yukon and how these concretely interact with Western institutions and knowledge systems to affect the structures of everyday life (Cruikshank 1998, 2005). However, in drawing on Cruikshank’s research, I am faced with the challenge of not reproducing the unequal patterns she describes. For example, in her own work, Cruikshank is careful to thank individual Tlingit and Athapaskan elders, as well as other Tlingit and Athapaskan individuals and Tlingit and Athapaskan governance structures, and to credit them for the knowledge that they have provided and of which they are the keepers.5 However, following the codes of writing an academic essay, my references to Cruikshank’s research take the standard form of notation, which acknowledges only her authorship. Cruikshank deserves credit. Her decades of on-the-ground work with indigenous elders, the analysis she brings based on her wide-ranging readings in anthropology and cultural theory, and the hard work of writing are essential to the knowledge-project of her books. But the core contributions of Yukon indigenous people deserve to be equally acknowledged. The shorthand of academic papers functions so that a discussion of a concept that might appropriately be labelled “Tlingit knowledge” is validated by referencing the authority of a written text cited by the cipher of an author name. This process sediments acknowledgment of

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the “literate part” of the work, crediting an author, while omitting giving credit to people and communities who have important claims to the knowledge in question. Later, I look at larger questions around the discrediting of oral histories as “heresay” within Canadian systems of governance (such as the courts); for now, it is important to acknowledge that simple, everyday practices of academia reproduce relations of power that favour written knowledge systems over oral ones. This is a significant stumbling block, limiting the ability of academia to participate meaningfully in the creation of appropriate – and in some cases badly needed – northern knowledge. While it is clear that all levels of government and society must work together to address critical challenges such as climate change, First Nations are often reluctant to participate in research that functions to extract the knowledge of local people as if it were just another resource to be processed and repackaged in the South, with benefits accruing disproportionately to southerners.6 Where Cruikshank’s work is helpful – following Innis – is in anchoring present-day knowledge and goods-exchange patterns in the southwest Yukon-Alaska region within the historical roots of particular local realities and material conditions. Cruikshank draws on both European and Canadian records (including diaries, paintings, and various forms of scientific data) and Tlingit and Athapascan knowledge (oral histories, songs, art objects, and tools) to explore European-indigenous encounters during the “Little Ice Age” that lasted from the late Middle Ages into the nineteenth century. As glaciers surged and later retreated in what is currently the southwest Yukon-Alaska-British Columbia region, First Nations peoples began to occupy newly revealed and habitable regions. At the same time, European explorers seeking to claim lands, find a passage through the Americas, conduct scientific research, and locate profitable trading opportunities were also arriving in these same areas. One particularly striking example of the meeting and mismatching of indigenous and European knowledge systems involves the encounters that arose as the result of two serious boating accidents in Lituya Bay in 1786. Tlingit and Athapaskan oral accounts recorded in the 1880s, the 1940s, and again in the 1960s and the 1980s, are in agreement with the basic facts recorded in La Pérouse’s journals of the 1786 expedition to the area. That summer, several large Tlingit trading boats from the same clan capsized in a dangerous rip tide at the mouth of Lituya Bay. Only one boat made it to safety, and most

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of the trading party drowned. Bags of furs from the boats floated into the path of the French explorer’s two ships. Barely succeeding in their own passage through the rapidly shifting tides, these ships sailed into Lituya Bay in early July 1786. As the crew members set about surveying the area, they were met by surviving Tlingit. Encounters continued over the next several days, culminating in the events of 13 July: before leaving the bay for good, two small boats of sailors from the La Pérouse expedition set out to breakfast onshore; however, the boats were dragged into a strong rip tide, and all twenty-one people aboard were drowned. While both European and indigenous accounts address these events, they are interpreted in remarkably different ways. As Cruikshank (2005, 149) explains: If the primary story that is reported in Western texts selects the meeting between Tlingit and French as the main story, with ecological disaster playing a secondary role, the emphasis is reversed in Tlingit accounts. There, clan losses arising from ecological disaster are the main story, and the French connection is a secondary consequence – French ships attracted by debris scattered by capsized Tlingit boats. In later renditions of the Tlingit narratives, La Pérouse’s visit is recalled either vaguely or not at all. Tlingit accounts of the events at Lituya Bay in 1786 focus instead on the tragic drowning of most of the Tlingit trading party; songs and stories mourn these deaths and link the affected clan with the massive peak referred to in English as Mount Fairweather and in Tlingit as Tsalxaan. The narratives affirm Tsalxaan’s power and the importance of heeding its signs, considered crucial to ocean navigation in the Lituya Bay area. As Cruikshank (2005, 128) describes, the landscape is socially active and sentient – the Tlingit worldview is attuned to relationships between people, places, and creatures. All are animate and all must be taken into consideration in navigating through the world. The composite of these relationships, and not the “first contact” interactions with Europeans, forms the focus of Tlingit insights arising from the 1786 events in Lituya Bay. Tlingit people are the centre of their own stories, and the driving themes of Eurocentric narrations of history take a back seat. It is simple but profound: a complete inversion of European narratives in which Tlingit inhabit the margins of the world.

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While different Western schools of thought may argue over the relative merits and disadvantages of contact between indigenous and European peoples, it is taken for granted that contact itself is the central fact organizing the history of First Peoples. There is life before contact (the imaginary home of the “noble savage”) and life after contact (with indigenous communities perceived to be corrupted, less authentic in their cultural practice, and in physical and moral decline).7 This frames resistance as a “push-and-pull” between a stronger, dominant group and a weaker, marginalized one. Within the dominant currents of cultural studies today, such a construction is common: indigenous peoples as well as other oppressed groups are widely theorized as inhabiting “the margins.” In consequence, resistance is conceived almost exclusively as something that arises in marginal spaces from a position of disadvantage.8 Powerful concepts and practices have emerged from this approach; but, following Innis, it is worth examining the bias that so easily conflates the “marginality” arising from unequal social constructs (systems of wealth production, governance, and social hierarchies) with “marginal” intellectual positions. Is unquestioned marginality in fact the only available option?9 If Innis’s fundamental tenet – that economic and epistemic dimensions of empire are related but distinct – is correct, it follows that an intellectual move to refuse marginality, to insist that knowledge systems from “the periphery” be placed on equal footing with “core,” or dominant, knowledge systems, will act to produce a shift: ways of knowing as mediated/enacted through culture will begin to take root through different practices of everyday life and (eventually) of institutions, sedimenting other power relations that will in time be felt in economic relationships. This is exactly what has happened in instances in which northern First Nations have negotiated land claims and self-government: the success of these strategies depends on recognizing the central – not peripheral – claims that First Nations have to exercise knowledge systems, cultural practices,10 and economic activities within traditional territories. As a consequence of such strategies, governance in northern Canada has begun to shift from Innis’s “space-biased” models of centralized power over vast distances to the “time-biased” structures of more decentralized governments and increased power-sharing at the local level. For example, it is common practice in much of the Canadian North for wildlife to be co-managed through local councils that contain both territorial and First Nations and/or Inuit representatives.11

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These councils do not just have greater regional representation: they actually operate differently from traditional wildlife-management institutions because First Nations have insisted that their knowledge practices be respected within the co-management structures. For instance, traditional knowledge may be brought into wildlife-management decisions, but this knowledge is brought forward within the context of specific protocols, developed by individual First Nations and/or Inuit, that govern the sharing of the information.12 Cruikshank (2005, 62) draws from Innis that a crucial feature of administration in the hinterland … is the classification and control of activities and the authorization of official observations, categories, and statistics in written texts. While this process is conventionally rationalized as both producing knowledge and serving the interests of those administered, it invariably occurs at the expense of existing regional traditions … Innis identified arctic and subarctic regions as furnishing a classic illustration of the modernist tendency to conceptualize time as spatially laid out, mechanically segmented, and linear. Colonial projects, he observed, move forward by devising and reinforcing categories –such as objectivity, subjectivity, space, and time. One normalized as “common sense,” such classifications provide a visual template for the annexation of territories and the subjugation of former inhabitants. The project of decolonizing the Canadian North is thus, to a significant degree, a knowledge project: until knowledge systems shift towards an increase valuation of northern ways of knowing, the Canadian state and its agents will continue to replicate classification systems and categories that subtly validate and reinforce the status quo, usually at the expense of local people and their self-determination. Drew Mildon (2008) complicates the question of decolonizing governance by following up on the efforts of Canadian courts to apply Supreme Court rulings concerning the admission and interpretation of First Nations oral-history evidence. This evidence is key to many First Nations attempts to assert rights, whether concerning land claims, resource-management rights, or self-government issues. Yet Mildon’s work shows that, despite intellectual recognition of the basic principle, actually applying the notion of equity for oral evidence is extremely difficult within a judicial system steeped in literate practices

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and traditions. The gist of this problem involves unequal standards for assessing the reliability of evidence, which Mildon views as arising from an often unconscious ethnocentric bias towards the authority of written evidence.13 This is perhaps best illustrated in the one example that Mildon cites as breaking with this bias – the Tsilhqot’in v. Canada case. In his final decision, Justice Vickers questions the authority of written historical records as rigorously as he does the oral histories presented by Aboriginal claimants. He points out that “disrespect for Aboriginal people is a consistent theme in the historical documents” and that this cultural bias could compromise the reliability of some written evidence.14 Furthermore, he takes the questions of legitimacy that Mildon describes as consistently being raised against oral history evidence (“Is the speaker a true authority for his/her peoples?” “Is this rendition accurate or is it embellished/using artistic license?”) and applies them to written publications, such as an anthropological work from the turn of the century, submitted by the Crown. Vickers concludes that, where oral and written accounts diverge, in fact the Tsilhdqot’in witnesses are often in a better position of authority to speak to Tsilhdqot’in historical realities than are the non-Aboriginal authors of written historical records.15 Cruikshank’s work also destabilizes the authority of written histories – usually assumed to be more stable than the “heresay” oral record, which is presumed to drift further and further off course with each successive telling and each successive generation16 – by carefully examining the shifts and embellishments that occur in European explorer narratives. In the case of the La Pérouse expedition,17 for example, Tlingit people participated in the rescue and recovery efforts when the two small European boats capsized, leading to a brief period in which La Pérouse’s journals note an apparent shared understanding/detente between the Tlingit and the expedition group (Cruikshank 2005, 147). However, the greater the distance from this event, the more European cultural biases of the period creep into references to the Tlingit traders. This is true in the edited version of La Pérouse’s journals, published in 1798;18 it is even more apparent in Dunmore’s annotated version of the journals, published almost two hundred years later, whose footnotes “strengthen the scientific detail at the expense of ethnohistorical scholarship” and “replicate[s] errors made by all early European visitors, conveying La Pérouse’s eighteenth-century misunderstandings into latetwentieth-century commonsense truths” (151). In the various expeditions that Cruikshank investigates over the course of Do Glaciers

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Listen?, there is a consistent drift in European-explorer portrayals of First Nations people. In the moment, First Nations are often documented as providing guidance or support – sometimes essential to travel and survival – to European exploratory expeditions. However, as explorer narratives are taken up in published book and magazine accounts, and on the lecture circuit, the help provided by indigenous people is increasingly minimized (e.g., the presence of Aboriginal guides may be omitted), with explorers being foregrounded as heroes and Aboriginal groups fading into prevailing Romantic stereotypes about wilderness and savage tribes.19 Harold Innis’s work on the uptake of literate and oral knowledge systems makes clear how, out of such colonial encounters, one version of history/set of mythologies – in this case the European narratives of exploration – comes to predominate and solidify into a common-sense story that informs popular culture: the communications technologies and transportation infrastructures of industrial culture favour the uptake of written narratives that fit smoothly into prevailing structures of administration and governance. At a time before radio, telephones, or television offered the possibility of amplifying voices across continents, published books circulated widely over vast distances, gradually boosting and reinforcing the power of the narratives they set out. Tlingit and Athapascan histories remained local, circulating largely within the southwest Yukon–Alaska–British Columbia region, while the knowledge structures in place in industrial culture – copyright, for example, and printing presses – supported the global uptake of explorer narratives. Eventually, reinforced by the increasing presence of settler culture and of associated government and social structures (e.g., schools), even within Yukon the power of oral histories and collective memory has been to a significant degree supplanted by a Europeanized version of history. This history, with its associated imagery, stories, and cultural signifiers, continues to play a significant role in Yukon’s political culture. Innis’s caution – that we must pay careful attention to the epistemic dimensions of our political and economic systems – certainly holds true with regard to my own experiences working on Yukon environmental issues. the legacy of the klondike

Part of my work at the Yukon Conservation Society (ycs ) involved trying to find a way forward on the most divisive conservation issue

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that the organization faced – placer mining. Since the Klondike gold rush, miners have continuously sifted the creek beds and valley bottoms surrounding Dawson City in search of nuggets and specks of placer gold. Panning, however, has been replaced by the use of dredges and other large-scale industrial practices, with creeks being diverted, permafrost thawed, and creek beds dug up and sifted to depths of dozens of metres. Y C S, along with other stakeholders such as fishers, raised concerns about the impacts of these practices on riparian ecosystems and especially on fish species such as salmon. These concerns drew Y C S into a classic “jobs-versus-environment” conflict, in which placer miners rushed to defend their livelihoods against what they perceived as excessive environmental regulation. Actually spending time in and around Dawson City helped me to appreciate why challenges to placer-mining practices triggered so much conflict. Placer mining was not just an economic activity in the area; rather, in core ways it was tied into the historical narrative and present-day identity of Dawson City. A sizeable tourist trade, which forms a significant part of the local economy, derives largely from Klondike “gold rush” mythology. Filled with steamboats and cancan girls, casinos and heritage storefronts, and festivals like Dawson City’s “Klondike Days” and Whitehorse’s Sourdough Rendezvous (which celebrates pioneer heritage through such events as axethrowing, log bucking and chucking, and a hairy-leg contest for women), popular enactments of the gold rush era continue to be part of contemporary Yukon culture. Supported by the literature of Pierre and Laura Berton, Robert Service, and Jack London (among others), this culture ties Yukon identity to the pioneering spirit embodied by the gold rush, emphasizing the entrepreneurial, independent, and eccentric-artistic nature of Yukoners and their hardiness in the face of the elements.20 One example of the predominance of these narratives is the initial scepticism of some Dawsonites towards the construction of the Danoja Zho Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in cultural and interpretive centre on the banks of the Yukon River.21 Designed by renowned Yukon firm Kobayashi and Zedda, which later won the Prix de Rome for its skill in creating culturally and environmentally appropriate northern architecture, the building drew on traditional Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in forms and designs. Yet, although it was put forward to recuperate, validate, and educate visitors about historic and present-day incarnations of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in culture, the project was viewed in

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some quarters as an affront to heritage preservation: it visually disrupted the “historical” building facades from the gold rush era that lined Dawson’s main streets (interview with Jack Kobayashi, 2008). In my first year and a half in Yukon, although I visited Dawson and environs on several occasions, and participated in local arts and culture events, the only version of regional history that I was substantively exposed to centred on the gold rush. It wasn’t until I attended a gathering at Moosehide – a traditional village site of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, a short walk or boat ride downriver from Dawson City – that I experienced something similar to what Julie Cruikshank describes: a local worldview that was not centred on narratives of discovery of land and resources. The particular Moosehide Gathering that I attended included a morning-long tribute to Chief Isaac, whose tenure began before the gold rush and extended well into the twentieth century. The tribute emphasized the flexibility, adaptability, and foresight shown by Chief Isaac and other Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in leaders, which supported the long-term survival of the community through a period of great challenges. Chief Isaac was credited with deciding, after gold was first found in the Klondike but before thousands of miners descended upon the area, to move the existing fishing camp and summer village site away from the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers, and away from the immediate influence of prospectors and gold fields. Chief Isaac also headed up a delegation of community leaders who journeyed downriver to perform certain sacred songs and to entrust them to neighbouring communities for safekeeping until such time as the turmoil brought by the gold rush calmed down and the songs could be brought back. The tribute ended with a particularly moving performance of one such song. The song had not been sung in many years: at the gathering, elders from different communities realized that between them they knew its different parts. Edward Roberts and Percy Henry were able to piece together these fragments and to perform the song in full. This performance had a powerful effect on those assembled, particularly those who recognized parts of the song from childhood. The song acted as a testament to the continuity of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and other nearby First Nations and to the vibrancy of their oral traditions: through gathering at Moosehide and recuperating a potlatch tradition that had been suppressed and even outlawed in the past, the community was able to bring together and to renew

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a history that had been fragmented. After the song, when the floor was opened to anyone who had something to express, many people spoke movingly of how the gathering had given them strength and affirmation and had deepened their resolve to overcome obstacles, to take ownership of their past feelings and actions, and to live with greater integrity and sense of purpose. The full scope of the events of that morning is far beyond my capacity to understand. But the experience did help me to appreciate the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in not as a margin but as a centre – something that is at the heart of a continuously unfolding complex indigenous culture that has deep connections to place. At Moosehide, indigenous knowledge was approached not as “bits of information” but, rather, in a much more holistic way – as embedded in practices that enacted ways of knowing/perceptions/intelligences whose full implications exceeded the bounds of my “literate culture” worldview. For example, the morning’s events enacted a much more complex and nuanced practice of witnessing than that privileged within the Canadian court system. Peter van Wyck describes how, within an Occidental tradition, “the witness is always too late … ‘There is no testimony,’ wrote Derrida, ‘that does not at least structurally imply in itself the possibility of fiction, simulacra, dissimulation, lie, and perjury – that is to say, the possibility of literature … This of course is to take away none of the force from testimony, but rather to place it in the zone of un-decidability.’”22 In other words, the use to which witnessing is put in mainstream Canadian culture is suspect. The performance of legal acts of witnessing, in which the witness is constructed as a passive and/or disinterested observer of events, with the authority to attest to a fixed, truthful accounting of what has occurred, may be consistent with a scientific worldview,23 but it conflicts with what we know about human-beings-as-witnesses. As a practice, the use of witnessing to reconstruct an “objectively” accurate picture of events – supposedly evacuated of the practices of storying that are integral to expressing human understandings – is conflictual, contradictory, and not particularly robust. In court cases, the limits of witnessing are constantly on display, with judges and juries faced with the task of deciding between accounts that are clearly not commensurate with one another. By contrast, the “witnessing” that I was party to at Moosehide was the opposite of “too late”: it actively created and reaffirmed

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both knowledge and relationships within the communities taking part. This form of witnessing – a shared public telling of a communal history – worked to create unity through common understandings of a shared past. It built continuity between this past and the present, and engaged both speakers and listeners in supporting their collective future: when individuals spoke of their troubles and their resolve to overcome events in their past, the acts of speaking publicly affirmed their commitments before a community that also had a role to play in supporting the speakers in their intentions. Such forms of witnessing act in “time-binding” ways, creating continuity between past and present, building internal cohesion within a society, and incorporating the sacred into everyday life. Innis stressed the importance of balancing the “space-bias” of industrial society with such “time-biased” practices and social structures, which he recognized as having a sophistication seldom acknowledged by the dominant culture and a unique ability to create stability and social cohesion. transcending time

”He always wrote more than he knew. But he always caught up” Carey (1999, 83, quoting Frank Knight)

James Carey, who perhaps has done the most to further Innisian scholarship within American communication studies, makes the point that Innis developed his thinking about monopolies of knowledge, and the space and time biases of communication and transportation technologies, only towards the end of his life. He died before he could fully develop these theories, and “we are left to follow out the lines of his inquiries while struggling through the enormous obscurity, absences, silences, and ellipses of his final writings” (Carey 1999, 83, quoting Frank Knight). One enormous absence/silence is Innis’s complete lack of estimation for the cultures of North American First Nations. Despite his fascination with oral cultures, and despite what his student Irene Spry (1999, 107) describes as his insistence upon a personal research practice in which “it was essential to go and see the actual setting of the problems that one was struggling to understand – the geography, geology, biology, botany, meteorology, human culture, customs, religion, and technology, in fact the entire context of the economic problem.” Innis devoted little

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attention towards first-hand learning about First Nations peoples and their worldviews, even as he travelled extensively through the Canadian North. Perhaps, had he lived to pursue his communication theories, Innis would have come to recognize in First Nations cultures some of the same attributes that he admired so highly in the oral culture of ancient Greeks. Or perhaps not. Perhaps Innis’s contribution to Canadian-First Nations relations springs from his ability to recuperate qualities of oral cultures within the Western tradition. Rather than reducing the gap between Western and indigenous approaches to simple binaries – such as nature/culture, civilized/uncivilized, literate/illiterate – Innis’s work shows that, within each culture, there coexists a mix of technologies, social formations, economies, and epistemologies. The challenge is in the calibration: to achieve stability across both time and space, cultures must find equilibria between tradition and modernity, flexibility and structure, global and local, and diversity and standardization. This recuperation of a constant dialectic between the past and the present articulations of a culture is, according to Innis, a key strength of the oral tradition. But the reciprocity it establishes also serves as an important template in the quest to create cross-cultural understanding. n o r t h / w e s t : r e a l i g n i n g o u r c u lt u r a l c o m pa s s

Of the cultural institutions necessary for restoring balance and protecting freedom in Canadian society, by far the most important for Innis was the university. Innis saw it as one of the last great bastions of the oral tradition. Noble (1999, 41)

Innis was not just a theoretician: in his life as an academic, he actively engaged with existing power structures and institutions, struggling to create formations that would safeguard the university as a last bastion of oral culture. Concerned that scholarship was becoming increasingly dominated by a short-sighted emphasis on utilitarian, specialized research in the natural and social sciences, Innis played a key role in the creation of the Canadian Social Science Research Council (Fisher 1999). He spearheaded efforts to ensure independent funding for researchers and to create a permanent place for public intellectuals and longer-term research projects that would contribute to the public good. According to Innis, “the job of

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academic social scientists was to confront bias and monopolies of power (the state) and knowledge (specialization) by doing basic research on the social problems facing Canadian society” (137). For northern researchers, taking up Innis’s legacy is not just about asking questions about the North: it is equally about undertaking a critical appraisal of our own practices as researchers. What kind of knowledge is being gathered? Whom does it serve? Does this research bring greater balance and equity or does it perpetuate a centre-periphery dynamic in which northern knowledge and northern resources are unequally exploited? When Valaskakis, Roth, and other Innisian scholars took up these questions within their generation of northern researchers, their work helped shift the paradigms of northern research towards more community-based participatory research and towards a new recognition of the responsibilities of northern researchers. For example, Roth played an important role in negotiating the development of the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies statements of ethical principles for the conduct of research in the North, first disseminated in 1982. Revised regularly ever since, these guidelines have encouraged academic researchers to more fully include and consult with northern peoples during all phases of their work, from problem definition through to results dissemination. Evaluating and recalibrating how northern research is done is especially germane in relation to the winding down, in 2012, of the 2007–09 International Polar Year (i py). Dozens of countries have invested over $1 billion in i py research (Boychuk 2007). The Canadian government pledged over $150 million to i py projects, with an additional $70 million allocated by the federal government towards a study of the floor of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans beyond the two-hundred-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. ipy projects have provided significant economic benefit and collected local information critically important to devising adaptation strategies for isolated communities coping with rapid climate change. For example, the Canadian-led Circumpolar Flaw Lead project, conducted in partnership with the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, not only collected both scientific information and traditional knowledge about changing sea ice conditions but also created opportunities for local students to learn about and take part in research. It also sponsored a multi-day workshop engaging climate scientists and Inuit leadership from across the North in discussions on

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climate change mitigation and adaptation. More generally, the inclusion of social sciences within the i py mandate – which brings the study of human health and welfare in northern regions into the i py’s research scope – increased the relevance of polar-year projects to northern peoples. In contrast to past polar years, this i py also explicitly recognized the need for northern participation in knowledge creation. Of forty-four Canadian projects approved in 2007 for federal government funding, six – just under 15 percent – had a territorial or First Nations government or a northern educational institution as the project lead. But the reality remains that the i py was largely focused on the acquisition of Western, scientific knowledge: the majority of approved Canadian projects originated with institutions based in southern Canada and not the circumpolar North. Mildon’s observations in relation to the Canadian legal system apply equally to scientific research: there is a great distance between recognizing a need for equity in principle and applying it in practice. The gap is filled with challenges arising from subtle institutional and procedural biases. While i py projects such as Gas, Arctic Peoples, and Security (g a ps) – a study of the impacts of oil and gas development on northern communities – made remarkable strides (g ap s, for example, managed to have northern graduate students appointed as principal researchers, although these students lacked the advanced degrees that the designation usually requires), prevailing institutional structures work against the decentralization of academic power. Criteria for i py funding depended largely on meeting academic research standards as set out by southern universities. In most cases, the types of community research projects that might be carried out by a First Nation or a northern ngo simply would not make the cut unless an institutional affiliation with a southern partner provided the academic resources and credentials necessary to pass evaluation mechanisms such as peer review. In an important step forward for northern research, two Yukon First Nations governments, Vuntut Gwitchin and Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, successfully initiated i py research projects, with the Yukon Regional i py Coordinating Office playing an important role in supporting them through the application and reporting processes.24 Such projects, however, were outliers. Despite a desire to work more equitably with local partners, the underlying assumptions of the i py process is that research begins in, and is coordinated by, accredited institutional actors (i.e.,

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governments and universities) that organize their work according to protocols and systems that fit smoothly with the administrative exigencies of southern Canada.25 Perhaps the best way to understand the limitations of such an approach is to contrast it with an effective long-term, community-based research project that applied for but did not receive i py funding. At the height of the i py-funded research boom, the Yukon Community Stewardship program – a tremendously successful initiative that had involved local communities in fish and wildlife monitoring and research for almost a decade – folded due to lack of funds.26 Over nine years of program operation, Yukon community stewards and habitat stewards played a significant role in raising the level of community awareness, education, capacity, and involvement in environmental stewardship and environmental monitoring in small Yukon communities. Begun in 1999 as a habitat stewardship program focused on fish stocks, and expanded in 2003 to include all fish and wildlife species and their habitats, the program employed local community stewards throughout Yukon. Over the long term, stewards worked to initiate and develop community-based projects to monitor, restore, conserve, and enhance fish and wildlife stocks and habitat. For example, steward Sebastian Jones initiated the Dawson City chapter of Plantwatch, a Canada-wide project in which volunteers note yearly variations in flowering times for selected local plant species. This “citizen scientist” effort gathers detailed local information on environmental change within different bioregions and has provided important data on how climate change is affecting the boreal forest. As did his predecessor, Jake Duncan, Jones helped to organize and support science-based education and monitoring activities at “First Fish Camp,” a program modelled on the Tron’dek H’wechin “First Hunt Camp” in which local youth learn cultural traditions and wildlife harvesting by participating with their elders in a weeklong camp. These activities – as has been the case with several community steward-initiated projects – were later taken up and organized by the community independently of steward support.27 It is not possible in this short chapter to discuss the full impact of the dozens of local initiatives supported by community stewards each year; it is worthwhile, however, to reflect on what these activities contributed to wildlife research, to community education, and to the local economy. With a relatively small number of regional biologists employed either through the Yukon Territorial Government

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or through federal agencies such as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Wildlife Service, community stewards played a key role in supplementing wildlife monitoring both through their own direct involvement with government biologists and through working with those biologists to train local people to take part in ongoing monitoring activities such as weekly springtime waterfowl surveys in ecologically important wetlands.28 Equally important, community stewards acted as a bridge between local people and the various government officials and administrative bodies that manage Yukon fish and wildlife. Community-education activities not only strengthened local knowledge and capacity to understand and to be involved in technical aspects of renewable resource management and habitat restoration but also created informal and formal opportunities for local people to meet, speak with, and contribute to the decision making of local Renewable Resource Councils, First Nation governments (usually heritage and wildlife departments), Yukon College, regional and even transnational management boards like the Yukon River Panel, and federal government bodies involved in habitat protection. Stewards also helped to raise money for, and to support, community-initiated stewardship projects. Along with the steward positions themselves, these projects created meaningful work and volunteer opportunities. Certain projects, such as efforts at restocking salmon runs and improving salmon habitat, worked to enhance local subsistence and cash economies.29 Finally, programs such as the 2006–07 Girls Science Camp, geared to girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen, created hands-on learning opportunities with visible results and relevance to the local area, stressing higher education and scientific careers as concrete, viable possibilities for youth from small communities. Locally developed, culturally appropriate camps, workshops, and other learning opportunities integrated scientific knowledge with local and traditional knowledge, and created a stronger foundation for interaction between local people and the bureaucracies and institutions involved in both knowledge creation and governance of wildlife concerns. All this was accomplished on a core budget of $302,000 in 2006–07, with community stewards raising an additional $170,000 for locally initiated projects.30 These sums are less than the amounts allocated to most individual ipy research projects funded by the Government of Canada. The community stewards program cannot be neatly labelled as “community education” or “wildlife research” or “economic development”:

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it was all of these – a community-based program that improved governance and knowledge of renewable resources by focusing on the needs of local people. Its accomplishments were possible because its form was determined by the needs of small Yukon communities rather than by the exigencies of southern universities or of federal government departments. Innis suggested that more equitable centre-periphery relations were not a question of economics alone: they concerned forms of governance, administration, and education, all of which supported and structured centre-periphery economic relations. This linkage is well understood by northerners who must conform to institutional needs and priorities dictated from outside the North. In a letter addressed to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, northern students from a Canadian graduate conference in northern studies – all of whom had had to leave their home communities to pursue higher education – highlighted the lack of institutional capacity in northern Canada: Canada is the single nation among the circumpolar north countries that does not have a northern university … The current situation is leading to an exodus of northern students and researchers and is arguably a serious intra-national brain drain. The fact that all participants in the roundtable discussion had no choice but to move to southern Canada coincides with northern research management in Canada; knowledge is extracted from northern peoples and their homelands – to be managed and disseminated through southern institutions. To counteract this brain drain, Canada must invest in the creation of a university in the north for the northerners.31 These students, like Innis, link the epistemic and economic dimensions of uneven development. In their lifetimes, they have seen a devolution of powers (through land claims agreements and Canadian court rulings) that has greatly increased self-determination for northern communities. But higher education is a comparative footdragger. Territorial governments may operate in Aboriginal languages, but the knowledge required to hold advanced government positions – even knowledge specifically about northern landscapes and peoples – is produced and disseminated primarily in English and French, and the gatekeepers are southern institutions. Northern students are beginning to insist upon the importance of the local: the creation of a northern university is an important next

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step in addressing the systemic knowledge inequalities that reinforce the marginal status of Canada’s northern territories.32 Even where there is a substantial population of highly educated people – Yukon has one of the highest postsecondary education rates in Canada33 – the prevailing structures of higher education offer few avenues that allow students to remain in the North and to participate in knowledge creation at the highest (university) levels. Community colleges are several rungs down on the academic ladder. Adult-education campuses, which are of considerable importance in delivering education in smaller communities, are even lower in the pecking order. How are the assumptions of southern Canada at play when ipy educational outreach is geared primarily at secondary schools, excluding the adult-education classes in which a significant percentage of people from small northern communities actually acquire their high school credentials? What does it mean that a graduate student with one field season under his/her belt is qualified to give a paper at an academic conference, but an adult educator with many years experience in a northern community is not guaranteed the same standing?34 Slowly, northerners are gaining influence in shaping northern research institutions and agendas. For example, input from northern governments and community groups influenced the Canadian government to modify a cornerstone of its Arctic research strategy – a multi-million-dollar proposal to build a remote research fly-in and/ or boat-in station – so that the station would be in an existing community that contained a school, medical services, and other infrastructure necessary for long-term local residence and community integration of research station staff and programs.35 Yet northerners’ influence is limited: Canadian government investment in Arctic research is geared first towards developing a research station focused on scientific research that supports Canadian strategic priorities, not towards developing local capacity through a northern university. The security concerns and economic opportunities arising from increasingly exploitable northern resources have spurred much of Canada’s increased investment in northern research. As one example, the tens of millions of dollars spent to map the Arctic seafloor relate directly to Canada’s 2013 submission to extend its maritime borders based on its extended continental shelf. At the same time as Arctic sea-floor mapping was proceeding with substantial new investment, Inuit and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (the Inuit organization responsible for implementing the land claims

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agreement that created Nunavut) launched a court case against the Canadian government to address its failure to properly fund Nunavut’s education system, whose high school graduation rates hover at 25 percent.36 When hundreds of millions of dollars are available to fund advanced scientific research in the Canadian North, but a small percentage of this amount cannot be found to invest in the temporary bridging programs that have proven successful in raising graduation rates and student achievement among Nunavut’s Inuit students, how are we to position the role of northern research in contributing to the public good?37 What can Innis’s insights into monopolies of knowledge, and the links between the epistemic and economic dimensions of uneven development, bring to this analysis? Innis’s careful taxonomies of staple commodities deconstructed the roles that technologies, resources, government regulations, methods of production and distribution, and social and political hierarchies played in the economic formations of his day. Perhaps what Canadian northern studies most needs is a similar taxonomy of our education systems – one that locates the taken-for-granted hierarchies of higher education in the material conditions of Canadian history, from the legacy of residential schooling, to the push to define a specifically Canadian social research tradition (which arose out of the University of Toronto in Innis’s day), to the political, social, and economic concerns that govern education in the present. Innis held firmly to the belief that the purpose of the university was to bring balance to the modern world by revitalizing the powerful knowledge practices of oral cultures. He railed against what he perceived to be the increased centralization of knowledge into rigid, specialized categories that risked solidifying into dogma and erasing cultural difference. Innis sought a corrective in the flexible, creative dialectics of an oral tradition based on open-ended and mutually respectful dialogue between actual human beings. Yet, in an era in which such dialogue is increasingly part of northern governance and northern institutions, the university system is not a leader but a laggard. While Canadian universities have expanded efforts to collect and document northern knowledge, they have been slower in adopting practices – from financial compensation for research participation, to academic recognition of traditional knowledge-keepers, to supporting meaningful practices that reinforce local knowledges through institutional recognition thus maintaining knowledge within northern communities (such as, for example, what might happen

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if Canada possessed a northern university) – that would support this knowledge in its living, locally appropriate forms. In his day, Innis played an active role in determining the constructs of academic research. He helped found not one but two research councils that supported academic work through grants, the aforementioned Canadian Social Science Research Council, and the Humanities Research Council of Canada. He also participated in key organizations for the promotion of knowledge, ranging from the very prestigious Royal Society of Canada, of which he was president, to a royal commission on adult education. Canadian northern scholars influenced by the Innisian tradition during the 1970s and 1980s also went on to become involved in the “knowledge questions” pertaining to defining ethical research and balancing the needs of local communities with institutional demands. Gail Valaskakis, in particular, was not only active within her university as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences but also founded the first postsecondary institution in eastern Canada focused on Aboriginal students. She then went on to apply her academic skills in the service of Aboriginal peoples as research director of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (Roth 2007). Innis set an example for academics, encouraging them to be actively involved in shaping the institutional arrangements that define how knowledge is discovered and circulated. He believed that universities must uphold the humanist tradition, catalyzing public dialogue on core questions defining knowledge, governance, and the role of human societies and individuals (Innis 1950b). For Innis, this commitment was more than ivory-tower idealism: a lifetime of detailed, carefully crafted research and analysis had revealed to him the role of epistemic choices in determining Canadian economic history. Because biases towards certain forms of knowledge and their concomitant preferred technological and administrative arrangements have real world consequences for entire societies, Innis believed that academics must play an active role in balancing knowledge flows and attuning research practices to serve a broader public good rather than just the instrumental and short-term needs of more powerful societal actors. Innis’s legacy speaks powerfully to northern researchers today. Northern communities are experiencing rapid environmental and societal change. Academic research has an important practical role to play in supporting northern decision making about infrastructure, resource development, social policy, education, and environmental conservation. But to be effective, to produce a grounded knowledge

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that actually speaks to local conditions and concerns, research and researchers must move beyond the centre-periphery model of research organization described by Coates and Morrison, in which academics, act as “fair-weather migratory birds that flock northward each year [and,] … perhaps unwittingly, became part of the colonization of the periphery” (de la Barre 175). Just as northern institutions and infrastructure must adapt to a changing climate and society, so northern researchers must adapt their practices and institutions. Innis believed that monopolies of knowledge played a central role in maintaining the political and economic structures of empire. Following Innis, greater equity in knowledge production and dissemination is required for northerners to make lasting, stable economic and societal gains. Much has been done to decolonize northern governance and to support northern self-determination. Innis’s contribution to northern studies is to provide the analytic tools needed to shift our knowledge practices and to introduce greater balance and equity to the epistemic dimensions of Canadian North-South relations. acknowledgments

I am grateful to the supporters, volunteers, and staff of the Yukon Conservation Society, from whom I learned so much. Thank you especially to yc s member Sebastian Jones, whose reflections as a former community steward for the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board were especially helpful. Thank you to Suzanne Robinson, a former senior instructor at the Community Education Program of Aurora College in Inuvik, for her insights and also for the example of her work as a community educator. Thank you to the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Heritage Department, whose excellent work in public history and heritage activities shaped this chapter in innumerable ways. Thank you especially to Chris Evans at the Heritage Office for his correspondence and corrections to the manuscript.

notes

1 Harold Innis, Empire and Communications (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), Preface.

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2 Such essays as “A Plea for Time” implore the reader to give time, and veneration for the past, its due: “The danger that knowledge of the past may be neglected to the point that it ceases to serve the present and the future – perhaps an undue obsession with the immediate, support my concern about the disappearance of an interest in time” (Innis 1964, 69). 3 See http://www.takeontheworld.gov.ab.ca/ and http://www.takeonthe world.gov.ab.ca/flash/couldbeyou_governance.html. These websites are no longer available. 4 Valaskakis in fact drew on Innis’s theories of communication in her doctoral work, examining how the introduction of technologies of writing affected Inuit in northern Canada (Matiation 1999, 27–32; Valaskakis 2005). A more comprehensive overview of the development of Aboriginal broadcasting in Canada is provided in Roth (2005). 5 The term “keeper” acknowledges that this knowledge is not disembodied but, rather, in some sense “belongs to” the keepers in question. Western constructions of ownership/authorship are not adequate to encounter this form of knowledge keeping, and this is the root of much conflict. 6 See the introduction of Carlson and McHalsie (2001). Tensions arising from differing perceptions of what constitutes ethical research and how research should be shared with and benefit communities have resulted in the continuous evolution of Canadian northern research policies and licensing procedures. See, for example, http://ycdl4.yukoncollege. yk.ca/~agraham//ethics/ (viewed 16 July 2010) for an overview of pertinent documents relating to the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies’ updating of its ethical principles for northern research during the 1990s. 7 Numerous scholarly works describe these social constructions in some detail. See, for example, Francis (1992) and King (2003). 8 For example, theorizing from the margins figures prominently in the work of feminist scholars such as Donna Haraway and in much postcolonial scholarship. See Brown and Strega (2005). Ross (2009) argues that such views of “the margins” as the only productive place for politics embeds a reification of structuralism within the work of Bourdieu, De Certeau, and other influential French social theorists via an assumption that the larger power structure can never be overthrown or significantly modified but only ruptured briefly through small-scale tactical interventions. 9 There is of course ongoing scholarly debate on this point. Jacques Rancière’s assertion that politics occurs at the moment of partitioning of the sensible, noted at the beginning of this chapter, argues for changing political orders by opening perceptions so that new perspectives can take

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up places of prominence within the political sphere. This is consistent with principles of First Nations and Inuit approaches to self-government in the Canadian North, wherein a new system of governance (First Nations and Inuit governance but adapted to the context of and existing within the Canadian state) takes its place in the political sphere. 10 These have both epistemic and economic dimensions. 11 In Yukon, for example, local Renewable Resource Councils (r rc s) co-manage wildlife resources under the umbrella of the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board (see http://www.yfwmb.ca/rrc). While there is considerable debate considering the efficacy of such councils and whether or not they act to reinscribe dominant culture values and modes of governance, their approach is clearly more locally oriented and is structured to attempt to incorporate indigenous and local knowledges. Nadasdy’s (2003) research is especially germane to the case of Yukon r rc s. 12 For example, information may be shared in a certain context only with the explicit recognition that it is to be used in the particular situation in question and not for other purposes without seeking explicit permission. Traditional knowledge protocols and policies are more and more a feature of northern governance institutions. 13 Mildon’s (2008, 81–5) discussion under the heading “Oral Evidence in the Supreme Court of Canada” delves deeper into this point. 14 Tsilhqot’in, para. 194, quoted in Mildon (2008, 93). 15 Issues regarding the weighting of oral history are only part of the historical problems with the administration of justice in northern “hinterlands.” Especially in earlier eras, the centralization of justice in far-away administrative centres – part of the “space-biased” logic of empire that Innis describes – posed great difficulties. Chapter 4 of Cruikshank’s The Social Life of Stories describes how delays in the transfer of documents, and in some cases their loss as they travelled great distances, compromised the administration of justice in Yukon outposts. In some cases, given shifting governance structures, it is not even clear if courts actually had the jurisdiction to try cases such as an 1898 case that resulted in death sentences for three Aboriginal defendants. 16 Mildon’s work supplies numerous examples of the Crown’s mobilizing these assumptions in its arguments in Aboriginal rights cases. 17 See Cruikshank (2005, 127–53). 18 Cruikshank (2005, 127 and 271n2). La Pérouse’s journals were published in France in 1798. An English translation was published in 1799; John Dunmore published a new translation of La Pérouse’s journals, with commentary, in 1994.

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19 Chapter 6 of Do Glaciers Listen? documents this process in more detail. 20 Both Renée Hulan (2002) and Sherrill Grace (2001) deal in much greater depth with the evolution of literary and popular culture “norths.” Drawing on Yukon Tourism’s research, Suzanne de la Barre’s doctoral dissertation offers a comprehensive overview of the tropes/mythologies that animate Yukon tourism marketing. Chapter 4 of Cruikshank’s (1998) The Social Life of Stories also looks at the “frontier myth” in the more particular context of depictions from the Yukon gold rush era. 21 See http://kza.yk.ca/projects/trondek-hwechin-cultural-centre/ (viewed 21 January 2013). 22 van Wyck (2007), quoting from Derrida (2000, 29–30). 23 Haraway (1991), for example, offers a succinct critique of scientific cultures and foundational concepts such as objectivity. 24 See Eamer (2011). 25 In recent years, an increasing body of northern scholarship has applied a similar argument to the study and evaluation of northern land claims, selfgovernment, and co-management. Irlbacher-Fox (2009), Kulchyski (2005), and Nadasdy (2003) are useful on these points. 26 The community stewards were funded through fourteen Yukon agencies, and the collapse of funding for the program is not directly related to ipy. However, the program would not have been eligible through ipy for core funds, and the proposal it did put in to work with ipy did not move forward. See http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php? id=389 (viewed 1 August 2008). See also Yukon Community Stewardship Program c r e -98–06, Project Report for the Yukon River Panel Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board, March 2007, prepared by Doris Dreyer, available at http://www.yukonriverpanel.com/reprojects.htm (viewed 1 August 2008). 27 First Fish has been in existence in some form since the late 1980s. However, Dawson community stewards help bring in new partners, educational opportunities, and funds to support the program. The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in government now organizes the annual camp (before self-government, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens and their representative organizations were involved in camp organizing). 28 Yukon Community Stewardship Program, Project Report for the Yukon River Panel, 18. Elsabe Kloppers established such surveys along the Haines Road in the Kluane region. 29 Country food continues to be an important part of rural Yukon economies. Additionally, sport hunting and fishing as well as a small commercial fishery based on the Yukon River add to the economic base.

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30 Yukon Community Stewardship Program, Project Report for the Yukon River Panel, 26. 31 Karla Jessen Williamson, letter to Chuck Strahl, 22 May 2008. The text is excerpted from a letter sent to the minister of Indian affairs and northern development by Karla Jessen Williamson, PhD, on behalf of northern students who drafted the text at a special session at the 2007 Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies conference in Regina, Saskatchewan. 32 A coalition of northern and southern Canadian institutions of higher education form the virtual University of the Arctic (http://www.uarctic.org/). While the University of the Arctic is an important institution, it is not the equivalent of an incorporated, degree-granting, accredited university that is physically based in a northern community or communities (and has a local campus or campuses). More and more, northern community colleges are finding ways to offer university-accredited programs and courses, including “bush” courses such as those of the Dechinta: Bush University Centre for Research and Learning. However, as yet there is no fully accredited university in any of Canada’s northern territories. 33 See http://www.rural.gc.ca/research/profile/yk_e.phtml for an overview of Yukon educational attainment. Detailed census figures are available at http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92591/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CD&Code1=6001&Geo2=PR&Co de2=60&Data=Count&SearchText=Yukon&SearchType=Begins&Search PR=01&B1=All&GeoLevel=PR&GeoCode=6001 (viewed April 2013). 34 I am indebted to Suzanne Robinson, doctoral candidate, president of the NWT Literacy Council, and a former adult-education teacher in Inuvik for this insight. 35 As of this writing, the federal government has incorporated community concerns into its latest High Arctic research station feasibility study. See Feasibility Study for the High Arctic Research Station, available at http:// www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1314732094357/1314732171336 (viewed April 2013). In 2010, Cambridge Bay was chosen as the site for the station. 36 The suit concerns funding for land claims implementation, and educational issues are an important factor. See http://www.cba.org/nunavut/main/ sections_abor/news_2006–12–06.aspx. A damning 2006 report from Thomas Berger, a widely respected special conciliator to the land claims implementation process, blasted the federal government for failing to live up to the spirit of its agreements in Article 23, a type of affirmativeaction clause for the majority, which guarantees that Inuit will have a

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proportional share of jobs within the Nunavut public service. See Berger (2006). It is Berger’s belief that these guarantees cannot be met, given the abysmal state of Nunavut elementary and secondary school education. The vast majority of his report is taken up in proposing a complete over– haul of schooling to create a fully bilingual education system. Berger concludes that, in order to meet its land claims obligations, the federal government must shoulder the bulk of the costs of implementing a new education system. While Berger’s particular recommendations are controversial, the assertion that the federal government is failing in northern land claims implementation is less contentious. See Jim Bell, “Land Claims Implementation Grinds to a Halt,” Nunatsiaq News, 14 January 2005, available at http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/50114/news/nunavut/50114_01.html (viewed 2 June 2008). It refers to a 2007 report from Canadian auditor general Sheila Fraser, which – in keeping with previous reports from her office – slams the federal government for its failure to successfully meet its obligations to implement northern land claims. 37 The Berger report recommended, while the Nunavut educational system is being overhauled, that $20 million be invested in a set of established educational programs with proven records in supporting Nunavut students.

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15 Innis and I on the Highway of the Atom1 p e t e r c . va n w y c k

In my field journal there is a small entry that reads: “An emphatic geography creates the language for its own expression.” I do not recall having written this, nor am I certain that I know what it means. But as a small and marginal gift, it suggests an occasion for thinking about the expressive language of landscape, about site and about place. For now, the landscape that I am concerned with is in the North of Canada. A complex North to be sure: a place, an idea, a limit. journal entry g r e at b e a r l a k e , 30 j u ly 2003

To start at the beginning is of course not an odd thing. Not really. As though one had a choice to begin elsewhere. As though a later object could somehow reach back and make one’s having begun into other than what it was, into something else. So to write now the beginning of this, let’s say, story, in no way poses itself as an historical proposition. It is, rather, an example of how it is that history itself reaches forward to organize the present. The now, as Benjamin might put it (meaning of course the actual site of history). This is the secret complicity between the past and the present. Yesterday this all began with a trail of tears, with Indians and potatoes, and Irish famine activists. Today, however, today is different. Today it all begins on the Lake. A proper name. Great Bear Lake. Sahtu, for the Dene. The Bear. Yesterday I was reminded about what I knew four years ago. And what I knew then was that the Highway of the Atom was a story about ethical theory. It was a story about the aporias of

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responsibility. It was a story, foremost about the infinite character of responsibility. And today, this recollection is still there, I still know this to be true, but today I am in a different place. I am on the Lake. By which I mean of course Great Bear Lake, home of Canada’s atomic modernity. Mile zero of the Highway of the Atom, where the wind blows with a fierce intensity, falling down the ancient hills, pouring onto the lake to lift the water’s surface. Into waves. Today it begins here, because it really began there. And, like a long wave, it signals through the route to its significant points. One could call this communication; following its itinerary to its scheduled stops, to its intersections. An historical transmission. I wrote this as I was beginning an eastward route across Great Bear Lake, from Déline to Port Radium, in the summer of 2003. It seems strange to me now. Much of my “data” looks like this; almost involuntary, like tears, someone said. And what makes these field notes of interest to me is that they are all occasioned by a kind of contact – a place, a text, a story, a landscape. They are all a record of a kind of encounter. They are about having been somewhere. A lake, a mine, a town, a river, an archive, a ruin. It doesn’t really matter; these are just the things that constitute a particular repertoire of events. They can be seen in kinship not only with “theory” (understood conventionally) but also with “story.” They are also and therefore pieces of testimony. Yet this is a long way from clarifying things. As witness, I am too late. The witness is always too late – and perhaps for this reason testimony can never clearly articulate what it is. “There is no testimony,” wrote Derrida (2000, 29–30), “that does not at least structurally imply in itself the possibility of fiction, simulacra, dissimulation, lie, and perjury – that is to say, the possibility of literature.” This of course is to take away none of the force from testimony but, rather, to place it in a zone of undecidability. For on the other side, “if testimony thereby became proof, information, certainty, or archive,” Derrida continued, “it would lose its function as testimony” (30). That is, in order to be testimony, it must be haunted. journal entry g r e y g o o s e i n n , d é l i n e , g r e at b e a r l a k e , 25 j u ly 2003

On preparations: How do you prepare for this fieldwork of words? What is the appropriate gear? Two days from now, I begin.

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Benjamin cautioned against beginning any project without the proper instruments at hand. What then are the proper instruments for exploring a route such as the Highway of the Atom? What preparations must one make? I have no idea. Not really. I have: a full set of maps at various appropriate scales, a Geiger counter, a shotgun, a digital recorder, a gp s, a compass, a solar cell, a laptop, two cameras, a fishing rod, a loved one, and a knife … This may well be much too literal. The “Highway of the Atom” is the proper name given to the route of these unstable staples. It is a palimpsestic economic and colonial path used by Europeans initially carrying furs, food, and disease, and subsequently carrying radium and uranium. This material passed through the North of Canada, leaking as it went, into the productive centres of the Second World War, and subsequently extending itself above Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and back again into the community of Great Bear Lake in the form of cancers, stories, addictions, and depression – hauntings. Until quite recently the Dene of Great Bear Lake, and many others along the Highway, knew nothing of radioactivity.2 Why would they? How would one even translate such a concept? In Inuktitut language, I am told, the concept of half-life translates as “half-human.” Today – that is, by now – many other translations have been invented, some conceptual and linguistic, some decidedly material and corporeal. My impressionistic journeys to the North of Canada have sought to identify residues and other forms of leakage. Stains on the land, on the territorial archive. Some of the leakage is “real,” by which we might mean material, at least in the case of the stain down the Highway of the Atom, measurable in terms of half-lives: boats, barges, building materials, mine tailings, and so on. But some of the leakage does not quite have this kind of materiality, statistical or otherwise. This sort of leakage might be narrative, or memorial, or archival, or indeed might have the character of a deferred action through some traumatic mechanism – not too difficult to imagine (van Wyck 2002). I approach this work not as a history of disaster – this would either beg the question or eclipse it – but, rather, history as disaster. A history that consumes itself, its remembrance, its witnesses, and its evidence. Ghosts there are (not cinders or pictures). On a trip I made to the North several years ago my travelling companion was also a ghost of sorts: Harold A. Innis. This is the

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other Innis. Not the archival and hermeneutic Innis, but the scholar in the field; the Innis that rarely gets acknowledged. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Innis travelled North on a number of occasions to conduct fieldwork aimed at understanding the productive relations between margin and centre, with a particular and abiding interest in the role played by geography in the course of empire; for Innis, it was precisely the emphatic quality of geography that issued an imperative that one must understand the local in order to think more broadly of the cultural. In any case, one needs company in this kind of work. In what follows, the reader will find some fragments, pieces, reflections on a place and a time from which I am, and remain, a bewildered stranger. A term of neither grandiosity nor self-negation, bewilderment, to become bewildered (and I would insist, I think, on the processual over the static, so perhaps “becoming-bewildered” is more like it), is of course not the same as being lost, although it is related. In fact there is a certain and interesting lack of symmetry between the two terms. Lost, being lost, seems much more comfortable with the categorical; you either are lost or are not. Whereas it makes less sense, intuitively at least, to speak of becoming lost, unless we are being particularly metaphorical in our usage. This bewilderment to which I refer, and I will stop just short of calling it a critical bewilderment – at the risk of suffocation under the mass of terms – is a kind of movement of going astray, of confronting an ambiguously located wilderness, perhaps inside, perhaps outside, or both. It is to be unsettled, off the path, but not unmoored completely (this would be precisely the fantasy of “going native”).3 Accordingly, what follows should be read not as complete ideas, or even as arguments, but rather as instances of my uncertainty. Writing – Landscape – North The methodological posture that would describe this work would not gesture towards a hermeneutics of the image; rather, it is a mode that “paints more than it digs,” as Barthes (1979, 14) puts it. This is far more interesting, it seems to me, reminding us perhaps of the productive intimacy between image and memory (Yates 1966). Barthes (1979, 14) continues: “The semiologist is, in short, an artist (the word as I use it here neither glorifies nor disdains; it refers only to a typology).” And the task, as he figures it, is “to play with signs

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as with a conscious decoy.” The sign “is always immediate … like a trigger of the imagination” (ibid.). He goes on to identify the things to which this mode of tentative analysis is, above all, attracted: narratives and portraits, he says, expressions, idiolects, passions, and “structures which play simultaneously with an appearance of verisimilitude and with an uncertainty of truth” (ibid.). On this account, semiology plays with the sign “as with a painted veil, or … with a fiction,” he tells us (ibid.). All of this is to say that one must remain mindful, always; that to make interpretation is foremost to make something. In other words, this interpretation is always as much about writing as it is about reading. Invention is there from the start. And so is story. Accordingly, my method here is to place this inquiry into a question of making, that is, of writing – narrative, portraits, expressions, passions, and so on – and, for me at least, to locate this writing in the North. Going North always seems to require giving an account of why one is there. What one seeks, I think, is a kind of Southern “state of exception,” to the extent that this is possible.4 Or desirable. A suspension, in other words, of a certain set of Southern institutional regimes, for the Northern traveller always tends to over-pack, as it were. North is always in a way an experimental and empirical check on the suspicion that if world and language are in a critical and secret collusion, then seeking a different world might help invent a different and critical language – on the face of it, a clearly utopian project, a project upon which too many ships have set sail already. Littered with boats and journals and bodies and poetry, frozen all and desiccated. And people, though not very many, the signs of whose occupation are nonetheless everywhere (if only because they have been there “forever”). The North, “a semiotic tragedy,” writes John Moss (1996, 17), is so freighted, as North, that it is difficult just to be there. North as idea eclipses North as place.5 As the late Robert Kroetsch (1995, 14) figured it, “to write, is in some metaphorical sense, to go North. To go North is, in some metaphorical sense, to write.” Of course, this does not leave much on the outside of writing (except for North) or North (except for writing), although the page itself becomes a portal to the infinity of Arctic space. But his point is that one goes North at the moment when the word “is in the process of extending itself onto the blankness of the page” (14). So here writing not only invents North as site but also evacuates it in the same gesture, in advance of itself as blankness.

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Stefansson did roughly the same thing some sixty years earlier, when he concluded his Northward Course of Empire with the observation that it is simply a good fortune “that we still have our frontier land in which pioneers may struggle and build, where they may dream their dreams of empire, and eventually write upon pages now blank the story of those realized dreams.”6 Always writing the North, but in Kroetsch’s case, even with the cultural transactions of “deep story” that run through his works (due perhaps to his early close reading of The Golden Bough),7 there is the sense that the romantic, mythic mode of a national Canadian nordicity is always somehow staged to undo itself in the same breath.8 But I wish to put to one side the seductions of these lyricists of deep nordicity, as we might call these particular writers of mythopoetic Canadianness; they just write too well. Let us just say that to go North is complex. It is a strange cartography for the Southerner. A different logic of place, with different striations than South. A smoother space in a way, but not only that. And if you happen to approach the North as a European, as a Southerner, as a practitioner, as an academic, it is quite easy to just get lost. In fact, it is just quite easy to get lost (Empire’s fantasy, after all). And here I am not being metaphorical. Fieldwork invents a kind of fiction – this is perhaps its particular haunting – a fiction that always writes against itself as a kind of testimony. Yet there is a tendency to want to forget this and to still end up getting lost. I have begun to think of all this in terms of an indexical imaginary, but I will come to this. The landscape of North, or that fraction of it that I happen to have seen, is difficult for the stranger; this would be its excess, its emphasis, its capacity to show. And of course in this tricky terrain, metaphors abound, always. Accordingly, care is required.9 As Lyotard (1991, 183) figured it, there is a landscape “whenever the mind is transported from one sensible matter to another, but retains the sensorial organization appropriate to the first, or at least a memory of it. The earth seen from the moon for a terrestrial. The country for the townsman; the city for the farmer. e s t ran g e m e n t (dépaysement) would appear to be a precondition for landscape.” How, he wonders, “could we capture the breadth of the wind that sweeps the mind into the void when the landscape arrives, if not in the texture of the written word?” (188). Good question. “[A] landscape is a mark, and it (but not the mark it makes and leaves) should be thought of, not as an inscription, but as the erasure of a support”

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(189). And indeed the very operation of metaphor is key here, for it is through its workings that we are invited to invent. Metaphor not simply as the laboratory of the humanities but metaphors as “the ravens of language,” as McKay (2001, 69) puts it in a stirring passage about de Man. This idea of the creative and inventive play of metaphor here stands against a dreary and debased notion of semiotic servitude whereby one speaks “only by picking up what loiters around in speech”; a kind of hunter-gatherer model of language (Barthes 1979, 15).10 Far from it. On de Man’s (1978, 19) account, it is not about ontology, about things as they are – not even close – but rather about authority, things as they are decreed to be. Nothing, in principle, separates the naming of one thing from another. For de Man, this is to see ordinary language as a zone of “wild figurations” (ibid.). And this unruly wild[er]ness in language is traversed by tropes. Tropes, de Man tells us, are travellers.11 Metaphors, the travellers of language – tourists, perhaps, visitors, or smugglers (another kind of tourism). To be clear, wilderness too is a trope, a traveller, and a raven in the metaphysics of Euro-American geography, but it has its proper place. On the lake and the river though, a tourist always knows too much and not enough. journal entry b l a c k r i v e r , 3 a u g u s t 2005

As I write this, I am on the Mackenzie River, steaming south at five knots towards the Arctic Circle. It will take eleven days to travel from the Mackenzie delta on the Beaufort Sea and up the Mackenzie to Hay River on Great Slave Lake. I am on a passenger boat, the Norweta, owned by a Dene man and an Inuit woman; an Indian and an Eskimo as they call themselves – “still at war,” they point out. I am a northern tourist; skilled, but perhaps useless. The other passengers on board are a strange collection of the “interested elderly” engaged mostly in forms of geographic free association. “Have you been to the Falklands?” I am asked. In 1924, the young assistant professor Harold Innis also made a visit to the Mackenzie River basin. The “river of disappointment,” as Mackenzie is said to have called it, upon discovering that it led only to the Beaufort Sea.12 Innis was to undertake numerous field trips throughout this period, visiting the Canadian margins (e.g., Lake

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Athabasca, the Yukon, James Bay, Labrador). And, as was his procedure, he made copious field notes – typed, his Mackenzie notes run to some ninety pages – detailing selectively, and idiosyncratically, his northward journey.13 After a long train ride, he began his river journey on the Peace River and made his way to Lake Athabasca. Then he travelled on the Slave River to Great Slave Lake, spending some time in Fort Resolution (where he counted 41 boats, 122 canoes, 6  scows, 12 birch-bark canoes, and several Evenrude engines),14 then, boarding the Liard River, crossing Great Slave Lake to the mouth of the Mackenzie (oddly, no mention of the congregation of cruciform white pelicans, although he did note two beavers and the Liard did manage to strike a shoal), taking a side trip up to Fort Nelson, British Columbia, then back to Simpson, boarding the s s Distributor, and down the Mackenzie River to Aklavik, the now decommissioned head of the Mackenzie delta, returning the length of the system to McMurray. “Certainly,” he wrote, “there is no river in Canada, the home of the canoe, better adapted for canoeing than the Mackenzie River and its tributary, the Peace” (Innis 1925a, 151).15 It can be paddled by canoe with only two or three breaks, he figured. “Effective paddling begins early in the morning, or late in the afternoon” (152). Innis, it turns out, was not actually in a canoe on the Mackenzie River. He was, at some point, in a canoe with John Long, camping on the shore at night. It is difficult to determine details like this from his journal, but in a memo he wrote concerning wildlife conservation in the Mackenzie District, he states that he left the Peace River by canoe and paddled through to Fort Resolution on Great Slave (Innis 1925b). His short published piece on his northern trip makes no mention of this fact, propagating instead the fiction of a vast paddling journey, with him in the stern. In any case, like me, he was a northern tourist of sorts, a passenger on a boat (in his case, the D.A. Thomas, and the Liard River) (Mitchell 2000, 194). Innis and I: migrant workers, travellers, itinerant labourers, les coureurs du stylo. His omission, though, the phantom canoe evoked in his field notes and hedged in his publications, added a certain gravitas to his travels and gives a clue to his ideas about North. I take my cue here from Mitchell: “The tourist is one of the most hypertheorized figures in contemporary cultural studies. The tourist has been staged as nomad, detective, seer and prophet, cultural theorist and ignoramus … I like to think of my own form of tourism

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as that of the … migrant worker who brings nothing but some skills developed elsewhere, skills that may or may not be useful.” Unlike me, however, he was little concerned with the problematics of North as such. He was at work, certainly; Innis’s son, Donald, reported his father’s pleasure at having once been described as “the best deckhand in the North” (Innis 1953, 4). Loading and unloading goods, fuelling the Liard, earning his keep. Counting. But his tourism, like my own, was located in his distance, his curiosity, his writing. His notes from that summer are nearly as difficult to follow as his most challenging published work; the through-line is buried under a succession of overlapping details that have more in common with the recursive quality of excited recollection than with the linear geography of the river – or for that matter, his itinerary upon it. The dates that locate his movements northward in the early part of his trip just seem to disappear as he goes further north. Once simply cannot tell where he is. Or when. Skipping from Norman to Resolution, to Fort Good Hope and Chipewyan, to Wrigley (before he reaches Simpson), to the precipitous decline of beaver prices in 1875, detailed trapping methods for all manner of fur-bearing creatures, to the Indians’ dislike for light-patterned prints; he gleans. Innis had gone North to explore the Canadian margins at the very moment that the North was, as it is again today, a Canadian cultural preoccupation, a cardinal point du jour.16 A voyageur of sorts, and a voyeur, certainly (part Stefansson, part Call of the Wild – a screening of which he apparently attended in Toronto in the weeks prior to his trip) (See Evenden, chap. 3, this volume). He was collecting instances and evidence of productive economic and social exchange in the North. He would gather first-hand data concerning the material practices of trade, the social relations within which it was manifest, and he would work on ideas about the Canadian North as a site of “national self-realization” (ibid.). With a growing suspicion, I think, of centralized repositories of “metropolitan” knowledge – archives, universities, scholarly journals, textbooks, and so on – he felt that to adequately understand the relations between resources, geography (particularly rivers), and colonial space generally, one needed to start from the ground, the territorial archive. That is, to determine the relations between spatial organization, technologies of transportation and communication, and economic growth, one must do field work, “dirt research,” as he put it tellingly.17 This work was not supplementary to the archive but continuous with it.

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journal entry m a c k e n z i e r i v e r , 3 a u g u s t 2005

“The river,” wrote Innis, “is a very important determining factor in the direction of economic development” [Evenden, chap. 3, this volume, 83]. The river was the primordial fact of North. “The river holds sway,” he wrote. “Since the rivers are the Highways,” he added, “the buildings of the missions, the trading companies and the police, each with a separate landing, are strung along the banks. These posts have length but no depth” [Innis 1925a, 152]. No depth, just a semblance. He saw the river as the ideal precinct for the canoe. The river presupposes a canoe to paddle it. If there was a determinism at work in the Innis of this period (and it certainly was not the naive determinism that he has often – and carelessly – been accused of), this may be a clue. However, we may see it differently; that is, perhaps it is the canoe that presupposes. A plausible inversion. But we might rather say that both the river and the canoe are produced in their use. A pragmatics of flow, matter, and use. Practice, in other words. I come to think that Innis really saw it in this manner. In any case, the river has certain practical and theoretical difficulties for the would-be navigator; for instance, which river? The surface of the Mackenzie is in a constant motion of current. The undersurface shifts from year to year, from month to month – no meanders in the Mackenzie; the sedimentary archive is a dynamic and active repository, a territorial archive – so one really cannot navigate the same river even once, much less twice. Not here. One’s competence consists at least in part in knowing this. It was about this time that Innis began to assume the role of a public intellectual of sorts; his excursions to the margins were of great interest in the South. He gave talks in church basements and public schools, to Girl Guides and trade shows, a furriers’ convention, Rotary clubs, and the Brotherhood of the United Church of Davenport Road. Innis’s idea of North, his nordicity, was in many respects quite conventional. North as a dangerous, mysterious, and potentially productive margin, a hinterland of Canada. The men of the fur trade – and they were men as far as his notes are concerned – were preindustrial, solitary frontiersmen. Not surprising, really. North for the Torontonian of his time was more or less the direction and distance of Muskoka, or at the limit, Temagami, or even Canoe Lake in

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Algonquin Park with its wilderness-virtue camps for the affluent offspring of Toronto’s Rosedale. In any case, it is precisely this mode of colonial metonymy that both invents and ceaselessly ratifies figures of North from the equally imaginary site of Southern Ontario.18 That this imaginary for the Southern Canadian is articulated principally around a concept of “wilderness” makes little difference; wilderness here is but a genre within the degree zero of nordicity. At the time he visited the Mackenzie, Innis was compiling material for what would become two separate volumes on the fur-trade period. The first was his 1927 The Fur Trade of Canada, published by University of Toronto Library. Lamentably out of print, this work brought the fur trade out of the space of an imaginary past and placed it squarely into the present as a dynamic, reciprocal, and ongoing force shaping Canadian (and European) development. Three years later, he published his opus, The Fur Trade in Canada, with Yale University Press. Tracking the fur trade between 1497 and 1929, sketching a vast and complex back-story to his previous volume, it is here that Innis’s sweeping and encyclopaedic historical method comes into view. The concept of “the staple” had become a powerful and portable template that allowed him to understand the relation between economies of the margin and central cultural forms; empire and the cultural logics of hinterland(s). “Each staple,” he wrote, “in its turn left its stamp” (Innis 1930c, 5) – a pithy line that I take up elsewhere.19 The staples of interest to me – uranium and radium – could hardly have been unknown to Innis in 1924, but I can find no evidence that they were of interest to him, although he did observe presciently that a mine is an “economic explosive.”20 Nor were they unknown to the Government of Canada, but they had yet to leave their particular stamp upon the North and elsewhere.21 It was six years after his Mackenzie trip that the world’s largest deposit of radioactive pitchblende, the “mineral museum,” as it came to be called (Spence 1932a, 1932b, 1935) was staked by Gilbert LaBine and his snow-blind sidekick Charlie St Paul on Great Bear Lake, setting into motion a network of effects that reverberate still. It strikes me that the radium and uranium, qua staples, mark a radical moment in the economic and cultural development of the North (and perhaps as well in the very conceptual development of “the staple”). Indeed, these staples are different. Parasitic in a way, operating both anachronistically, through the reanimation of the fur-trade river system (the portage,

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the York boat, the river boat, the barge, and so on), and through a succession of contemporary transportation and communicative systems (rail, air, road … wireless, telegraph, telephone), effectively activating various phases of Canadian economic, technological, and cultural development. For Innis, the penumbra of the staple, the technologies surrounding its setting and development – these are the field of the stamp, its imprint. For Innis, the staple exists within this field of development. For me, the penumbra of the staple is enlarged to encompass the future as well, creating strange loops where the fur-trade route bleeds into the Manhattan Project, for example. Or, when the Dene (who continue to suffer this history) travel to Japan to apologize for their role (their labour, their land, their unwitting complicity) in the destruction of Japanese cities, things get complicated – temporally and ethically.22 Field Notes in the Margins So what is a margin, anyway? Quips Jody Berland (1999, 80): “It’s where you write your notes.”23 I had wanted to find myself in a kind of dialogue with my absent other, Innis, through his notes. Since his trip was motivated by an urge to understand place and relation, it seemed promising. In advance, I had felt in agreement with him on important principles. First, that space was not merely the milieu upon which the events of history unfold but that both space and such events are produced and generative in relation to concrete social practice. This also seemed promising. And second, that cultural margins are a necessary, and in any case rewarding, site for understanding dominant historical and cultural forms. That is, for all its difficulties, fieldwork is necessary, fraught and fruitful. Innis’s field notes, though, attest mainly to his gleaning practice – he makes lists; he notes exchanges and prices and trapping techniques; he takes measurements, makes sketches, counts boats and barges – all towards the production of a descriptive thickness. He sought the dirt on the place. But perhaps what interested me most, naïvely I suppose, was that we both found ourselves on the same river, at the same time of year, taking notes. Writing in the margins. Trying to make sense of things. Yet what I found in the northern notes of Innis was a theorist who refused to theorize. I am not the first to make the observation that Innis had too little to say about methodology.

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Overstating the point somewhat, Wernick (1999, 130) puts it this way: “Considering that he wrote as a social scientist, and at that as a critic of the mainstream, he also had remarkably little to say about methodology, or indeed about theoretical considerations of any kind. On even such basic questions as the epistemological status of an historical approach to social science, the effectivity of economic factors, or indeed the precise meaning of key terms like ‘monopoly of knowledge,’ he is virtually mute.” True, Innis did not devote a great deal of writing to methodological questions, but entirely mute he was not. There is, for example, a fascinating, published exchange between Innis and Broek on the disciplinary formations of the social sciences in relation to concepts of nationalism, knowledge, the poverty of the geo-political move in geography, and specialization (Innis and Broek 1945). Elsewhere, one may find Innis writing on questions of methodology and historical method in his work on Veblen (Innis 1929c), and in his essay “On the economic significance of culture” (Innis 1944b). One might move towards a more general claim that Innis was more apt at the ongoing performance of methodological invention than at providing a meta-theoretical elaboration or argument. The river for Innis was an opening, a corridor to a decidedly Southern mode of induction. journal entry c o b a lt - b l o o m a n d c o p p e r - g r e e n – a n o t e o n t h e u n c a n n y , 30 j u ly 2003

At Port Radium, there is an abandoned tennis court. It stands atop the sheer granite cliffs right at the point where they plunge into the blue unfathomable depths of Great Bear Lake. This court, this ruin, is surfaced in a remarkable concrete made in part from pulverized uranium mine tailings. It overlooks another ruin: the decommissioned – that is, bulldozed and abandoned – uranium mine.24 Homo ludens meets Homo faber. It is difficult to convey the strangeness of standing here, listening to a Geiger counter rendering sonorous the material history of this place; 1200, 1400, 1550 microRems per hour. Translating the abstract invisibility of energetic matter seeking its own repose, struggling towards the mute lifelessness of lead. [From my notes I can tell that I stood mid-court and searched briefly for a line about love and danger.] To stand here is quite literally to glimpse the uncanny of landscape, “the proximity of the remote” [Gordon 1997, 52], the oikos haunted by its history.

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Is this, I wonder, the emphatic geography I had imagined? Anyway, this was hardly a discovery on my part. It had been noted in numerous radiological surveys and in anecdotal reports from those who had visited the area. In advance, I knew exactly where to find it. One must climb the bulldozed talus slope at the southwest corner of the mine site. I knew that from there I would see a panorama of lake to the west, to the south, and to the northwest. I would see the only remaining structure on the property – the former rcmp cabin, dating from the late 1930s. To the east, the opening to Echo Bay, several kilometres from the former townsite of Cameron Bay, a wild-west radium boomtown in the 1930s, where Irene Spry spent a summer pretending to be Harold Innis; where Zip and Zoom, two diasporic sex-trade refugees from the Yukon gold rush, lived and worked; where pitchblende was smuggled and mineral claims traded. All of this I knew before I arrived. Yet the very notion of preparation, the question of its sufficiency, or scope, was not the problem here. It was not a problem of description; it is not that one thing cannot describe another – indeed, this may be all that one thing can do. Rather, it is about a bodily encounter, a moment, an event. And whatever else an event may turn out to be – in all of our interminable hand-wringing about such things – it is simply not something that can be experienced in advance of itself. The encounter or event I refer to is lost in the very moment of recognition and reconciliation, where archive precedes landscape, where the testimony precedes the witness. A moment of seemingly reversed causality. That odd sensation of visiting a region that is already imprinted symbolically (archivally, discursively, textually, practically) in one’s awareness, in one’s work. I know what happened here! I recognize this place. Some would call this fact-checking. But this lacks precision. And imagination. It can just as easily be seen as the troubling of indexicality, a near approximation of the indexical imaginary. The index tells us that it is okay to be a “realist” in polite company and in the woods. It has no truck with mimesis, that cheap trick of the cinema and the cave. No unconscious operating beyond the limit of detection as the secret guarantor.25 The index seduces with the sensation of competence. Surely this is one of the extra-textual, seductive pleasures of doing fieldwork to begin with. Yet there is something unsettling about all of this. To be in the field is not about the factual confirmation, arbitration, and correction of the textual. It is about an encounter – the mark is always produced in the encounter – where the territory asserts a non-conformity with

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its varied representations, where indices betray. Suspension. False memory, bad data, forgetting. And yet even a misalignment is identifiable as such only in relation to alignment itself. Misrecognition is a kind of recognition, and it can ultimately be referred to error; always a manner of adjustment, re-calculation, and correction. The trouble, though, pertains to the hard bits, the pieces that resist, that fail to fail, so to speak. Knots of bewilderment, these are sites – keepingplaces, perhaps – marked by a radical non-registration of the ontic and the epistemic.26 It is an open question. A problem is produced in-between a knowledge and a place, a witness and a landscape, a chorographic procedure (to which I will return). It is neither the confirmation of knowing (the positivism of method) nor the pretence of error (right, again!) but the abyss and the silence of no language game, no tacit abridgement in advance. Invention. Abduction. Writing and reading. It is not that one searches for ciphers of the real – this is merely what one ends up with, even while a complacent sense of indexicality is palpable. A cipher is not the thing you cannot understand because of its complexity, ambiguity, or incomprehensibility. A cipher is that which you think you ought to understand precisely because it appears to be about understanding, or beyond it – the obvious. It goes without saying. This is the problem with indices, is it not? On the one hand, they demand a form of knowledge. One must know that the flash of lightning shares an existential bond with the clap of thunder that follows. But on the other hand, this is only one way of describing things. The agitated clicking of my Geiger counter as I circle the ancient tennis court in Port Radium surfaced in radioactive concrete is a sign. Clearly. I am in no doubt that there is a semiological relation between the radiation and the clicking. This must be an index. The child who places her hand on the door of the still-warm oven is engaging in a piece of semiotic learning. She is about to learn the sureness of the index. A tekmerion, a sure sign.27 And she is also about to invent an idiom. Henceforth the warmness of the oven will signal its object clearly with the ontic commemoration of pain. The first time, though … the first time one is free, in a sense, from that knowledge that ties things together. Thereafter, things can never be the same again. The indexical imaginary is precisely the fantasy that one is, in this sense, free. The archive asserts its tyranny through the fantastic seductions of metonymy. Yet as with tekmeria generally, certainty, necessity, we would say, is predicated upon knowledge – a public knowledge, a manner of

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ratified belief, and a knowledge that is precisely at issue. The tekmerion reaches its limit in making an “irrefutable” claim, in telling us that something is the case. Not why. It makes no explanation. This cancer is malignant. That oven is hot. This tennis court is hot. But it can make no explanation; this is but the retroactive projection of a knowledge unsure of its grounds. It is demonstrative first, and then, and therefore, persuasive. Here there really is no “why.” Until there is certainty, there is no tekmerion; it is, as Barthes (1988, 61) puts it, “suspended.” And this suspension of the tekmerion may well be a matter of cultural investment. Consider for example the dispute between neo-Darwinism and young-earth creationism concerning fossils, emphatic trickster objects for sure. While the fossil record is strong indexical evidence (tekmerion) of deep history from an evolutionary point of view, for the young-earth creationists, it is merely evidence of a Noachian catastrophe some six thousand years ago. Or, for the Canadian government, the residual radioactive contamination at Great Bear Lake is simply a perfectly reparable inconvenience, one of thousands of contaminated sites bequeathed to the present by an era of unregulated industrial development. For the Dene, or those who spoke with me, something has happened to their land, their lake, and their health, and they were involved. Here, as perhaps elsewhere, landscape and differend are aligned closely. There is no way to resolve conflicts of interpretation. The tekmerion on the one hand, and the index in suspension on the other. It is hard to tell the difference. The indexical imaginary exists amid this ambiguity when one confers upon the sign in suspension a capacity to reveal a truth.28 It is in the very instant of this ambiguity that one may become lost. journal entry c a m e r o n b ay – a u g u s t 2003

It was about a year ago today [August 2003], as I sit here in Cameron Bay in the midst of all these ruins (most of them invisible), that I found myself in the NWT Archives in Yellowknife, amidst other ruins. It was a remarkable few days spent poring through a scattered collection. Maps and photos and clippings and books. And one that I brought with me – now sodden with much of the rest of my papers – was a diary of Irene Spry, who was Irene Biss at the time, and who had been in the orbit of Innis since her

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arrival at the University of Toronto in 1929. Written in a difficult hand, in a school workbook, she took me through an impressionistic inventory of Cameron Bay at the time of her visit in 1935.29 As I spread my wet things on the floor of the bunk house at what remained of Branson’s Lodge (an abandoned fishing camp) at Cameron Bay, I have discovered a copy of Irene Spry’s Cameron Bay journal in my papers. Since Innis never visited this lake, I was happy to have Spry’s journal to read, but I was certain that it had been left behind. It reads like a series of sketches in preparation for a short story. This place, she said, was a rich collection of buildings, and tents and caches, and tin huts and sheds. And where I sit as I write this, I could imagine just over there where Vic Ingraham has his post office and pool room and the Musk Ox Saloon. (Old Vic lost two legs, a few fingers, and nearly his life when the schooner he was on, the Speed II, caught fire and sank in a late fall storm while crossing from Fort Franklin in ’33.) A good deal of money is said to have changed hands here, according to the laws of chance. The sign on his door said “No person under 16 years of age, or treaty Indians allowed in here.” No blacks, no Irish, no dogs. And not far from Vic’s was the Arctic Lunch. Jessie Matthews ran it and sold a fair bit of booze on the side. Alcohol was a central flow of this economy. The government had declared that everyone was entitled to two gallons a year. Jessie did a good business. And just to the left would have been Gardiner’s Café; cheap food, hot coffee. Inside one might have found Anna Berquist, Swedish runaway, and squeeze of Chuch McLeod the prospector. Dr and Mrs Byrnes lived here too with their daughter Elizabeth. The Mrs was apparently a bit “lushed, tanned and wrinkled,” writes Spry. And reports are that a number of people seem to have very little confidence in the doctor’s professional skill as a mine doctor. But people tend to talk too much. The radio station here was staffed by 4 radio boys. One wished them the best I suppose … not long ago the operator at Rae burned to death when the station caught fire while he was asleep, and before that, another one managed to drown in the frigid spring waters. It was said that if a man were to fall completely under the water of Great Bear Lake, he would not come back up. It’s just too cold. Henry Swanson had had a trading post in Fort Franklin. Upon hearing of the staking rush he made his way across the lake in the spring of 1931 and staked the entire area that was to become the town of Cameron Bay. It is said that well into the 1930s one

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could still find his claim stakes, inscribed with the name “Anna,” his daughter’s name, and the rightful and registered owner of the claims, according to Anna. Over behind the Swanson’s house, near to the old lumber shed, is the Hudson’s Bay Company store. Andy Reid runs it, and Tommy Taylor, “a cheerful cherubic youth, very pink,” is the apprentice clerk. And next to that, the mining recorder and his “bloodless but well-meaning wife.” And Paul Trudell, assistant mining recorder, “a round bouncing little French Canadian.” D’Arcy Arden married an “Indian” woman. Elmer Baher was the rcmp officer; not a pleasant job one would imagine. Jim English wants to be an electrical engineer, and Mr Langfeldt is the pharmacist, and Frank Causneau is there, an ex-Yukon gambler … came here once the gold rush had exhausted itself. The Yukon seems to have spit out a number of gold rush alumni into the heady dream of the radium rush of the early 1930s, followed by the Yellowknife gold rush of ’35. Yukon Jessie (the aforementioned Jessie Matthews), arrived from the Yukon, having picked up a couple of working girls in Edmonton en route. Jessie was a large woman, apparently – this gets mentioned by all who note her presence here – and the girls, poetically dubbed Zip and Zoom, were fast women, evidently. None of them ended up staying in town for long. Zip and Zoom found nice men to take them south (Zip to Toronto with a miner, and Zoom to Edmonton with a trapper, I believe), and Jess was flown south on the good will of a pilot with some extra space. This radium-rush who’s-who goes on for pages. No economic history here. The orphaned lad of seventeen from Dr Barnardo’s Homes in Britain whose cheerful laugh endeared him to everyone; a crusty seventy-two-year-old carpenter from Victoria, B C, whose temperament and traits were so adverse, so unpleasant, no one would travel with him; a man with a wooden leg, and another who had competed in long-distance foot races. There was a white justice of the peace from Alberta, and a “colored refugee” from justice from Alabama … an unemployed chemistry professor from Notre Dame, and a deaf mute from Manitoba, and so on.30 journal entry a r c t i c c i r c l e – 1 a u g u s t 2005

Forests are such a luxury of the Southern imagination. Cruciform and phantastic, lush, intoxicated. The diminutive waifs in the

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North; however, those objects of Purdy’s scorn, these are the real trees, and not out of any Darwinian extremity. Settlers all, stunted, they wait for better times. Coniferous models of the messianism of the North. A gambit that appears to be paying off in the warm return of climatic change, one notes. Waiting. John Moss says something like, North is the metaphysics of geography. Perhaps this is why we are still so neurotic when it comes to thinking about it. Is it just our lingering suspicions about metaphysics? Or metaphors? Lichens, as with these “northern dwarfs,” have a more than passing affinity with duration. They can wait. This is also the tragic ambiguity of distance. Isn’t it? Too far and too long. One we can manage – the time, that is – the other we cannot. One is approached with a shout or a shot, the other with a lament or by tears. But the two, once confused, have a particular affinity, precisely, for tragedy. Too far and too long. Duration is of course not the exclusive province of lichens and trees. Duration (both kinds, at least) is also the domain of the stories – not history – belonging to the peoples of the North, and elsewhere. Those of us of European extraction (odd word, that) may find it strange that one might speak of having been around forever. In the same place. Very long and very close. But “we” don’t do this. And all this says, or all I am trying to say, is that we have before us a problem. The antiquarian distinctions between modes of worldly representations – that is, between topos, choros, and geos – arose out of “three very different ways of conceptualizing space and place, three different ways of gaining knowledge of them, and three different ways of representing that knowledge” (Curry 2002, 503).31 It would be quite incorrect to assume a simple scalar relation between these terms, as though they describe a movement from the very large (geos) to the very small (topos). Of these three, chorography has all but disappeared in the conceptual and discursive reshuffling of these terms. One path of derivation here is to follow the chora itself. Walter does this, although rather than chorography, he is interested in deriving a chorographic practice he calls topistics. It requires a particular approach and a particular mode of reasoning that, after Plato, he likens to dreaming with open eyes: “Plato tells us that to grasp the nature of place, ‘we must try to express and make manifest a form obscure and dim.’ It lies outside both reason and sensation, to be apprehended by some kind of sensuous reasoning. ‘Some sort of

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bastard reasoning, which is hardly trustworthy,’ Plato writes, gives us the knowledge of place” (Walter 1988, 121). Walter continues: Chora, which may be translated as either “place” or “space,” depending on context, is one of the independent, eternal modes of experience – one of the three types of Being in the universe. One type of being refers to the eternal ideas, the changeless forms or models of things apprehended by the reason – the domain of concepts. The second type of Being includes the transient copies or exemplifications or the eternal forms, meaning perceptual phenomena, which pass from birth to decay – the domain of sensory experience. The third type of reality, chora, is the receptacle of sensory experience and the seat of phenomena. Whereas the eternal models exist without specific location, every instance of sensory experience must emerge in a place. (122) The chora, which Derrida enlivens from Plato’s Timaeus – as a kind of third mode between being and becoming – shares a similar but not identical derivation.32 Julia Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language was perhaps the first major work of theorization of the chora. Also working from a reading of the Timaeus, Kristeva (1984, 26) “borrows” the term chora as something pre-positional, nonaxiomatic, non-representational, neither model nor copy, as that which “precedes and underlies figuration” and is “analogous only to vocal or kinetic rhythm,” that is, repeatable and separable. And it is this rhythmic space (i.e., articulation) – modelled as analogous to the unconscious of the Freudian subject – as the semiotic chora that suggests a very tricky kind of place. Not at all a determined place, which would be a topos, but a manner of spacing in which things may come to take place. As a pre-ontological site that is yet somehow a receptacle, its relation to the nominable itself is of course paradoxical, as she notes. Of particular interest here, however, is the idea of chora as “a modality of significance in which the linguistic sign is not yet articulated as an absence of an object,” (26) suggestive not of a Lacanian real but, rather, of a productive locus of invention. The other line of derivation follows chorography as a practice or art. There was a particular place for chorography as a qualitative mode of picturing the world, an attempt to “capture a more subjective dimension of spatiality in specific rather than in generic terms” (Ulmer 1994, 39). Ptolemy is said to have compared this practice

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with a kind of painting.33 Contemporary readings of chorography take this into the domain of the rhetoric of invention, as a mode of generating method from theory (39). An interesting inversion, from which one might derive a unique method of approach that could be called a “topistics”; that is, a mode of theory that retro-navigates an idea of place as inseparable from experience.34 In a word, theoria: “Theoria did not mean the kind of vision that is restricted to sight. The Greek word for exclusively optic perception is opsis. The term theoria implied a complex but organic mode of active observation originally – a perceptual system that included asking questions, listening to stories and local myths, and feeling as well as hearing and seeing” (Walter 1988, 18). For Gregory Ulmer (1994, 39), chorography, also a mode of theoria, is “a rhetoric of invention concerned with the history of ‘place’ in relation to memory.” The writer will “store and retrieve information from premises or places formulated not as abstract containers,” he writes, “as in the tradition of topos” (73) – that is, a “collection of commonplaces” for the purposes of argument,35 a place where a plurality of oratorical reasonings coincide – but as means of writing and reading a stamp or imprint. It is tactile and subjective, decidedly non-Aristotelian, and aims at something between description and explanation. One proceeds with ideas and feeling and citation, not with a compass (a distinctly unreliable instrument in northern latitudes anyway).36 Chorography is a kind of memory art for engagement with place or region.37 To Yates’s ars memoriae, it posits an art of the practice of place and invention; an (Ulmer 1994, 162). Its apparent similarity to choreography is but a happy coincidence. And so, one might add, is the relation between theoria and therapeia; that is, the therapeia of place means “close attendance” or “caring” (Walter 1988, 20). To write with the paradigm is the method proposed by Ulmer. We could call this a monstrous writing, or a teratological writing, as Barthes (1967, 86–8) had it; that is, a kind of contamination. The oppositions and differences characteristic of the paradigm (“the mnemonic treasure,” that which “normally” remains unified in absentia) are rendered monstrous (Barthes says “transgressive”) when they come to be expressed syntagmatically (i.e., in praesentia) (58–62). To move the paradigmatic onto the syntagmatic is to move speech closer to a metaphoric order through the “removal of a kind of structural censorship,” not unlike that of dreams (60).

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journal entry t u l i ta ( f o r t n o r m a n ) , 6 a u g u s t 2005

Innis is not good company. It is too easy to come to a dispute with him, to see his selectivity as an all-too-conventional optic of an indifferent euro-ethnography. A Southern politics of Northern exclusion permutes into a historio-economic vision of a North morally and economically bound up in the formation of Canada. His vision though, precisely, is a problem. He seems not to like Indians, women, or Jews. However invaluable Indians were to his understanding of the dynamics of the fur trade, of colonial development, and the formation of “Canada,” they were not reliable witnesses for his territorial ethnography (quite literally a mode of Nation-writing). “Half breeds,” apparently yes, but not the Indians. “Caribou-eaters,” he calls them. Or the Eskimos, the “Huskies.” Evenden, I recall, is much more damning in his reading of Innis’s race and gender issues; I simply find myself bewildered. This is in the background of my thinking today. More importantly, I have been invited to a wedding – the entire village of Tulita will attend. Today is the day that the church celebrates the transfiguration of Christ, apparently. It also happens to be the sixtieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The priest comments on both of these things as a way to make a call for peace. The groom is eighty-two years old and dying from cancer. During the 1950s he had worked for Eldorado on the Great Bear River handling bags of uranium ore. This total and bizarre connection remains unspoken. A strange nexus. I am weary of reading Innis’s notes, trying to invent the author as an interlocutor. Such is the transference of reading. This has turned into a point of departure for me: Innis was there as a reader; he did his real writing elsewhere. journal entry t s i i g e h t c h i c ( a r c t i c r e d r i v e r ), 6 a u g u s t 2005

We arrive mid-day. Fourteen eagles sunning themselves at the mouth of the river. I think it was fourteen (notwithstanding Borges’s Argumentum Ornithologicum). I can find no fish being smoked. No bales tied and waiting for transport to Aklavik (all that Innis saw on his visit). It is hot. There is an inviting pond on

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the large delta area at the confluence of the Red and Mackenzie rivers. High above stands the village. Walking through town, I stop and speak with an old woman who is standing near the church. I ask her about swimming in this pond. “No,” she says, and then tells me a long story. Following one of the innumerable battles between the Gwitch’in and the Inuit, scores of Inuit were thrown into the lake, the wounded to drown, and all the bodies were just left in the lake. Ever since this time, she said, the eagles wait for the bodies to rise, but all that emerge are ghosts. The lake is full of ghosts, too full, so there is just no room to swim. She uses a Slavey word to describe when this happened; I think it means the really long-ago time. Too many ghosts. This is it really. This is what Innis cannot see. What he has no eyes to see. These puncta, these ghosts. “Civilization spoils Indians for hunting,” he said. The studium that animates his practice can only ever let him experience, “in reverse” perhaps, his own culture (Barthes 1981, 28). The emptiness of the landscape about him does not belie a human presence. Far from it. This human presence is simply not available to that (Southern) eye. He sees empty with a telos of filling, whereas one might have seen or heard something else. A grave, a story, a ghost. But not easily. Given his deep commitment to and admiration of cultures of orality, this seems odd. In any case, Chamberlin (2003, 54) expresses the upshot of this problem quite clearly: “It is an assumption that understanding sophisticated oral traditions comes naturally to the sympathetic ear. It doesn’t. Just as we learn to read, so we learn how to listen; and this learning does not come naturally.” More than a sympathetic ear (or eye) is required. I ask myself questions that I can only hope to answer. What then might be the chorographic procedures for writing this landscape? What manner of writing is appropriate to an emphatic landscape, such that it is both ethically engaged and alive to the proximity of the remote? How to be in the field without recourse to the metaphors of colonial exploration, including of course the very idea of an empty landscape. How to narrate a place and a time as stranger. How to manage the seductions of the institutional archive and the metropolitan knowledge it fosters while remaining alive to the productive possibilities of the accident (“the unfathomable threads of causality” [Ulmer 1994, 201]) as a methodological axiom.

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notes

1 A different version of this chapter was published in the Canadian Journal of Communication 33, 2 (2008): 171–91. It is reprinted with the journal’s permission. A similar version is also included in van Wyck (2010). 2 “We would travel across the lake and watch them unload the [uranium ore] bags … lots of people handled the ore bags but it must have been dangerous so now people are talking more about uranium. In those days we never thought about the danger of uranium” (Canada 2005, 114). This particular history – of the Dene, uranium, landscape, and cultural memory – is the subject of a monograph (van Wyck 2010). See also Déline Dene Band Uranium Committee (1998); Déline Uranium Team (2005). 3 I think here of Torgovnick (1990). 4 See Agamben (2005). 5 See, for example, van Herk (1991); Wiebe (2003). 6 Cited in Stefansson and Gísli (2001, 73). 7 See Neuman and Wilson (1982). 8 This, for example, would be Grace’s (2001) reading of him in relation to the canon of Canadian Northern writing. 9 It is clear that we will not alter Canada by jettisoning our ideas of the North (i.e., Grace), any more than we will by changing the name of the Mackenzie to Deh Cho, or of Frobisher to Iqaluit. A trick of toponomy aimed more perhaps at reducing the burden of residual and Southern postcolonial guilt. An apology by other means. And in any case, paying a debt is not the same thing as making an apology. 10 He continues: “The sign is a follower, gregarious; in each sign sleeps that monster: a stereotype. I can speak only by picking up what loiters around in speech. Once I speak, these two categories unite in me; I am both master and slave. I am not content to repeat what has been said, to settle comfortably in the servitude of signs: I speak, I affirm, I assert tellingly what I repeat.” 11 He continues: “What makes matters worse is that there is no way of finding out whether they do so with criminal intent or not.” 12 See Innis (1930a, 132). 13 Mackenzie River Trip Typed Notes, 1924, uta, Harold A. Innis, Personal Records, B1972–0003/006 (03), (04). 14 Ibid., 15. 15 Innis (1925a, 151). As Jonathan Bordo suggested to me, it is therefore interesting that Innis should invoke the beaver and not the canoe as the

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organizing and introductory figure for his work in The Fur Trade in Canada. See Innis (1930c). 16 His trip was in the lead-up to the second International Polar Year (ipy) in 1932 (a multination, collaborative scientific frenzy of Northern and polar research). Consequently, his fur-trade book landed in a very fertile time. My interest here coincided with the fourth ipy in 2007–08. As with previous Polar Year initiatives (1882, 1932, 1957), this was a vast initiative. At last count there are over fifty countries involved formally (including, I note, Malaysia) and over ninety participant countries. 17 See Creighton (1978); Watson (2006, 40). 18 In her (it-takes-a-village-to-write-a-book-like-that) Canada and the Idea of North, Grace (2001) works this theme and its relations to Creighton’s “Laurentian thesis” of nordicity. Renée Hulan (1996, 2002) takes up similar themes. And from another point of view, working from image to site, Jonathan Bordo takes this up in his “Jack Pine” essay (1992), in “Picture and Witness at the Site of the Wilderness” (2000), and in “Canada,” the Proper Name of the Wilderness (in progress). 19 See van Wyck (2002); van Wyck (2010, 194–5). 20 Innis (1929e). Innis (1940d, 202) directly touches upon the radium and uranium finds at Great Bear Lake in the context of a book review of Laytha (1939). He also alludes to the pitchblende discoveries at Bear Lake, giving particular attention to how airplanes had been used to freight supplies (Innis and Lower 1936, 396). 21 See, for example, Leitch (1935); Timm (1933). 22 As it turns out, this particular stamp is profoundly indelible. In 2002, uranium was worth about nine dollars per pound. In the summer of 2007 it approached $140. Do the arithmetic: it is all happening again. It is estimated that only 50 percent of the global uranium fuel requirements are met by existing uranium mining production, the remainder coming from decommissioned military sources; this shortfall is driving the boom. Alberta Star, a Canadian mining and exploration firm – owned, incredibly, by the brother of author Douglas Coupland – has, with the blessing of the Dene (or some of them), recommenced uranium exploration on Great Bear Lake and blanket-staked the entire area. Thus, to the strange loops mentioned above we may add the staging of a traumatic return of the nuclear, capable of re-entering the market defensively through a back door, opened in part by the exceedingly short half-life of public memory and ironically (read: perversely) fuelled (so to speak) by such public spectacles as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. As I write this in 2009, the Government of Canada has recently announced its commitment to nuclear

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energy as part of the nation’s energy future; Al Gore, together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was the 2007 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; North Korea has just (May 2009) conducted its second underground nuclear detonation, the first being a one-kiloton detonation in 2006, and the most recent twenty kilotons; and Iran, with the assistance of the Russian government, is now (2010) in the final fuelling stages of bringing it first reactor on line. Thus we see the grounds of an emergent empirical argument – in the form of mean sea-level changes, images of melting glaciers, placeless polar bears, global urban-rural ratios, rising global temperatures (thermal and political) – favourably disposed to a renewed interest in and development of nuclear energy and security. India and China stand as two important constituencies in which converging flows of capital, population pressure, poverty, and politically unstable and/or diminishing fossil fuel resources all point towards a resurgence of the nuclear as a prudent, or necessary, choice. China in particular represents an almost unimaginably large market for uranium. (Westinghouse, now owned by Toshiba, has several billion dollars’ worth of orders for new nuclear plants in China.) China currently produces almost 80 percent of its electricity from coal; making it not a particularly good citizen from the point of view of post-Kyoto carbon negotiations: “The country plans to build 27 plants to meet a target of raising nuclear energy output fivefold by 2020. India aims to build 17 reactors to triple nuclear power capacity by 2012.” See Chambers (2005). Closer to home (mine) the Ontario government has just announced that it plans to add two new reactors (to be running by 2018) to the Darlington reactor complex, and Bruce Power has just unveiled a proposal for two new reactors to be built in Saskatchewan. These will be the first new reactors to come online in Canada since 1992. See http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf49a_ Nuclear_Power_in_Canada.html. The most plausible future today is one in which commercial nuclear power generation is seen as a path to good carbon stewardship. Great Bear Lake seems destined to become part of the global supply chain. 23 See also Berland (2009). 24 From this vantage point, weather permitting, one can survey a staggeringly wide expanse of Great Bear Lake. In 1900, Macintosh Bell and Charles Camsell of the Canadian Geological Survey stood at this place and wrote the prosaic and oft-quoted, “In the greenstones east of McTavish Bay occur numerous interrupted stringers of calc-spar, containing chalcopyrite and the steep rocky shores which here present themselves to the lake are often stained with cobalt-bloom and copper-green” (Bell 1901, 27).

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25 For a recent contribution to scholarship on indexicality and its relations to the trace, see Cyr (2008). 26 I put it this way because it strikes me that if we say the symbolic and the real, in an orthodox manner at least, the symbolic will always prevail, at least with respect to discourse. In any case, here, nothing trumps anything by default. 27 A tekmerion is an odd species of sign, a necessary sign. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle (1926, 27) puts it thus: “Necessary signs are called tekmeria … when people think that their arguments are irrefutable, they think that they are bringing forward a tekmerion, something as it were proved and concluded.” 28 The imaginary, the pre-verbal Lacanian imaginary, we could describe as the pre-symbolic subject’s spectral identification and over-estimation. It is a misrecognition of one’s coherence and one’s power. The attraction of the ego as another. In this sense, “indexical” imaginary could be described as the sign presumed to be configured as semiologically coherent and as possessed of a “natural” capacity for testimony that it may not in fact possess. It is not specular; it “implies a type of apprehension in which factors such as resemblance and homeomorphism play a decisive role, as is borne out by a sort of coalescence of the signifier and the signified” (Laplanche and Pontalis 1973, 210). 29 Irene (née Biss) Spry, Journal, 1935, nwta-sf. As far as I know, it was almost fifty years later, some fifteen years before she died, before she published anything to do with this fieldwork. In 1982, a short note appeared in the Musk-Ox summarizing her travels in the summer of 1935. While the main source of her papers is Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, she donated her hand-written journal from that summer and over six hundred of her photographs to the Northwest Territories Archives. See Spry (1982). 30 Peet writes in a similar vein (so to speak). See Peet (1978, 1983). 31 See also Curry (2005). 32 See Derrida (1997). 33 See Nicolet (1991, 100). 34 Walter (1988, 21). Walter derives this particular sense of topistics from a reading of a Platonic theoria through the quasi-romantic lens of holistic experience. He uses the “French” expression “nostalgie de la boue” (as “recherche de la boue perdue”). Interestingly, Rosalind Krauss (1991, 112) points out that it is in fact not idiomatic French at all but an anglophonic term “transposed into the magically resonant frame of a supposedly French turn of phrase.”

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35 See Barthes (1988, 64). 36 Walter (1988, 21) illustrates this sense of method through a story: “Thales, one of the Seven Sages, while observing the stars fell into a well. A Thracian slave woman laughed at him, saying he wanted to know what happened in the heavens, but failed to observe what was in front of his own feet. In this simple way, she exposed the predicament of a theorist who loses his ground.” 37 Two particularly lucid instances of this mode of chorographic engagement are Jonathan Bordo’s “The Homer of Potsdamerplatz: Walter Benjamin in Wim Wenders’s Sky over Berlin/Wings of Desire, a Critical Topography” (2009) and “The Keeping Place (Arising from an Incident on the Land)” (2003).

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ga Glenbow Archives h b c a Hudson’s Bay Company Archives j h ua - b p Johns Hopkins University Archives, Isaiah Bowman Papers l ac Library and Archives Canada l ac - i a f Library and Archives Canada, Department of Indian Affairs Files l ac - d f Library and Archives Canada, George M. Douglas Fonds l ac - s f Library and Archives Canada, Irene Spry Fonds nwta - l f Northwest Territory Archives, Arne Lahti Fonds nwta - s f Northwest Territory Archives, Irene Spry Fonds pa h s Prince Albert Historical Society Archives pa a Provincial Archives of Alberta r ac - r f Rockefeller Archive Center, Papers of the Rockefeller Foundation r ac - wp Rockefeller Archive Center, Joseph Willits Papers q ua - l p Queen’s University Archives, A.R.M. Lower Papers s gm- s t ej  Soeurs Grises de Montréal, Sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus Hôpital – Chesterfield Inlet s p f c St. Paul’s – Fort Chipewyan, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca, 1920–21 ua a - p f University of Alberta Archives, James M. Parker Fonds, ub c a - h f Rare Books and Special Collections, F.W. Howay Fonds. uta - c h r Canadian Historical Review Records, uta - d r Department of the Registrar uta - e p University of Toronto Archives, Division of University Extension, Textual Publications

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Contributors

ser g ei v. a r k h i p ov (1961–2012) was an associate professor in the Department of Russian Philology at North-Ossetian State University (no su) and was chair of the Department of Mass Communications at ngo Vladikavkaz Institute of Economics, Management, and Law (v i e mp) in Russia. Professor Arkhipov was at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, dc (2006–07), where he was the holder of a Fulbright Fellowship. He was the editor and publisher of an annual inter-university collection of articles in social science and humanities entitled “History and Philosophy of Culture,” and he had over forty academic publications to his credit. jeffr ey d . b r i son is an associate professor in the Department of History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In 2005 he published Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Canada: American Philanthropy and the Arts and Letters in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), a study that explores the influence of private American philanthropy on the making of a national culture in Canada. He is currently working on a project that examines the role private philanthropic foundations played in fostering extra-national intellectual networks and infrastructure from the late 1930s to the early years of the Cold War. willia m j. b ux ton is professor of communication studies at Concordia University in Montreal. He is the author of Talcott Parsons and the Capitalist Nation-State: Political Sociology as a Strategic Vocation (University of Toronto Press, 1985), co-editor of Harold

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Innis in the New Century: Reflections and Refractions (McGillQueen’s University Press, 1999); and editor of Patronizing the Public: American Philanthropy’s Transformation of Culture, Communication, and the Humanities (Lexington Books, 2009). Author of a number of articles on Innis, he is currently editing (with Michael Cheney and Paul Heyer) a two-volume version of Harold Innis’s “History of Communications” manuscript (accompanied by some Innis’s other unpublished writings). g eor g e c ol p i t t s is professor of history at the University of Calgary. Author of Game in the Garden: A History of Human History in Western Canada to 1940 (UB C Press, 2002), he has published extensively on issues related to the fur trade in the Canadian North, particularly on matters pertaining to regulation and conservation policies. He has, moreover, done consultation work as a historian on a b c Hydro-sponsored study of the environmental impact of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. matthew e v e nde n is associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. His research lies in environmental history and water history, with a regional specialization in Canada, particularly Alberta and British Columbia. He serves as a co-leader of the Canadian Water History Project and as executive leader of the Network in Canadian History and Environment. He is the author of Fish versus Power: An Environmental History of the Fraser (Cambridge University Press, 2004) – which received a Clio Prize from the Canadian Historical Association – and has recently co-authored (with Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles) The River Returns: An Environmental History of the Bow (McGillQueen’s University Press, 2009). ba r ry gough is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Archives Fellow, Churchill College Cambridge, as well as a Fellow of Kings College, London. He has been the recipient of the Clio Prize from the Canadian Historical Association for his trilogy of books on the Northwest Coast. He has also received various book prizes from organizations such as the Canadian Nautical Research Society, the North American Society for Oceanic History, the British Columbia Historical Federation, and the BC Book Prize Committee. His honours include the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia Medal,

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the Queen’s Jubilee Medal, and an honorary doctorate from the University of London for his distinguished publications in naval and commonwealth history. He is a founding member of the Peter Pond Society and is a charter member of the Champlain Society. pau l he y e r is professor of communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. In addition to his 2003 biography of Innis, he has co-written, with David Crowley, the introduction to the most recent version of Innis’s Bias of Communication, and co-edited with Crowley the introductory textbook, Communication and History: Technology, Culture, Society. His recent books include The Medium and the Magician: Orson Welles, the Radio Years (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) and the forthcoming Titanic 1912–2012: From Media Event to Myth. He is also co-editor of a two-volume version of Innis’s massive unpublished “History of Communications” manuscript (with William J. Buxton and Michael Cheney) to be published by Rowman and Littlefield. ha rold a da ms i nni s (1894–1952) taught in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Toronto from 1920 until his death in 1952. One of Canada’s leading social scientists, he is best known for his major works in economic history, such as The Fur Trade in Canada (Yale University Press, 1930) and The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (Yale University Press/ Ryerson Press, 1940) as well as his later work on communications, most notably Empire and Communications (Oxford University Press, 1950) and The Bias of Communication (University of Toronto Press, 1951). A lesser known aspect of his career is his long-standing involvement with the policy process, as evident in the memorandum on conservation he submitted to the Federal Wildlife Advisory Board (see chapters 3 and 4, this volume) and in the working relationships he established with government agencies such as the Department of the Interior, the Department of External Relations, and the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, along with philanthropic bodies such as the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. ja mes moc h oruk is professor of history at the University of North Dakota and is co-chair of the University of North Dakota’s Canadian Studies Program. In 2001 he received the Margaret

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McWilliams Award from the Manitoba Historical Society for The People’s Co-op: The Life and Times of a North End Institution (Fernwood, 2000). His major work on the history of Northern Manitoba: “Formidable Heritage”: Manitoba’s Northern Resources and the Cost of Development, 1870–1930 (University of Manitoba Press, 2004) won the McWilliams Prize for best scholarly book in 2005. Mochoruk has also published several shorter works on the North, such as Constructing a Meaning for Northern Manitoba: Or the Cult of Developmentalism Moves North (North Dakota Humanities Council, 2001), as well as a historiographical contribution, “The Historiography of Northern Manitoba” in K. Coates and W. Morrison, eds., The Historiography of the Provincial Norths (Centre for Northern Studies, Thunder Bay, 1996). His most recent work is the co-edited volume (with Rhonda Hinther) Re-Imagining UkrainianCanadians: History, Politics and Identity (University of Toronto Press, 2011). liz a pip e r is an associate professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, where she teaches environmental and Canadian history. She is the author of The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada (U BC Press, 2009) as well as articles on mining, fisheries, and disease in northern Canada. Professor Piper has direct experience working in the North with the Geological Survey of Canada, spending 1996 and 1997 on Baffin Island and 1998 on Reindeer Lake in Northern Saskatchewan. shir ley rob ur n has worked and volunteered in environmental and social justice organizations for close to two decades. She has been a grassroots organizer and campaigner, communications coordinator, and researcher, and she has also taken on various organizational leadership roles. Her doctoral research, inspired by her experiences working for a Yukon pan-territorial environmental n g o, focuses on how northern indigenous communities and environmental groups influence climate change governance through strategic interventions into the public sphere. In particular this research examines how northern stories and storying – as text, as performance, as experience, as social process, as interventions into language, and as seeds that are sown at specific places and times – shift the discursive fields in which public-policy decisions on climatechange issues take place. Roburn’s research and writing is informed

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by her learning, travelling, and living on the land in Yukon, northern British Columbia, and Alaska, and by her exposure to northern First Nations perspectives. peter   c .  va n wyc k is  professor of communication studies  at Concordia University, where he is also the graduate program director of the Media Studies Graduate Program. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and writer with an abiding interest in the theoretical and practical relations between culture, environment, landscape, and memory. His most recent book, The Highway of the Atom (McGillQueen’s University Press, 2010) – winner of the 2011 Gertrude J. Robinson book award from the Canadian Communication Association – is a theoretical and archival investigation concerning the material and cultural history of uranium production in the North of Canada. He is also the author of Primitives in the Wilderness: Deep Ecology and the Missing Human Subject (State University of New York Press, 1997), and Signs of Danger: Waste, Trauma, and Nuclear Threat (University of Minnesota Press, 2005). jeff a . we b b is an associate professor of history at Memorial University. His major research interests are in the history of Newfoundland and the history of the mass media. Following an early interest in political history he became interested in the ways that the mass media created a sense of community and identity. This led to several articles on aspects of the history of the Confederation debate and The Voice of Newfoundland: A Social History of the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland, 1939–1949 (University of Toronto Press, 2008). He has recently been conducting research on the history of popular music and the historiography of Newfoundland.

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Index

Abel, Kerry, 7, 166n20 Aboriginal peoples, 172; approaches to self-government of, 322n9; broadcasting of, 299, 321n4; as canoeists, 56, as consumers and trading partners 59; culture of, 47n60, 88; effect of fur trade on, 43n30, 55, 57, 59–60, 78–81, 88, 96n49, 103, 105–6, 115n7, 116n19, 164; effect of writing on northern governance of, 295–6; as guides, 165n8, 306; health care for, 161, 232; hunting of, 61, 103, 108, 116n19; illness of, 137; in Mackenzie Basin, 123–4; mine work, 135; northern land claims of, 303; Northwest Company and 61; relations with whites of 96n49; self-government of, 303; storytelling of, 296; transportation techniques of, 163; trapping methods of 19; as “trippers,” 109; wildlife management of, 304 accelerator principle, 43n29 Adcock, Christina, 146n9 agriculture, 207n5; of aboriginals, 62; Dickson’s study of northern,

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221; districts, 157; and fur trade, 62; and industrialization, 22; Innis on, 264n15; in Mackenzie River drainage basin, 16, 85, 102­3, 106, 122, 124; and mining, 83; in Newfoundland, 172, 176, 183; North Pacific Planning Project and, 240n13; limitations of in Precambrian shield, 154; small scale, 183; in Soviet Union, 248–9, 255; Western Canadian, 26, 85, 152, 188 air travel: and advance to the North, 91, 143, 190, 265n18; Biss and, 34, 128, 130–3, 140, 141, 145; bush flying and, 128–30, 147n18; and freighting, 139; and geo-political concerns, 192; Innis’s views on, 139–42, 145, 157–8; and mineral exploration, 161; and mining, 142; replacing water routes, 88; in Soviet Union, 256 Alaska: Highway, 217, 219, 230; -Siberia air route, 265n23; Steamship Company, 20 Alberta 50n80, 67, 248; government of, 297; industrial

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394 Index

development in northern, 298; Star, 350n22 Alberta and Arctic Transportation Company, 131 Alberta and Great Waterways Railway, 109 Alexander, David, 168–70 Allan, Hugh Bart, 28 American Council of Learned Societies (acls), 260 American and Pacific fur companies, 57 American Smithsonian Institution, 130, 146n10 Amulree Commission, 184n10 Amundsen, Roald, 130 Anderson, Andy, 42n21 Anderson, Inspector Arnold, 42n27 Anderson, Benedict, 164 Anderson, Inspector K.F., 107, 118n31 Anderson, R.M., 45n49 anthropology: and Canadian government, 203; and the “New Northwest,” 27; physical, 252; self-reflexive, 95n26; in the work of Cruikshank, 300 architecture: in Newfoundland, 172–4, 179; in Yukon, 307 Arctic: and Atlantic Oceans, study of seafloor of, 312, 317; Canadian, 49n49, 212, 217, 223, 228, 254, 263n5; civilization of, 82, 117n26; eastern, 109, 196, 199, 203, 221, 223, 230, 299; exploration of, 194; high, 49n77; increased accessibility of, 190; North American, 235; opening of, 161; scientific work on, 89; security of, 300; Soviet, 214,

25449_BUXTON.indb 394

215, 223, 228, 247, 254, 268n39; University of the, 324n32; warming up of, 284; western, 199, 203, 208n17, 221 Arctic Institute of North America (a ina), 212, 219, 223, 226n27, 234–6, 244n41, 244n44, 268n44; station at Baker Lake of, 236 Arctic Survey: and a ina, 236; Brison on, 36–7; and Camsell, 232–3, 240n17; and the c ssrc, 220–4, 228; Department of Mines and Natural Resources and, 241n22, 245n45, 248, 259, 263n4; inauguration of, 204; Innis and, 30, 216, 233–4; as linked to cultural power/knowledge, 217; and the North Pacific Planning Project, 231–2; Parkin and, 214; and post-war knowledge production, 237; publication of, 243n35; r f and, 212, 227; Sheelah Grant on, 7; and the Soviet Union, 229, 248, 259 Aristotle, 296 Arthapaskan: governance, 300; histories, 306; knowledge, 301; oral accounts, 301 Ashby, Eric, 268n41 Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies, 312; and ethical principles for northern research, 321n6, 324n31 Astor, John Jacob, 57 Ayre and Sons, 175 Baine Johnson Ltd., 172 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 300

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Index 395

Banff School of Fine Arts, 212 Barthes, Roland, 329–30, 341, 346, 349n11 Bartleman, James, 120n41 Bartlett, Captain “Bob,” 190, 194 Bates, Stewart, 221 Bederman, Gail, 135 Bell, James Macintosh, 240n17, 351n24 Belokhvostikov, Nikolai D., 246 Benjamin, Walter, 300, 328 Berger, Carl, 10, 54, 62, 146n13, 239n3 Berger, Thomas, 324–5n36, 325n37 Bériault, Yvon, 206n3 Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr., 44n41 Berland, Jody, 337 Berlin, Isaiah, 44n40 Berton, Laura, 307 Berton, Pierre, 307 Bezanson, Anne, 58; and Arctic Survey, 215, 220; and cs s rc, 216; and Russian scholarship (via Innis), 252, 257–8, 271n58 Bickerton, James, 43n32 Biss (Spry), Irene: diary of, 134, 341–2, 353n29; and gender, 33, 133, 135, 310; at Great Bear Lake, 338; on Innis, 107, 115n6, 115n7; lack of access to Aboriginal peoples, 134, 144–5, 147n28; and new transportation technologies, 34; in northern Ontario, 127–8 Black, David, 66 Bladen, Vincent, 206n4, 270n51 Blanchet, Guy, 42n23, 131 S S Blue Peter, 178 Bocking, Stephen, 146n9 Bolinger, Mrs. J.M., 95n27

25449_BUXTON.indb 395

Bordo, Jonathan, 349n15, 353n37 Borges, Jorge Luis, 347 Bourdieu, Pierre, 321n8 Bowman, Isaiah, 47n59, 218 Brabant, A., 42n18 Brebner, Bart, 270n55 British Columbia, 13–14, 95n24, 301, 306; interior of, 153 Britnell, George, 248 Broek, Jan O.M., 333 Brouillette, Benoit, 242n25 Brown, George, 42n26, 81, 91 Brown, R.N. Rudmore, 208n10 Bruce, E.L., 221 Brunhes, Jean, 47n59 Buchan, John (Lord Tweedsmuir), 56, 192, 197, 208, 209n20 Buinitzki, W.H., 255, 260n47 Cadigan, Sean, 168, 170 Cambridge University, 52 Cameron, Agnes Deans, 46n10, 130, 134 Camsell, Charles, 268, 269n44, 351n24; and Arctic Survey, 222, 241n24, 243n31, 243n36; geographical interests of, 264n14; Innis and, 42n18; and North Pacific Planning Project, 229–30; and northern exploration, 130; and Soviet Union, 247 Canada, 247–9, 274; Atlantic, 50n80, 29, 158; Biological Board of, 130; Broadcasting Act of, 299; compared to the United States, 248; Department of Agriculture of, 221, 231; Department of External Affairs of, 36–7, 228, 230, 240n10, 246–7, 254, 259–60, 265n22,

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396 Index

270n54, 271n55; Department of Fisheries and Oceans of, 315; Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development of, 316, 324n31; Department of Indian Affairs of, 79, 80, 100, 105, 162, 233; Department of the Interior of, 74, 77, 80, 8, 85, 104, 106, 116n15, 238; Department of Mines and Natural Resources of, 42n18, 222–3, 228, 213, 231, 233, 237– 8, 245n45, 247, 254; Department of National Defence of, 236; Department of Trade and Commerce of, 263n6; Dominion Bureau of Statistics of, 216, 231; eastern, 58, 247; Federal Wildlife Advisory Board of, 33, 100; Fisheries Board of, 42n18; foreign policy of, 276; Geological Survey of, 164n3; government of, 336, 341, 350n22; Historical Sites and Monuments Board of, 7; National Archives of, 56; National Museum of, 263n4; as a northern nation, 3; Parks, 7; science in, 256; southern, 78; Topographical Survey of, 42n18; United Church of, 261; western, 50n80, 21–6, 28, 89–90 Canada Council, 213, 217, 224 Canada Firsters, 75 Canadian Arctic expedition, 18, 45n49 Canadian Centenary Series, 166n40 Canadian Club, 85; of Brandon, Manitoba, 258 Canadian Frontiers of Settlement Series, 2, 152

25449_BUXTON.indb 396

Canadian Geographical Journal, 228, 232, 264n14 Canadian state: agencies, 227–8, 304; Arctic research strategy of, 317; and Arctic Survey, 222; commitment to nuclear energy of, 350n22; and conservation 111–13; and contamination at Great Bear Lake, 341; and de-industrialization, 168; and national archives, 205, 223; 1927 celebration of Alexander Mackenzie by, 56; officials, 234, 261; power, 131; presence in North of, 33, 102–6, 137, 296; provision of transportation infrastructure by, 153; reinforcing the status quo by, 304; social scientific knowledge and, 227–8; strategic priorities of, 300; Supreme Court and, 304 Canadian Historical Review: and “Canadian shield controversy,” 90–1; Innis and Tyrrell in, 4; Innis’s 1944 letter to the editor of, 204–5; Innis’s review essays of the North in, 12, 30, 35–6, 48n70, 48n73, 48n74, 49n74, 72, 99n90, 186–210, 214, 238, 244n44, 248, 263n4 Canadian Institute of International Affairs, 86, 221; and Lloyd’s study of the Arctic region, 212, 223; as publisher, 271n57 Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 49n75, 52, 187, 206n4; articles on Canada’s New North-west in, 204, 221–2, 231, 242n27, 243n35; founding of, 206n4 Canadian Northern Railway, 156

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Index 397

Canadian Pacific Airways Company, 233 Canadian Pacific Railway: building of, 66, 152; and Innis’s mining research, 46n55; Innis’s published work on, 12–13; Innis’s thesis on, 43n29, 74, 76; 168; Ocean steamship services of, 30; n w c as precursor of, 61 Canadian Railway and Marine World, 163, 207n8 Canadian Social Science Research Council (cs s rc): and Arctic Survey 7, 36, 204, 212; and cc, 224; Creighton’s account of, 245n46; and rf, 216, 219, 220, 223–4; and Department of Mines and Natural Resources, 245n45; executive committee of, 228–9, 237; founding of, 227, 239n4; and Hart House conference, 234; Innis’s role in, 30–1, 36, 247–8, 311, 319; Moore’s report for, 241; research committee of, 31, 49n77, 220; securing information on Soviet North by, 228, 254; social-credit grant of, 226; as supported by Camsell, 231; Wherrett’s study for, 232 Canadian Tuberculosis Association, 221 Canadian Wildlife Service, 315 Canol Project, 217, 230 Careless, Donald, 8 Carey, James, 310 Carnegie Corporation of New York (c c ), 212; Museum Committee of, 212, 224 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 212;

25449_BUXTON.indb 397

Canadian-American relations series, of, 225, 239n3 Carlson, William S., 243 n31 Catherine the Great, 293n2 Cavell, Janice, 7, 8 Champlain Society, 41n15, 64n4 Chapelon, Marcel, 268n41 Chapin, David, 72n5 The Chelyuskin, 196 Chesterfield Inlet, Innis’s visit to, 26, 40n6, 42n22, 42n27, 208n7 Chicago and Northwestern Transportation Company, 26 Chief Isaac, 308 Childe, V. Gordon, 267n33 Chamberlin, Edward J., 348 chorography, 38, 340, 344–6, 348 Circumpolar Flaw Lead Project, 312 civilization: Arctic, 82; and arts, 282; Byzantine, 37; Canadian, and drainage basins, 13–14; European, 44n37, and fur trade, 16; Greek, 15, 275, 288; health of, 296; history of, 274; integuments of, 194; Mediterranean, 248; presence of in the North, 137, 140, 192, 197; rapprochement between Eastern and Western, 37, 262, 287–8; rise and fall of in relation to paper and printing, 205; weakening of, 284; Western, 47n60, 50n80 Clark, J.M., 43n29, 75 Claxton, Brooke, 219 Coates, Ken, 7, 96n49, 166n20, 320 Coats, Robert, and c ssrc, 220, 228–9, 240n10, 247, 264n13 cod fishery: collapse of, 182; Innis’s study of, 9, 55, 68, 167–8, 178–80

13-07-09 11:48

398 Index

Cody, H.J., 90 Cold War, 129, 261; rhetoric, 292 Columbia University, 200, 271n57; Men’s Faculty Club of, 267n34; Sydenham Hospital of, 268n41 Cominco, 134, 141 commodity, 43n43, 75, 112, 183 communication: and Canadian Pacific Railway, 26; as historical transmission, 327; and hbc, 109; infrastructures of; Innis’s studies of, 12, 143, 224, 259, 272n70, 298, 311, 321n4; international linkages of, 167–8; in Newfoundland and Labrador, 171–2, 183; in North, 73, 113, 249; North-south vectors of, 30, 35, 48n70, 192; between Russia and Western World, 258; technologies of, 274, 306, 308; and Western Canadian communities, 24 (Canadian) Confederation: Newfoundland and, 158–9, 167; 1927 celebration of, 56; Peter Pond and, 69, 85; as political union, 15 Conference on International Organization (1945), 264n8 Connor, Ralph, 198 conservation: of caribou, 106; economics, 121n51, 121n53; economists on, 112–13, 121n51; education in, 125; forest, 106; of fur-bearing animals, 125; Innis on, 16–17, 33, 80–1, 96n48, 100–21, 333; of muskoxen, 116n12; in Newfoundland and Labrador, 182; north Pacific fisheries, 121n53; post-w w i interest

25449_BUXTON.indb 398

in, 104; practices, 154; role of state in, 111, 113; of wildlife, 16, 33, 96n48, 100, 102–3, 105, 123, 137, 220, 221, 240n13 Contributions to Canadian Economics, 186–7, 206n4 Cook, Captain James, 58, 80–1; linked to Pond’s explorations, 60 Costello, Jack, 42n28 Coupland, Douglas, 350n22 Cox, Bruce Alden, 115n11 Crane Foundation of New York, 212 Cree people, 105–6 Creighton, Donald: and American empire, 218–19; biography of Innis by, 9, 58, 73, 149–50, 272n70, 350n18; and c ssrc, hrc, 245n46; economic research of, 55; and Laurentian thesis, 57, 350n18 Cruikshank, Julie, studies of indigenous knowledge by, 37, 300– 2, 305–6, 308, 322n15, 323n19 Currie, B.W., 221 D.A. Thomas, 57, 333 Dalhousie University, 221 Danoja Zhu Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, 307 Dartmouth College, 212, 219 Davies, Raymond, 268n41, 271n56 Dawson, Carl, 204, 221–2, 244n44 de Certeau, Michel, 321n8 Dechenta, Bush University Centre for Research and Learning, 324n32 de Glazebrook, G.T., 247, 264n9, 270n54, 271n55 des Groseilliers, Médard Chouart, 56 de la Barre, Suzanne, 323n20

13-07-09 11:48

Index 399

DeLury, J.S., 164n3 de Man, Paul, 332 Dene people, and conservation, 105–6; in 1920s, 137; and uranium mining, 348, 350n22 Denison, Merrill, 198 Denmark, 35; and development of Canadian Arctic, 196 de Poncins, Gontran, 198 Derrida, Jacques, 309, 345 De Wet, J.P., 270n51 Dick, Lyle, 116n12 Dickson, William, 221 S S Distributor, Innis as passenger on, 16, 57, 77, 123, 131–3, 146n15, 333 Dominion Explorers Ltd., 42n23, 158 Donald, W.J., 270n51 Dorrien-Smith, Gwen: and Innis, 42n25, 147n26, 209n21; visit to Yukon of, 81, 134–5 Douglas, George M., 129 drainage basins, 207n5; Hudson Bay, 15–16, 24, 30, 41n13, 207n5; and Innis’s mining research, 46n55; in Innis’s work, 12-13, 20, 43n29; Mackenzie River, 15–16, 18–21, 24–6, 28 17, 20, 18, 19, 41n13, 46n56, 47n61, 47n62, 57, 68-9, 74, 81– 2, 122, 143; Pacific Coast, 15, 20, 24, 30, 46n56, 63, 207n5; Saint Lawrence, 43n31, 55; subcivilizations and, 13–17, 207n5 Duncan, C.S., 43n29, 75 Duncan, Jake, 314 Dunning, Hon. Charles, 42n18 East India Company, 62 Easterbrook, W.T., 121n53, 142

25449_BUXTON.indb 399

Eccles, W.J., 64n4 economy: high-energy, 144; lowenergy, 144; Russian compared to Western, 289 education: in conservation, 125; in North, 221–3, 232, 316–18; in Nunavut, 324n36, 325n37; propaganda and, 105; royal commission on adult, 319 Eldorado Mines, 38, 42n21, 233, 347 empire: American, 219; British, 53; Byzantine, 288; French fur trade, 14; Innis on, 303, 329; Roman, 293n2 engineering, 84, 163, 249 European-indigenous encounters, 301–3 excess capacity, 82, 107–8, 117n26 Exercise Musk Ox, 237–8, 243n40, 244nn41–42 exploration, 127, 186; companies, 158; geological, 146n10; northern, in Russia, 255 Falconer, Robert, 16, 89–90 Fanon, Frantz, 297 Faucher, Albert, 49n77 Fay, C.R., 67 Fay, Sidney, 30, 201, 209n28 Field, Henry, 267n33 Financial Post, 90–1; Innis’s Labrador article in, 168, 176–82, 257; Innis’s Russia articles in, 270n53, 271n57, 286 Finnie, Oswald Sterling, 42n18, 42n25, 104–6, 116n14, 117n21 Finnie, Richard, 30, 42n25, 202–4, 210n33, 210n34, 210n35, 242n27

13-07-09 11:48

400 Index

First Nations. See aboriginal peoples Fisher, Donald, 237–8 fishery, and Arctic Survey, 220–1, 240n13; commercial, 161; and economic history, 54, 152, 207n5; and fresh-frozen salmon; Innis’s work on, 142–4; of Labrador and Newfoundland, 29, 158, 168, 173–6, 182; 180; monitoring of, 314; in northern Manitoba, 160; Simeon Perkins and 68; and transportation, 154 Fleming, R.H., 28 Flint, Professor Richard Foster, 237, 243n31 “floaters,” 177 food: in North, 102–3, 106, 110; supply, 111, 123–5, 144; in Yukon, 315, 323n29 Ford, Harry, 42n20 Foucault, Michel, 117n24 Francis, Douglas, 115n6, 121n52 Franklin, John, 130 Fraser, Colin, 111 Fraser, Simon, 60–1 Freeman, Lewis Ransome, 208n10 Freuchen, Peter, 196 Frisby, Anne Llewellyn, 63n1 Frontier College, 42n19 Frontiers of Settlement series, 212, 225 fuels: and aviation, 139; Biss’s interest in, 140, 142; fossil, 144; high-energy, 142 fur trade: growth and decay of 33, 46n56, 88; hbc and, 62, 111; Innis’s study of, 9-10, 24, 32, 41n11, 46n50, 52–6, 58, 67, 78, 91–2, 100, 152, 186, 207n5, 265n16, 336; and lumbering, 88;

25449_BUXTON.indb 400

men of, 335; in the Mackenzie basin, 16, 122, 124, 126, 213; and mining, 142; in Newfoundland and Labrador, 172, 178, 180; non- hb c, 108– 9; posts, 4, 5, 176, 131; practices, 18; river system, 82, 159, 336; Peter Pond and, 69; route, 337; J.L. Robinson’s study of, 221; Russian, 248–9, 265n17; and urbanization, 19; sub-civilizations and, 13–14; and tourism, 155; and transportation, 107, 110–11, 138–9, 154; workers, 144 Gagarin, Yuri Alekseevich, 273 gambling, 157, 161, 174–5 gasoline, 84, 140; and aviation, 141; engines, 141, 145, 157; and mining, 83; -powered motor boats, 174, 180; -powered tractors, 158; replacing water routes, 88; tanks, 84; technologies, 143; transportation, 142 Geddes, Patrick, 139 geology: and Arctic Survey, 220, 240n13; Department of Mines and Resources’s survey of, 231, 240n13; and the Northwest, 27 Geographical Review, 42n26, 112, 127, 207n8; Innis’s article on hb r in, 163, 165n4, 263n4 geography: of Battle Harbour, 171; of Canada, 62; continental, 92; department of, 89, 93; as determinant of economic development, 170; economic, 77, 82, 179; emphatic, 38, 326, 329, 338; Euro-American, 332; and formation of a ina; French

13-07-09 11:48

Index 401

cultural, 47n59; and fur trade, 129; Innis and, 90, 235; natural, 23; and Northwest, 27; physical, 140; regional, 51–2, 112 Germany, 217, 253; army of, 276, 283; indoctrination in, 289 Gibb, W.K., with Innis in Yukon and Alaska, 20, 46n53, 46n54, 73, 95n24, 271n56 Gibson, R.A., 232, 234, 241n24, 242n25 Godsell, Philip H., 190 gold: -bearing-ores, 144; -bearingquartz, 27; discovery of in Fraser River Valley, 21; 1930s mining boom in, 143; placer mining of, 20, 54, 152, 189; 307 rush, 21, 174, 206n3, 308, 339; in the Yukon, 21 Goncharov, Ivan, 273 Gough, Barry, 32, 70, 72n3 Gould, Laurence M., 243n31 Gouzenko Igor, 292–3; affair, 261 governance, 102, 106, 113 Grace, Sherrill, 8, 323n20, 349n8, 350n18 Graham, Angus, 197–9 Graham, Gerald, 55, 222 Graham, Maxwell, 103, 116n17 Grant, Hugh M., 64n4 Grant, Shelagh D., 7, 129, 217, 223 Gras, N.S.B., 43n29 Graves, Mortimer, 260 Gray, L.C., 120n48 Great Bear Lake: discovery of pitchblende at, 336; Innis and Biss at, 128, 130, 141; uranium oxide mining at, 38, 217, 326–8, 338, 341–2, 350n22, 352n22, 351n24

25449_BUXTON.indb 401

Great Britain, 21, 29, 275; Colonial Office of, 57; industrialization in, 22; Privy Council (Judicial Committee) of, 176, 184n10 Great Slave Lake: Biss at, 128, 141, 333; hb c posts on 109; Innis at, 16, 85, 123, 128, 131, 333; Pond at, 71; Railway, 138; trading posts of, 109 Great Depression, 143, 182 Greeley, W.B., 120n48 Greenland, 196, 263n4 Grenfell, Sir Wilfred, 176, 183 Grey Owl (Archie Belaney), 56, 190 Group of Seven, 75 Gwich’in, 137, 348 Hamelin, Louis-Edmund, 49n77 Hamilton, Earl, 270n54 Hammond, Lorne, 114n2, 115n8, 120n48 Hamsden and Alley, 111 Hancock, W.K., 118n27 Hannah, Matthew, 117n24 Hanson, Earl Parker, 203 Haraway, Donna, 321n8, 323n24 Harkin, James, 103, 128 Harris, Eskimo, 42n28 Harris, Husky, 42n28 Harris, Rachel, 42n19, 81, 132 Harris, Seymour, 249 Harris, T.W.: friendship with Innis of, 42n18, 42n19, 80, 115n8, 132; as northern figure, 194 Harvard University, 30, 52, 200, 209n22; Bureau of International Research of, 201, 209n 27, 209– 10n28, 214; exchange programs with Soviet Union of, 249 Harvey, D.C., 128

13-07-09 11:48

402 Index

Hay, R.A., 42n18 health care, 161, 221–23, 232 Hearne, Samuel, 5, 41n15, 130 Henry, Alexander, 69, 71 Henry, George, 49n79 Henry, Percy, 308 Hewetson, H.W., 221 Heyer, Paul, 9, 32, 44n36, 45n44, 64n7, 297n6, 272n70 Highway of the Atom, 326–8 Hiroshima, 347 history: of communication, 261; ecclesiastical, 192, 298n12; economic, 51, 128, 251–2, 261; English, 251; “from the inside,” 32, 72, 207n6; narratives of Canadian, 299; national, 92; oral, 301, 305, 322n15 Homan, Paul, 47n64 Hopper, Bruce, 202 Hotelling, Harold, 113 Howay, Judge Frederic W., 207n7 Hudson Bay: Biss’s visit to 128; Innis’s visit to, 83, 89, 128, 165n13, 167; Inuit on 137; Newfoundlanders and, 181–2; older industries on 154, 181–2; railway to, 93; region, 91; as remote, 58; shipping operations on, 78, 158; western, 25–7, 33, 187, 189, 194, 208n16 Hudson Bay Railway (hbr): construction of, 28, 138, 152, 155– 6, 159; Innis on, 26–30, 34, 40n6, 99n78, 128, 139, 142, 161, 165n10; Innis’s endorsement of, 85, 88, 137–8, 188–9; links to, 158; and mineral development, 88, 139, 152; and prairie grain, 151–2; state’s subsidy of, 153

25449_BUXTON.indb 402

Hudson’s Bay Company (hb c): Archives of, 56, 63n4; Athabasca District of, 109; Biss and, 128; and conservation, 125; decline of monopoly in Northwest of, 25; forts, 41n15; fur-trading system of, 14, 17–18; graft in, 82; Hudson Bay Record Society of, 64n4; Innis and, 4, 33, 74, 77–8, 118n32; and licence fee increases, 106, 119n37; Mackenzie River District of, 42n20, 57, 77, 100, 105–7, 109, 110, 116n15, 118n33, 120n46, 129, 131, 137– 8, 143; managers of, 102, 110; merger with Northwest Company, 62; and nwc, 60; in Newfoundland and Labrador, 172, 176, 180; northern Department of, 24; publishing program of, 64n4; and stockholders, 63n4; trade with Inuit by, 178; 108 traders of, 120n44; transport of, 131, 165n13; Zoological Reports for the Labrador Peninsula of, 234 Hudson’s Bay Mining and Smelting Company (hb m&s), 156, 160 Hulan, Renée, 323n20, 350n18 Humanities Research Council, 216, 246n46, 319 Hutchinson, Isobel, 190, 197 Hyde Park Declaration, 218 hydro-electric power: Arctic Survey and, 240n13; Biss and, 33–5, 127, 134–5, 140–1; Department of Mines and Resources and, 231; and Innis’s northern vision, 6, 150, 152; as linked to mining and smelting, 83, 141, 153; in

13-07-09 11:48

Index 403

Newfoundland, 181–2; in Northwest, 129, 144; in Precambrian Shield, 138; and second industrial revolution, 6, 188; and western Hudson Bay, 47n64, 156 indexicality, 31, 339–40, 352n28 Indian Hunting Reserves, 117n21, 125 industrialization: Biss and, 135, 140, 144; Canadian Pacific Railway and 13; and cylonics, 48n69, 188, 274; effects of, on North, 26, 28, 32, 74, 127, 131, 163, 188–9; Great Britain and 22; and the hbr , 138; Innis and, 139, 140, 142, 144; as integrating Canada, 62; in Newfoundland and Labrador, 168, 172, 181; and northern Manitoba, 35; and Precambrian Shield, 34; in Russian north, 292; and settlement, 90; Veblen and 25, 76, 83–4, 107, 150; vectors of, 21 Ingstad, Helge, 146n10, 194 Innis, Donald, 49n77, 334 Innis, Harold Adams: as archival researcher, 41n11, 56–7, 84, 150, 186, 214, 329; Baptist background of, 53, 80, 184n5; biographical studies by, 27–8, 32, 47n67, 65–72, 186, 193–4, 207n6, 208n12, 208n15; c h r review essays of, 186–210; on Canadian Pacific Railway history, 13–15, 20, 24, 29, 44n36; as chair of the cs s rc research committee, 212–27, 233, 263n5;

25449_BUXTON.indb 403

contacts with the North of, 5–6; on cyclonic development, 34, 48n69, 141, 152, 156, 189; fieldwork of, 78–86, 95n26, 102, 104, 107–8, 152, 155, 160, 162– 4, 168, 171–2, 176–7, 186, 333– 4, 337, 347, 389; and gender, 33, 79, 81–2, 93, 97n52, 97n54, 102, 133, 147n26, 172, 197–9, 209n21, 347; and geography, 76, 77, 87–90, 93, 169; as J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal recipient, 3–5, 39nn1–2, 40n3; legacy for northern researchers of, 38, 296, 312, 318, 319; memoir of, 65, 69, 71; on method, 100–1, 149, 337–8; on “New Frontier,” 142–3, 153; 1915 visit to Alberta, 50n80, 67, 248; 1924 visit to Mackenzie drainage basin of 12, 20, 33, 35, 38, 40n7, 44n38, 45n48, 57, 71, 73, 75, 77–8, 80–4, 86, 94n4, 100, 127, 136, 141, 149, 213, 332, 335, 336; 1926 visit to Alaska and Yukon, 4, 20, 35, 58, 73, 83, 95n20, 95n24, 127; 1929 visit to northern Manitoba and Western Hudson Bay of, 12, 25–6, 33–4, 58, 73, 78, 83–4, 89, 95n27, 127, 167, 181, 194, 101–2; 1930 visit to Atlantic provinces, 28–30, 34– 5, 58, 167–85, 192; northern “boosterism” of, 91–3, 150, 186; northern scholarship of, 10, 32, 35, 72, 82, 85, 89, 92, 113, 333; on Northwest, 4, 5, 20, 21, 27, 32, 28; as public intellectual, 32, 74, 84, 87, 93, 98n69, 149, 214, 311; published exchange with

13-07-09 11:48

404 Index

Broek of, 338; race and ethnicity in work of 33, 38, 78–82, 93, 95n27, 96n34, 96n49, 102, 108, 136­–7, 157, 161, 163, 183, 189, 310, 347–8; rural upbringing of, 10, 67; on Russia, 31, 36–7, 49n76, 237, 240n10, 246–8, 251–3, 256, 265n18, 267n33, 272n70, 294n5, 273, 291, 292; scholarship on, 3, 5, 6–11, 53, 39n2; at University of Chicago, 5, 31, 42, 43n29, 52–3, 75–6, 149; at the University of Toronto, 52–3, 73, 76–7, 89, 93, 148, 155, 214; visits to northern Ontario, Quebec of, 58, 73, 83; in World War I, 10, 44n37, 45n47, 52–3, 63, 65–8, 72–5, 149, 160 Innis, Mary Quayle, 44n37, 49n79, 54, 76; influence on Innis of, 66 International Geographical Association, 21; 1928 Congress of, 90 International Polar Year (Fourth), 2007–09, 312, 350n16; Canadian government funded projects of, 315, 324n35; educational outreach of, 317; Gas, Arctic, Peoples, and Security (ga p s) project of, 313; study by of human health and welfare, 313; Yukon Regional Coordinating Office of, 313 International Polar Year (Second), 1932, 350n16 Innu people, 178 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 351n22 Inuit (people), 137, 348; approach to self-government of, 322n9;

25449_BUXTON.indb 404

Circumpolar Conference, 312; co-management of wildlife by, 303; effect of writing on, 321n4; Innis and 136, 161, 163, 167, 348; leadership, 312; Nunavut 317–18, 324n36; and Newfoundland, 178; in the Tapirit Kanatami, 312; Valaskakis’s study of, 299; in the western Arctic, 221 Irwin, David, 195–6 Ise, John, 120n48 Jackson, C.W., 42n18 Jackson, John C., 68 Jenness, Diamond, 45, 49, 129, 243n31 Job Brothers, 178, 180 Johns Hopkins University, 212, 218, 226n27, 262n3 Joint Economic Committee, 240n12 Joint War Production Committee, 240n12 Jones, Sebastian, 314 Jossien family, 44n37 justice, administration of, 304–5, 313, 322n13, 322n15, 322n16 Karamzin, Nikolay, 273 Karluk expedition, 193, 196 Kazan (ussr), 276, 282 Kemp, H.R., 263n6 Kerr, Archibald Clark, 268n41, 279 Keynes, John Maynard, 72n2 Khaki College, 52, 270n51 King, Mackenzie, 56, 240n12 Kingston Conference for Canadian Artists, 213 Kitto, Frank H., 95n22, 151

13-07-09 11:48

Index 405

Klondike, 35, 174, 190; gold rush, 26, 307–8; memoirs of, 190 Kloppers, Elsabe, 323n28 Knight, Frank, 42n29, 75 knowledge, monopolies of, 204, 299, 310, 318, 320; Innis on, 338; keepers of, 312n5 knowledge systems 299; dominant, 303; Innis on, 298; shift in, 304; Western versus northern, 295; written, 301 Kobayashi (Jack) and Zedda, 307–8 Kodriavtzev, S.M., 229 Krauss, Rosalind, 352n34 Kristeva, Julia, 345 Kroetsch, Robert, 330–1 Krotkov, Gleb, 228 Kulchyski, Peter, 295, 323n25 The Kyle: Innis on, 167–8, 171–2, 174, 176, 178; role of, 183; Dr Rusted on, 184n11 La Pérouse: journals of, 301, 305, 322n18; 1786 expedition of, 301–2, 305 LaBine, Gilbert, 42n21, 233, 240n17, 336 Labrador: and Clara Rogers, 40n8, 81; Innis’s visit to, 167–85, 213, 333; in Innis’s c h r review essays, 35, 192; Innis’s writings on, 48n70, 50n80 Lahti, Arne, 134 Lake Athabasca, 71, 109, 140, 332–3 Lamb, Kaye, 234 Lamson and Hubbard (Boston), 109–11 Landon, Fred, 270n54

25449_BUXTON.indb 405

landscape, 349n2; Canadian, 13; emphatic, 348; empty; 348; uncanny of, 338 Laurentian thesis, 8, 43n32, 43n34, 57, 165n18, 350n18 Laytha, Edgar, 350n20 Learmonth, L.A., 42n20 Lecky, W.S., 118n32 Lena River, Innis’s visit to, 294n6 Lenin, 251, 253, 288; mausoleum of, 279 Leningrad: Catherine the Great, Voltaire, and 293n2; Innis’s visit to, 250, 267n29, 267n38, 276, 283 Lévesque, George Henri, 49n77 Lingard, C.C., 221, 271n57 Lituya Bay, 301–2 “livyers,” 177, 183 Lloyd, Hoyes, 42n18; and Innis’s conservation memorandum, 96n48, 103, 100, 114n1, 114n3, 115n9 Lloyd, Trevor, 42n24; and a ina, 240n31, 242n30; Arctic research of, 212, 219, 223 Liard River, Innis’s trip on, 16, 57, 77, 98n74, 123, 131, 333–4 London, Jack, 77, 307, 334 Long, John: biographical note on, 45n47; and trip to Mackenzie basin with Innis, 16, 71, 73, 115n8, 115n9, 333 Loo, Tina, 114n2, 115n10 Lower, A.M., 270n54; collaboration with Innis, 40n4, 40n5, 186, 206 n3; economic research of 55; and Tyrrell medal presentation, 2 lumbering: and Canada’s evolution, 62; Innis’s field trips and 150;

13-07-09 11:48

406 Index

and mining, 83, 88; in Newfoundland, 35, 183; in the North, 152, 158; as “older” industry, 154; in Precambrian shield, 138; Simeon Perkins and, 68; as successor to fur trade, 88 Lynch, F.C.C., 42n18, 77 Lynn-Folk, Henry, 86, 99n75 Lyotard, Jean-François, 44n41; on landscape, 331 Macaulay, R.H.H., 190 Macdonald, Bill, 72n5 Macdonald, Malcolm, 56, 217 MacDonell, Rev. W.A., 41n15 MacEachern, Alan, 114n2 MacGibbon, D.A., 25, 270n51 MacIver, Robert, 74, 94n4, 97n49; as Innis’s advocate, 16, 46n51 Mack, Captain George E., 42n21, 47n67, 160, 165n13; as well known northern figure, 194 Mackenzie, Sir Alexander: biographies of, 56; and xy Company, 60–1; as explorer, 68, 70, 78, 130; and Mackenzie River, 332 Mackenzie Highway, 138 Mackenzie and Mann, 156 Mackenzie, N.A.M., 243n31, 270n54, 270n55 Mackenzie River, 349n9; delta, 128, 263n4, 332; estuary, 63; and the hbr, 138; Innis’s travel on, 16, 38, 48n72, 71, 73–5, 78, 85, 87, 123, 229, 336; linear geography of, 334; mouth of, 45n48, 333; Peter Pond and, 60; region, 221; surface of, 335; route, 131; trading posts of, 109,

25449_BUXTON.indb 406

130; van Wyck’s trip on, 332–3, 347–8 Mackenzie River Transport, 131 Mackenzie, Sir William, 27 Mackintosh, W.A., 43n29, 54, 76, 91, 121n52 Manitoba, 14, 50n79, 51, 207n7; central, 156; Department of Mines and Natural Resources of, 151, 156; government of, 151, 165n18; Industrial Development Board of, 151; northern, 34, 139, 143, 149–66, 172, 187, 194, 221; northwestern, 152, 156; Office of the Commissioner of Northern, 151; opening of major mines in, 156 Manhattan Project, 337 Manning, Ella Wallace (Mrs T.H.), 199 Manning, Lieutenant Commander T.H., 42n24, 221, 234, 244n42 Masik, August, 197 Matthews, Keith, 169–70 Mayrand, Léon, 246–7, 264n7, 268n41 Marault, Msgr, Olivier, 39n1 margins, 150; of Canada, 334; Innis’s excursions to, 335; as sites of resistance, 303; writing in, 337 Maritimes: historiography of, 168; Innis’s writings on, 50n80; Innis’s visit to, 73, 89, 174 Marshall, Alfred, 115n6 Marshall, John, 219, 260 Marx-Lenin Institute, 268n19 Marxism, in the Soviet Union, 251– 2, 258, 275, 277, 279, 288

13-07-09 11:48

Index 407

Materials Co-ordinating Committee, 240n12 Mathers, Charles W., 137 Mavor, James, 246 May, Wop, 140 McEachern, Ronald, 257 McGill University, 49n77, 212, 221; a i n a established at, 226n27, 235 McGillivray, Duncan, 61 McGillivray, William, 61 McKay, Don, 332 McKay, R.A., 242n25 McLachlan, Major J.B., 42n23; 47n67, 159–60, 165n12 McLean, Stanley, 270n55 McLuhan, Marshall, 72n2 McMaster University, 25, 44n37, 45n47, 63n3 McPhail, Alexander, 66, 68, 71, 264n15 McTavish, Simon, 60 Megill, Allan, 44n41 Memorial University, 170, 185n11 Merk, Frederick, 63n4 Merrick, Elliot, 210n14 Methye Portage, 28, 41n13, 69 meteorology, 27, 221, 240n13 Métis nation: Biss and, 135–7; and Canada, 62; Innis and, 78–80, 102, 131, 136; in Mackenzie Valley, 119n36, Migratory Birds Convention, 103, 123 Mildon, Drew, 304–5, 313, 322n13, 322n16 military, 130; American, 217, 223; metaphors, 92; Russian, 279, Western model of, 287

25449_BUXTON.indb 407

minerals, 138, 141; development of, 82–3, 88, 92–3 Minh, Trinh T., 297 mining: and aviation, 142; camps, 161, 164n4; decay of, in Yukon, 46n56; districts, 158; expansion of, 112; growth and decay of, 88; industries, 221; Innis and, 6, 21, 74, 82–4, 89–90, 92, 93, 150; 142; interests, 91; Macintosh on, 55; in Newfoundland and Labrador, 181–2; and “new industrialism,” 33; in northern Manitoba, 35, 139, 152–4, 156; in North, 130, 143; and Precambrian Shield, 138, 142; syndicates, 157; and transportation, 138, 142; in western Hudson Bay region, 26; and wheat economy, 46n58; Zaslow on, 166n18 Mitchell, George, 198 Mitchell, Wesley, 47n64 Mitchell, W.F., 237, 244n44, 333 Monument Boards of Canada, 207n7 Moore, Andrew, and Arctic Survey, 42n24, 221–2, 232–3, 240n19, 240n22 Moosehead, 308; Gathering, 308–9 Moravians: Church of, 172, 176; missions of, 178 Morrell, William Parker, 206n3 Morrison, Bill, 166n20, 320 Morton, A.L., 63n4 Morton, W.L., 7, 51–2, 61, 164, 165n18 Moscow, Innis’s visit to, 247, 249– 50, 254, 268n38, 276, 278–9

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408 Index

Moss, John, 330, 344 Moulton, H. G., 74, 76 Munn, Henry Tore, 196, 208n15 Muskeg Limited, 27 Nadasdy, Paul, 322n11 narrative: European explorer, 305–6; grand, 6, 213, 227, 238; macro, 39, 44n41, 11, 31, 39, 44n42, 50n80; micro, 11, 31, 39, 44n41, 44n42, 50n80, 238; staples-based, 39 S S Nascopie, 42n21, 165n13, 189 Natural Resources Intelligence Service, 40n7 Nef, John U., 270n54 Neill, Robin, 64n6 Nelson River, 139 Neufeld, David, 7, 8 New York Times, 268n41 Newbigin, Marion, 43n29, 55, 91, 99n86 Newfoundland: fleet of, 158; historiography of, 169; in Innis’s c h r review essays, 192; Innis’s visit to, 29, 35, 50n80, 58, 89, 93n2, 95n24, 159, 167–85, 213; as linked to the Arctic and Hudson Bay through shipping, 48n70; Railway, 29 Newfoundlanders, ice navigational skills of, 167, 208n17 Nikitin, Afanisiy, 273 “No Tripping Policy,” 106, 111 Nobel Peace Prize, 351n22 nordicity, 74–5, 87; Canadian, 151, 331; deep, 331; Hamelin as founder of, 49n77; history of in Canada, 94 n7; of Innis, 335; Laurentian thesis and, 350n18; social creation of, 73

25449_BUXTON.indb 408

S S Noronic, 26 North: as anti-modern enclave, 86; aviation in the, 157; boosterism of, 91–2, 151, 187; Canadian sovereignty in, 104; as determined by transportation and communication vectors, 192; development of, 92; everyday life in, 198; as field site for scientific research, 146n11; as frontier, 144, 192, 213; geo-political significance of, 211; industrial capital and, 130; Innis’s idea of, 335; landscape of, 331; as margin, 335; as marked by rapid growth and decay, 82; as “metaphysics of geography,” 344; penetration of, 85; problematics of, 333; as “semiotic tragedy,” 330; as sign for absence of civilization, 192; as sign for wilderness, 192; social exchange in, 334; southern researchers and, 127, 131, 145; unique characters of the, 160; women in, 133–5; writing in, 330 North Pacific Planning Project, 229–32, 237, 243n36 North West Company, 4, 32, 57; Dawson’s study of, 221; 1821 merger with HB C, 62; explorations of, 61; inner circle of, 69; Innis’s profile of, 58; organization of, 60; Peter Pond in 66, 68 Northern Aerial Minerals Exploration, (na me), 42n21, 158 Northern Traders, 109–10, 119n36 Northern Transportation Company Limited, 232

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Index 409

Northwest: Biss in, 1935, 127–45; decline of hbc ’s monopoly in, 25; gendered experiences of Biss in, 133; hbc’s transportation and, 138–9; hydro-electric installations in, 129; Innis and, 20, 27; Montreal and, 182; “new,” 28; nwc and, 32; Pond and, 60; trade of, 56 Northwest Game Act (1917), 103– 4, 115n11 Northwest Passage, 130; overland, 158 Northwest Territories, 109, 221, 247; administration of, 232, 245n45; Bureau of, and Yukon Branch (of the Department of the Interior), 104–6, 234; game laws, 104, 123, 125; Literary Council of, 324 n34 Nova Scotia 21, 29, 68; industrialization of, in the nineteenth century, 168; Royal Commission on Provincial Economic Inquiry, 48n71, 50n 80, 128 Novosibirsk, 250, 254, 277, 293n3 Nunavut: education system of, 318; public service of, 325n36 O’Brien, Jack, 195–6 Odell, R.K, obe, 230, 240n16 Ogdensburg Agreement, 218 oil, 230; “Big,” 112; discovery of, 21; Norman Wells, 130, 140; reserves, 217 Oliver, Hon. Frank, 47n67, 160–1 Ommer, Rosemary, 168, 170 Omsk, 249, 276; Agricultural and Experimental Station of, 254–5; Innis in, 294n4

25449_BUXTON.indb 409

On-to-the Bay Association, 151 Ontario, 51; eastern, 29; government of, 351n22; new, 78, 99n89; northern, 20, 58, 73, 83, 128, 142, 152; northwestern, 25, 157; southeastern, 61; southwestern, 61 oral culture, 310, 318; of ancient Greeks, 311; and universities, 311 oral tradition, 38, 150, 296, 299, 308, 318 overhead costs, 43n29, 75; in hardrock mining, 152 Oxford University, 52; Exploration Club, 208n20 Palyi, Melchior, 265n16 Papanin, Ivan, 268n45 Parker, Ralph, 268n41 Parkin, Raleigh: and a ina, 242n30, 243n31; Arctic research proposal of, 211–15, 217, 219–20, 234–7; and Arctic Survey, 228 Parkman, Francis, 57 Pearson, Lester, 211, 214, 217 Pearson, Lester B., 211, 214 Peary, Robert, 130 Peace River: Innis’s trip down, 16, 57, 61, 73–4, 82, 85, 128, 333; region, 74, 207n5 Peck, Reverend Edmund J., 42n22 Perkins, Simeon, 66, 68, 71 Permanent Joint Board of Defence, 240n12 Phillips, W.A., 42n20 philosophy, 281; Greek, 37, 281, 287–8 photographs, 115n9; of Captain Mack, 165n13; taken by Porsild in the Soviet Union, 237, 263n4

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410 Index

photographs taken by Innis, 97n63; and Innis’s c h r review essays, 194; in Newfoundland, 168, 171–3, 176–7, 184n1, 184n4; in western Hudson Bay, 84 Pinksy Brothers, 109 pitchblende, 130, 143–4, 240n17, 336, 338, 350n20 Plantwatch, 314 Plato, 288, 344–5 police, 102, 122–3 Pond, Peter, 186; as anthropologist, 70–1; illiteracy of, 70; Innis’s writings on, 4, 58–61, 66–71, 85, 115n8, 186; in Mackenzie Basin, 68; and Northwest, 5, 27–8, 41n13, 56; and nw c, 32; organization of trade by, 61, 68, 70; scholarship on, 69, 72n5 Porsild, Alf Erling, 42n24; and a i na, 243n31, 268n44; and Arctic research project, 202; biographical note on, 263n4; in northern Canada, 129; and reindeer experiment, 196; and Soviet Union, 237, 246–7, 254, 264n14, 266n26, 266n27, 294n6 possibilism, 23, 47n59 Pound, Ezra, 66, 72n2 Pratt, Mary L., 78 Preble, Edward A., 129 Precambrian (Canadian) Shield: as anchor of Canada, 55, 62; Biss and 142–3; developmental possibilities of, 90–2, 138; hydropower of, 140–1; Innis and, 142, 154; and Laurentian thesis, 57; and mining, 142; and northern Manitoba, 156; and Pond, 59,

25449_BUXTON.indb 410

142–3, 154, 156–7; potential of, 148n37; resources of, 34 price system, 25, 109, 143 Prince Albert Historical Society, 5, 41n15 S S Prince George, 20 Ptolemy, 345 public opinion, 35–6, 274, 288–9; shifting in relation to North, 189, 197 pulp and paper: and Canadian North, 152; Innis on 6, 21, 128, 150, 274; in Newfoundland and Labrador, 172, 181, 183; and northern Manitoba, 35, 154, 156 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 273 Quebec, 21, 73, 83, 193; north shore of, 48n70, 174, 178; northern, 21, 153 Queen’s University, 54, 164n3, 216, 221; Biology Department of, 228; Convocation Hall of, 287; Innis’s speech at, 258, 270n53; Roosevelt’s speech at, 218 rca f, 232, 244n40, 249 rcmp, 105–6, 115n8, 338 Radcliffe College, 210n28, 214 radium, 328, 336, 350n20; in Cameron Bay, 338; as staple, 336 Radishev, Aleksandr, 273, 290 Radisson, Pierre-Esprit, 56 railway: building of, 88, 92; and bush flying, 130; cross-Canada, 299; and development of northern Canada, 89, 91, 139; effects of, 183; as “fixed transportation corridor,” 34; and fur trade, 55, 62; to Hudson Bay, 93; Innis’s

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Index 411

advocacy of, 89; innovative construction of, 159; and mining development, 46n58, 92, 152, 164n4; and new transportation techniques, 82–3; and NorthSouth linkages, 58, 62, 189–90, 248; replacing water routes, 88; and the steamship, 29; as unifying Canada, 74, 92; in western Hudson Bay region, 26; and wheat economy, 23, 46n58, 248; workers, 160 Rancière, Jacques, 296, 321n9 Ransome, Lewis, 194, 209n21 Rasmussen, Knud, 196 Ray, Arthur: on the fur trade, 108, 119n35, 119n41; on Innis, 43n30, 213 Rea, Kenneth R., 146n8 Red River, 61; Colony, 13–14, 62 Reimer, Chad, 43n34 reindeer: experiment, 196, 263n4; herds, 190; ranching of, 154 Renaissance: first, 288; second, 37, 288, 292–3 resources: development of, 130; economy of, 107; exhaustion of, 112, 114n5; exploitation of, 87, 130, 133, 138, 143–4, 166n18, 174, 235; extractors of, 112; fishery, 178, 183; freshwater, 141; frontier of, 141, 152, 156; human, 188–9, 274, 287; Innis on, 52; management of rural, 297, 304; natural, 113, 127–8, 131, 143, 220, 231, 254, 274; northern, 129, 182, 235, 249; oil, 130; potential of, 78; renewable, 316 Reveillon Frères, 107

25449_BUXTON.indb 411

Richardson, James, 157 Riel, Louis, 62 Ritchie, James, 117n23 Robbins, John, 216, 228, 234 Roberts, Brian, 210n38, 244n44 Roberts, Edward, 308 Robertson, Douglas S., 190 Robertson, Norman, 228–9, 260, 264n7 Robinson, Lewis, 51–2, 221, 232, 240n16 Robinson, Suzanne, 324n34 Robinson, W.J., 221 Rockefeller Foundation: and a ina, 219; and Arctic Survey, 30, 36, 204, 212, 221; and Canadian North, 219; and c ssrc, 220, 221, 223; Humanities Division of, 219, 227, 260; and Innis, 213, 219, 222, 224; and knowledge production, 36; officers of, 215, 222; Social Science Division of, 212, 215–16, 252, 260, 271n58 Rogers, Clara C.: friendship with Innis of, 40n8, 42n19, 42n25, 81, 97n54, 147n26, 209n21; and woman travellers in the North, 134–5 Romanet, Louis, 42n20, 110, 118n33, 120n46, 120n47 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 218, 240n12 Rose, Hilda, 42n28 Ross, Kristin, 321n8 Roth, Lorna, 12 Roy, Gabrielle, 52 Royal Canadian Geographical Society, 246–7, 264n14 Royal Canadian Institute, 41n9 Royal Historical Society, 39n2

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412 Index

Royal Society of Canada, 3, 39n1, 113, 246, 256, 319 Russell, J.H., 109 Rusted, Dr Nigel, 184n11 Said, Edward, 297 Sandlos, John, 116n18 Saunders, A.S, 43n32 Saint Lawrence River: and agriculture, 61; and Canadian Shield, 63; and fur trade, 43n41; Innis on, 16, 74, 76, 176; lower north shore of, 35, 176, 193 Saint Paul, Charlie, 336 Schiller, Duke, 42n21 scholarship, Canadian northern, 299, 349n8 schools: military, 284; mission, 125, 135 schooners, 175, 178–80 science: application to North, 130; economic, 286; emphasis on utility of, 284; natural, 281; social, 281 Scott Polar Research Institute, 210n38, 244n44 Second International Polar Year, 207n9 Second World War, 112–13, 228, 262n1, 293; productive centres of the, 328; southern interest in northern resources during, 129, 217; Soviet-external relations during, 285; world configuration after, 292 Sedov, 255 Segal, Louis, 269n45 Selye, Hans, 246, 250, 262n3, 266n24 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 146n10

25449_BUXTON.indb 412

settlement: and civilization, 13; effect of mining on, 142; frontiers of, 150, 248; and industrialism, 25, 90; in Mackenzie basin 16; in New World as opposed to Old World, 21, 133, 221, 232, 249; in North, 23, 30, 33, 82, 189, 199; and railway, 23; in Russia, 255; and transportation, 142; and wheat economy, 23; wilderness and, 133; as viewed from air, 133 settlers, European, 47n60 Seven Years War, 59, 68, 70 Shackleton, Edward, 209n20 Sherridon, 138, 156 Shore, E.B., 261 Siberia, 138, 248–9, 254, 276 Sider, Gerald, 170 Sifton, Clifford, 160–1 Simpson, George, 60 Slave River, 16, 71, 73, 85, 333 Slavey people, 116n19, 348 Smith, Adam, 274 Smith, Arnold Cantwell, 259–60, 268n41, 278, 294n5 Smith, Jefferson Randall (Soapy), 208n15 Smith, Oliver Goldwin, 92 Smith, Sidney, 260, 265n20, 270n54 Smith, W. Dent, 270n51 Social Science Research Council (US), Programs and Policy Committee of, 215 Solov’ev, Sergei Mikhailovich, 92 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 290 Soper, Joseph Dewey, 129 Soviet Academy of Sciences, 31, 247, 250–1, 253, 280; 220th

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Index 413

anniversary celebration of, 223, 240n10, 246–50, 253, 259, 262n1, 267n34, 280 Soviet Trans-Siberian Air Staging Route, 249 Soviet Union: advertising in, 275, 280, 289; agriculture in, 276, 282; Allied relations with, 217; American Embassy of, 252, 268n41; Arctic Institute of, 214, 255, 236, 256–7, 259, 269n46, 274; arts in, 282; Australian Embassy of, 268n40, 270n56; books on, 35; British Embassy of, 268n40, 279; Byzantine tradition in, 288; Canadian embassy, 294n5; communications in, 286– 8, 274–5, 280, 290; economy of, 289, 291–2; food in, 281, 285; Geophysical Institute of, 256; government of, 253, 287, 289, 291; humanities in, 252; 254, 260–1, 268, 278, 292–3; legation in Canada, 246–7; military in, 254, 279, 287, 289; nationalism in, 277; northern activities of, 128, 199, 208n11, 228, 235–6, 247, 254, 284; northern regions of, 36– 7, 49n76, 277–8, 290–1; science in, 31, 252–4, 284–5; social sciences in, 252, 254; transportation in, 276; travel writing on, 37, 273 space, 88; bias of, 38–9, 296, 298, 303, 310; fixity of, 35, 193–4 Spry, Graham, 129 Spry, Irene. See Irene Biss Stalin (Joseph): purges of, 281, 283; system of, 290 staples, 328; -based economies, 298; and beaver, 57; Biss’s view

25449_BUXTON.indb 413

of, 140; and formation of wheat pools, 67; fur, 111; Innis’s theory of, 9–10, 13, 24, 52, 57, 83, 88, 102, 114n5, 118n28, 149, 152, 155, 174, 181, 207n5, 213, 248, 272n70, 274–5, 291, 298, 318, 336–7; Mackintosh’s view of, 54–5, 76; minerals as, 93; and the Maritimes, 168–9; monographs of Innis, 39, 227; Newbigin’s view of, 55; in Newfoundland and Labrador, 29–30, 170–1; Precambrian Shield and, 62; -producing regions of Canada, 152; radium and uranium as, 328; “rigidities,” of, 107–8, 115n7; statist assumptions of, 107; as template, 38 steamship, 29, 110, 128; cargoes, 110; operators, 102; services in North, 109, 131; use of in Newfoundland, 178–80 Stefansson, Viljalmur: and a ina, 235, 243n31; biographical note on, 209n23; and Canadian Arctic Expedition, 41n12, 45n49; as defender of Inuit culture, 147n32; enthusiasm for northern Canada of, 129; Innis and, 30, 36, 41n12, 137, 199–203, 209nn26–27, 210n30; Louis-Edmund Hamelin on, 49n77; and nordicity 75; popularity of, 94n7; publications of, 209n24; and Porsild, 263n4; and Richard Finnie, 210n35 Stephen, George, 27 Stern, J.A., 190 Stewart, Charles, 106 Stringer, Bishop I.O., 42n22 Sutherland, Doctor J.A., 42n28

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414 Index

Sutton, George Miksch, 190 Sverdlovsk, 249; Innis in, 294n4 Tamminen, Anne, 42n18, 97n52 Taracouzio, T.A.: biographical note on 209n22; book on Soviets in North edited by, 30, 36, 191, 199–202, 204, 214, 236 Tawney, R.H., 252, 268n41 Taylor, Frederick, 46n52 Taylor, Griffith, 42n24, 49n77, 90, 99n81, 221 technology, 83, 169, 178; construction, 157; for freezing fish, 176; and innovation, 139; and new communication, 299; new industrial revolution, 188; satellite, 299 tekmerion, 340–1, 352n27 theoria, 346 Thomas, Lowell, 194, 208n18 Thompson, David, 61 Thompson, E.P., 170 time, 88; bias, 38–9, 303, 310; -binding, 310; fixity of, 35, 193­–4 Titov, Ghermain Stepanovich, 273 Tlingit people: governance of, 300; “knowledge,” 300–1; and oral accounts of La Pèlouse’s visit, 302, 305; histories, 306 Tolstoy, Leo, 268n41 Tolstoy, Sofia A., 268n41 Toronto Globe and Mail, 90, 253, 257 Tough, Frank, 119n35 tourism, 332–4, 165n8; eco-tourism, 155; historical, 155; northern, 131–2, 154; Yukon, 307 tractors, 139; and advance to the North, 91, and mining, 142; as revolutionary, 158

25449_BUXTON.indb 414

trade routes, 168, 298 traders, free, 110; independent, 111; white, 125 transportation, 240n13, 248–9; agents, 128; Biss on, 132–4; and Canadian Pacific Railway, 12; charges, 123–4, 199; costs, 124; economy, 93; experts, 207n8; fixed corridor of, 34, 138–9, 143; of foodstuffs to North, 102; and fur trade, 88; gasoline, 142; and hb c, 109–10, 131; Hewetson’s study of, 221; industrialized, 107; infrastructures, 129, 306; Innis on, 52, 61, 248; in Labrador, 178; within Mackenzie drainage basin, 16; marine-oriented, 172; and mining, 83, 138, 142, 152, 154; modes of, 57; networks, 82, 88, 131, 220; in Newfoundland, 179–81, 183; in North, 28, 73, 108, 154, 189, 157–8, 161, 249; North Pacific Planning Project and, 240n13; North-South vectors of, 30, 35, 48n70, 58, 157, 178, 192; opportunities for Innis and Biss in North, 129; “problem” of, 111; progression of, 92– 3; revolution, 168; river, 82; routes, 144; technologies, 84, 86, 130, 132, 150, 174–5, 179, 310; water, 33, 83; and Western Canadian communities, 24; and Western Hudson Bay, 26 Treaty 8, 105 Treaty 11, 105, 130, 137 Trevelyan, G.M., 57 Trigger, Bruce, 96n34 Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, 307–9, 313; “First Fish Camp of, 341,

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Index 415

323n27; “First Hunt Camp” of, 314; leaders, 308 Trotter, Reginald, 216, 228 Tsalxaan (Mount Fairweather), 302 Tsilhqot’in v. Canada, 305 Tucker, Robert C., 268n41 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 92 Turnor, Philip, 5, 41n15 Turquetil, Bishop Arsène, 42n22 Tuttle, Charles, 148n39 Tylor, Edward, 70 Tyrrell, James William, 130 Tyrrell, Joseph: biography of, 41n10; and Canadian Arctic Exepedition, 45n49; editorial work of, 41n15; farm of, 42n17; and Innis 4–5, 40n5, 41n14, 41n15, 42n17, 45n49, 207n7; and mineral belt at Chesterfield, 40n6; and Stefansson, 41n12; and Prince Albert Historical Society, 41n15; and Saskatchewan trading forts, 207n7; and tradition of northern exploration, 130 Ulmer, Gregory, 346 S S Ungava, 26–8, 208n17 United Nations, Charter of, 264n8 United States of America, 218, 231, 248; military-industrial complex of, 218; Resources Planning Board of, 231 United States Army Air Forces: Arctic, Desert and Tropical Information Center (adti c), 242, 243n31; Arctic Section, 235 Université de Montreal, 39n1; Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery, 262, 263n3

25449_BUXTON.indb 415

universities, 227, 314; Canadian, 318; Innis on 272n70, 311, 318– 19; and northern governance, 318; and production of knowledge, 239n2; southern, 316 University of Alberta, 164n3, 221 University of the Arctic, 324n32 University of British Columbia, 51, 221, 270n54 University of Chicago, 74, 270nn54–55; Griffith Taylor at, 90; Innis at, 76, 150 University of London, 52 University of Manitoba, 265n20; Department of Geology, 151, 164n3 University of Paris, 52 University of Saskatchewan, 221 University of Toronto; 218–19, 221, 243n37, 270n54; Biss’s arrival to, 342; Department of Political Economy, 16, 206n4, 214, 224, 246, 260; Extension Department, 40n7, 85, 145n1, 154, 186; Faucher at, 49n77; Hart House, 209n21, 221, 234; hiring of Griffith Taylor at, 90; History Department, 264n9; Innis’s appointment to, 94n8, 94n13; librarians and archivists at, 57; Library, 50n79, 206n4; Russian studies, 249, 259–60; Slavic Studies, 37, 261, 263n6; social research tradition of, 318; Toronto newspapers’ slander of, 91; University College, 249; University of Western Ontario, 270n54 uranium, 328, 336, 349n2, 350n20; oxide, 217; as staple, 336; value of, 2007, 350n22

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416 Index

Urquhart, J.A., 221 Urwick, E.J., 206n4 Usher, Peter, 43n33, 109 Valaskakis, Gail, research on Innis of, 43n33, 299–300, 312, 319, 321n4 Vale, Alf, J., 42n22 van Wyck, Peter, 38–9, 207n9, 309, 328 Veblen, Thorstein: as admirer of engineering profession, 46n52; influence of on Innis, 23–5; 33, 43n29, 47n64, 76, 83–4, 97n49, 107, 117n25, 150, 186, 338 Vidal de la Blache, Paul, 47n59 Vinogradoff, Paul, 252; tradition of, 252 Vize, Professor Vladimir, 255 vo k s (All Union Society for Cultural Contacts with foreign countries), 229 Vucinich, Alexander, 260n1 Vuntun Gwitchin, 313 Wallace, R.C., 151, 164n3 Walter, Eugene V., 344, 352n34, 353n36 Warren, Bob, 271n57 Washburn, Dr A.L., 235–7 water: routes of, 88, 129; power, 127, 129, 231 Watkins, Mel, 43n33 Watson, A.J., on Innis; 9, 68, 90, 149, 150, 239n3, 272n70 Wernick, Andrew, 338 Western Canadian Airways, 157 wheat, 248–9; and Canada’s evolution, 62; economy, 21–6; and h b r, 85, 88, 151–2; and mining,

25449_BUXTON.indb 416

46n58; pools, 67, 154; and the railway, 164n4; in Russia as compared to Canada, 248, 276; as staple trade, 55; and western Hudson Bay, 47n64 Wherett, Dr. G.J., 42n24, 221–2, 232–3, 240n19 wilderness, 329; concept of, 336; as desert, 148n43 wildlife: co-management of, 300–4; monitoring, 314; prohibiting waste of, 125 Wildlife Advisory Board (1916), 103, 105, 114n2, 115n8, 115n9, 238 Wilgress, Dana, 229, 247, 264n8, 264n11, 271 Williamson, Karla Jessen, 324n31 Willits, Joseph: and a ina, 243n31; and Arctic research, 211–12, 218, 234–5; and Arctic Survey, 215, 219–20; and c ssrc, 216; and Innis’s visit to the Soviet Union, 252, 270n54; and Russian studies at the University of Toronto, 260 Wilson, Harold, 42n28 Wilson, Colonel J.T., 42n27; and a ina, 235–7; biographical note on 243n37; and Exercise MuskOx, 237, 244n41; and Innis, 236–7 Winks, Robin, 58, 64n5 Wood Buffalo National Park, 106, 116n18, 117n21 Wright, Chester, 43n29, 271n55 Wright, Ivan, 270n51 Wrigley, Gladys, 42n26 writing, technologies of, 321n4 xy Company, 60

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Index 417

Yacobson, Sergius, 260 Yakutsk, 249, 254, 276–7, 278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286; Innis group’s visit to, 294n6; Plant Breeding Institute of, 268n39 Yates, Frances A., 346 S S Yukon, 20 Yukon: College, 315; Community Stewardship program, 314–16, 323n26; Conservation Society of (yc s ), 306–7; environmental issues of, 306; Fish and Wildlife Management Board of, 322n11; identity as embodied in gold rush, 307; indigenous people of,

25449_BUXTON.indb 417

296–301; Innis’s research in, 4, 20, 46n55, 58, 81, 83, 143; local worldview in, 308; oral histories and collective memory in, 306; policy-formation processes in, 38–9; Renewable Resource Councils (r rc ’s) of, 322n11; southwest, 300; Territorial Government of, 314–15; tourism, 307, 323n20 Yukon River; Panel, 315, 323n29; region, 221 Zaslow, Morris, 119n34, 146n8, 165n18

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25449_BUXTON.indb 418

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