The Canadian Northwest: Its Potentialities 9781487583712

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THE CANADIAN NORTHWEST: ITS POTENTIALITIES L'AVENIR DU NORD-OUEST CANADIEN

ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA "STUDIA VARIA" SERIES l. Studia Varia: Literary and Scientific Papers-Etudes litteraires et scientifiques (1956). Edited by E. G. D. MURRAY 2. Our Debt to the Future: Symposium Presented on the Seventy-fifth Anniversary, 1957-Presence de demain: Colloque presente au Soixante-quinzieme Anniversaire, 1957. Edited by E. G. D. MURRAY

3. The Canadian Northwest: Its Potentialities,· Symposium Presented to the Royal Society of Canada in 1958-L'Avenir du NordOuest Canadien; Colloque presente a la Societe Royale du Canada en 1958. Edited by FRANK H. UNDERHILL

The Canadian Northwest: Its Potentialities Symposium presented to the

ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA in 1958

L'Avenir du Nord-Ouest Canadien ,

Colloque prisente ,

a la

SOCIETE ROYALE DU CANADA en 1958 EDITED BY

FRANK H. UNDERHILL, F.R.S.C. PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY BY UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

1959

Copyright, Canada, 1959 University of Toronto Press Printed in Canada London: Oxford University Preu

Reprinted in 2018 ISBN 978-1-4875-8235-7 (paper)

PREFACE

No ASPECT of the remarkable economic expansion of Canada since World War II has attracted more public attention than the largescale resource development that has been taking place in our Northwest. What has chiefly characterized this area, in the public mind at least, has been the spectacular big project-the mining enterprises producing uranium and nickel, the water-power harnessed to produce electric power to refine bauxite into aluminum, the wells that extract oil and gas, the pipelines that deliver these fuels to distant centres of consumption, the new highways and air-routes. All this has stirred romantic ideas in the minds of most Canadians and encouraged grandiose dreams about national destiny. More important, it has roused a new sense of responsibility for the future of this hitherto largely unknown and neglected fifth of the country. It was fitting, therefore, that the Royal Society of Canada, when it held its 1958 meeting in Edmonton, the chief gateway to this new northland, should devote considerable attention to the Northwest. A general session of all its five Sections was held on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 3, at which five of the papers printed in the present volume were read-those by the Abbe d'Eschambault and by Messrs. Legget, Wonders, Rawson, and Turner. Along with them is printed a paper on minerals and fuels contributed by Messrs. Lang and Douglas to Section IV ( Geological Sciences), and a paper on the constitutional history of the Northwest Territories after 1905 by Mr. Zaslow which was given at a joint session of Sections I and II (French and English Humanities and Social Sciences) . The reader will discover that each expert has given his own definition of the boundaries of our Canadian Northwest, and that the editor has not tried to reconcile their differences of opinion in this matter. All of them concentrate most of their attention on the northern parts of the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia-the parts north of existing railway lines-and on the Yukon Territory and the Mackenzie District of the Northwest Territories. Each paper was prepared independently without consultation with the other authors, and there is inevitably some repetition of facts. The repetition that is most significant, however, is in the cool, bard, realistic approach which leads all the authors to empha-

vi

Preface

size the difficulties that stand in the way of the development of the Northwest. On the other hand, while they all agree in this, they also agree that it is impossible to lay down definite limitations to future development because present-day scientific knowledge of the possible resources of the area is itself so limited. All of them agree on the desirability of much more research and planning ( which involves much more expenditure of money) by both public authorities and private enterprisers if future development is to be carried on wisely and economically. In the time available at an annual meeting such as this, with a crowded programme, it was, of course, impossible to deal with all the questions that arise if a full study of the Northwest is to be undertaken. There was no spokesman of the federal government present to expound the problem as seen, say, from the point of view of the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. The question of the function of these northern areas in continental defence was not touched on. The original inhabitants, the Indians and the Eskimos, were rather neglected. And, no doubt, a good deal more might have been said in additional papers in the general field of politics and sociology. Perhaps a critic might remark that this collection of papers shows only too clearly that the fellows of the Royal Society of Canada resemble most of their fellow citizens in thinking of Canadians primarily as economic animals. But, allowing for all these possible criticisms, the Edmonton sessions may surely be said to have produced a collection of papers which are illuminating and authoritative, sobering in their realism and at the same time inspiring in the vision which they give of a possible future.

F. H. UNDERHILL

CONTENTS

Preface FRANK H. UNDERHILL, F.R.s.c., Curator, Laurier House, Ottawa 1 Introduction

Genthon, Manitoba

3

F. LEGGET, F.R.s.c., Director, Division of Building Research, National Research Council, Ottawa

6

ABBE ANTOINE D'EscHAMBAULT, M .s.R.c.,

2

An Engineering Assessment ROBERT

3

Assessment by a Geographer

C. WONDERS, Professor of Geography, University of .Alberta

WILLIAM

4

•

23

Minerals and Fuels A. H. LANO, F.R.s.c., Chief, Mineral Deposits Division,

Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa, and R. J. W. Head, Geology of Fuels Section, Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa DouGLAS,

3,

S Biological Potentialities

D. S. RAwsoN, F.R.s.c., Professor of Biology, University of Saskatchewan

6

7

61

The Resources Future

D. B. 'fuRNER, Deputy Minister and Commissioner of Fisheries, Department of Recreation and Conservation, Victoria

16

A Prelude to Self-Government: The Northwest Territories

190S-1939 MORRIS

ZAs1.0w, Lecturer in History, University o/ Toronto

90

THE CANADIAN NORTHWEST: ITS POTENTIALITIES L'AVENIR DU NORD-OUEST CANADIEN

INTRODUCTION

Abbe Antoine d'Eschambault,

M.S.R.c. 1

I SHALL LEAVE TO THE ENGINEER, the biologist, the geologist the task of assessing the relative value and wealth of the vast and varied regions of the Northwest Territories of today. As an amateur historianvery amateurish-I shall endeavour to say a few words on the history of these far lands which we are in the process of rediscovering. Benjamin Suite has said that the chief, and perhaps only, objective of the explorers in Canada was the extension of the fur trade. This statement, along with many others from Suite, has been strongly opposed. There is, however, a great deal of truth in Sulte's assertion. The traders, either from Montreal or Hudson Bay, searching for untapped regions or anxious to cut off lines of supply, penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of unknown territories, thereby advancing the work of discovery. What is called today "Northwest Territories" included a much greater region a century ago. This very campus where we meet today, with its beautiful buildings, was, a little more than fifty years back, part of the "Territories." The term Northwest Territories was officially applied to the Hudson's Bay Company's possessions handed over to Canada in 1870. The exact limits of the possessions were not defined in the transaction. The Company held at the time four departments: Montreal, Northern, Southern, and Columbia Departments. The object of the contract with Canada was the Northern and Southern Departments. Out of this territory was carved in 1870 the province of Manitoba. After the troubled period of 1869-70, the Movement of Resistance led by Riel and the metis and the creation of Manitoba, government was organized in the remaining territory by the Northwest Territories Act of 1875. A Lieutenant-Governor was appointed, assisted by an appointed Council which ultimately, towards the end of the century, became an elected Legislative Assembly demanding responsible government. lThe Abbe d'Eschambault began with a few sentences in French, then paused and said: "I presume that most of you have understood my remarks couched in my French-Canadian dialect. In case some of you might know only Parisian French, I shall continue in your own Anglo-Canadian patois."

4

Abbe Antoine d'Eschambault

The Council of the Northwest Territories met for the first time at Livingstone, in the Swan River district, on March 8, 1877, under the Honourable David Laird, Lieutenant-Governor. At the first meeting he invited the members to suggest ways and means of preserving the buffalo, as the complete disappearance of the great herds would mean famine for the Indians. And as I was preparing this paper the news came over the radio that a group of Eskimos had died of hunger in the Arctic regions owing to absence of caribou food: a situation today remarkably similar to that in the Northwest Territories of a century ago. Gradually the Territories were divided. In 1876 the District of Keewatin was placed under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba, an arrangement that lasted till 1905. In 1882 the districts of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Athabaska were created and soon given representation in the federal Parliament. In 1895 the Districts of Yukon, Mackenzie, Ungava, and Franklin were created, Yukon being made a separate Territory in 1898. In 1905 two new provinces were formed out of the southern portion of the Territories, Saskatchewan and Alberta, with full provincial self-government. Ungava was added to the Province of Quebec in 1912, and in the same year the boundaries of Manitoba and Ontario were extended northward to the 60th parallel, as those of Saskatchewan and Alberta had been in 1905. This left the Northwest Territories with the Districts of Mackenzie, Keewatin, and Franklin, all north of 60°. Since 1905 the Northwest Territories have been administered by a Commissioner and Council. The Commissioner is now the Deputy Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources in Ottawa. The Council, which at first consisted of four appointed members, now has five appointed members ( one being Deputy Commissioner) and four elected members. The Yukon Territory has a resident Commissioner and an elected Council of five, the government having been transferred in 1953 from Dawson to Whitehorse. It has a representative in the House of Commons at Ottawa, and the Mackenzie River area of the Northwest Territories has another. The magnet which drew men to the Northwest Territories-if we except the Yukon-was the fur trade; and even in the Yukon the fur trade preceded the gold rush by some forty years. The pressure came from two directions-from Hudson Bay, at first spasmodically, from the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa rivers, and from the Lake Superior area. The notable figure here of that movement was La Verendrye, a Canadian born at Trois-Rivieres. Before the end of the French regime

Introduction

5

in Canada the French had penetrated as far as the Saskatchewan River by water and overland as far as the Rockies. Because of the danger to their monopoly the Hudson's Bay Company had also started moving. Kelsey and Hendry had made their trips into the interior from York Factory. After the passing of the French regime came the "Pedlars" from Montreal, as "thick as Mosquitoes," says a Hudson's Bay man! They soon were banded in fur trading companies, such as the Northwest and the X Y. Later (1804) these two companies joined to form the formidable Northwest Company, which held sway over most of the Territories. The Hudson's Bay Company was soon moved out of its complacency and forced to penetrate inland, first in the region of the Northern Saskatchewan and Lake Winnipeg, later in the Athabasca, the emporium of the fur trade. Later again the survey of that genial explorer, David Thompson, and the two great voyages of Alexander Mackenzie completed the discovery of the vast northern country from Lake Superior to Whale Island or Mackenzie Bay on the delta of the Mackenzie and to the Pacific through the Bella Coola. Thus the transcontinental canoe-route was established from Lachine to the icy waters of the Mackenzie through a myriad of rivers, lakes, portages, falls, and rapids. And on this route, opened by the undaunted courage of the fur trader and the explorer, followed the missionaries, the scientific travellers and later again the settlers. In weighing the potentialities of these great territories let us not forget their heroic adventure. I think, with deep feeling, of the humble voyageurs, the men of toil and sweat who sped their canoes over treacherous waters. Unknown, unrewarded, they passed with a song on their lips, the most human of all humans. To them could be attributed the words of Pericles on the unsung heroes of his day. No monument, no inscription bears their names, but their deeds are woven into the stuff of other men's lives.

AN ENGINEERING ASSESSMENT

Robert F. Legget, F.R.s.c. CANADA'S NEW NORTHWEST was the arresting title of a volume published just over a decade ago; this was the official report of the North Pacific Planning Project, directed by Dr. Charles Camsell, F.R.S.C., and the first comprehensive review of its kind. 1 Ten years have passed since this blue book gave Canadians their first real appraisal of a vital but little-known part of their great land, ten years in which "the North" has probably received more publicity than in all previous time. It is surely appropriate, therefore, that the Royal Society of Canada, at its meeting in the city of Edmonton, "Gateway to the North," should take a new look at the Northwest, and endeavour to reassess its potentialities with the scientific detachment that characterizes all the Society's proceedings. The ten years have seen significant developments in the Northwest, and indeed in the Arctic generally. The DEW line has been conceived, designed, and built, in association with the less spectacular but equally important Mid-Canada line. Trans-polar flights now appear as ordinary items in public time-tables. New roads have been constructed-to Mayo and Keno Hill in the Yukon, from Grimshaw to Hay River in the Mackenzie valley, with an extension to Yellowknife well on the way to completion. New mines have been developed-for uranium ore north of Lake Athabasca; some are in prospect-for lead and zinc ores on Great Slave Lake. Commercial fishing has become important; forestry resources are now being tapped. Widespread exploration is in progress for gas and oil. Aklavik, main settlement of the far Northwest, is to be moved to a new site and made into a town worthy of Canada's North. It is small wonder, then, that "the North," and the Northwest in particular, has excited the public imagination in these recent years. Much has been written, and a great deal more has been said, about the lNorth Pacific Planning Project, Canada's New Northwest: A Study of the Present and Futllre Development of Mackenzie District of the Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory, and the Northern Parts of Alberta and British Columbia (Ottawa, 1948).

An Engineering Assessment

1

potentialities of this land of the last frontier. Some of the more enthusiastic statements can be discounted as the happy imagery of those who have never been in the North. There remain, however, so many and such divergent published predictions about the North that two at least may usefully be quoted as guideposts for this symposium. The Royal Commissioners on Canada's Economic Prospects, having visited the North in the course of their studies, have this to say: In the whole of the Northwest Territories with its 1,300,000 square miles,

there are no more than 15,000 people; and the military bases, mining camps, trading posts and administrative centres are hardly more than pin-pricks in the surrounding bush and muskeg and barrens. There will be important economic developments in this area in the years to come. But it would take the ruthlessness of a Peter the Great to plant any large centres of population there. 2

By way of contrast to this restrained opinion, consider the following statement which appeared in an official publication, but one designed specifically for popular consumption, issued a few weeks ago: The North's possibilities are almost limitless. More and more private industry will move into the country, especially as the demand for minerals rises in the world outside. It will rise, for the world's population is growing by thirty million a year..•. New minerals must be found to supply this new population. New minerals must be found to supply peoples from Bangor to Bangkok wanting higher living standards. Where in the world are there enough minerals to supply them? In Canada's North. What's to stop the North? Not climate. People who can live happily through Manitoba or Saskatchewan or North Dakota winters shouldn't be discouraged by climate in the Arctic. It's a curious fact that civilization has been expanding northward ever since the dawn of history. It began in North America, in Mexico and Yucatan, and in the Old World along the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. For thousands of years, civilization has been converging from both sides of the world toward a common centre. That centre is the Arctic.a THE REGION

These are interesting and challenging predictions, even when restricted to the Northwest, an area that must be delineated at least in general terms if discussion is to be useful. At the outset, the term "Northwest" must be distinguished from the official title of the Northwest Territories. The area dealt with in Dr. Camsell's report of 1947 included about one 2Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, Final Report (Ottawa, 1958), p. 5. 3 Departrnent of Northern Affairs and National Resources, This is the Arctic (Ottawa, 1958); it must be emphasized that this pamphlet is deliberately written in popular vein in order to achieve its purpose.

8

Robert F. Legget

million square miles, extending from the 110th meridian westward to the Alaskan border and the sea and from the Arctic coast to a little below the 55th parallel. (When started in 1943, the North Pacific Planning Project was an international undertaking including all of Alaska; the United States withdrew from participation in 1944 and the project continued and was completed as a wholly Canadian venture.) This area included the Peace River country and extended as far south as the site of the Kitimat development. It is a measure of the change in public thinking that the latter area would not be thought of today as in the Northwest. With the southern boundary moved up to about the 58th parallel, roughly the southern edge of the Liard watershed, there still remains a vast region-at least one-fifth of the land area of Canada. A study of the map will suggest the main divisions of the region-the Yukon plateau and its Arctic coastal plain, the Pacific coastal area, the interior mountainous area, and the Mackenzie valley stretching eastwards into the barren grounds of the western section of the Precambrian Shield. And it requires no more than a glance at the map to show the incongruity of the Alaska Panhandle, a geographic anomaly of questionable political parentage that should surely, some day and in some way, be internationally reoriented. This, then, is the Northwest, as it is generally envisaged today. About one-quarter of the area is to the north of the Arctic Circle. Possibly more surprising to those unfamiliar with the region will be the fact that well over two-thirds of the area described is a part of the drainage basin of the Mackenzie River. This great waterway, one of the twelve great river systems of the world, 50 per cent larger than the St. Lawrence, second only to the Mississippi-Missouri system in North America, is a dominating feature of the Northwest. It will call for frequent mention in this symposium. RESOURCES AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT

The resources of the Northwest will be described in detail by other speakers; here they must just be listed if the means for their potential development are to be appreciated. Considering first renewable natural resources upon which alone can any permanent development be based, there are forests in the southern and western parts of the region, notably in the Liard valley and on the slopes of the coastal range. There is a very limited amount of cultivable land, generally adjacent to main river courses. Wildlife is found throughout the area, even in so inhospitable a

An Engineering Assessment

9

location as the Mackenzie delta, the muskrat trapping in which is widely known. Fish are now being taken on a commercial scale from some of the larger lakes. For the development of these resources, simple transportation routes and residential buildings are vital. Water-power may properly be considered a renewable resource; such it should be if watersheds are wisely managed. The great power potential of the water of the Yukon and Upper Fraser, when carried through the coastal range, is already well known. Even in the Mackenzie system, however, it is estimated that about 1,200,000 horsepower are available at ordinary minimum daily flow, increasing to about 3,400,000 horsepower if storage can be provided to ensure minimum six-month flow. Of this power potential, about one-seventh (506,000 horsepower) is that obtainable at the Pelican and Mountain Rapids on the Slave River, the rapids which affect transportation on the Mackenzie system so seriously. Mineral resources, although non-renewable, probably take pride of place in any assessment of the immediate potentialities of the Northwest. Gold, silver, lead, and zinc in the Yukon, uranium on the shores of Great Bear Lake and of Lake Athabasca, gold and soon lead and zinc on Great Slave Lake--these are well known, and suggest mineral possibilities yet unknown and unseen. Oil at Norman Wells has now been produced for over a quarter of a century; recent licences granted to oil companies for the exploration of 12 million acres in the Mackenzie delta suggest the promise of local geology for oil reservoirs yet untapped. Oil reserves are known to exist in the Yukon. For the development of water-power and of mineral resources much more than simple transportation routes and residential construction is needed because heavy engineering construction is involved, requiring a variety of materials, equipment and man-power. They were not idle words which, well over a century ago, were used to describe the work of the civil engineer as "the art of directing the great sources of power in Nature for the use and convenience of man." The civil engineer always has been, and must be, in the van of the pioneers. He must provide the transportation routes, be they simple roads or main-line railways, improved waterways or airfields, and the buildings and other structures without which the potential of a new land cannot be realized. The design and construction of the DEW line showed what could be done by the engineer and builder in the North, for in these respects at least the requirements of defence were similar to those of resource development. The difference comes when economics have to be considered, as they must usually be for civilian purposes. Give him enough money and men, and the engineer can build a skyscraper at Resolute

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Robert F. Legget

Bay. But he will usually look carefully at the economics of any such venture when defence is not an imperative. It is the economic aspects of transportation and of building that demand attention. TRANSPORTATION IN THE NORTHWEST

Alexander Mackenzie made his epic journey of discovery in 1789 down the great river that now bears his name, travelling from Chipewayan to the Arctic and back, about 3,000 miles, in 100 days. For 150 years thereafter the Mackenzie River system remained the main transportation route for almost all of the Northwest, and for the western Arctic. A few ships have sailed into the Arctic from the Pacific through Bering Strait; a few travellers with dog teams and sleds have made winter journeys to and from the south. In the main, however, it was inland water transport that alone served the Northwest until the recent war years. The first steamboat was launched in 1883; the first diesel tug-boat appeared in 1938. The first aeroplane flew into the Mackenzie valley in 1921 but, even in 1939, the regular air service by then established used only small ski- and float-equipped planes, since there were no permanent landing strips in the entire valley. Access to the narrow coastal region from the sea has never been a problem. Entry to the Yukon was achieved in 1900 when the Whitepass and Yukon Railway was opened between Skagway and Whitehorse. River traffic on the Lewes-Yukon river system (the Yukon being another major river of North America, draining 320,000 square miles) supplemented the railway in serving Dawson City and the interior. The Mackenzie River system, however, dominated the pre-war transportation scene for much of the area under review; it is still of vital importance and so must be very briefly described. It starts as the Athabasca River, rising on the eastern slopes of the Rockies west of Edmonton, and flowing into Lake Athabasca which, in turn, drains into Great Slave Lake down the Slave River, to be joined by the Peace River from the west. The Mackenzie River proper flows from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean, its principal tributaries being the Liard, the Bear, and the Peel, all of which have served as regular transportation routes. From a point about 300 miles north of Edmonton (Waterways), where the Clearwater River joins the Athabasca, the combined river system provides a navigable waterway to the Arctic sea, 1,600 miles in length, with but one impassable section, the twelve miles of rapids on the Slave River between Fort Fitzgerald and Fort Smith (at the 60th parallel), to circumvent which a portage road has long been in operation.

An Engineering Assessment

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Northern Alberta Railways link Edmonton with the head of navigation at Waterways, adjacent to Fort McMurray. From Edmonton to Aklavik, freight therefore moves by four stagesby rail to Waterways, by the upper river fleet to Fort Fitzgerald, by truck or tractor across the portage road, and by the lower river fleet from Fort Smith to Aklavik. The river traffic is handled on barges which are pushed now by diesel "tugs," but previously by the old wood-burning stem-wheeler steamboats of the Mackenzie River Transport service of the Hudson's Bay Company which terminated its operations just a few months ago. The river fleets have to be shallow-draft, the Athabasca sometimes having as little as three feet of water over its sand bars. The shallow-draft makes navigation across the open waters of the two great lakes quite hazardous. The upper river has an open season of about four to five months, the lower river less than four months. In this short period, the freight for an entire year has to be moved; hence storage and trans-shipment arrangements at Waterways are vitally important. This was the transportation picture for the Northwest in 1939. In that year, Canada completed the first phase of what became the Northwest Staging Route, soon to be extended with American aid in the form of permanent airfields at the five locations selected for landing strips, and supplemented and serviced by the Alaska Highway, which also provided Whitehorse with another outlet. Permanent airfields were established at six strategic points in the Mackenzie valley in 1942, finishing with Norman Wells. A road has been built from Grimshaw to Hay River; this assists in moving freight on the lower river somewhat earlier than previously but the short open season of navigation ( complicated by the fact that the Mackenzie system thaws first in its headwaters, thus causing serious flooding in its lower reaches at every "break-up") still controls the effective use of the river. Today, therefore, the lower Mackenzie valley-the Northwest with the exception of the Yukon and northern British Columbia-is served by a regular air service from Edmonton and by the summer freighting service on the river. Feeding the latter is the upper river service from Waterways, freight trucked to Hay River by road, and small shipments made early each season from Fort Nelson (reached via the Alaska Highway) down the Liard River to the Mackenzie, while the former is at flood level. A railway is now to be built to Pine Point and this will give access to Great Slave Lake similar to that provided by the GrimshawHay River road. There will still remain, however, the thousand miles of river between Great Slave Lake and the Arctic served only by water and air. Some special supplies have been brought into the valley in the

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Robert F. Legget

winter by over-snow tractor trains, such as some of the supplies for DEW line construction hauled in from Alaska across the Yukon, but high costs will prevent this from being anything but a special service for some time yet to come until regular instead of special winter roads can be used. The Canol project has been mentioned. This 577-mile pipeline ( 4 inches and 6 inches diameter) was operated between Norman Wells and Whitehorse from April, 1944, until May, 1945, with a pumping capacity of 3,500 barrels per day, obtained from sixty wells drilled in the Norman Wells area. All supplies for this major wartime undertaking came in down the Mackenzie, a vast emergency American fleet of barges and tugs augmenting the regular river service. Much of the material, and almost all of the special fleet, went out the same way, for, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in it, little now remains of "Canol" except the few pipelines still in the Yukon and the airfields in the Mackenzie valley. Like many other northern defence projects, the publicity it attracted tended to obscure the fact that, although it was built and did operate, its economics bore no relation to the basis upon which civilian development must be founded. It was estimated, for example, that the direct cost of operating the pipeline and the rough service road paralleling it (now abandoned) was $1,000,000 a year, without any allowance for interest on capital or amortization. Transportation is, therefore, the key to the development of the Northwest. New roads have recently been suggested; some surveys for them have been started. But it must be noted that these can only connect with the two existing roads from "the outside" and so are limited in extent; that construction and maintenance may be relatively very costly; and that unless they are built to unusually high standards they will not be suitable for carrying the very heavy loads now handled with such relative ease on the river. It is useful to recall that it is cheaper to construct and maintain a good railway line than a first-class paved highway, and to observe that Knob Lake, Moosonee, and Churchill ( for example) are all served by railways only, despite their importance. The importance of roads is not to be minimized; but if their construction is to be based on sound economics, it is clear that the Mackenzie River system is going to continue to serve the Northwest for a long time to come. This means that freight shipments into the area have to be planned long in advance ( usually a year) in view of the short and crowded summer shipping season, and that the high costs involved must be realistically appreciated. Table I shows some typical costs, with some comparative figures for reference. Amongst other things that these figures

An Engineering Assessment

13

demonstrate, they show that-wonderful though the existing air service down the Mackenzie has proved to be-it is not an economical means of getting freight into or out of the Northwest. These figures emphasizing the cost of transportation point directly to the main complication in the other prime preliminary to northern development, building. TABLE I EXAMPLES OF SOME TRANSPORTATION COSTS IN TIIB NORTHWEST

Route Edmonton to Waterways by rail Waterways to Norman Wells by boat Edmonton to Grimshaw by rail Grimshaw to Hay River by road Hay River to Norman Wells by boat Edmonton to Dawson Creek by rail Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson by road Fort Nelson to Norman Wells by boat Edmonton to Aklavik via Waterways Edmonton to Aklavik via Hay River Edmonton to Aklavik by air freight Edmonton to Aklavik : single fare for one passenger by air Edmonton, or Vancouver, to Whitehorse by air freight single fare for one passenger by air

Cost per 100 lb. ($) 0·52 2.73 0.61 1.44 1.75 0.61 1.40 3.25

'l

3.25 3.80 5.26 3.95 4.47 60.60 135.00 18.00 79.00

BUILDING IN THE NORTHWEST

Building a power plant or building a house, once the design has been prepared, involves bringing together materials, equipment, and manpower, and the orderly and economical assembly of the first two items by the application of the third, into the finished project. Since there is no resident skilled construction man-power in the Northwest, as in the more settled parts of Canada, since all equipment has to be brought in from "the outside" using transportation facilities just described, and since there are in the North few indigenous materials that can be used in building, it is clear that the cost of building is bound to be high, thus making economics the main determinant in civilian design procedures. It costs, for example, just about as much to transport from Edmonton to Aklavik the materials that go into an ordinary small house as it does

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Robert F. Legget

to purchase the materials here in the first place. Correspondingly, and as Table I shows, it costs the equivalent of almost three normal weeks of work merely to transport one plumber (say) from Edmonton to Aklavik and back again. Building economics in the Northwest are, therefore, complex; they have always to be studied in association with the logistics of getting all the necessary materials and equipment to the right place and at the right time. There are other factors, also, which must be considered before one can tum to the rather obvious solution of using some of the lightweight building materials now becoming available for the residential construction that looms so large in all resource development. All buildings in the North must be completely reliable, easily repaired if necessary, and as fire-resistant or fireproof as is practicable. They should also involve a minimum of skilled labour for their erection. Although it is entirely probable that new systems of building, possibly using plastics, will be developed for northern use-some experimental work in this direction is already proceeding in Canada-nothing has yet appeared which suggests any immediate departure from traditional building methods and materials, used with maximum efficiency. (The word "traditional" is used with some diffidence since, despite its honourable meaning, it is often viewed with disdain when applied to building on the very questionable grounds, presumably, that anything that has been used in building for a long time must, of necessity, be bad and therefore capable of improvement.) For small northern buildings such as residences, therefore, the use of wood-frame construction may be expected to continue to be sound and economical. Not only is wood the most versatile of all ordinary building materials, but pound for pound it is stronger than steel and even gives about the same equivalent strength, pound for pound, as the cement in concrete, quite apart from the additional weight of stone and sand that must be used as aggregate. With transportation costs so high, this one feature of wood is alone warrant for its extensive use in the North. At the same time wood provides an insulating value of fifteen or more times that of masonry materials, a feature which makes it an almost indispensable material even in "masonry construction" built to a high thermal standard, in regions of Canada with less severe winter climates than in the North. The danger of fire is an ever present problem, but not necessarily a deterrent to the use of wood. It is worthy of note, for example, that although the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have used wooden buildings almost exclusively for their widespread and long-standing work

An Engineering Assessment

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all over the North, they have never lost a building because of fire. There is a popular belief that masonry buildings "do not bum," but Canada's annual fire record completely disproves this. The worst fire that the writer has encountered in recent years was in a large hydro-electric station that would have been generally regarded as absolutely fireproof, constructed as it was of steel, concrete and masonry, with not a single piece of wood in sight. Prefabrication is clearly a procedure that may be economical in northern building, reducing as it does so considerably the necessary on-site labour. This very economy may, however, conflict with the desire, or even the official policy, to use local labour to the maximum extent possible in the Northwest. A large proportion of the smaller buildings in the more isolated communities of the North constructed in recent years have been built in this way. It is a salutary reminder that even this is not a new development in building. When Martin Frobisher sailed into Hudson Bay in 1577, amongst the cargo in his two little wooden ships were two wooden buildings prefabricated in England. Major construction operations in the Northwest are subject to the same special limitations as the building of smaller structures. Economic factors and the associated logistics of the operation of building are, as has been explained, paramount. Popular belief is that climate is an equally serious special feature of northern building but climate can readily be shown to be of little special significance in so far as the design of buildings is concerned, although it does affect construction operations and the "livabiHty" of buildings. The Division of Building Research of the National Research Council, in co-operation with the Canadian Army, to cite just one example of measured performance of buildings, studied a prefabricated wooden building used to house Army personnel near the Yukon-Alaska border. Throughout the 161 days of the test, the average air temperature was -10°F, minimum temperature ranging as low as -54°F. With little in it that was unusual, although specially designed for Arctic use, but because of sound design and careful operation, the building provided safe, comfortable, and economic accommodation, as shown by the meticulous records taken through the winter. CLIMATE OF THE NORTHWEST

Of all the popular misconceptions about northern development, those relating to climate seem to be most widespread. It is generally believed that the Northwest, in particular, is much colder than the rest of Canada, and that it suffers from excessive snowfall. Both ideas are wrong. The

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Robert F. Legget

fact that the tree-line extends almost to the Arctic coastline in the Mackenzie valley is an indication of the fallacy of the concept of cold. Detailed statistics would be out of place in this general review but as comparative examples there may be mentioned the average cold temperature cycles of Aklavik and Churchill, and of Whitehorse and Winnipeg, for each pair are approximately equal in degree. Extremely low temperatures are sometimes experienced in the Northwest but the over-all differences between north and south are not so great as to be significant with regard to building design or construction. It is of more than passing interest to note that on the day preceding that on which this paper was presented to the Society, the coldest place in Canada was Kenora, Ontario, and the warmest, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Wind is more of a problem in the North than in the South, the combination of wind and low temperature being a very real impediment to human comfort outside in northern winters. Even here, however, misconceptions have arisen since the public have all too readily applied statements about "wind-chill" in the North to things for which the term was never intended. The expression is used to define the combined effects of low temperature and wind on the human body, that is, upon exposed surfaces the temperature of which is maintained at an almost constant level. In the case of a building exposed to corresponding conditions, its outside surface temperature will drop, the thermal gradient within the wall adjusting itself accordingly. The effects of wind upon heat losses in the two cases are markedly different. It is the prevalence of wind in the North which has contributed to the misconceptions about snow, since the wind does result in snow-drifting and snow-movement which can be quite spectacular. Some will recall the photograph published two years ago in a popular magazine of a large pile of snow that had been blown through a keyhole. It is the effect of "wind-packing" that produces snow of the correct consistency for cutting into the blocks needed for the construction of igloos, those well-adapted buildings that defy duplication in man-made materials except in respect to shape and appearance. The actual amount of snow that falls each winter in the Northwest is, however, relatively small, much smaller than normally falls anywhere in southern Canada east of the Rockies. Here we encounter one of the phases of the Canadian climate that is peculiar to the North, and one that must have a profound effect upon the future development of that region. This is the very low total precipitation over the entire area, precipitation that is so limited that the Canadian North has been called "the greatest desert in the world." This is probably a mild exaggeration but when it is realized that in the region under

An Engineering Assessment

17

review to the east of the Cascades, there are never more than from 4 to 6 inches of rain, at the most, available each year for crop growth, it will be appreciated that here are real desert conditions, extending over an area of much more than a million square miles. From the point of view of development engineering, this very low precipitation directs attention to the fact that the water supplies essential for all human habitation must normally come from flowing rivers. This places very severe limitations upon the location of permanent settlements. The second unusual and really significant climatic factor in northern development is the length of the seasons. It is here that the cold of the North makes itself felt, for winter may account for more than half of the year with summer limited to a few weeks at most. It may be helpful to recall that the Arctic Circle is that parallel of latitude north of which there is in every year one day without direct sunlight and one day of continuous sunlight-and one-quarter of the Northwest is north of the Arctic Circle. A useful indicator of the duration of summer is the number of frostfree days available at any locality, information regularly published by the Meteorological Service. For Prince Rupert, on the coast and close to the southern boundary of the region under consideration, there are on the average 195 days each year in which the temperature never goes below 32°F. In the Mackenzie valley, and in the Yukon, the number of frost-free days rarely exceeds 75. This does not mean about two-and-ahalf months of summer but merely that there are two-and-a-half months in which it is not winter. Again there are direct implications for engineering, such as the very short length of the construction working season, unless special and expensive measures are taken for such things as the protection of newly placed concrete, and the influence of the necessary length of the heating season upon the economics of building operation, and thus upon building design. There is some connection, also, between the long winter season and permafrost. PERMAFROST AND NORTHERN BUILDING

Permafrost is one of those terms that engineers have brought into use and yet that are philological monstrosities which become commonly misused even as they come to find a place in everyday language. Originally coined by Professor Siemon Muller, 4 permafrost as a word 4S. W. Muller, Permafrost or Permanently Frozen Ground and Related Engineering Problems (Military Intelligence Division, Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army, 1943).

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Robert F. Legget

was politely castigated by the late Professor Kirk Bryan who proposed a series of philologically correct names as substitutes, such words as cryopedology and pergelisol. c; As has happened so often before, the correct words-although used to some extent in Europe-remain on this continent in the seclusion of one academic paper, while the term "permafrost" has progressed to such a point that it has been featured in articles in popular magazines. The word is used to describe a condition rather than a material, that state of the earth's crust when the ground temperature is below 32°F. The general pattern of variation in ground temperature is now well recognized. For southern Canada, there is a diurnal variation perceptible to a depth of a few inches, an appreciable annual variation to a depth of about twenty feet, with at least a six-month time lag at that depth. When a steady ground temperature is reached, it is found to be close to, but not necessarily equal to, the annual mean temperature for the locality. This steady temperature is found to increase with depth, at a rate of approximately 1°Fin 150 feet. In the North, accordingly, with its long winters and consequent low annual mean temperatures, the steady ground temperature will be correspondingly low and perennially frozen ground-permafrost-is the result. In the Mackenzie valley, shallow permafrost has been found as far south as Uranium City on the north shore of Lake Athabasca. Little accurate information on the depth of permafrost is yet available, but it is known to extend to a depth of about 150 feet at Norman Wells, and to about 1,300 feet at Point Barrow, Alaska, and at Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island. These depths are those at which the ground temperature just reaches 32°F. If, in the regions of perennially frozen ground, the earth's crust consists of solid or fragmented rock or of dry and well-drained sand or gravel, the phenomenon of permafrost is scientifically interesting but of no unusual engineering significance. Diamond drilling work will be difficult; mine workings may have to be heated rather than cooled; but building and construction operations can be carried out in normal fashion. When, however, the ground consists of waterlogged soil and particularly if the soil is fine-grained, complications arise with modem building designs and construction; the thermal balance of the frozen soil and water can easily be disturbed, possibly with disastrous results, as the solid permafrost assumes the consistency of soup when thawed. Unfortunately for Canada, the geology of her northern regions is such CiKirk Bryan, "Cryopedology," American Journal of Science, CCXLIV (Sept., 1946), pp. 622-42.

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that, to a far greater extent than in any other northern country, large areas of the North do consist of frozen waterlogged silt. The greatest concentration of this troublesome combination is to be found in the lower part of the Mackenzie valley. Perennially frozen ground has been recognized in the North from the time of the early explorers, although not then known as permafrost. They observed the existence of ice beneath the shallow "active layer" which thaws in high summer. Early settlers quickly learned not to disturb the surface of such ground but to build their simple cabins on sills or cribs above ground level. Troubles with permafrost developed only with the advent of modem building in the North, the development of the little oil refinery at Norman Wells in the thirties yielding pioneer experience. When the first house in the Northwest to be provided with a concrete basement was built at Yellowknife about 1938, it was initially the envy of almost the entire population of the lower Mackenzie valley; by the latter part of its first winter it had become the problem building of the North, the heat from its fine furnace passing readily through the concrete walls and floor to thaw out the frozen unconsolidated silt upon which it had been so carefully built, with consequent serious settlement of the whole structure better imagined than described. It was, however, the extensive construction in the Northwest of the war years that first revealed the true magnitude of what can properly be called "the permafrost problem." The building of the Alaska Highway, the Canol project, and the construction of airfields in the Canadian North and especially in Alaska, these and many other smaller construction operations showed vividly what special precautions in both design and construction the occurrence of permafrost created, when the soil involved was waterlogged glacial silt. What can only be described as a "crash" research investigation was undertaken, but even without benefit of much research, real advances in engineering techniques were quickly and splendidly made. Research continues and will continue, the National Research Council, for example, having at Norman Wells its own Northern Research Station to accommodate the permafrost and other northern research work of its Division of Building Research. The laws of nature being what they are, however, and saturated silt being an unstable and troublesome material when not frozen, it follows that all construction operations that have to be carried out when permafrost of this kind is encountered will continue to be rather severely affected. Roads, railways, and airfields must be constructed above the surface of the ground with a minimum of disturbance of the invariable vegetal cover (muskeg), the importance of which in maintaining the

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Robert F. Legget

thermal regime can hardly be over-estimated. Buildings must be isolated from the ground by means of air spaces, their loads transferred to the ground by simple cribbing or by piles, steam-jetted into the frozen soil, for all but the smallest structures. Above all, the sites for new settlements must be selected only after the most careful surveys of all possible locations so that the best ground conditions available may be secured. These are the procedures now being followed in the building of the new town of Aklavik, the site for which was selected only after a comprehensive survey of the 5,000 square miles of the Mackenzie delta. Although permafrost research is generally, and inevitably, directed towards severely practical objectives, the scientific problems posed by permafrost are not being overlooked by Canadian research workers. Is the southern limit of permafrost receding, in keeping with the recent slight warming of the Arctic? Is the existence of permafrost in North America a relic of the last glacial period? These and allied questions are meat for much argument. Changes are so slow that no speedy answers can be expected. But appropriate observations are now being made and recorded, and instrumentation is so arranged that in years now far ahead answers to these and allied questions should become available. A NOTE ON THE U.S.S.R.

If only because the U.S.S.R. is so often mentioned in discussions of northern development, and particularly in connection with permafrost, a brief note on the Soviet North must be added. Soviet permafrost research is known to be extensive; it is certain to be of high quality. The extensive development of the northern parts of the U.S.S.R. is not, however, the result of this relatively modern development but is closely linked with the fact that much of the Soviet North is free of permafrost, coupled with the added fact that, where permafrost does exist, the local geology is such that the frozen ground material is often not troublesome. Those who talk so glibly about the poor showing of Canada in the North, as compared with the U.S.S.R., should note that the large cities of the Soviet North and the bulk of its much publicized northern population are all in the western region where the influence of the Gulf Stream keeps an Arctic port such as Murmansk open throughout the year. Possibly because of this, Murmansk has been settled since the eleventh century. Moreover, the climate of Archangel is approximately the same as that of Quebec City, the land mass of northern Eurasia having a thermal regime rather different to that of northern Canada. li these facts were recognized, proper perspective would be restored, and Soviet

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21

experience would be used as a challenge to further Canadian efforts in the North and not to disparage what this country has already done. CONCLUSION

There is so much yet to be done in developing the Northwest that all such challenge is to be welcomed, as is also informed interest such as is indicated so clearly by the holding of this symposium. The area involved is immense; the climate is generally inhospitable; the provision of even minimal transportation services is costly and difficult; building is a complex operation, economically unorthodox and made more difficult by the presence of unusual permafrost conditions. Despite all this, much has been done already in advancing the northern frontier; much more still remains to be done. There is, however, one thing more to be said even in this engineering assessment of the potentialities of the Northwest; this relates to people. For engineers do not forget that their work in advancing the frontiers of civilization is done for people, often for the improvement of amenities for those living in an area, but in the case of the Northwest for the use of those who have to go to the North from the more settled parts of the country. Do Canadians in general really want to move to the North? We are essentially a southward-looking people, sun-worshippers still at heart; the long winters of the North are the reverse of what the average Canadian surely dreams of as the climate he would most enjoy. One major new Canadian development, not very far north by Mackenzie River standards, is already faced with the problem of extending operations southward rather than to the north because of the reactions of workers' families to the unaccustomed dark days. Is it not significant that at the present time the fastest population growth in North America, by transference, is to be found in Florida, California, and Arizona? It will, therefore, require strong economic incentives to produce any major increase in population in the Northwest and this can arise only from mineral development, since public expenditure per capita already far exceeds that for anywhere else in Canada. And mineral development is usually a strictly economic proposition. If the Northwest can produce minerals that can compete, in the markets of the world, with minerals produced elsewhere after allowing for all transportation costs, the Northwest may advance rapidly; if not, then advance must be slower. Anyone who has seen, as I have, buildings being hauled miles to be used in a new town-buildings from the town of Goldfields on Lake Athabasca, founded in the thirties but abandoned and deserted in the early

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Robert F. Legget

fifties-cannot forget the sensitivity to external factors that will govem the development of the Northwest, just as long as mineral exploitation has to be the basis of its economy. I believe in the future of the North, and particularly in the certain future of the Northwest. I am, however, very conscious of the difficulties, both physical and economic, that lie in the way of its development. I do not share in a literal sense the optimism of the writer who said, of the North, that "the resources are great enough to overcome the problems." The time scale to which development will take place is surely the only aspect of the North upon which there can be understandable difference of opinion. It is here that personal experience tends to influence opinion. And so may I conclude with a brief reference to an experience of my own? On my first visit to Fort Chipewayan on Lake Athabasca in 1940, I was taken to meet an old man, Alexander Fraser by name. When he found that I was a Scots Canadian he unlocked some of his treasures for me; I soon found myself with a set of bagpipes under my arm. I think of those pipes today, for I was talking with the grandson of the personal piper to Sir George Simpson and the pipes were those which had travelled all over the North in the governor's famous canoe. So short is the history of the North. So inspiring also, not only in the days of the great governor of "The Company," not only in these modem days of Herculean achievements such as finishing the DEW line, but also in the prospect of all that will most certainly be done.

ASSESSMENT BY A GEOGRAPHER

William C. Wonders THE NORTHWEST is a geographical myth. Like other similar generalizations its location is relative to the background of the speaker and to the era of history involved, and its characteristics are often bewilderingly diverse. To the person from Ontario the term may suggest the Lakehead or Kenora districts; to any American, west of the Mississippi at least, it immediately is thought of in terms of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Little more than fifty years ago it officially made up well over half the total territory of Canada, including even the grassland plains of what is now the southern part of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Today the Northwest Territories lie east of the Yukon! Despite the possibility of confusion in its definition the Northwest is a convenient term and doubtlessly will remain in use. As understood at present in Canada, it includes primarily the Yukon and the western section of the mainland Northwest Territories, with parts of the adjacent provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. For convenience it is often adjusted to political boundaries though rarely is this satisfactory from a geographical point of view. The two most comprehensive surveys of the Northwest, both published in 1947, 1 failed to establish common boundaries. One took as its eastern limits the eastern boundary (102° W) of the Mackenzie District in the Northwest Teriritories, and the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary (1 10° W). The southern limit through British Columbia was fixed arbitrarily about latitude 53 ° N, but followed the valleys of the Athabasca and Slave rivers through Alberta. The other survey included the territory west of a line from Waterways to Coronation Gulf (approximately the western limits of the Canadian Shield), north of the Peace River area and east of the Alaska Highway. Both surveys included all territory north to the 1 North Pacific Plannin~ Project, Canada's New Northwest: A Study of the Present and Future Development of Mackenzie District of the Northwest Territories, Yukon Territorv, and the Northern Parts of Alberta and British Columbia (Ottawa, 1948). C. A: Dawson (ed.), The New North-West (Toronto, 1947).

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William C. Wonders

Arctic Ocean. It is interesting to note that the recent provincial Royal Commission on the Development of Northern Alberta took as its southern boundary the 55th parallel. I suggest that the southern boundary be set by the railway line, since it still is this medium of transportation, more than all others, that makes possible regular service linking the area with other parts of the nation and continent. Canada was built on railways; and the full development of the Northwest is largely dependent upon them, as has been pointed out vigorously in recent submissions for the railway extension to Pine Point on Great Slave Lake. In dealing with the Northwest we are dealing with an area north of railhead, a fact which in itself imparts distinctive characteristics and problems to the area. The eastern limits of the Northwest are not as satisfactorily defined by administrative boundaries or geologic boundaries as they are by a transportation factor again: that territory which is immediately accessible to the Mackenzie River system. This would be more restricted than the entire Mackenzie District, but would include the important Beaverlodge uranium area on Lake Athabasca. The area north of the tree-line would be excluded, even though the western Arctic coast is served chiefly by ship (after trans-shipment) via the Mackenzie River system, and even though much of the current mining activity beyond the treeline is operating out of Yellowknife. Yet the change from woodland to tundra is a major one, which in the past has been reflected in the separation of Indian and Eskimo peoples. Modern technology, particularly as reflected in aircraft, has decreased the time involved in the change to a matter of hours. It has made possible permanent occupation of the tundra if the need justifies the cost. In no way has it decreased the impact of the change. Complete adjustment must be measured still in years and decades if not in generations. Tree growth varies considerably within the area, but the Northwest is a forested region in its natural condition. Within the area thus defined there is great diversity, especially in terrain. The three major physiographic elements in Canada are all represented, effecting at least a threefold internal subdivision with significant differences in resources as well as in appearance and living conditions. In the east it includes an appreciable area of the Canadian Shield, that lake-strewn rocky surface of low relief. On its thin and sandy soils stunted conifers and birches form only a scrub growth in most areas. The line of contact with the Interior Plains to the west is marked by the three "Great Lakes of the North"-Great Bear, Great Slave, and Athabasca. This northward extension of the Plains differs

Assessment by a Geographer

25

from conditions farther south in the Prairie Provinces in its much more restricted east-west extent ( varying from 200 to 400 miles within the area) and in its much lower elevations. Its most striking feature is the great Mackenzie River system which drains northward for over a thousand miles, whence is derived the name, Mackenzie Lowland, often applied to this sector. Generally, the lowland surface is poorly drained with frequent muskeg but the sector is extensively forested. Though many of the trees are small and slow-growing especially in the north, the Mackenzie Lowland includes the best forest stands in the Northwest Territories. The westernmost sector, including most of northern British Columbia and the Yukon, is part of the Cordillera region, the sector of greatest relief and landscape variety. A complex of rugged mountains and plateaux cut by deep valleys, many of which are tributary to the Yukon River system, produces a striking contrast to the other two sectors. Forests again are widespread particularly in northern British Columbia and in the southeastern Yukon. The mountain terrain and increasingly northern latitude, however, greatly restrict the forest areas of the Yukon. In assessing the potentialities of the Northwest we are discussing essentially the resource base of the area. Surveys of this base have been made often enough in recent years that, it seems to me, the general features are now known. Five major natural resources provide the basis for development of this vast comer of Canada: wildlife (including fish), forests, agriculture, water-power, and minerals. The earliest resource exploited was fur, and this has continued down to the present. It has been the chief support of the native peoples in the Northwest, yet it cannot be regarded as meeting their needs adequately even today, let alone as providing for the future . Fluctuating prices for pelts and varying numbers of animals, coupled with rising costs, do not afford a sound resource base for a population. A more recent development has been the commercial fishery which was opened on Great Slave Lake as recently as 1945-6. The annual marketed value of the catch is over $2 million, 2 a figure which has been equalled by the total value of the pelts taken in the Northwest Territories in only six years in the past twenty. 3 The present quota of 9 million pounds might be increased to 12 million in the future. 4 Great Bear Lake does not 2Department of Resources and Development (Canada), Industries of the Northwest Territories (Ottawa, 1953 ) , p. 23. 3R. G. Robertson, The Northwest Territories, Its Economic Prospects (Ottawa, 1955), p. 44, and Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, Annual Report:, (Ottawa). •R. G. Robertson, The Northwest Territories, Its Economic Prospects, p. 10.

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William C. Wonders

appear capable of supporting a commercial fishery but Lake Athabasca's present sporadic industry could be further developed. It is reported that in the past ten years it has been fished only three seasons with an average annual catch of 130,000 pounds. 5 Yet an estimated potential of at least 2 million pounds a year is calculated for the Alberta portion of the lake alone. At the same time, it should be realized that while the commercial fishery contributes significantly to the economy of the Northwest, it is a seasonal operation only. Of itself it is unlikely to supply a base for a stable, year-round resident population. Until recently the forest resource in the Northwest has been of importance chiefly as providing a habitat for native animals and a source of shelter and fuel for the local peoples. The wood-burning steamers formerly refueled from the riverside stands and in the Yukon contributed to the depletion of the more accessible timber resources. Small sawmills have operated for local needs along many of the main rivers. The mines have required considerable supplies of timber. These operations can hardly be considered as economic activities in themselves, and it is only in the past few years that such developments have begun. It is generally recognized that only in the areas of the Liard valley and the Slave River are natural conditions sufficiently favourable for any real forest development in the territories. In the northern parts of the provinces falling within the Northwest the potential is greater but there still are serious problems to be overcome. At this time three large sawmills are operating in the Wood Buffalo Park. The most promising development is the sawmill and planing-mill just being completed at Fitzgerald on the Slave River. When an accompanying plywood plant is finished and all operations are under way, it is expected that 250 men will be employed. This will be the first real commercial exploitation of the forest resources of the Northwest on a relatively permanent basis. Other developments will come ( e.g., the Report of the Royal Commission on the Development of Northern Alberta forecasts a pulp mill at or near McMurray by 1987), but unfortunately much of the area is marginal for forest growth on a commercial scale and its relative value should not be over-estimated. Agriculture is not a significant resource base for the Northwest. It is hampered hy climate and soil conditions and its disadvantages are aggravated by transportation problems. The growing season is short with particularly unpredictable early fall frosts, 6 although the shortness 11 Royal Commission on the Development of Northern Alberta, Report (Edmonton, 1958), p. 26. 61n the Mackenzie Lowland the average frost-free season ranges from a minimum of 44 days at Fort Norman to a maximum of 92 days at Fort Resolution (J. L. Robinson, "Land Use Possibilities in Mackenzie District, N.W.T." Canadian Geographical Journal, July, 1945); in the southern Yukon it averages 45 days, as

Assessment by a Geographer

27

of season is modified by the length of daylight and the high summer temperatures for these latitudes especially in the Mackenzie Lowlanda point emphasized by Taylor in his assessment of the area. 7 It now is appreciated that light summer precipitation is a further restrictive factor. 8 Stacey states that "north of about latitude 56° dryland cropping conditions prevail" in northern Alberta. 0 Soil conditions are extremely variable over the area, being greatly restricted by relief, by the effect of glaciation, and by permafrost. Recent federal government estimates of available arable land in the Yukon Territory range from 250,000 to 500,000 acres and in the Northwest Territories from 1 million to 1.5 million acres. 10 A 1956 release from Ottawa raises the figures to 1 million and 2.5 million acres respectively but this still is a very small fraction of the total area of the Northwest. Even though grain can be grown at least as far north as 62° and vegetables as far north as Aklavik, less than one-fifth of one per cent of the arable land in the Territories is under cultivation at present. If in northern Alberta, chiefly in the Peace River area, there still are 14.5 million acres of good, at present unimproved, farming land, and if it is not expected that there will be any appreciable increase either in the amount of new land settled or in the number of farmers in the Peace River country in the immediate future, 11 it would not appear likely that there will be any major change in agricultural production still farther north. Indeed, it has been pointed out that in Canada generally, the rising demand for agricultural products in future will be met chiefly through the more intensive use of land in areas already settled. 12 Water-power, at present almost entirely undeveloped, is a potential resource of considerable importance. Its distribution within the Northwest is very uneven. East of the mountains most of the large potential compared with 75 days in the central Yukon (J. L. Robinson, "Agriculture and Forests of Yukon Territory," ibid., August, 1945); in northern British Columbia it averages only 22 days at Finlay Forks and 42 days at Dease Lake, although this is a short-term record (W. G. Kendrew and D. Kerr, Climate of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, Ottawa, 1955); in northern Alberta it averages 65 days at Fort Vermilion and 67 days at Fort McMurray (W. G. Kendrew and B. W. Currie, Climate of Central Canada, Ottawa, 1955). TG. Taylor, Canada (London, 1947). BM. Sanderson, "Drought in the Canadian Northwest," Geographical Review, XXXVIII, 2 (April, 1948), pp. 289-99. DE. C. Stacey, "Some Technical Aspects of Agricultural Development in Northern Alberta," Northern Development Conference, Proceedings (Edmonton, 1957). IOBriefs submitted to the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, 1955. llRoyal Commi$sion on the Development of Northern Alberta, Report, pp. 1-2. 12Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, Final Report (Ottawa, 1957), pp. 166-7.

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William C. Wonders

sites are within Alberta, where 2,715,000 horsepower of undeveloped water power is available. 13 1.6 million horsepower of this occurs on the Athabasca River between the towns of Athabasca and Fort McMurray and so might be considered to be marginal to the area under discussion. The other big supply of power is an estimated 1 million horsepower available from the Slave River rapids at the 60th parallel ( although other estimates of the potential at this site range only from 200,000 horsepower to 500,000 horsepower). A further 100,000 horsepower is available at Vermilion Chutes on the lower Peace River. North of the provincial-territorial boundary the potential is much less owing to the regular gradient of the river system through this lowland sector. Low precipitation is a further limitation. Eastward, in the Shield and at its margin there are numerous power sites though most are of limited size. One of the largest, with a reported capacity of 100,000 horsepower, is on the Lockhart River at the east end of Great Slave Lake. 14 In the Yukon Territory, the regular gradient over most of the river system and the wide seasonal fluctuation in flow greatly limit its water-power potential. A survey in 1947 of the total Yukon River drainage in Canada rated it as only 19,740 horsepower at ordinary minimum flow. 15 On the other hand, if the headwaters are partially diverted through the Coast Range Mountains and down into the Pacific directly, after the manner of the Kitimat project, the potential is quite startling. This Yukon-Atlin-Taku project is estimated to offer a potential of 4.9 million horsepower--one of the greatest blocks of hydro-electric power in the world. The project is dependent upon agreement being reached not only between British Columbia and the Yukon, however, but also between Canada and the United States; since access by sea to the hinterland must be through the "Panhandle" and since the Yukon River system is Alaskan in its lower reaches. Besides this immense block of power, other major sources, totalling about 2.5 million horsepower exist in northern British Columbia. 16 Most of these also are on the rivers flowing to the Pacific, such as the Stikine, Nass, and Iskut rivers, although 179,000 horsepower are estimated to be available on the Peace River in British Columbia and perhaps 400,000 horsepower on the Liard River within 13 Royal Commission on the Development of Northern Alberta, Report, pp. 62-5. HR. G. Robertson, The Northwest Territories, Its Economic Prospects, p. 12. 15Canada's New Northwest, p. 87. 16G. Griffiths, "Inventory and Evaluation of B.C.'s Hydro-Electric Resources," Ninth British Columbia Natural Resources Conference, Transactions (Victoria, 1956); and British Columbia Atlas oj Resources (Victoria, 1956).

Assessment by a Geographer

29

the province. Much of this power probably will remain undeveloped until the exploitation of mineral resources creates a particular demand for it. The immense potential of the Yukon-British Columbia sector differs, however, in that it may be attractive enough in itself, especially if accessible from the sea, to draw industry to the area. Despite the promise of water-power potential, it is the mineral resources of the Northwest to which the area must look for its development. It has been the mineral resources which have made possible such broadening of the economic base as now exists and which account for the bulk of the white population in the area today. Since World War II production has increased greatly. In 1946 the total value of mineral output in the Yukon and Northwest Territories was less than $3 million whereas ten years later it was just under $38 million (1957 production in the same area was approximately $36 million). The same period has seen the tremendous growth of the Beaverlodge uranium area in northern Saskatchewan from nothing to an estimated production value of $39 million in 1957! Other equally important developments have been the opening up of new oil and gas producing areas chiefly in northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, and in northern British Columbia the opening of a new asbestos mine from which the 1957 production was valued at $8 million. It is now generally appreciated, I believe, that the mineral resources are the basis upon which the potential of the Northwest must primarily be assessed. Other resources may supplement its economic development but minerals will be the key, as indeed they have been for the past fifty years. This development will be more rapid than in the past because of our increasing dependence upon machines in a technological age-a situation which at once demands greater supplies of minerals and makes possible the exploitation of such resources in more remote areas such as the Northwest. That the Northwest possesses immense mineral resources is also widely recognized. Each of the three geological and physiographic sectors is favourable: primarily metallics in the Shield and Cordillera, and petroleum and natural gas in the intervening northward extension of the Great Plains. (It should be noted, however, that the latter sector contains more than just fuels. The large zinc-lead deposits at Pine Point, for example, occur within its boundaries.) There will be increasing demand for these mineral resources in the immediate future . Even though the situation for specific minerals will vary, the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects has pointed out that "the gross value of the production of the nation's mines, smelters, and refineries in

30

William C. Wonders

1980 may be about $5 billion, almost three and a half times the value produced in 1955."17 To date, even exploration work has scarcely started on these mineral resources of the Northwest. For example, only one wildcat well has been drilled for every 762 square miles of potential oil-producing territory, 18 and almost all such wells have been drilled in the southernmost parts, in northern Alberta and adjacent British Columbia. Northern Alberta alone is estimated to possess 1.4 billion barrels of virgin economically recoverable oil as of 1980.19 Apart from the Norman Wells oilfield programme, the first real exploratory drilling programme north of 60° did not get underway until 1952. It now appears that the immense oil reserves of the Athabasca oil sands ( estimated at from 200 to 300 billion barrels) may be utilized in part before very long. 20 A similar encouraging prospect exists for the metallic minerals. Realistically, conversion of the mineral potential of the Northwest into production is limited by two geographical factors: distance and climate. The latter raises operational costs but is not insurmountable. Distance is the more serious problem. The area is both far removed from the chief markets and characterized by vast extents of territory within its boundaries. Consequently expensive transportation is the major reason for very high mine production costs in the Northwest. It is practicable to mine ore in northern Ontario with a gold content of approximately .15 ounces per ton and make a profit, whereas to make the same profit in the Northwest Territories the gold content of the ore must be approximately .45 ounces per ton. Particularly for base metals, transportation costs have often been prohibitive. It is expected that the railway extension to Great Slave Lake recently announced will do much to improve the mining industry of the Northwest Territories, as well as benefit other resources. 21 At the same time it will not remove the distance factor, and any mineral resources in the Northwest will have to contend with this disadvantage so long as similar resources are available in more accessible areas. Size of reserves, richness of content, and ease of exploitation will have to be balanced against distance involved. 17Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, Final Report, p. 216. 1su. J. Chaput, "Oil Exploration in the North," Alberta Prof. Engr. XII, 2 (March, 1958), p. 12. 19Royal Commission on the Development of Northern Alberta, Report, p. 57. 20Research Council of Alberta, Athabasca Oil Sands (Brief to the Borden Royal Commission on Energy Resources, 1958). 21R. G. Robertson, The Northwest Territories, Its Economic Prospect,, pp.

24-30.

Assessment by a Geographer

31

Against this background, what will be the nature of the pattern of settlement and conditions in the Northwest? The chief change likely will be a further decrease in the importance of the older communities originally established in the days of water transportation exclusively and designed to serve the fur trade. It is possible that some may be abandoned entirely. New mining communities will be established. Improved social and government services now being extended into the area will result in the growth of some centres, again probably at the expense of others since concentration of these services is necessary. Transportation will be governed chiefly by the mines, as at present. It may well be that the railway extension to Great Slave Lake and the introduction of new techniques of transportation designed for the particular needs of the area will see the development of new centres to provide those services, or they may simply emphasize further the importance of some of those now existing. It seems likely that at least one major centre, similar to Kitimat, will develop on tide-water in northern British Columbia to utilize the immense hydro-power potential of that sector of the Northwest. For the local population of the area, living conditions still will be dominated by the two geographical factors mentioned previously: climate and distance. The impact of the long, cold winter on living conditions in Yellowknife for example was effectively pointed out by Robertson. 22 There the average daily temperature from November to March inclusive is -8°F as compared with 16°F in Edmonton, 10°F in Saskatoon, 9°F in Winnipeg, 18°F in Sudbury, and 8°F in Chibougamau. In terms of heating requirements, this means an annual average of 15,600 degree-days of heating at Yellowknife, compared with 10,300 at Edmonton, 10,800 at Saskatoon, 11,000 at Winnipeg, 9,500 at Sudbury, and 12,400 at Chibougamau. 23 Even with the most efficiently insulated modem housing, heating costs will be high. A restricted construction season, heavy clothing expenditures, and a limited water transportation season are other costly results of the same factor. Summer temperatures are much more comparable with conditions elsewhere in western Canada, but as mentioned previously there is little likelihood of foodstuffs grown locally reducing the cost of living except possibly for some garden produce. 22/bid., 24-30. 23There are as many "degree-days" as there are Fahrenheit degrees difference in temperature between 65 degrees and the mean temperature for any day when the mean is below 65 degrees.

32

William C. Wonders

Some persons would look to climatic change as a long-term factor improving this condition. Kerr has stated that "the Yukon seems to share the increase of temperature in recent decades usual in high latitudes.. .. The annual mean [at Dawson] was about 3° higher in 1941-50 than in 1901-10, and the winter mean about 9° higher in 1939-48 than in any other 10-year period since 1901."24 Currie has not commented on the situation in the eastern part of the Northwest. However, Longley shows that the trend in mean temperatures in the Yukon and Northwest Territories again has been downwards in the past few years. He comments: "The method of analysis has shown a great many minor fluctuations in Canadian temperatures during the past 50 years. The spatial as well as the temporal extent of these fluctuations have been seen to be quite variable . . . . With such variety, the search for causes of Canadian temperature fluctuations or extrapolation of trends into the future is difficult." 25 Clearly, one should not expect much along these lines! Even with improved transportation, the inhabitants of the Northwest will continue to have to cope with vast distances in the development of the area. Isolation from the more populous parts of Canada "outside" and from one centre to another within the area will continue to create social and economic problems. Mining communities do not make for the steady expansion of contiguous settlement. The scope and rate of development of the Canadian North are often compared unfavourably with their counterparts in the U.S.S.R. It cannot be denied that population and activity in the Russian North are much greater than in our own. Using postwar figures of Shabad it has been estimated that in the "Northlands" (arctic and subarctic) of the U.S.S.R. there is a population of 29,725,000 compared with 1,509,000 for the corresponding part of Canada.26 A better comparison is perhaps made between the population in the Canadian Territories and that in the Russian "Far North"-both areas lying north of 60° . In Canada this would be about 32,000. In the U.S.S.R. it would be about 4.5 million! 27 In terms of the total population this means that one person in 47 lives north of 60° in the U.S.S.R., and one in 516 in Canada. It is reported that the area of cultivated land in the Russian Far North covered 790,000 acres in 1944;28 and 450,000 acres were claimed to be under 24Kendrew and Kerr, Climate of B.C. and the Yukon Territory, p. 178. 25R. W. Longley, "Temperature Trends in Canada," Toronto Meteorological Conference, Proceedings, 1953 (London, 1954) . 26T. Shabad, Geography of the U.S.S.R. (New York, 1951). 27Compiled from The U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe (Oxford, 1956) . 28Th~ Statesman's Year-Book (London, 1957), p. 1473.

Assessment by a Geographer

33

cultivation in the Arctic zone in 1957. 29 In 1956 the total area of farms in the Canadian territories was 4,477 acres. 30 The dramatic contrast suggested in these figures should be viewed in proper perspective. First, the Russian North is generally more favourable climatically for settlement. In the Siberian taiga the frost-free period ranges from 75 days in the north to 125 days in the south,31 and from 90 to 120 days in the European sector. 32 Even then, Cressey is very skeptical of the reports of great northern agricultural development, commenting: "Many maps of Soviet agriculture carry a line showing the northern limit of cultivation, in general near the Arctic Circle. Such a line is based on scattered research stations, many of them in somewhat unrepresentative situations .... It should also be noted that the extreme northern limit of possible cultivation does not refer to grains or any widespread type of cultivation which might provide livelihood for millions of people. The bulk of the area north of the Leningrad-Irkutsk line of three months growing season must remain essentially empty."33 Secondly, over half the northern population in the Russian North is in the European sector where there has been not only a better climate, but also contiguous contact with the more densely settled sectors to the south. Population pressure has pushed these people northward for many generations. Such is not true for the Canadian Northwest. Thirdly, much of this northern population in the U.S.S.R. is not there voluntarily: "the total population of the Vorkuta area is sometimes put as high as 450,000, of whom the great majority are either prisoners or forced residents, including some foreigners." 34 Finally, the development of the Soviet Far North is a policy to which the government is strongly committed. It involves the exploitation of natural resources ( chiefly mineral and forest), the development of an alternative northern sea-route, and the pursuit of scientific information, not to mention its propaganda advantages. With all this, there are serious doubts that it is economically feasible except under the peculiar operations of the present Russian regime. 35 29N. Lokhmaton, "Farming in the Far North," UNESCO Features, no. 231, (April 8, 1957). 30Census of Canada, 1956 (Census Division, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa, 1957). 3IM. Y. Nuttonson, Agricultural Climatology of Siberia, Study no. 13, International Agro-Climatological Series (Washington, 1950), p. 52. 32T. B. Cressey, Basis of Soviet Strength (New York, 1945), p. 97. 33T. B. Cressey, in Soviet Economic Growth, ed. A. Bergson (Evanston, Ill., 1953), p. 272. 34The U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, p. 92. 35See T. Armstrong, The Northern Sea Route (Cambridge, 1952); and C. Krypton, The Northern Sea Route and the Economy of the Soviet North (London, 1956) .

34

William C. Wonders

Development of the Canadian Northwest and utilization of its potentialities must therefore follow their own course. One thing could be borrowed from the Russians, however, and that is the firm commitment to a planned development, without the ruthlessness of their policy. Planning is especially important in an area dependent chiefly upon mineral production, since mines are temporary features in the long run and there is a tendency, perhaps, to live only in the present. Both the Paley Commission in the United States and the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects have emphasized the increasing degree to which our southern neighbour will be dependent upon our mineral output. Yet the present economic recession in the United States and its resultant demands for restrictions on Canadian imports can hit a mining area such as the Northwest very sharply. Wise planning can minimize such hazards. In such planning both independent persons experienced in the North and qualified government officials should participate, but there should be better co-ordination of efforts than at present. This combination of private initiative and national responsibility can be the unique contribution of Canada to northern development. In conclusion, if we are serious in our oft-stated support of such a policy, we must be prepared to pay for it. Eventually the North may carry itself but we cannot expect this immediately. In 1953-4 the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources was constituted to demonstrate our increasing interest in the North. A capable, efficient organization exists to effect such policy. Yet since the formation of this department, it never has received as much as one per cent of the federal budget. For the fiscal year ending March 31, 1957, it received $37 million, or 0.8 per cent of the total, and less than half of this was for northern purposes! 36 At this rate we can hardly discharge our present responsibility in the North, let alone realize the fulfilment of its promise. 86Department of Finance, Public Accounts of Canada for the Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1957. It is appreciated that expenditures are made for northern purposes under other government departments.

MINERALS AND FUELS1

A. H. Lang, F.R.s.c. and R. J. W. Douglas PROSPECTING, MINING, AND OIL PRODUCTION were important in the opening of Canada's Northwest and will probably be even greater factors in its development. The current annual yield of minerals and fuels (oil, gas, and coal) in this frontier region is valued at about $90,000,000. Although this is only some 5 per cent of the total Canadian production, its importance is magnified by the fact that mining is by far the greatest industry in the area. For this paper the Northwest is considered to comprise the parts of the four western provinces north of existing railways, the Yukon, and the part of the Northwest Territories west of Hudson Bay and including the western Arctic Islands. This is about one-fifth of the total area of Canada. Despite the relatively early stages of mining and oil activities and geological investigations in the Northwest the literature on these subjects is extensive. This brief paper can but sketch them. The following sections outline the geology, on which the potentialities are mainly based; the history, because some matters can be explained best by historical treatment; and the present situation. The later sections on potentialities summarize our personal opinions only. GEOLOGICAL SETTING The Northwest includes parts of four of the principal geological ( and physiographic) regions of Canada, in which the potentialities for minerals and fuels differ greatly. (1) The oldest and largest of these is a segment of the Canadian Precambrian Shield, which extends much farther to the east and southeast into Ontario, Quebec, Labrador, and Baffin Island. ( 2) The Shield is overlapped to the west by a mantle of younger, flat-lying strata which underlie the Interior Plains. Although the part of this belt lying within the Northwest belongs to the Plains region, it bears little resemblance to the prairies farther south, for most of it is lPublished by permission of the Director, Geological Survey of Canada.

36

A. H. Lang and R. J. W. Douglas

forested and much is swampy. ( 3) Still farther west is a wide belt of high mountains interspersed with lower plateaux, which are part of the Cordilleran region. ( 4) The Shield and the Plains extend into various sections of the Arctic Islands, which also contain the Innuitian region, characterized by folded strata and, in part, by high mountains. Precambrian rocks together represent at least 2,500 million yearsthe first five-sixths of geological time. Rocks younger than Precambrian are easier to separate because they are less deformed and because many contain fossils that aid in the correlation of strata; therefore, the 500 million years or so that elapsed after the Precambrian are divided into three eras, the oldest called the "Palaeozoic," the intermediate the "Mesozoic," and the youngest the "Cenozoic."

(I) Canadian Shield Because its shape suggested that of a shield, early geologists applied this name to the large area of Canada in which Precambrian rocks outcrop. Nearly half of the Northwest is within the Shield. Here, as in other regions, bedrock usually is exposed only intermittently, a condition that hampers geological investigations and prospecting. Although a few small areas near mining camps in the northwestern part of the Shield have been mapped and studied fairly thoroughly by geologists, most of this huge region has been covered only by reconnaissance methods. The many kinds of rocks that constitute the Shield resulted from the deposition and consolidation of muds, sands, and other sediments, from volcanic activity, and from the formation of granite and other intrusive rocks. From time to time pressure and movements in the earth's crust altered and deformed the original rocks, bent and heaved great masses of them into mountain chains, and formed cracks in the rocks. Movements along many such cracks produced the displacements that geologists call "faults." The earlier mountain systems were worn down by erosion, seas covered much of the resulting low land, younger sediments and volcanic rocks were deposited on the older strata, and the process of mountain building was repeated. The rocks now exposed at and near the surface of the Shield are of three main categories, each of which includes rocks of many different kinds. The oldest category comprises very ancient and contorted rocks, together with much granite. Younger than these are belts of less altered and less deformed strata, also commonly accompanied by intrusive rocks, which are the "roots" of later Precambrian mountains that also were worn down by erosion. Still younger patches of fairly flat strata represent late Precambrian basins of sedimentation and volcanism that were not involved in mountain building.

Minerals and Fuels

37

Mineral deposits of different kinds are formed by various geological processes. Space does not permit reviewing all of these, but it is desirable to outline the origin of one of the most common groups in order to clarify later discussions. This group includes veins and large irregularly shaped masses of rock containing scattered masses of valuable minerals. Most orebodies that yield metals and some of those that provide nonmetallic minerals belong to this group. Their origin is associated with the formation of granite and other intrusive rocks, and with mountain building. Some deposits were formed by crystallization within the intrusive rocks, generally near their upper parts, and others by the movement of metals (by solutions or some other process of ionic transfer) into the adjacent strata, where they were deposited along fractures or faults, or in pores in the rocks, or as chemical replacement of rock-forming minerals. Such deposits were formed far below the land surface existing at the time, and those now lying at or near the present surface have been revealed or partly revealed by deep erosion. They are of all sizes and degrees of richness, only the largest or richest being exploitable economically, even in the most accessible localities. Many deposits do not outcrop, but are buried by overburden or by barren rock; geology, geophysics, and geochemistry are being used with increasing success in providing indirect techniques for indicating the possible existence of buried deposits within reach of mining, such indications almost always requiring confirmation by cores obtained with a diamond drill. The Shield is divisible into large areas called "geological subprovinces" distinguished by kinds and ages of rocks and by the prevailing directions of ancient mountain roots. Authorities are fairly well agreed on the boundaries and names of some of these subprovinces, but other sectors require much more study. Subprovinces are commonly characterized by occurrences of one or more metals or by deposits of one or more geological classes, depending on the geological histories of the areas, and perhaps also on the original distribution of metals in the earth's crust. It is impossible to discuss all the subprovinces of the northwestern part of the Shield that are now recognized or imperfectly suggested, but a few are mentioned briefly as examples ( see also Map 1 ) . Near the Arctic coast is a subprovince called the Coppermine by some geologists. It is characterized by gently dipping beds of shale and sandstone, with some interbedded flows of lava that, at several widely separated localities, contain small masses of native copper (i.e., a mineral comprised of the elemental metal, not a chemical compound). Also present in the lavas are zones of fractures containing chalcocite,

LEGEND

~

Western Cordillera

~

Eastern Cordillera

1_:.

;:;\"._;I

LJ

Interior and Arctic Coastal Plains Canadian Shield lnnuitian Region

100

G.S.C

Scale of Miles o 100

I

I I

QUEEN ELIZABETH

""""' a

40

A. H. Lang and R. J. W. Douglas

another copper mineral. South of this subprovince a large triangular area called by some the "Great Bear subprovince" extends from Great Bear Lake to Great Slave Lake. It contains large areas of contorted sedimentary and volcanic rocks and of granite. This subprovince is best known for its uranium, as it contains the Eldorado and Rayrock mines and many uranium prospects. It is also characterized by silver, cobalt, nickel, and copper. To the southeast is the Yellowknife subprovince, a large area containing granitic, sedimentary, and volcanic rocks, perhaps older than those of the Great Bear. The Yellowknife is predominently a gold-bearing area, with some tungsten as well; its eastern part also contains occurrences of beryllium, lithium, niobium and other metals. A relatively small subprovince called the "East Arm" extends along the shores and islands of the east arm of Great Slave Lake. Its strata are dominantly sedimentary, in which occurrences of copper, lead, zinc, uranium, nickel, and cobalt have been found. Farther south are the Taltson subprovince, containing several prospects of uranium and other metals; the Athabasca, containing several uranium mines and about 3,000 known uranium occurrences; and the Athabasca Plain, where few mineral occurrences have been found, probably because of the young, flat-lying nature of the strata underlying it. Between the Athabasca Plain and the south border of the Shield is an unnamed subprovince characterized by occurrences of uranium, gold, copper, and other metals. Of the subprovinces mentioned, the Yellowknife is an example of the oldest category of rocks and conditions; the Great Bear, East Arm, Taltson, and Athabasca represent the intermediate; and the Athabasca Plain is typical of the youngest category. This brief account gives no conception of the intricate local geology of the Shield, but it indicates the importance of the geological work already done, the need for much more geological research, and the desirability of considering the subprovinces when planning prospecting ventures and additional transport facilities.

(2) Interior Plains In the Northwest the Interior Plains extend from northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia to the Arctic Ocean. They are underlain by essentially flat-lying sedimentary strata of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic ages which form the northern part of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. The strata rest upon the Precambrian basement and are generally thickest adjacent to the Cordillera, fingering out along the margin of the Shield. Other variations in the total thickness of the strata divide the region into several smaller basins where the strata are thick,

Minerals and Fuels

41

separated by areas where they are thin. The nature of the sediments and their structural conditions indicate that the region is favourable for local accumulation of oil, gas, and coal. The sediments beneath the plains of the Northwest are of various compositions and modes of origin. They include: limestones; dolomites; products of evaporation, such as gypsum and salt; various shales, siltstones and sandstones; and coal. These sediments, although stratified, do not extend unlimitedly as individual beds, but change in composition laterally and at different levels in the succession. Some beds vary in thickness and in places may be absent. Here and there, for example, may be limestone reefs, built of the remains of organisms, and surrounded by shale; or massive, vuggy, and porous dolomites grading laterally into non-porous dolomites and evaporites on the one hand, and, on the other, into shales and limestones; or sandstones may flank the sides of buried mountains or upland areas of the Precambrian basement, which were formed when the Palaeozoic seas gradually encroached and finally submerged the edge of the Shiel4 These and many more conditions produce rocks with certain features of porosity and extent that render them favourable to serve as reservoirs for the accumulation of oil and gas. Other rocks have characteristics that favour the preservation of the body tissues of the multitude of organisms that inhabit the seas. In time these remains were converted to oil and gas which, as the rocks were compacted and squeezed by the load of overlying sediments continually being added, ultimately found their way into the pore-spaces of the reservoir rocks to form what are called oil or gas pools. At various times parts of the basin lay at or close above sea-level; here lush, dense vegetation accumulated in swamps and lagoons, later to be buried and compacted to form coal. Although to the casual observer the strata of the Plains appear to be flat, they are gently flexed and warped or broken by small faults. Such structures are formed in various ways. Some are the result of irregularities on the surface of the sea-floor on which the sediments were originally laid down, or irregularities on the underlying Precambrian basement; some are caused by differential compaction of the sediments; and some may result from gentle earth-movements which gradually depress certain segments of the earth's surface more than adjacent ones, or raise other segments above sea-level thus allowing sediments previously deposited to be removed by erosion. Stronger earth-movements that produce mountain systems such as the Cordillera may disrupt rocks containing oil and gas, bending them into folds or displacing them along faults. The oil and gas migrate into the high parts of such structures, where they

42

A. H. Lang and R. J. W. Douglas

accumulate in the pores and fractures of the reservoir rocks. Some structures contain both oil and gas in important quantities; others contain significant amounts of one only; others may be unproductive. Coalbearing strata once deeply buried may be tilted by earth-movements and bevelled by erosion, so as to be accessible for mining. These, and other features which space does not permit mentioning, are evident in the rocks exposed on the Interior Plains or revealed by the cuttings or cores from wells. The rocks underlying the plains of the Northwest differ little from those of the more southerly parts of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, where most of the oil and gas and much of the coal is produced at present.

(3) Cordillera About one-quarter of the Northwest is within the complicated mountain system that extends along the west side of North and South America. Where traversed by the Prince Rupert branch of the Canadian National Railways the Cordilleran region is about 400 miles wide. Farther north it widens to about 600 miles where it extends from the St. Elias Mountains at the coast to the Franklin Mountains east of the Mackenzie River. Although the northern Cordillera contains some strata that are probably late Precambrian in age, most of the rocks exposed are Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. In the Northwest the Cordilleran region is divisible into five principal northwesterly-trending belts, four in the western Cordillera and a fifth comprising the eastern Cordillera. The most westerly is along the coast and its islands, and is largely in the "Panhandle"; it contains sedimentary and volcanic formations of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic ages, usually much deformed by mountain building. This belt is flanked to the east by a long wide zone in which the most abundant rocks are Mesozoic granitic intrusives forming part of the "Coast Range intrusives." It also is mainly in the "Panhandle," but large areas extend into British Columbia and the Yukon, including some of the highest summits of the continent. Farther east is a central belt composed mainly of rolling plateaux. These are underlain mainly by sedimentary and volcanic strata of Mesozoic and Cenozoic ages, the older being intruded by bodies of granite and other intrusive rocks. Still farther to the east is a belt that includes the Omineca and Cassiar Mountains in British Columbia and the Pelly Mountains in the Yukon; it contains large amounts of altered sedimentary and volcanic rocks as well as large and small granitic bodies. Much of the territory in the four belts thus outlined is favourable for the occurrence of mineral deposits, largely

Minerals and Fuels

43

because the mountains and plateaux in them were formed fairly long ago and have been eroded deeply to expose intrusive rocks and associated deposits. As in the Shield, some of the main geological units of the Cordilleran region show a tendency to be more favourable for one or more metals than for others. For example, the western marginal zone of the Coast Range intrusives is known to contain deposits of gold, copper, and molybdenum. Its eastern border zone contains the mines and former mines at Anyox, Stewart, and Tulsequah and other occurrences of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc. The southern part of the interior belt contains deposits of gold, mercury, chromium, and other metals, and a few occurrences of uranium and beryllium have been found near Atlin. The continuation of this wide belt into the Yukon contains the Klondike goldfield and many lesser ones, the silver-lead veins of the Mayo area, occurrences of tungsten, tin, copper, zinc, and antimony, and coal deposits at Carmacks and Dawson. The Selwyn Mountains along the boundary between the Yukon and Northwest Territories contain several granitic bodies that, among other features, make this little-known area favourable for prospecting; occurrences of iron, copper, gold, silver, lead, and zinc have been reported. Almost all Canada was glaciated during the last "ice age," which is estimated to have begun about 1,000,000 years ago and which, for most of the country, ended only a few thousand years ago. A large tract in the Yukon Plateau is one of the few places in Canada that was not glaciated, because the high St. Elias Mountains to its southwest cut off moistureladen clouds to such an extent that ice did not form here despite the cold. This area escaped the scouring action and the deposition of glacial debris that were so widespread elsewhere. Placer gold deposits formed before the period of glaciation were not destroyed or deeply covered. Here the great Klondike deposits were found . A thick succession of stratified sedimentary rocks of late Precambrian to Cenozoic ages forms the mountainous areas of the eastern Cordillera. In general, the younger rocks border the Interior Plains and the older strata are exposed deep within the mountains. Intrusive rocks are rare, an important point in considering the possibility of finding metalliferous deposits within reach of the surface, but not one that rules out the possibility of such discoveries. Known indications, however, are those of the fuels. The Rocky Mountains and bordering Foothills attain their greatest width in northeastern British Columbia close to their northern limit along the Liard River. The mountains consist of parallel, northwesterly-

44

A. H. Lang and R. J. W. Douglas

trending ranges, the higher parts rugged and irregular from erosion by glaciers, remnants of which still remain. The Foothills contain fold and fault structures in which porous reservoir rocks, such as are known in the adjacent plains or mountains, may be present at depth. North of the Liard River the Mackenzie Mountains are broadly arcuate, flanked on the east and northeast by the Franklin Mountains which are partly east of the Mackenzie River. Between these mountains lies the Mackenzie Plain, in which Norman Wells oilfield is situated. The oil is produced from a limestone reef of Palaezoic age. The sedimentary rocks underlying the Mackenzie Plain, and also Peel Plateau to the northwest, are thick and in places bent into gentle discontinuous folds. In northern Yukon the eastern Cordillera comprises the north-trending Richardson Mountains and the northwesterly-trending British Mountains which, together with the Ogilvie Mountains to the southwest, surround a broad sedimentary basin beneath the Porcupine Plain. North of the British and Richardson Mountains is the narrow Arctic Coastal Plain. The strata beneath the Porcupine Plain, and perhaps also the Arctic Coastal Plain, are folded. The less intensely deformed parts of the eastern Cordillera, particularly the Foothills and sedimentary basins where the strata are thick, contain many structures that may contain oil and gas, but so far few have been tested. Some are readily evident from regional geological surveys and others will, no doubt, be found as a result of detailed studies and geophysical surveys. In addition, it is probable that reefs, such as that at Norman Wells, occur at places that may or may not coincide with these structures and whose discovery may require many years of exploration. (4) Arctic Archipelago The western Arctic Islands include parts of the Shield, Plains, and Innuitian regions. It is, however, simplest to discuss them in a single section. The physiography and geology indicate that the archipelago was at one time a continuous land mass that is now partly submerged. Parts of the Shield extend northward into the southern islands and, in a general way, these areas probably differ little in mineral potential from other parts of the Shield. Intervening plains are underlain by flat-lying Palaeozoic strata which thicken northward and become gently folded near the Innuitian Region. The later contains worn-down mountain systems which, to the northeast, rise into typical mountains. The northern islands include the deep Sverdrup sedimentary basin and the Arctic Coastal Plain. In places thick successions of sedimentary rocks ranging in age

Minerals and Fuels

45

from Palaeozoic to Cenozoic contain features suggesting that the archipelago may become one of the future oil-producing regions of Canada. Some of the strata contain coal seams. HISTORY

Interest has been taken in the mining possibilities of the Northwest for more than two centuries. Natives brought copper to Fort Prince of Wales soon after it was established at the present site of Churchhill. A few years later, in 1769, Samuel Hearne was dispatched by the Hudson's Bay Company to try to find the source. After one of the great pioneer journeys on this continent he was led to the "mine," in the region northeast of Great Bear Lake. The occurrence consisted only of scattered fragments of native copper, but more promising copper deposits have since been found in this area. In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie, during his explorations of the river that bears his name, discovered pieces of yellow waxy material that he called "petrolium," and also reported a burning coal seam. In the previous year he had noted the occurrence of the bituminous sands near Waterways that are now known as the Athabasca oil sands. Later travellers found oil seeps at several places along the river. No other mineral occurrences are known to have been found during the eighteenth century. The next event in the mineral history of the Northwest was a discovery of gold on one of the Queen Charlotte Islands, but although some gold was mined it did not lead to a significant operation. This was a lode deposit, that is, a deposit in bedrock. The event that initiated important mining in the Northwest was the discovery of gold in the Klondike and this, instead of being a lode occurrence, was a placer. Placers are gravels in which grains of valuable mineral are scattered after being dislodged from a lode by erosion. Placer gold deposits usually have the advantages of being close to the surface. Some can be found, and mined, fairly easily by slightly experienced men. The resulting gold dust can be transported easily. After the early days of the California placer gold boom, prospectors spread northward, founding minor placer camps, until the great Cariboo gold field was found in 1859 in central British Columbia, south of the area being considered in this paper. From the Cariboo prospectors worked their way still farther north, substantial amounts of gold being mined in the Omineca and Cassiar regions. The first gold was found in the Yukon at least as early as 1869. The Klondike placer field, discovered in 1894 but not prominent until two years later, caused the

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stampede of 1897 and subsequent years that is now legendary. At the end of the nineteenth century the only production of minerals or fuels in the Northwest was in British Columbia and the Yukon, and the only great mining camp was Klondike. The Klondike output reached its peak in 1900, when the total production for the Yukon was about $2,000,000; a smaller production has continued to the present, largely from the dredging of gravels too lean for ordinary placer methods. About the tum of the century the first large lode deposits were found in the northern Cordillera. Most of these early discoveries were found near the coast by prospectors stimulated by the Klondike activity. One of the earliest was at Observatory Inlet, not far from Stewart. This was not brought to production until 1914, when a smelter was completed at Anyox, but from then until the mine was exhausted in 1935 it yielded eighteen million tons of copper ore. The Premier deposit near Stewart, staked in 1910 and brought to production in 1917, has provided more than three million tons of gold-silver-lead-zinc-copper ore. Other mines added to the production from Premier to make Portland Canal one of British Columbia's leading camps. Gold, copper, silver, lead, and zinc worth several millions of dollars have been produced intermittently from mines near Tulsequah. The completion of a mill at the Cassiar asbestos mine in 1953 marked the first important asbestos operation in western Canada; the discovery and development of this deposit were influenced by the presence of a road branching from the Alaska Highway. Placer gold was produced in the Mayo district in the Yukon from about 1898. This led to the discovery and exploitation of nearby lodes, the first being found about 1906. The first shipment of high-grade ore was sent out during the winter of 1914-15. Since then the mines of the area have produced more than $50,000,000 in silver, lead, zinc, and gold. In 1937 a Geological Survey party discovered mercury at Pinchi Lake, in British Columbia, not far north of the Canadian National Railways. Soon afterwards mercury became an essential wartime commodity and the deposit was brought into production by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company. The mine was the largest producer of mercury in the Commonwealth and one of the world's greatest. It is believed to contain additional ore which, together with that of other deposits found later along what is now called the Pinchi mercury belt, constitute important sources of this element. Little attention was paid to mineral possibilities in the northwestern part of the Shield for many years following Hearne's journey. Investigations were begun for the Geological Survey late in the nineteenth century and were gradually intensified. About 1898 prospectors, probably trying

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to reach the Klondike via the Mackenzie valley, reported the first finds of gold and zinc at Great Slave Lake. Prospectors visited Lake Athabasca in 1910, the first interest being in occurrences of copper and nickel that did not respond to testing. A mining engineer examined the copper deposits of Coppermine region in 1912, and geologists attached to the Canadian Arctic Expedition found and described a few mineral occurrences along the Arctic coast in 1913-16. The change from desultory prospecting to the present mining activity in the northwestern part of the Shield began in 1928 when several groups of well-qualified and well-organized men commenced to travel in floatequipped aircraft. This form of transport revolutionized prospecting and the examination and preliminary testing of finds in remote places, particularly in the lake-dotted Shield. The event that led to a substantial mining operation in this region was the discovery of pitchblende at Great Bear Lake in 1930. The establishment of a radium mine here three years later was a feat that has captured the imagination of the public not only because of the glamour of radium, and later of uranium, but also because the mine is only a few miles south of the Arctic Circle and is the most northerly metal mine on the continent. It became second only to one in the Belgian Congo as a producer of radium. During World War II the emphasis was secretly shifted to uranium, and in 1944 the Canadian Government purchased the Eldorado firm and still operates it as a Crown company. During the period of intensified interest in uranium following the war, Eldorado established a large operation a few miles north of Lake Athabasca where pitchblende had been found in 1935. During the last few years several additional mines have been found and developed, both by private interests and by Eldorado, making what is now called the Beaverlodge area one of the world's leading uranium fields. For several years prior to World War II gold was the most soughtafter metal, and during this period gold mining was established in the Yellowknife area. Prospectors were active here from 1933, and production was begun at the Con mine in 1933 by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company. Proving of the Giant deposits was completed by Frobisher Exploration Company in 1944, and the continuation of the Giant zone, displaced several miles by a fault, was found at the Con property at about the same time. Yellowknife has become one of Canada's great gold camps despite transportation costs and a difficult period for operators of gold mines. The first substantial production in the Hudson Bay region was begun in 1957 when a plant was completed at the North Rankin nickel-copper-

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platinum mine. Those responsible for the operation have been commended not only for successfully overcoming difficulties of climate and transportation but also for training Eskimo labour. Exploration for oil and gas is closely linked with advances in geological knowledge of the rocks that bear these fuels and, accordingly, with the history of geological investigations. These were begun in 1887 and since then many geologists have penetrated the remote and difficult terrain of the Northwest, gaining information on the geology and natural resources. These surface geological investigations form what may be considered the first stage of exploration for oil and gas, a continuous programme that expands as each new well, each geological project, and each geophysical survey adds information to the vast fund of knowledge required to discover the oil and gas hidden beneath the surface of the earth. Basically, oil and gas investigations are the application of previous general knowledge of the mode of occurrence, or "habitat," of the oil and gas in a specific region. As most deposits are small relative to the sedimentary basin in which they occur and are commonly limited to a few feet of beds within a thick succession of strata it is important to ascertain the most favourable locality at which the well is to be drilled. To do this, particularly in the later stages of exploration, geophysical methods are widely used, together with geological study of cuttings and cores from wells already drilled in the area. In the southern part of the Prairie Provinces exploration is largely in the later stages, whereas in most of the Northwest exploration for oil and gas is still in the early stage. Because exploration for oil and gas in the Northwest is an extension of similar activity farther south it is desirable to touch on events there. Drilling commenced in western Canada about 1900 and was markedly stimulated during World War I when discoveries were made in the southern plains of Alberta and at Turner valley in the Foothills. This activity reached as far north as a line between Fort St. John and Waterways-about the southern boundary of the area under consideration in this paper. Soon after World War I drilling commenced in the Northwest at Norman Wells and near Great Slave Lake. The Norman field was discovered in 1920 when the first well drilled in the Northwest yielded oil. For many years afterwards oil from a few wells was refined locally and shipped by barges along the Mackenzie River system, until during World War II the field was developed under the Canol project to meet the fuel requirements of military forces in the Northwest. From 1942 to 1945 much geological work was done, sixty productive wells were drilled, a refinery was built at Whitehorse, and a pipeline with a

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capacity of over three thousand barrels a day was constructed through the mountains from Norman Wells to Whitehorse. After the war the pipeline was abandoned and the Whitehorse refinery dismantled. A small refinery at Norman Wells now supplies the continually-increasing requirements of the region. In the expansion of exploration that followed the discovery of oil at Leduc in central Alberta in 1947, during which more than 3,000 wells were drilled in the peak year of 1956, oil was discovered at Normanville in northern Alberta and gas was found at Fort St. John in northeastern British Columbia. Development of the Fort St. John district was rapid, accompanied by construction of a gas pipeline through the Cordilleran region to southwestern British Columbia and adjacent parts of the United States. Interest spread still farther north; between 1951 and the end of 1957 wells were drilled in northern Alberta and British Columbia beyond the immediate vicinity of railways, several encountering gas and a few, oil. About fifty-five wells have been drilled in the Northwest Territories since 1951, mainly along the Mackenzie River and south of it. Of these, some resulted in discovery of gas at Rabbit Lake, west of Hay River, and four were drilled at Norman Wells in 1956 to increase the production. Since their discovery long ago the Athabasca oil sands have been a challenge to geologist and engineer alike to explain their nature and origin and to perfect methods for the recovery of the oil. They lie north of Waterways and are exposed along the Athabasca River. The deposits represent accumulations of heavy oil disseminated through the sands. Reserves of oil are variously estimated at 100 to 300 billion barrels, more than all other known oil reserves of the world. Many attempts have been made and millions of dollars have been spent in trying to extract oil from the sands. Various methods have been tried, using washing techniques with hot or cold water, but although successful they were uneconomic. Many occurrences of coal in strata of Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and Tertiary ages are scattered in the Cordillera, Interior Plains, and Arctic Islands. Some of these have been known for many years and were mined for local use. As communications improved, and the supply of petroleum products increased, production gradually declined; today a little coal is mined in the Northwest only near Aklavik and at Carmacks, Yukon. The most significant known metallic deposit in the Plains is near Pine Point on the south shore of Great Slave Lake. Exploration of the deposit was begun in 1920 and intensified in 1948 by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company, with the result that a large tonnage of

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potential ore has been established. Various indications of non-metalliferous deposits have been found. Apart from construction materials, perhaps the most significant of these are occurrences of salt and gypsum near Fort Smith. PRESENT ACTIVITIES

In the Northwest there are now several large producing mines, some smaller ones, and a producing oilfield. It would be difficult to state exact figures for the value of current production because convenient preliminary statistics are listed according to entire provinces and do not indicate which of the smaller mines are in the north. For practical purposes, however, it is sufficient to add the production from the larger mines in the northern parts of the western provinces to that for the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. In this way the total value of the production for the Northwest in 1957 is estimated at $92 million. Uranium was by far the leading product, accounting for about $53 million. Other principal products were gold (more than $13 million) and asbestos ($7 million). Silver, lead, and zinc to a total value of about $11 million were mined in the Yukon in 1957, and the value of these metals and copper produced in northern British Columbia was about $5 million. Oil produced in the Northwest Territories in 1957 was valued at about $736,000 and gas at $6,000. The output of coal in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories was worth $96,000. About 60 per cent of the total production in the Northwest in 1957 came from mines in the Shield, and, with the exception of oil, gas, and a little coal, the remainder came from the Cordillera. The principal mining area in the Shield at present is the Beaverlodge uranium camp north of Lake Athabasca. Here three large mines each with its own treatment plant are in operation, and several smaller mines ship to some of these plants. This is at present the only significant mineral production in northern Saskatchewan, exclusive of the production at Flin Flon, which is at a railhead. No minerals are produced from the small part of the Shield in Alberta. The producing parts of Manitoba are excluded from this discussion. In the Northwest Territories the largest operations are at Yellowknife where the Con and Giant gold mines account for most of the $11 million in gold produced in 1957. The remainder came from the Consolidated Discovery mine where a relatively small, high-grade deposit is operated 65 miles north of Yellowknife, served by a winter road and by air transport. Two uranium mines are in operation in the Northwest Territories. The

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largest is the Eldorado at Great Bear Lake, its plant being rated at 300 tons of ore a day. Its fairly small size is compensated for by the richness of its ore, a necessary requirement for the establishment of this operation in such a remote place. Eldorado has announced that "on the basis of present estimates, the ore reserves of the mine will be approaching exhaustion towards the end of 1960." The other uranium producer is the Rayrock mine, served by a road from the north arm of Great Slave Lake. It is a small, high-grade operation with a plant rated at 150 tons a day, which began production in 1957. Far to the east, the North Rankin mine at Hudson Bay began production of nickel, copper, and platinum in 1957, with a plant rated at 250 tons a day. Because of a decline in the financing of mining ventures not much testing of prospects was done in the northern part of the Shield in 1957. A shaft was planned to explore the Taurcanis gold deposit, 150 miles northeast of Yellowknife. Illustrative of the problems of mineral exploration, $650,000 is reported to have been provided by companies jointly to test this deposit by underground exploration in 1957 and 1958, so that a decision as to whether or not to proceed with development may be made by October, 1958. Diamond drilling was done to test a few other properties. For the last year or so, less prospecting has been done in the northwestern part of the Shield than during the previous decade because of lessened interest in additional uranium deposits and lower prices for several other metals. Considerable searching was done, however, mainly in the Great Slave, Coppermine, and Rankin Inlet areas and in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. This was done partly by individual prospectors and partly by organized projects of companies holding concessions or large groups of claims. The largest operation in northern British Columbia at present is the Cassiar asbestos mine in the Liard region. Here a 500-ton-a-day plant was completed in 1954. The great Premier mine near Stewart and the adjoining properties related to it were closed in 1957, partly as a result of low metal prices and partly because a fire had destroyed the plant, but exploration of deposits was continued in this district. Important producers were the Tulsequah gold-copper-silver-lead-zinc mine at Taku, and Torbrit silver-lead mine at Alice Arm, production from each mine being valued at more than $1 million. Placer gold operations in the Atlin area produced about $50,000. Production of silver, lead, and zinc in Yukon in 1957 amounted to about $11 million, most coming from Mayo. Gold production in the Yukon was valued at about $2 million, most of this being derived by dredging gravels in the Klondike valley. Considerable prospecting and testing of prospects was

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carried on in northern British Columbia and the Yukon in 1957 and this will probably be the case again this year. In addition to prospecting by individuals there was a good deal of organized company prospecting and investigation. This was attributable to several factors of which the following were probably most significant: much of this region has received less previous prospecting, except for placer gold, than other parts of Canada; much interest is being taken in asbestos possibilities following the success at Cassiar Asbestos, and asbestos occurrences have recently been found in the Yukon; geochemical prospecting is being tried following publication of results of research in these methods conducted at Mayo; interest is being shown in several base metal discoveries found in recent years, part of this interest stemming from tentative plans for a large hydro-electric development near the British Columbia-Yukon boundary; parts of the northern Cordilleran region have been made more accessible by roads built during the last few years; and investigations into mineral possibilities in a large part of northern British Columbia are being conducted for the WennerGren organization which has made an agreement with the provincial government. Several companies are active in exploring for oil and gas in the Northwest and for much of the region hold rights to explore and drill granted by Dominion and provincial authorities. Some of these companies, although searching primarily for oil and gas, also have permits to stake mineral claims in case deposits analogous to those at Pine Point are found. Of the 200 million acres of prospective oil and gas lands in the Northwest, exclusive of the Arctic Islands, exploration permits and reservations covering about 120 million acres are currently held or applied for. This is in two large blocks: one in the southern Northwest Territories, northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia; and the other embracing the northern Yukon and the lower Mackenzie River region. No land is held along the eastern margin of the Interior Plains nor in the Arctic Islands. Most of these rights have been acquired during the last few years, but in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon applications for more than 35 million acres have been received since September, 1957. The extent of these recent acquisitions indicates present interest in the region and possible future exploration and drilling. A plant is being designed to recover 20,000 barrels of oil a day from the Athabasca oil sands, using the recently developed Coulson centrifuge process which separates oil and sand by spinning. Construction is planned for 1958 and 1959. The heavy oil is to be processed by coking

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and extraction of sulphur to a light oil for transmission to Edmonton by pipeline. POTENTIALITIES

The possibilities for future discoveries and production in a region so large and diversified as the Northwest depend on many considerations, some of which are favourable whereas others are unfavourable. The factors we think most significant are outlined in the following paragraphs. The resources that can be appraised most accurately are the ore reserves of producing mines, but these are a minor factor in the subject as a whole. It is customary to begin production when sufficient ore is proved, and to do additional exploration of the property as mining proceeds. Therefore, reserves seldom indicate the full potential of a mine until it is in its last years. Comprehensive figures on known reserves cannot be presented in a short paper because there are so many types of deposits and other differences. Two examples must suffice. Recent reports indicate that the Giant Yellowknife mine has reserves for about twelve years at the current rate of production ( together with large amounts of "indicated" ore), and Cassiar Asbestos for about twenty-five years at the increased rate of 1,000 tons of ore a day planned. Further exploration may reveal additional ore laterally or at a greater depth. Many mines are worked for ten, twenty, thirty years or longer, but all are abandoned in time, although some are revived because of changed conditions. Another class of reserves is "potential ore." This is material which is of lower average content than is economically mineable now in the district concerned, and which appears to be present in a quantity that would otherwise be suitable. Such material is usually called "submarginal" if its content is not far below economic grade, and "ultra-lowgrade" if much below it. Submarginal material may become ore if costs of labour, supplies, or transport are reduced, if metal prices rise, if more efficient methods of mining or treating the ore become available, or if much larger tonnages are revealed, thus permitting the lower unit costs made possible by a very large operation. Ultra-low-grade material offers some possibility of providing a source of an unusual metal or mineral that cannot be found in better deposits, or a source of more common metals in the distant future if all richer deposits are exhausted. The possibilities of ultra-low-grade rocks are, however, even more uncertain than those of submarginal deposits because of the desirability

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of importing metals derived from better deposits in other countries, and the possibility of using substitutes. Therefore, although very low-grade deposits of certain metals and minerals undoubtedly occur in northwestern Canada, they are not considered further in this paper. On the other hand, some of the larger and better-situated submarginal deposits may become important in the not too distant future. The difficulties of summarizing the known reserves of such material are even greater than for ore reserves because most deposits are less fully known. Companies usually suspend exploration as soon as the material shows fairly definite indications of averaging below the current minimum. Again, only a few examples are cited. Some gold deposits near Yellowknife provide examples of submarginal material. Costs here are considerably higher than those of mines in accessible districts in, say, Ontario. Some northern deposits or parts of deposits are not classed as ore, whereas comparable material at Porcupine or Kirkland Lake would be included in ore reserves. The Pine Point lead-zinc deposits at Great Slave Lake afford another example. The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company was reported a year or so ago to be satisfied that enough ore was indicated there to warrant mining if a railway were built; recent decline in metal prices may have altered the present circumstances but in all probability these deposits represent a resource that will be used sooner or later. Another example is provided by uranium mines in northern Saskatchewan. The average grade of uranium ores in accessible places in Ontario is about 0.1 per cent U30 8 , whereas the ore mined in Saskatchewan averages 0.2 per cent more. Large tonnages of rock averaging about 0.1 per cent were partly proved to exist in Saskatchewan, some as parts of deposits being mined, and some as separate bodies. Admittedly the ores are different from those of Ontario and the cost differential is probably not entirely one of transportation, but improved transportation would probably permit mining of at least some of this material if the demand should again equal that prevailing when contracts were negotiated for the mines now producing. Thousands of mineral occurrences have already been found in northwestern Canada and many have been described in reports and plotted on maps. No precise data are available to indicate the ratio between mere discoveries and producing mines, but it is considered to be between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000. It would, therefore, be unreasonable to expect a large proportion of the known occurrences to respond to further testing, because most have already been eliminated at least once in the reviews of prospects conducted by mining companies. Sometimes, however, a

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prospect eventually becomes a producer despite several unfavourable reports or unsuccessful attempts at exploration. This is sometimes because of changed metal prices or production costs, and sometimes because, by brilliance or luck, drill holes or underground workings probe a different part of the property. Certainly some of the prospects that have been known for some time can be expected to respond to further testing, particularly as, in general, only the most attractive prospects were tested extensively in the Yukon and other fairly remote regions. Preliminary tests have not yet been finished at some favourable prospects found within the last few years. The completely unrevealed mineral possibilities of this huge region are believed to provide potentialities far beyond those of known deposits and occurrences. The Shield and Cordilleran region offer thousands of square miles favourable in a general way for the occurrence of mineral deposits. On the basis of present knowledge the Plains region offers fewer, but not insignificant, possibilities for minerals. The Innuitian region also has possibilities for minerals, but its remoteness and climate will impede prospecting and development. The Northwest contains areas where the outcrops have not yet been prospected. More numerous are outcrops that have been visited hastily or that hold possibilities for detection of minerals that may become desirable in future. Northern Canada offers greater possibilities for outcrop prospecting than southern parts of the country where more work of this kind has been done. Still greater possibilities, but also greater uncertainties, lie in the chances of finding buried orebodies. The mineral resources are well diversified and widely distributed. Therefore various areas can be selected for further prospecting or further work on known occurrences as the demand for particular products increases. Parts of northern British Columbia and the Yukon are not far from ocean transport or are near passes that provide easy routes to the sea. The brief descriptions of the eastern Cordillera, Interior Plains, and Arctic Islands have touched on some features of the geology that render these regions potential sources for the fuels. Their combined area is vast, exceeding that of the southern Interior Plains, but much of the country is inaccessible except by expensive means or for short periods of the year. These regions contain sequences of sedimentary rocks, and structural conditions, favourable for accumulation of oil and gas, and elsewhere for coal. Reserves of oil in the Norman Field were estimated in 1954 at about 26 million barrels. Reserves in the Athabasca oil sands are variously estimated as between 100 and 300 billion barrels. Several

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occurrences of gas and oil have been found, the extents of which have not yet been determined. About 300 wells have been drilled, mainly in the Norman field and in northern Alberta, northeastern British Columbia, and the southwestern Northwest Territories; the first well is now being drilled in the northern Yukon; none has been drilled in the Arctic Islands. This is in marked contrast to southwestern Canada where more than 22,000 wells have been drilled, indicating that the possibilities of the Northwest are still relatively untested. The favourable human potential should not be overlooked. Residing in northwestern Canada and in the country as a whole are competent prospectors, engineers, scientists, executives, and others who as teams have demonstrated their ability to find, finance, develop, and operate mines and oil and gas fields under the conditions prevailing, and who can be expected to make the most of its undoubted future possibilities. One of the most unfavourable factors is shortage of transport facilities. Additional roads and railways would undoubtedly stimulate prospecting and the testing of mineral discoveries, and lower the costs of some operations. There are, however, other drawbacks that must be mentioned. An obvious one is that although the climate of much of the Northwest is reasonably favourable, it is a serious obstacle in the more northerly parts. Although this would probably not prevent exploitation of resources in great demand, it would be likely to cause greater expenditures on weatherproofing, recreational facilities, bonuses, furloughs, and other items and so raise costs and place deposits at a disadvantage with respect to comparable ones farther south. Few unique deposits are known in the Northwest. True, the Pinchi mine was an outstanding mercury producer for a few years, but peacetime competition from other countries soon caused its closure. For several years it was thought that the Northwest might have a monopoly on Canadian-produced uranium, but later discoveries in Ontario have surpassed the northwestern mines in current production and reserves. It is also true that the Mayo silver-lead deposits are of very high grade, and that the asbestos at Cassiar is so favourable for spinning that it enjoys a preferred market. In general, however, the known deposits are of kinds that can be matched in more accessible and better serviced parts of the country. Although the Northwest contains better opportunities for conventional prospecting than more southerly regions where outcrops have been more thoroughly searched, the trend is gradually toward highly specialized prospecting for obscurely-outcropping deposits and for buried deposits. These methods are only now being widely employed in southern Canada,

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where many areas hold good opportunities for them. Therefore much of the future demand for metals may be met by future discoveries in these districts, which are already fairly well served by transport facilities and settlements and which are closer to markets. Favourable geological potential is only the starting point in the search for orebodies. Many inexperienced persons have an oversimplified idea of what constitutes an orebody and the ease of finding and proving one. Therefore, although we are confident that the more favourable parts of the Northwest contain valuable mineral deposits, we consider it necessary to emphasize that, excepting occasional spectacular finds, the process of narrowing down suitable areas, prospecting, appraising discoveries, and testing the more promising ones involves much skill, time, and money, and disappointments as well as successes. Although additional industries, communities, and defence installations in the Northwest might provide local markets for fuels, and would cause demand for local deposits of construction materials such as sand and gravel, they would not have much effect on the exploitation of metal deposits. So much equipment and supplies are needed to process ore that it is usually cheaper to bring in finished metals until consumption becomes very great. To estimate the possibilities for increased production of the fuels in the Northwest it is necessary to consider matters other than the favourable geological conditions. The fuel industry is intensely competitive, not only between individual producers of coal, gas, and oil, but also between one productive region and another or between countries. Future developments of fuels in the Northwest must be viewed in the light of possible future increases in the more southerly regions producing at present, and by a comparison between costs of development, costs of transportation, and availability of markets. Although the present decline in demand for coal in western Canada may cease and production may rise as the increased demand for it to generate electricity overcomes the decline in use on domestic and railway markets, it is unlikely that coal deposits in the inaccessible regions of the Northwest will be exploited in preference to continuing operations in the established coalfields of the southern regions of western Canada. Continuation of coal mining in the Northwest on a scale to meet local requirements where the price is competitive with alternate fuels can, however, be expected. To develop the oil and gas resources of the Northwest requires an extensive programme of geological and geophysical investigation, and ultimately of drilling. This is already under way in some parts. In the

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areas concerned railways are absent, seas and navigable rivers are usable for only a few months of the year, and roads are scarce. Movements of men, equipment, and supplies are by the water routes or over winter roads and bulldozed trails usable only by special vehicles, under the adverse weather conditions of the northern winter. Geological and geophysical surveys may be facilitated by use of conventional aircraft and helicopters. Costs of all these are high in comparison with costs of similar work in the south, and may even be excessive for some parts of the Northwest when compared with the value of the oil and gas that might be discovered. Construction of arterial roads and railways will materially reduce these costs, but access to the adjacent country will still be difficult and expensive. The oil and gas to be found in the Northwest, other than that used locally, will require transportation to other regions. Oil is transported most economically by marine tankers or pipelines, although small quantities may be moved short distances by tanker truck or by rail. Gas, except for the fraction that can be liquified, must be moved to markets by pipeline. Oil and gas pipelines are most economically operated at large volume or for short distances. As for local requirements of the Northwest, newly discovered oil and gas fields, advantageously placed with respect to present or future mining camps of the Canadian Shield, may be served by small refineries such as the present Norman Wells refinery or by small gas pipelines. They would, however, face competition from southern sources as transport facilities improved in the Northwest. For oil from the continental Northwest to reach present and future mining camps of the western Cordillera in the Yukon and northern British Columbia, construction would be required through rugged terrain at costs considerably greater than over the Plains. This has been done in the case of the Trans Mountain pipeline through the mountains of southern British Columbia and of the Canol pipeline from Norman Wells to Whitehorse. The latter was, however, of small capacity and uneconomic after the war. Possible routes for oil pipelines are from the Mackenzie Plain to Whitehorse along the route of the Canol pipeline, to serve the southern Yukon and northern British Columbia; and southward from the Porcupine Plain and adjacent regions along the proposed road from Dawson to Fort McPherson to serve the interior of the Yukon and parts of Alaska. Distribution of oil beyond the Northwest, by pipeline to the sea, would be determined by its competitive position with respect to world oil sources adjoining the Pacific. Such oil would also have to compete with

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that originating in the central Interior Plains, brought to the Pacific

region near Vancouver by the Trans Mountain pipeline.

A gas pipeline into the northwestern Cordillera from northeastern British Columbia, following the Alaska Highway, or from other regions along routes mentioned above, would have to be sustained by future local markets there. These markets may be insufficient for many years. By comparison, the Westcoast Transmission pipeline, which taps the gas-fields of the Fort St. John region and serves the present population and industries of much of southern British Columbia, included in its initial delivery of 400 million cubic feet per day the export of 300 million cubic feet per day to markets in the northwestern United States. Northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia are not far from the existing gas and oil pipelines of western Canada. The Westcoast Transmission gas pipeline begins at Fort St. John; a spur from the Trans Mountain oil pipeline lies about 125 miles southeast of Fort St. John at Sturgeon Lake; and the lnterprovincial oil pipeline commences in the Edmonton district. Furthermore, an oil pipeline from north of Waterways to Edmonton is proposed. These parts of the Northwest are already undergoing developments closely linked with those immediately to the south and will no doubt become more closely integrated as exploration and drilling continue to be advanced northward. These areas are, however, more distant from the markets served at present by the existing fields. Some of the islands of the Arctic Archipelago are accessible by sea for only a few months of the year and those in the Northwest are, even in summer, surrounded by sea-ice. Full development of the potential fuel resources of the islands must surely await the time when the world demand for oil is such that intermittent delivery is of little consequence, or when advances in technology permit penetration of the sea-ice by shipping during the greater part of the year. The fuel resources of the islands and northerly continental region form a potential source for strategic purposes. In summary, the Northwest has important mineral and fuel resources and some of the additional occurrences already found will probably respond to tests or to improved circumstances. We believe, however, that these more or less definite potentialities are far outweighed by the possibilities for additional discoveries in this vast area, still in the early stages of prospecting and containing large geologically favourable tracts. We consider that, excepting occasional spectacular finds, increase in the production of minerals will depend mainly on increase in national or

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international demands. The greatest uncertainty seems therefore to be not in the ultimate potential but in the rate of growth of the demands. Under present conditions the most favourable discoveries would be those of unusually high metal contents or specifications, and discoveries of metals or minerals not being produced now in sufficient amounts for present markets. The extent to which fuel potentialities are developed will depend largely on the requirements of the Northwest, and will be augmented as demands in other parts of Canada or elsewhere warrant. 2 2References for this paper are as follows: J.E. Armstrong, Geology and Mineral Deposits of Northern British Columbia West of the Rocky Mountains (Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin no. 5, 1946); H. S. Bostock, Potential Mineral Resources of Yukon Territory (Geological Survey of Canada, Paper 50-14, 1950); Y. 0. Fortier, A. H. McNair, and R. Thorsteinsson, Geology and Petroleum Possibilities in Canadian Arctic Islands (American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Bulletin no. 10, vol. 38, 1954, pp. 2075-109); G. S. Hume, The Lower Mackenzie River Area, Northwest Territories and Yukon (Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 273, 1954); C. S. Lord, Mineral Industry of District of Mackenzie, Northwest Territories (Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 261, 1951); B. R. McKay, "Coal Reserves of Canada," chapter 1 and Appendix A of Report of the Royal Commission on Coal, 1946 (Ottawa: 1947); F. H. McLeam and E. D. Kindle, Geology of Northeastern British Columbia (Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 259, 1950); C. H. Stockwell (ed.), Geology and Economic Minerals of Canada (Geological Survey of Canada, Economic Geology Series no. 1, 4th ed., 1957).

BIOLOGICAL POTENTIALITIES D. S. Rawson, F.R.s.c. THE PREVIOUS ARTICLES have pointed out that successful development in the north will depend not on any one resource but on the integrated development of all resources. Thus the values of forests, agriculture, wildlife, and fisheries are not to be measured solely in dollars but in their vital contributions to the settlement and development of the north. It is our task to evaluate northern resources and to consider the probable methods and extent of their utilization in the healthy expansion of our western communities. It is a considerable honour to be asked to speak for Canadian biologists on the biological potentialities of the Northwest, but an honour that has been accepted with some reservations. How, in so brief a space, can one do justice to such varied resources scattered over 700,000 square miles, one-fifth of Canada?1 How can one speak for a large number of biologists who are by no means always in agreement? How can one steer a middle course between the usual cautious and impersonal scientific reports on our natural resources and the all too numerous, wildly optimistic visions of our northern "promised land"? The first question to be asked is, how much do we know about biological resources in the Northwest? The romance of the northern frontier, and the myth of the vast unknown are still with us, but the truth is that we have a great deal of accurate information about the north. A brief search through my own library and a few well-placed requests brought forth an almost embarrasing wealth of materials. If anyone wishes evidence of the amount of biological information on the Northwest let him examine the thousands of references under such beadings as botany and zoology in the seven volumes of Arctic Bibliography which have appeared from 1953 to 1957. In recent years our scientists have been doing a good job of examining and evaluating the soils, vegetation, fish, and wildlife resources of the north. Nor has this information resulted only from recent work. To see our resources in perspective it is essential to look into the classical

11be Yukon Territory and Mackenzie District.

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accounts by the earlier scientist-explorers such as Richardson/1 Pike,• Preble, 4 and Seton. 11 Coming to more recent materials we may cite the report, Canada's New Northwest, published in 1948.0 It is appropriate that this report was assembled by Dr. Charles Camsell, a former President of this Society ( 1930-1) and, I believe, our only member born in the Northwest Territories. During his lifetime Dr. Camsell has participated in the development of the northland from its early pioneer condition to the establishment of air transportation and the present phase of accelerated development. My presentation of information on northern resources will have to be brief and illustrative, rather than comprehensive. The illustrations will be drawn mainly from the Mackenzie District and the Yukon, but I am not forgetting the very large areas of the District of Keewatin and Franklin. Attempts at brevity may lead to oversimplification and sometimes to misleading generalizations. I have, however, attempted to verify the facts and to bring my information up to date. In this connection I wish to express my gratitude to a number of scientists and administrators who have responded generously to my requests. I shall begin with a brief inventory of northern biological resources. SOILS

It is appropriate that we should begin our discussion of biological potentialities with a consideration of soils, since most of the life in any area is dependent on soils and the vegetation which they support. We should think of soils in the widest sense, not only those with agricultural possibilities but those supporting forest and tundra vegetation, and even those apparently barren rocky areas which, by their disintegration, pr~ vide the minerals for alluvial soils and for aquatic productivity. Soils with agricultural possibilities are scattered through many parts of the Northwest and Yukon Territories. Dr. A. Leahey of Ottawa 2J. Richardson, Fauna Boreali-Americana, Part I, Quadrupeds (London, 1829); Part III, The Fish (London, 1836). sw. Pike, The Barren Ground of Northern Canada (London and New York. 1892). 4E. A. Preble, "A Biological Investigation of the Hudson Bay Region," U.S. Department of Agriculture, North American Fauna, XXII (1902), p. 140; "A Biological Investigation of the Athabasca-Mackenzie region," U.S. Department of Agriculture, North American Fauna, XXVII (1908), p. 574. liE. T. Seton, The Arctic Prairies (London, New York, 1911). 6North Pacific Planning Project, Canada's New Northwest: A Study of the Present and Future Development of Mackenzie District of the Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory, and the Northern Parts of Alberta and British Columbia (Ottawa, 1948).

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estimates the potentially arable lands of the Northwest Territories at about three million acres. 7 These lie mostly in the great river valleys. The largest single unit, nearly one and a half million acres, lies along both sides of the Slave River between Fort Smith and Great Slave Lake. Other important areas lie in the Liard River valley, along the Hay River, and along the Mackenzie from Fort Providence to Fort Simpson. Arable lands in the Yukon are estimated at more than half a million acres, mostly in the regions near Whitehorse and Dawson. This 3.5 million acres represents about 0.7 per cent of the land area in the Yukon and the Mackenzie District. This may seem a very small proportion, but one might cite the very considerable agricultural development of British Columbia where only 4.6 million acres (2.8 per cent of the province) is classified as potentially arable. Much of the arable lands of the Northwest are low, river-bottom deposits of sandy or silt loams, fertile and readily cultivated. Others are higher river terraces and heavy glacial tills, less fertile but capable of producing important crops under proper cultivation. Special care will be required in cropping these less fertile soils to avoid depletion of mineral nutrients in an area where artificial replenishment would probably be impractical for economic reasons. Only a rough estimate could be made of the area which could be used for grazing by domestic animals. It would be relatively small in the Northwest Territories, but in the Yukon at least ten times as large as that suitable for cultivation. Agricultural use of the soils in the Northwest is, of course, controlled by climatic features such as mean temperature, length of frost-free period, hours of daylight, and precipitation. The deep layer of permafrost interferes with soil development and drainage. However, the arable lands mentioned above lie mostly south and west of the permafrost limit. Detailed consideration of the agricultural use of lands in the Territories is beyond our scope and competence. We should note, however, that active research has been carried on for the past ten years at two experimental substations, one located near Whitehorse and the other at Fort Simpson. Thus accurate information is being obtained to guide the progress of agriculture as it develops in pace with other industries in the Territories. 8 While agricultural lands make up only a small percentage of TJ. H. Day and A. Leahey, Reconnaissance Soil Survey of the Slave River Lowland in the Northwest Territories of Canada (Canada Department of Agriculture, 1957), pp. 1-44. 8 Department of Agriculture, Experimental Farms: Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories, Progress Report 1947-1953 (1954), pp. 1-48; Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Progress Report 1945-1952 (1954), pp. 1-43.

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the total area, they will be of vital importance to meet local needs for food. FORESTS

The forests of the Northwest present a problem similar to that of the soils; that is, we must consider not only the "productive" forest and its accessible fraction, but also that vast area which is classified as "nonproductive" as far as wood products are concerned, but is of prime importance as a habitat for game and fur-bearing animals. Up-to-date information on the forests of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories has been provided by Dr. J. D. B. Harrison of the Forestry Branch, Ottawa. The latest statistics show accessible productive forest amounting to 9 million acres in the Yukon and 7 .5 million in the Northwest Territories. About three times this amount is described as potentially accessible. Non-productive forest amounts to 80 million acres in the Yukon and 675 million in the Northwest Territories. The accessible productive forest amounts to 7 per cent of the area of the Yukon and 2.2 per cent of the area of the Mackenzie District. For immediate use there is an estimated 85 million board feet of white spruce along the Slave River between Fort Smith and Fort Resolution and another 200 million along the Mackenzie River between Slave Lake and Norman Wells. As these supplies and those in the lower Liard valley are used, others farther afield can be developed. Extensive stands of poplar will no doubt be used for plywood and other purposes. Plans for sustained utilization will have to take account of the slow rate of regeneration in northern forests and the possibility of permanent damage from overcropping. Some of the best and most readily accessible forest is in the Slave River Lowlands-from Fort Smith to the Slave delta. But this was also listed as one of the largest and most promising areas of arable land. Here is an illustration of the problems of land use which will have to be solved in many such areas, whether to keep them producing forest products or to clear them for agriculture. Perhaps a satisfactory compromise would be to use unforested land adjacent to the river plain for agriculture and retain most of the present forest for sustained yield. TUNDRA

The vegetative resources of the Northwest are by no means limited to the so-called productive forest. The infinitely larger area of thin subarctic forest (taiga) and the non-forested tundra provide food and

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shelter for the abundant animal life of the area. We should keep these plants in mind as the primary source of food for all animals, as well as their more direct uses such as food for the caribou. Important studies of our arctic vegetation have been made by Porsild,9 Raup, 10 WynneBdwards,11 and many others. These deal with the phytogeography, plant ecology, and utilization of plants by animals and man. The natural agents for transforming tundra vegetation into food for man are the barren-ground caribou and the musk-ox, but because of their present low numbers they utilize only a small fraction of the area available for grazing. The question whether reindeer should also be used for this purpose will be considered later. Although the tundra suitable for reindeer grazing amounts to many thousand square miles, its carrying capacity is by no means unlimited. As Porsild has pointed out, the extremely slow growth of lichens and other tundra vegetation makes the winter range vulnerable to serious damage by overgrazing and trampling.12 Nevertheless, he believes that at least one million reindeer could be maintained on suitable areas no longer occupied by caribou. The smaller herbivores, such as lemmings, also have an important role in linking the vegetation to the production of various fur-bearers. Raup has emphasized the importance of vegetation as indicating the potentialities of the land; 13 and Cowan the use of plant succession as a guide to planning wildlife management. 14 Basic research on vegetation is thus vital in realizing the biological potentialities of the area. GAME

Any evaluaton of the animal resources of the Northwest is beset by many difficulties. The animal populations themselves are changing in numbers and in distribution. The extent of their use for food and 9A. E. Porsild, Reindeer Grazing in Northwest Canada (Department of the Interior, Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch, 1929); "Plant Life in the Arctic," Canadian Geographical Journal (March, 1951), pp. 1-27. IOH. M. Raup, "Botanical Problems in Boreal America," Botanical Review VII (1941 ), pp. 148-248; "Phytogeographic Studies in the Athabaska-Great Slave Region," J. Arnold Arboretum XXVII ( 1946), pp. 1-85. uv. C. Wynne-Edwards, "Isolated Arctic-Alpine Floras in Eastern North America: a Discussion of their Glacial and Recent History," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Section V, Ser. III, XXXI (1937), pp. 1-26. I2A . E. Porsild, "Land Use in the Arctic," Canadian Geographical Journal, XLVIII (1954), pp. 423-4 and XLIX (1954), pp. 20-31. ISH. M. Raup, "Some Botanical Problems on the Arctic and Subarctic Regions," .Arctic VI (1953), pp. 68-74. 141. McT. Cowan, "Plant Succession and Wildlife Management," Science in .Alaska, Proceedings of the Second Alaska Scientific Conference (1951), pp. 322-7.

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clothing and the sale of furs is also changing rapidly. It would be rash to attempt any quantitative estimate of their future potentialities but it would seem certain that, whatever their economic future may be, the varied wildlife of the north will remain as one of its major attractions. The game animals may be considered first, and among them the barren-ground caribou demands attention. A large proportion of our northland is covered by tundra and thin northern forest which provide grazing areas for the caribou. Early in the century, their numbers were believed to have been between 1.5 and 3 million. Ten years ago careful aerial surveys carried on by the Wildlife Service revealed about 670,000, and in 1957 less than half that number. The reduction is believed to be mainly the result of over-utilization and of unusually low calf crops, 7 to 10 per cent in recent years as compared to 20 and 28 per cent in earlier observations. The reason for the lowered rate of reproduction is not known. Such a drastic reduction in the most important game animal of the area is a tremendous challenge to our wildlife biologists. An intensive programme of research is being carried on and extensive reduction in the caribou harvest and various means of preventing waste of the resource have been recommended. It is of interest that the Alaskan-Yukon caribou herds are reported to be increasing under present management practice. An attempt to make additional use of the grazing potential of the tundra resulted in the introduction of domesticated reindeer in the Mackenzie delta region some twenty-five years ago. This carefully planned and laboriously prosecuted programme resulted in a herd of about 2,400 animals in 1933 which more than tripled itself in the next ten years.U• A herd of 4,000 is now maintained under government supervision and one of 1,600 under native ownership. We should also note that more than 12,000 reindeer have been slaughtered for meat in the twenty years since the industry was established. However, in recent years three native herds have been abandoned by Eskimo owners who did not care for herding and found more attractive employment. Thus, while the experiment was undoubtedly a scientific success, it appears that the present social and economic conditions are not such as to lead large numbers of Eskimos or others into the life of reindeer herding. An increased human population in the north may well alter this situation in future years. Among the other large herbivores the musk-ox is of special interest This animal, although found also in Greenland, is almost unique in our Northwest. In danger of extermination forty years ago, it is slowly but steadily increasing. The great Thelon Sanctuary established in 1917 UIA.

E. Porsild, "Land Use in the Arctic."

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has protected one of the main surviving herds which is believed to have doubled its numbers in the past fifteen years. The present population of musk-oxen is estimated at 5,000, of which 1,500 are on the mainland and 3,500 on the Arctic Islands. It has been suggested that the musk-ox could be used for productive grazing of the tundra. Experiments were conducted in Alaska and a tame herd is now being reared by Teal in Vermont.it' Farther south, in the more heavily wooded areas, the moose and woodland caribou provide additional game. In the Wood Buffalo Park west of the Slave River we have a fine herd of bison. It was estimated at 1,500 when the area was first protected in 1922. In the period 1926-9 some 6,700 plains bison were shipped into the Park. In 1949 the herd bad increased to 10,000 or 12,000; and at present, in spite of considerable harvesting, it is in the order of 12,000 to 14,000 in the Park and some 2,500 outside, mainly in the Northwest Territories. The Yukon has a particularily rich and varied supply of big game. Here, in addition to moose and caribou, hunters take many sheep, goats, and grizzly bear. In many somewhat remote settlements the meat from moose and caribou is still of great importance for food. More spectacular is the great and growing utilization of big game for recreational purposes. It is estimated that in recent years non-resident hunters have paid nearly $200,000 annually for licences, guides, and transportation in the Yukon. The residents also make good use of the excellent opportunities for hunting and fishing. Many former trappers in the area are now finding the tourist business more exciting and remunerative. Improved transportation will no doubt bring similar developments in parts of the Northwest Territories. In the meantime we must take care to ensure protection of the forests and wildlife which will be the mainstays of the tourist trade in these areas. FUR

While some of our biological resources are limited to small portions of the Northwest, almost all of this vast area is capable of producing fur. The fur-bearers depend mainly on vegetivorous mammals such as Jemmings and hares, and are thus utilizing indirectly the plant resources of the area. The main fur producers are the white fox, muskrat, beaver, mink, lynx, and marten. The white fox is found in great numbers in the northern tundra and along the Arctic shores. Muskrat are most abundant along the Mackenzie and especially in its wide delta where, in some years, half a million pelts have been harvested. Fine furs such as marten 16J. J. Teal, "The Golden Fleece of the Arctic," Atlantic Monthly (March, 1958), pp. 78-81.

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and beaver are produced mainly in the wooded southwest parts of the Mackenzie District and in the Yukon. Historically, fur trapping was the means of opening up the great Northwest area and until comparatively recent times fur was its only export. The potentiality for continued production is still assured but, somewhat paradoxically, the future of this industry is perhaps more doubtful than any other in the area. Cyclic variations in the abundance of many of the fur-bearers and entirely unpredictable fluctuations in the market result in wide variations in the annual income from furs. In recent years this income from the Northwest Territories and the Yukon bas varied from $900,000 to $2.4 million. The trend to depressed fur markets and the improved possibilities for other income have caused many northern trappers, Indian, Eskimo, and white, to tum to other occupations!!'.:· In some areas, where unmarketable fish or other sources of food are available, fur farming may be considered as a future industry. Earlier fur farming experiments at Yellowknife, Fort Smith, and in other areas were not an economic success, but improved transportation should reduce operating costs. FISH

Fish resources in the Northwest are found in lakes, rivers, deltas, and the Arctic sea. Through much of this area fish have long been used for subsistence and it may be that many local stocks are inadequate for heavier exploitation. Investigations begun in 1944 in the Mackenzie and Yukon areas have revealed some stocks which are capable of extensive fisheries. In 1944 our studies showed substantial populations of lake trout and whitefish in Great Slave Lake, as well as physical, chemical, and biological conditions which indicated a capacity for sustained production.17 A commercial fishery of three to five million pounds per year was recommended, with provision for continued study of the fishery and periodic review of the results. Dr. W. A. Kennedy began such a study of the fishery in 1946 and has continued to supervise it to the present year, 1958. 18 The carefully controlled fishery now stands at a limit of 9 million pounds, an annual harvest worth about $1.5 million. It is a matter of particular satisfaction to those of us who have been associated with this project that this extensive industry was preceded by scientific 17D. S. Rawson, "Estimating the Fish Production of Great Slave Lake," Transactions of the American Fisheries Society LXXVII (1949), pp. 81-92. 1sw. A. Kennedy, 'The First Ten Years of Commercial Fishing on Great Slave Lake," Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Bulletin no. 107 (1956), pp. 1-58.

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evaluation of the resource, has been carried on according to the best available management procedures, and now shows no sign of damage to the basic stocks of fish. Great Bear Lake, investigated by Miller and Kennedy in 1945, has some fish, chiefly around its ~argins, that are of local importance. However, it is fundamentally very much less productive than Great Slave Lake and in all probability will never support a commercial fishery for export. Smaller lakes near Great Slave have some useful productive capacity. The Slave River itself has supported vital subsistence fisheries. In the Yukon River a moderate production of salmon and whitefish is of special interest. 19 The Mackenzie River has long supported a fishery estimated of at least three million pounds. Recent studies suggest that this production could safely be doubled as the need arises. A study of Teslin Lake on the Yukon-British Columbia boundary by(. .~ments et al. in 1945 revealed definite potentialities for a sport fishery and the possibility of a small commercial fishery for whitefish. 20 Fish resources of the Arctic coastal region are under investigation by the Fisheries Research Board of Canada. In general the findings suggest that fish stocks, important for local use, exist in all the major rivers along the Arctic coast. The usable marine fish include herring, two species of flatfish, and two species of cod. These have been taken mainly in the brackish, inshore waters. The offshore area is soon to be explored. Sport fishing is as yet little developed in the Northwest, but the abundance of such species as the grayling, arctic char, and lake trout suggests that this activity will grow in the Yukon and Mackenzie regions as it has in the adjacent parts of British Columbia, northern Alberta, and Saskatchewan. The decline in fur trapping and the rapid increase in hunting, sport fishing, and tourists indicate the changing values of our wildlife resources. In the future, recreational and aesthetic values may well overshadow the need for food and the economic returns from the sale of wildlife products.

OTHER WILDLIFE

In this brief inventory of biological resources it is not possible to deal adequately with all the groups of animals in the area. Perhaps the major 19V. C. Wynne-Edwards, ''The Yukon Territory," in North West Canadian Fish Surveys, 1944-1945, Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Bulletin no. 72 (1947), pp. 5-20. 20w. A. Clemens, R. V. Boughton, and J. A. Rattenbury, "A Preliminary Report on a Fishery Survey of Teslin Lake, British Columbia," Report of the Department of Fisheries of British Columbia (1945), pp. 10-5.

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omissions in the above sketch would be the marine mammals and the birds. Marine mammals such as seals, white whales, and walrus have long been important in the life of the Eskimo and thus in the economy of the Northwest. Because of slow growth and slow reproductive rates marine mammals could easily be overcropped. Their conservation is particularly important since alternative foods for Eskimo subsistence are often not available. The larger whales, especially the bowhead, which were the basis of early exploitation in the Arctic, have not been utilized to any extent in the past fifty years. The population appears to have made an encouraging recovery and might now support a small annual harvest. Perhaps the most important of northern birds are the ducks, geese, and the willow ptarmigan. The greatest concentration of ducks is in the Mackenzie valley, particularly in the great marshy deltas of the Athabasca, Peace, and Slave rivers and the Mackenzie River itself. Canada and snow geese, eider and old squaw ducks provide meat, eggs, and feathers for use over a wide area. The ptarmigan is a main source of food for many of the fur-bearing animals and often emergency food for man. Eider ducks nest in the western Arctic but never in great colonies as in the eastern Arctic where some efforts have been made to establish a down industry. Hunting of birds for sport is carried on mainly in the southern parts of the Northwest Territories; but, by international agreement, the open season for migratory birds cannot begin before September 1, and by this date many of the ducks and geese have left the more northern areas. In considering the biological potentialities of our northern fauna we must consider destructive as well as productive organisms. Among the wildlife of the area are such carnivores as wolves, grizzly bears, weasels, and wolverine. Some of these have a positive interest to hunters or trappers but there is greater concern with their predations. The wolf is apparently the main predator of the caribou but it is difficult to determine its role in the recent decline of caribou numbers. Extensive programmes of wolf control by winter poisoning have been carried on since 1952. In the past five winter seasons (1951-6) a total of more than 3,200 wolves have been killed along with a small number of foxes and wolverine. Parasites of northern mammals, including man, constitute another important "negative resource." Our President, Dr. T. W. M. Cameron, dealt admirably with this subject at our meetings of 1957 .21 He reported that trichina is of widespread occurrence in polar bears and marine 2IT. W. M. Cameron, "Parasitology and the Arctic," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Section V, Ser. III, LI (1957), pp. 1-18.

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mammals, also in about one-third of the Eskimo population. Hydatid cysts caused by Echinococcus tape-worms are abundant in deer, caribou, and moose and transferred by wolves and dogs. In some areas 40 per cent of the Indians show evidence of having at some time been infected by this parasite. Both parasites have been responsible for a moderate number of serious and even fatal cases in the human population of the north. There are, of course, many other parasites known to infect the wildlife of the north, causing some mortality but perhaps no serious losses. In a similar category of "negative resources" we may place the black flies and mosquitoes, populations which must be dealt with effectively in any northern project during the summer season. Our brief comments have been illustrated chiefly with reference to common species and those of economic value. The production of food from our northern biological resources is an important economic activity and the value of such production can be recorded in dollars. Certain recreational uses of the wilderness and wildlife can also be shown to bring substantial monetary returns in the tourist and related industries. There are, however, aesthetic and recreational values in northern areas which defy any monetary measurement. It is these values which we safeguard by setting aside wildlife sanctuaries and wilderness areas. These are truly "invaluable" and irreplaceable. With the rapid shrinking of wilderness areas in the remainder of the continent, this may well become one of the most important values of our biological resources in the Northwest. Consideration should be given to the establishment of additional reserves of this kind. THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

That scientific research is essential for planning the utilization of natural resources would, I am sure, be universally agreed in these days. It may, however, be necessary to emphasize that many kinds of investigations are needed. There is still need in the more remote parts of the Northwest for what might be called exploratory investigations. These lead naturally to the classification of biological resources and to inventories of particular elements. Perhaps the greatest need is for basic research on important organisms, research that requires laboratory as well as field work and that will often continue over a number of years. The extent and variety of these needs may become more evident as we present a quick review of recent research activities in preparation for some suggestions as to future programmes. The soils of the Northwest have been examined as personnel and transportation became available during the past fifteen years. Dr. A.

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Leahey of the Experimental Farms Service, Department of Agriculture, has been chiefly responsible for this work. In 1944 he explored the soils of the southern Yukon and in 1945 made a reconnaissance of soils along the Slave and Mackenzie rivers. In 1952 he took part in an examination of soils along the Mackenzie highway to Hay River and in 1955 made a more detailed study of the Slave River Lowlands. Stations for agricultural investigation were established on the Alaska Highway 100 miles west of Whitehorse in 1944 and at Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River in 1947. The research at these stations has already provided much sound and interesting information concerning agricultural possibilities in the Northwest. For primary studies of our northern vegetation we can give credit to two well-known scientists. The first is Dr. A. E. Porsild, a fellow of this Society, who has numerous publications on Arctic flora to his credit, the first, in 1929, in preparation for the famous Reindeer Experiment. The second is Dr. H. M. Raup of Harvard, whose studies deal mainly with the forested areas of the Northwest and Yukon Territories. More specific studies of the productive forests were made in the years 1943-45 by Harry Holman of the Forestry Branch, Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. The programme of wildlife investigation bas been extensive. Clarke's study of the Thelon musk-ox sanctuary was published in 1940.22 The main caribou programme was begun by Banfield in 194823 and continued since 1950 by Kelsall and others. The Canadian Wildlife Service has maintained resident biologists in Fort Smith and Aklavik since 1947, Yellowknife since 1950, and Whitehorse since 1956. Major projects have centred on such mammals as caribou, bison, wolves, white foxes, beaver, muskrats, and marten. Ornithological studies have included the snow goose, Ross's goose, and the whooping crane. Extensive banding of ducks for migration studies has been carried on for three years on the Mackenzie River just below Great Slave Lake. Marine mammals such as the walrus were investigated by the Wildlife Service and more recently by the Fisheries Research Board. Dunbar indicated the need for and important opportunities of research on the marine mammals of the Arctic and Subarctic.24 22c. H. D. Clarke, A Biological Investigation of the The/on Game Sanctuary, National Museum of Canada, Bulletin no. 96 (1940), pp. 1-135. 23A. W. F. Banfield, "The Present Status of North American Caribou,.. Transactions of the Fourteenth North American Wildlife Conference (1949), pp. 477-91; "The Plight of the Barren Ground Caribou," Oryx IV (1) (1957), pp. 1-20. 24M. J. Dunbar, "Arctic and Subarctic Marine Ecology: Immediate Problems," Arctic VI (1953), pp. 75-90.

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Studies of the inland fisheries were begun in 1944 under the auspices of the Fisheries Research Board when Dr. Wynne-Edwards examined the Mackenzie River and the writer began an investigation of Great Slave Lake. In 1945 Dr. Miller and Dr. Kennedy examined Great Bear Lake while Wynne-Edwards studied rivers and lakes in the Yukon. 211 The Great Slave investigation was completed by the writer in 1947 but the first year's work revealed potentialities for a commercial fishery which began in 1945. In 1946 Dr. Kennedy initiated a continuing study of the commercial fishery which has provided a unique analysis.26 For the past three years the Fisheries Research Board has had field parties investigating the main fish-producing waters in rivers running into the Arctic and in certain inland lakes near the Arctic coast. The Board plans to extend these studies into lakes of the Keewatin District. A small research vessel is also planned which will enable studies of the marine fish in the Beaufort Sea and Banks Islands areas. An extensive programme of research on the biting-flies and other insects of northern Canada has been carried on since 1947 under the joint auspices of the Defence Research Board and the Department of Agriculture. It is noteworthy that this programme has emphasized basic research on the habits, life history, and ecology of northern insects as well as modern methods for their control. An excellent summary of this programme has been provided by Freeman and Twinn. 27 The foregoing comments may serve to suggest what has been done in biological research in the Northwest in recent years. Was it enough? Are our present programmes adequate for solving the problems of today and the new problems which we can expect to result from increased penetration of the north in the near future? I suspect that those responsible for the past programmes would all say, emphatically, no. Much greater scientific manpower and much greater expenditures will be required to produce the information needed for intelligent preservation and utilization of northern resources. Suggestions for programmes of northern biological research have not been lacking in the past. The Arctic Institute of North America deserves much credit for organizing and stimulating research. In March, 1946, 2llA. T. Cameron et al., "North West Canadian Fisheries Surveys," Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Bulletin no. 72 (1947), pp. 1-94. 26W. A. Kennedy, "The First Ten Years of Commercial Fishing on Great Slave Lake." Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Bulletin no. 107 (1956), pp. 1-58. 27T. N. Freeman and C. R. Twinn, "Present Trends and Future Needs in Entomological Research in Northern Canada," in D. Rowley, ed., Arctic Research: The Current Status of Research and Some Immediate Problems in the North American Arctic and Subarctic (Arctic Institute of North America, 1955), pp. 163-71.

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the Institute published a 65-page programme of desirable scientific investigations in arctic North America. 28 More than half of this programme dealt with biological resources. In 1955 it published a 260-page book, by some thirty authors, dealing with the status of research and immediate problems in the North American Arctic and Subarctic. 29 The Institute has also provided financial support for numerous research projects in northern areas. Its present programme includes a project on the relationship between resource availability and economic growth in southeast Alaska. The activities of the Canadian Wildlife Service have been suggested above. Its present Chief, Mr. W. W. Mair, has indicated repeatedly the need for more and better research, in the exploratory field, in problems requiring immediate practical answers and, above all, in basic investigations concerned with important wildlife species. He has pointed out the need for additional personnel to free some of his staff from crash programmes and "first aid" research. He has also promoted close co-operation with the universities, to make effective use of their facilities for fundamental research and for training professional personnel. The Fisheries Research Board has carried on its programme in the Northwest for the past fifteen years and has mapped out a tentative programme for several years ahead. A major factor in this planning has been consultation with the Department of Northern Affairs concerning the need for information on continuous and emergency food supplies in our northern areas. Various methods of speeding up this programme have been discussed. In 1953 the writer made suggestions for various fundamental studies in freshwater biology in Arctic and Subarctic areas. 30 It would seem clear that the need is recognized and that programmes are ready if the necessary funds and personnel are made available. While comparisons may be unpleasant and misleading, it also seems clear that, at least in our programmes of basic biological research, we have lagged considerably behind the comparable programmes in Alaska and Greenland. The main programme in Alaska was begun in 1947. It was well planned and generously financed. Its valuable results have been reported in Annual Conferences since 1950. Research on the biological resources 28The Arctic Institute of North America, A Programme of Desirable Scientific Investigations in Arctic North America, Bulletin no. 1 (1946), pp. 1-65. 290. Rowley (ed.), Arctic Research: The Current Status of Research and Some Immediate Problems in the North American Arctic and Subarctic (Arctic Institute of North America, 1955). soo. S. Rawson, "Limnology in the North American Arctic and Subarctic,.. Arctic, 6, 3 (1953), pp. 198-204.

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of Greenland has been carried on under Danish auspices for more than fifty years. Of special interest is the work on fisheries and marine biology reported in many papers in the Meddelelser om Gronland. Terrestrial flora and fauna have also been studied and the results applied in such practical ways as sheep farming and reindeer herding. 31 A summary of recent research in Greenland was published by Bocher, Holmen, and Dunbar in 1955.32 It must be emphasized that the basic research projects should be in addition to, and can in no way replace, the still urgent exploratory, inventory, and management projects. An obvious need, mentioned years ago by Clarke and others, is the establishment of one or more permanent research centres in the far north where laboratory and field studies could be carried on throughout the year. 33 The importance of such stations is pointed up by the productive research carried on by United States investigators at the Arctic Research Laboratories at Point Barrow and by the Danish workers at their stations in Greenland. We have examined briefly the extent and variety of our northern biological resources and attempted some evaluation of the investigations aimed at the conservation and proper use of these resources. One of our conclusions is that the programme of surveys and research has been altogether too restricted. As we begin to remedy this situation let us keep in mind both the vastness of the territory and the multitude of its problems. The imminent improvements in transportation into the north will facilitate many of our investigations and at the same time it will render far more urgent the need for scientific information on which to base our plans for the economic utilization of biological resources. Improvement in transportation will also make it urgent to set aside additional wilderness areas in which vegetation and wildlife can be protected for their aesthetic, recreational, and scientific values. llM. J. Dunbar, "Greenland-An Experiment in Human Ecology," Commerce Journal (March, 1947), pp. 69-109. 82'f. W. Bocher, K. Holmen, and M. J. Dunbar, "Recent Biological Research in Greenland," in D. Rowley, ed., Arctic Research: The Current Status of Research and Some Immediate Problems in the North American Arctic and Subarctic (Arctic Institute of North America, 1955), pp. 172-83. 83Jt should be noted that Clarke's study, most of the investigations of Porsild, and many others in the Northwest were sponsored by the National Museum of Canada.

THE RESOURCES FUTURE D. B. Turner

THE CANADIAN NORTH generally is viewed through rose-colotL-ed glasses. A host of writers for a host of years have described the north in glowing and romantic terms in a host of publications from best sellers to pulp magazines. Most of these writers have inspired us with the adventure to be found in primitive areas, and impressed us with the beauty of the aurora borealis, the spell of the Yukon, and the many striking, exciting, and marvellous phenomena and activities which stir our imagination about the red-bloodedness to be found throughout the vast lands north of latitude 55°. Not many of the writers have emphasized the other side of the picture, the drawbacks and the discomfortsthe mosquitoes in the muskegs, the transportation barriers, the high cost of potatoes and citrus fruits, the long winters, the disappearing caribou, and the pitifully low prices for fur pelts. In the minds of most of us, and especially if the descriptions come from reading instead of actual experience, the aspects of beauty and romance obliterate thought concerning the hazards of life in the remote and relatively unpopulated regions of Canada's northland. But I would like to restore the thought about the sober side of life in the northlands. I believe that dispassionate examination of the resources and conditions in northwest Canada is essential to a proper perspective of its future. Resources and climate determine man's occupancy of an area or region every bit as rigidly as, in any area or environment, soil and water and sunshine and air, in various combinations, determine, in degree of abundance and thriftiness, what animals or plants can be supported. It is this philosophy, with full regard for man's ingenuity and other special abilities, which I propose to discuss in a preliminary way, as applied to northwestern Canada. Let me start with a word or two about air, sunshine, soil, and water, and follow that by proposing a list of ten resources to which discussion of the future of northwest Canada can be limited.

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AIR, SUNSHINE, SOIL, AND WATER Soil and water, together with the sun and air, are the four factors which, in diverse combination and interaction, are responsible for the growth and development of all living things on this planet, both plant and animal. If one of these factors is in short supply or the state of harmony between the four factors leaves much to be desired, the effects are revealed in the status of living or renewable resources, the wealth of wildlife, the success of crops, the quantity and quality of the fish, the vigour of the forest growth. In the climes of northwestern Canada, soil of fertility and productivity is generally short in supply or lacking entirely. In addition, growth seasons shorten as the far north is approached. Thus conditions are not favourable for an economic agriculture, and this limitation can be applied to all plant growth as far as a richly productive environment is concerned. In turn, this means that the animal populations, which depend on plant growth, are limited in numbers-in other words, the wildlife populations, for example, which reach a period of abundance periodically every nine to ten years are never, except at the height of their cycle, in large numbers. The principles related to the operation in nature of the four factors of air, sunshine, soil, and water in large measure will determine the economics of Canada's Northwest as surely as they have done previously in all developed areas of the earth. In our discussion of Canada's Northwest it is well to remember the saying that "every human enterprise is the mixture of a little bit of humanity, a little bit of soil, and a little bit of water." In the recorded history of mankind, soil has proved to be the substance, and water the life-blood, of civilization. I find no reason why historical dictates cannot be applied to northwestern Canada. For convenience here, an arbitrary naming of the renewable and nonrenewable resources will be used. Together they cover the sum total of the resource elements of the earth. The ten headings selected are: soil, water, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, mining, power and energy, recreation, wildlife, and people. Soil and water are placed first to emphasize that they are the fundamental resources. The category "people," for obvious reasons the most important of the ten resources, is placed last to represent the summation of all the natural resources. THE RESOURCES OF CANADA'S NORTHWEST

For discussion in this paper, Canada's Northwest is considered to include roughly the land and water surface north of latitude 55° and

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west of longitude 95°. This area takes in approximately the northern halves of the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, together with most of the Northwest Territories and all of the Yukon. The political units comprise a vast territory, representing some million-and-a-half square miles and being about 39 per cent of Canada's total area. In extent, northwestern Canada represents some nine Californias or seventeen Britains. Texas could be accommodated six times in the area. Northern Manitoba Northern Manitoba is considered to be north of a line drawn from latitude 54 ° on the western border southeastward over the mouth of the Winnipeg River as it enters Lake Winnipeg; this line marks off the agricultural area of the south from the non-agricultural lands of the province. Over the northern area, apart from the larger towns of Flin Flon, The Pas, and Lynn Lake, the majority of residents obtain their livelihood from the natural resources of fur, fish, and game. Today fur prices are too low to encourage trapping; mining and other employment opportunities are more lucrative. However, the rate of increase for both the Indian and metis populations of the province may force a considerable proportion of the northern population to continue their traditional livelihood of fishing, hunting, and trapping despite increased alternative occupations. The accessible forest zone is considered to be suitable for the future location of one or more pulp and paper industries because of the availability of suitable timber, water power, and transportation. Black spruce is the important pulpwood species. Present utilization of wood is hampered by lack of local industries. All metals produced in Manitoba are obtained from rocks of Precambrian age. As the Precambrian Shield comprises more than threefifths of the area of the province, and as post-World War II discoveries have been noteworthy, mining assumes a position of great importance in northern Manitoba. One example will suffice to illustrate this. In the Mystery Lake area, the International Nickel Company of Canada Limited decided, late in 1956, to invest $135 million to open and develop two mines, construct a smelter and refinery, and establish a town to house an initial population of 10,000 people. In addition, $5 million will be required for a spur line from the Hudson Bay Railway and $40 million for a hydro-electric plant at Grand Rapid on the Nelson River. Manitoba's largest source of undeveloped water power is the Nelson

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River. Surveys reveal twelve power sites and it is estimated that 4 million horsepower can be developed from these. The Churchill River is expected to produce one million horsepower. Development of the sites would depend on the establishment of local mines or other industries. The most northerly of Manitoba's more important power rivers is the Seal River and it is estimated that in excess of 150,000 horsepower can be produced therefrom. In northern Manitoba during 1957 more than 1,000 commercial fishermen ( 8 7 separate operations) produced more than 7 million pounds of fish, worth nearly $1.5 million. Sport fishing in northern Manitoba is increasing rapidly. Tourist catering in this land of a multitude of lakes keeps pace with the increase in anglers who buy a substantial share of Manitoba sport fishing licences. Northern Saskatchewan Agricultural settlement in Saskatchewan lies south of latitude 50° approximately; north of this line can therefore be considered northern Saskatchewan. This northland has roughly 14,000 people, with more than half of them of native origin and dependent largely on fish and fur resources and welfare programmes. The white people are concentrated in the two mining areas of Uranium City and Flin Flon and at the distribution centre for the north, Lac La Ronge. Roughly about one-third of the area is Precambrian outcrop with fair to excellent potential for metallic minerals. Today mining is the most important industry in northern Saskatchewan. The forests are a major resource in a one-hundred-mile commercial forest strip across the southern fringe of the region. The quality of timber deteriorates rapidly north of this strip but mine timbers, building logs, fuelwood, and a limited supply of building lumber can be provided in most areas. Fish and fur resources supply the basis for a livelihood for most of the indigenous people, and there is not much scope for expansion. Recreational resources, as in the northern halves of all four western provinces, are relatively unlimited. Angling and tourist catering facilities are increasing very rapidly, with major potential for further expansion with improvement in access. Hydro potentials are surprisingly limited in northern Saskatchewan and will be of significance only for local industrial operations near potential hydro sites along the Churchill River and at the head of Lake Athabasca. Local petroleum fuels are almost entirely lacking. Uranium ore deposits, however, appear to be fairly widely scattered, in addition to the concentration in the Beaverlodge area.

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Transportation and communication facilities are developing quite rapidly with major improvement over the last few years. The Northern Alberta Railways to Fort McMurray facilitates river and lake barge service to Lake Athabasca and there is good all-year air service to the Beaverlodge mining area from Prince Albert and Edmonton. Lac La Ronge has highway access. A railhead at Lynn Lake in northern Manitoba is connected by road to Reindeer Lake in Saskatchewan. Plans are being made for a road to continue northward from Lac La Ronge, which it is expected in the next few years will give road access from the highway system of the province to Reindeer Lake, Wollaston Lake, Lake Athabasca, and probably also to Cree Lake and Uranium City, with a possible connection to Yellowknife. In summary, the greatest potential in northern Saskatchewan is mining and its potential is almost unknown. Development will be a relatively slow process and will result in increased northern population. These developments in tum will result in more intensive utilization of the other resources of the North, particularly those with recreational values.

Northern Alberta The Alberta northland, in our consideration of northwest Canada, lies north of latitude 55 °, much as it does in British Columbia where the Canadian National Railways from Edmonton to Prince George and Prince Rupert provides a man-made line of division. Compared with northern Saskatchewan, northern Alberta teems with people, some 70,000 against 14,000. But most of Alberta's northern population is accounted for by the 64,000 in the Peace River district working largely in agriculture, forestry, and service industries. Population, incidentally, is expected to triple in northern Alberta in the next thirty years. In northern Alberta there is a different resource picture. The shift in emphasis swings widely away from base and precious metals and related mining towards forestry, petroleum and natural gas, and the McMurray tar sands. At the moment these are the principal known and calculable natural resources of northern Alberta. To these can be added the future use of 14.5 million acres of land suitable for agriculture, and the reasonable assumption that there are deposits of base and precious metals in the Precambrian areas. Major forestry activity in Alberta, as in Saskatchewan, is in the southern strip, south of the 57th parallel, and represents a total cut value of more than $4 million. The bulk of the timber, again as expected, is spruce. A pulp plant is foreseeable in northern Alberta. A forerunner is the plywood plant, in conjunction with a planer mill

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which will commence operation in 1960 at Fitzgerald, bordering the 60th parallel. Fur trapping produced $600,000 in 1957 and that came from 1,426 traplines employing 2,816 men. The northeast corner of Alberta holds the prospects for finding metallic minerals. Elsewhere the mining story is local and involves uranium, silica sand, volcanic ash, and gypsum. Sources of energy in northern Alberta lie for the present in petroleum. Last year's production was 2.6 million barrels, worth about $6 million. Reserves are about 122 million barrels, increasing to an estimated 1.4 billion barrels by 1980. Production of natural gas is expected to be about 59 billion cubic feet in 1958 and by 1980 there are expected to be 9 trillion cubic feet in reserve. The Athabasca tar sands contain an estimated 300 billion barrels of oil. Hydro-power potential is considered to be of fairly major extent but distances make development uneconomical at the present. It is estimated that there is a potential of 2,715,000 horsepower. Northern Alberta is relatively advanced in the development of transportation, with 158 miles of hard surfaced highway and 785 miles of graded and gravelled roads. The Alaska Highway is well known. The Mackenzie highway travels straight north from Grimshaw to the south shore of Great Slave Lake, at Hay River in the Northwest Territories, with 303 of its 385 miles in northern Alberta. The Northern Alberta Railways, a joint operation of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian National Railways, has two lines from Edmonton, one to Fort McMurray and the other to Dawson Creek in the Peace River area of British Columbia. Commercial water transportation in northern Alberta is found only north of Fort McMurray on the Athabasca River. Less than 10 per cent of the population found income in industry in 1956. Northern British Columbia The population of northern British Columbia, calculated as the area north of latitude 54 ° and including the Queen Charlotte Islands, is 96,902 according to figures compiled in 1956. Included are nearly 10,000 Indians. Centres of population include Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Prince George, Dawson Creek, and Fort St. John. At present, forest resources constitute the major natural resources of northern British Columbia. Spruce is the leading wood with 30 per cent of the cut. Lodgepole pine and aspen contribute 25 per cent each, and the other woods the remaining 20 per cent. One pulp plant operates near

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Prince Rupert. Other pulp plants are being considered at Kitimat, Prince George, and Taylor, the new petroleum town between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John. Lode metal bearing areas, relatively unprospected, cover 36,300 square miles of northern British Columbia. Coal and asbestos in quantity are both known, and high grade asbestos is being mined. In northeastern British Columbia oil and gas exploration is in an active stage. Natural gas production and transmission to Vancouver and other points in the province has led to industrial production of gasoline, sulphur, propane, and butane at Taylor. Agriculture is of major economic significance particularly in the Peace River district. The agricultural potential in northern British Columbia is considerable and in the neighbourhood of 5 million acres, with about half of this acreage lying in the Peace River region, a quarter adjacent to the Canadian National Railways line from Prince George to Prince Rupert and, significantly, about 865,000 acres in the Fort NelsonLiard River area which is latitude 59°. Commercial fishing is centred around Prince Rupert with the Nass and Skeena rivers the major spawning streams. Six salmon canneries, three cold storage plants, one shellfish cannery, two herring reduction plants, and three fish offal plants are operated in the Prince Rupert area. Recreational potential is superior, with excellent fishing, big game hunting, and splendid scenery. Northern British Columbia is rich in hydro-power resources. As is well known, the aluminum industry was established at Kitimat because of the enormous hydro potential at tide-water. In total, and apart from Kitimat, potential of 11 .5 million horsepower is known. The Taku River has about 5 million horsepower potential. The Liard River is rated at 2.5 million and the Peace River at 2.25 million horsepower. The Stikine River shows more than one million and five other rivers make up the remainder of the 11 .5 million horsepower. Until recent years, lack of transportation links in northern British Columbia have constituted the greatest drawback to development of resources. The Canadian National Railways main line from Prince George to Prince Rupert was at the southern boundary of northern British Columbia and the only other rail connection was the Northern Alberta Railways line from Edmonton to Dawson Creek. Recent years have brought great strides in transportation. The John Hart Highway now links Prince George with the Peace River District, and at present the Pacific Great Eastern Railway is completing the direct rail link between Vancouver and the Peace River area, with transcontinental

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connections at Prince George and Vancouver. In the west a highway is being built to connect Stewart, on the coast north of Prince Rupert, to Cassiar, from where a tie is made with th,e Alaska Highway. Yukon and Northwest Territories Of Canada's total population of 16 million in 1956, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories each possessed about one-tenth of one per cent. Less than one-tenth of one per cent of Canada's 1,387,000 immigrants during the 1946-56 period ventured into the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. For twenty years, from 1921 to 1941, the population of the Yukon showed scant increase, from 4,157 to 4,914, an increase of less than 1,000. From 1941, however, to 1956 it more than doubled, from 4,914 to 12,190. The Northwest Territories, on the other hand, grew in population more uniformly over the years. There were 8,143 people in 1921, 9,216 in 1931, 12,028 in 1941, 16,004 in 1951 and 19,313 in 1956. Statistics pertaining to rural and urban dwelling are interesting and revealing in terms of the economy north of the 60th parallel. They are presented for the year 1956. TABLE I 1956 POPULATION: YUKON AND N.W.T.

District Yukon N.W.T.

Rural Farm

40

12

Urban

Non-farm

9,580 14,756

2,570 4,545

Source: Bulletin 1-7, 1956 census.

I shall not repeat the particulars about the economy of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories which have already been given in the other papers of this symposium. But two paragraphs from the Gordon Report are worth quoting: There is widespread recognition in Canada that the northern reaches of the country, including the northern sections of the provinces as well as the Yukon and Northwest Territories, constitute a new economic frontier. Northern Canada today and tomorrow may be what the West was in the earlier period of our history. It not only offers attraction to those in search of adventure and fortune but it has seen industry become interested in these areas as a long-term source of basic materials. Major developments such as the Kitimat plant of the Aluminum Company in northern British Columbia, the new pulp and paper plants in the northern parts of the Prairie region, and the heavy investment leading to the production of iron ore in the Ungava area of Quebec and Labrador, to note a few examples, are precursors of similar events in the future. The increasing demands for the

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products of Canada's forests and mines or for special hydro-power resources will probably lead to major developments as transportation and other basic investments are made throughout the northern parts of the country. The exact form these developments will take and the time which will elapse in each instance will be largely determined by the interplay of the forces of supply and demand. The next few decades, however, will transform much of this northern area of Canada. It is less possible, however, to be satisfied that these dynamic forces of growth will reach beyond the 60° parallel in sufficient strength to ensure the same degree of expansion in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, which for our purposes we have defined as the North. Our hesitation in forecasting such a development in the near term is not based on any reservations about the extent of the resources of these territories. It stems rather from the abundance of the resources of the northern hinterlands of the provinces, from British Columbia to Newfoundland. Where there are comparable resources in these areas, earlier development may be expected for the very reason of their greater proximity to market outlets. Industrial operations in the Yukon and Northwest Territories have been largely limited to those situations where the exceptional quality of the resources have been sufficient to absorb any economic disadvantages of operating in the region and of long-distance transportation to commercial markets. 1 THE FUTURE OF CANADA'S NORTHWEST

Soil and Agriculture In an over-all way northwestern Canada can be described as nonagricultural. In large measure this is caused by the combination of a lack of suitable soils for farming and by a predominantly harsh climate under which the number of frost-free days precludes the growing of most cereal, vegetable, and fruit crops. The bright spots in the agricultural picture consist mainly of the Peace River districts of Alberta and British Columbia. In all other areas, and declining in importance and occurrence northward from the 55th parallel, are home gardens and localized, small crop areas in what might be termed agriculturally favoured river valleys. Even in the great Peace River areas, agricultural crops are not a sure thing-the weather pattern shows wide fluctuations from year to year and partial or total loss of harvest is never unexpected. Forestry Commercial forestry makes a noteworthy contribution to the economy of the northern halves of the four western provinces. By and large this is a "spruce" story. As other facets of the economy grow, as transportation networks come into being more and more and continue to become IRoyal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, Final Report (Ottawa, 1957), p. 413-14.

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more closely linked in their parts in tum to the larger markets, the forest industry will assume greater and greater importance. Pulp mills, plywood plants, and related industries will be built. The scale of forest operations, however, never will be large and nearly all of the operations will be located south of the 60th parallel in those areas where quality and quantity of trees are superior. Fuelwood and mine props can be obtained in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Fisheries In the past commercial fisheries have been a mainstay in the limited economy of the many parts of the northlands. There should be steady but not startling expansion in the fisheries industry in the years to come as more lakes come within economic reach. The increase will come with improvement in transportation, with a rapidly growing national population, and as fisheries research workers add to the already substantial contribution made to the development of the fisheries industry of the Northwest. Mining Mining, including the fossil fuels as well as metals, non-metals, and structural materials, is and will continue to be the major reason for economic development of the Northwest, not only as a whole but in its parts. For those parts of the area which lie in the Great Central Plain the proven resources of petroleum and natural gas are great indeed. For the remainder of the Northwest in general, recent finds and possession of favourable formations promise great wealth of base and precious metals and a variety of minerals for industrial use. The new centres of northern population to come, like those existing at present, will nine times out of ten be mining settlements of one kind or another. It is expected that none of these centres of settlement will be large but collectively they will represent the greater part of whatever population increase northwestern Canada attains in the decades which lie ahead. Petroleum and natural gas exploration and development today are leading the way in economic development in northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, and soon will be doing the same north of both provinces in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. The big year of foray into the Yukon was 1957 when almost 10 million acres were secured by oil companies. During the first three months of 1958, more than a million acres per month were taken up. Beyond favourable formations, however, there is no knowledge yet whether the Yukon has commercial oil or not. If oil is found, expansion of the industry could be

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rapid, for drilling on tundra or permafrost could be year-round if so desired.

Energy-Hydro Petroleum and natural gas are important sources of energy in the Northwest but, because they are non-renewable, they have been placed with considerations of mining. Hydro-power, on the other hand, represents a renewable resource and is kept separate in a category of its own. Sources of water-power in the Northwest are substantial and, with wonderful advances being made in long-distance transmission of electric energy, the needs for such energy can be supplied for a long time to come in most parts of our northern areas, particularly as far as the northern portions of the four western provinces are concerned. Were our other resources in such quantity as hydro-power it could be predicted quite freely that our north would now be about ready to take its tum in matching the tremendous strides our national economy has taken during the past twenty-five years throughout the lands that lie south of the 55th parallel. Wildlife and Recreation There seems to be a widespread misconception that the wildlife resources of Canada's north are in rich supply. The physical characteristics of northwestern Canada are such that both its agriculture and its wildlife possibilities lessen perceptibly from the 55th parallel to the shores of the Arctic. The farther north one proceeds from latitude 55°, the more thinly spread are the wildlife resources, and at the best of times, except for specially favoured localities, game and other wildlife can never be described as abundant. Indeed, vast tracts of the north can be described as nearly barren of wildlife. The same situation obtains in respect to people or trees or other living things. Coldness and distance are marked characteristics of the northern wilderness, and higher forms of life are grouped sparsely in small communities. It is freely predicted that recreational activities will increase throughout the north in the years that lie ahead. Ease of travel and shorter working time in the year now make it possible for more adventure afield for more and more people of this continent. The north will share the wealth of this leisure age because the north will always beckon. Solitude and wilderness continue to increase in attraction as man gets caught up in the maelstrom of a busier and busier world and one which, at the present rate of population increase, bids fair to become a place crawling with people.

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People North of latitude 60° in Canada lie the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, together one of the most sparsely populated areas of the world. In the latter is found one person for every 80 square miles; in the former it is one for 23 square miles. Between latitudes 55° and 60° the ratio is closer, as might be expected from both climate and resources. People and soil and its products have been closely related all through history-the land will be occupied by the number of people or plants and animals which the soils can support. Accessibility simply determines when land can be occupied by people; but in the end the richness of plant and animal life determines to what concentration occupation by people will take place. Because extractive industry is growing rapidly throughout northwest Canada increase in population must follow. It can be expected, therefore, that the populations of the northern halves of the four western provinces will grow rapidly, and even spectacularly in terms of comparative statistics, because a diversity of industries is already appearing in these areas and others are imminent. Most of these, it should be remembered, are based on exhaustible wealth below the surface of the earth. The next thirty years therefore, because of great expansion in resource use, should bring at least a trebling in population from latitude 55° to 60°. Mining activities will account for the major share of this population increase, while the relatively static renewable resources will record modest employment increases, with forestry likely to make the steadiest gains. Because mining wealth is expected to be immense over northwestern Canada as a whole and because the need in Canada and the United States for products of the mine and the well will continue to grow, the population will increase further beyond 1985 or 1990 but at a lesser rate. In time the mines will be exhausted and the north will once again be able to support a population in balance with its renewable resources. There can only be an excess of people in relation to resources when living standards are dropped or when supported occupants, such as those employed in national defence services, are maintained through supplies from outside. The native peoples of northwestern Canada, unlike the white people who are largely concerned with extractive exploitation of resources, derive their livelihood from the renewable plant and animal resources. They do not find their homeland inhospitable in terms of climate and terrain as do the white people. These indigenous people will continue as the true permanent population north of latitude 60°. South of latitude 60° to latitude 55°, the native people should increase and prosper but

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probably will not record great gains in population. On the other hand the permanent population of white people should show a significant rise. It is my opinion that Canada's north, from the southern boundary of latitude 5 5 °, will never be inhabited by large, or even substantial numbers of people. Because of low populations at present in the various areas of the Northwest, it is expected that percentage increase, in comparison with Canada as a whole, will be considerably higher than in most parts of southern Canada; but absolute numbers should do little more than raise but slightly the ratio now existing between the Northwest's population and the national population. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

There is reason for optimism in believing that road and rail construction and development of air transport will usher in a strong and long period of prosperity for northwestern Canada. There is tremendous potential in the resource wealths hidden below the surface of the earth, with some of it proved, particularly in the fields of petroleum and natural gas; but despite great discoveries in fossil fuels and in Precambrian minerals and metals, by and large the mining possibilities are as yet unknown. There is basis for much optimism too, in the knowledge that the long-term trend in the demand for base metals and other mining products is strongly upward. Mining development, in extent and in richness, promises an exciting fifty to one hundred years ahead, with considerable growth in urban settlement and multiplication of services. In turn, the mining developments will lead to more intensive exploitation of other resources, principally those of the forest and those associated with recreation and travel, mainly sport fishing. Modest increase also will be found in the development of commercial fisheries. Together, these resources will add somewhat to the substantial increase in population that will rise with expanding mining operations. Hydro-power resources represent a stable element in many parts of northwestern Canada. This renewable source of energy will do much to put on a permanent basis the expected substantial refining and manufacturing segment of the economy and likely will make the greatest contribution of any resource to both the working and the leisure hours of the people of the north. Energy, whether hydro, thermal, or nuclear, promises to account for a stabilization of population in northwestern Canada at a level several times that of today. This situation will prevail as long as the minerals last-for these are the only resources, with pulp and paper a distant second, that promise use of hydro-power in quantity.

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The renewable resources are the rub in the economy. With the exception of special areas such as the Peace River district, agriculture does not and cannot exist on a scale sufficient to serve even light concentrations of people. Forests can and will support more people than at present but their contribution will be in reasonably solid support of a fair number of permanent workers, not a great addition to absolute numbers. By and large, the harvesting of wildlife will be much as it is today and will lie mostly with native peoples of the non-urban areas. When the non-renewable resources are used up-and their peak should occur before a century passes-northwestern Canada should slump back noticeably towards where its economy stands today. Transportation facilities should shrink in both quality and quantity because of lack of backhauls. Risk capital will vanish in keeping with the decline in mining, for there are no other natural resources in the amounts needed to entice money for development. Settlement, though not as sparse as it is today, will yet be thin and in low enough numbers that professional services will be hard to retain, hence there will be high costs for health, education, and the other needs of society. Taken together, such factors as those mentioned, transportation, money, and sparse settlement, will result in inability to attract people, as is the situation in Alaska today. The economy of Alaska would collapse if the military withdrew, for about $2.00 out of every $3.00 circulating there is defence expenditure. Not many people can be supported on a base of fisheries and fur. I believe that a century from now, after an era of remarkable mining prosperity, our Northwest, especially the regions lying north of Latitude 60°, will be in much the same position as Alaska, or Dawson City, is today. Living will be simple, people will be few. The Northwest will be a land for the visitor, the urban dweller of the south who seeks a complete change in the company of his country cousins to the north who, in small communities or in relative isolation, enjoy their work and their leisure in their quiet and uncluttered world. The cost of living will be high, as will freight costs. And tales will be told about the glories of the past, as they have been told before in the Yukon. Yet there will be modest prosperity throughout the northland, and the permanent residents will love their environment as they do so thoroughly today.

A PRELUDE TO SELF-GOVERNMENT: THE NORTHWEST TERRITORIES, 1905-1939

Morris Zaslow THE ADVANCE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT within the British empire and commonwealth is a theme dear to historians of the English-speaking world, particularly those of the liberal persuasion. Its sweep extends back across the centuries to the mediaeval English Parliaments, if not indeed to the assemblies of warriors in the forests and bogs of continental Europe, and calls to mind the lawyers and squires who bested the Stuart kingship, made Parliament the real master of Britain, and sowed the seeds of responsible government in infant colonies across the Atlantic. It recalls those worldly-wise Whig aristocrats of the eighteenth century and the liberal reformers of the nineteenth who enlarged the powers of Parliament and transformed it into the authentic voice of a nation rather than a class. Overseas this vision of "the Englishman's birthright" inspired the American Revolution and the 1837 Rebellions; and it led British and colonial statesmen to devise a formula reconciling the colonists' desire to manage their own affairs with the unity of the empirecommonwealth. The same concept continues to influence people in other climes, setting their feet upon the now weH-worn path that leads to democratic freedom under the British system. And it is in this tradition that one perhaps may dare place the demands by residents of the District of Mackenzie for a government more responsive to their wishes and needs, even though the particular grievances which inspired their unrest varied widely from those of earlier struggles. In western Canada the pattern of gradual constitutional evolution has unfolded in two far-separated eras. In 1870 the Dominion of Canada undertook to administer the bulk of the newly acquired Rupert's Land and North West Territory as a subject land. But in 1887 federal representation was granted to the inhabitants, while the right to elect members to the governing Council eventually transformed that body into a wholly-elected Territorial legislature headed by a responsible government or cabinet. Finally in 1905 the southern parts of the territory

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were erected into provinces, though agitation for another quarter century was required to win control over their natural resources and thus gain true equality with the older provinces. The outlines of this earlier western Canadian struggle for self-government have been related many times, most recently in the books by C. C. Lingard and L. H. Thomas. 1 But the sections north of the 60th parallel, the Northwest Territories of our own time, continued under direct federal control; and these were reduced to a status inferior even to that of 1870. Government was conferred upon a Commissioner, assisted by a Council of not more than four members, sitting in Ottawa and responsible to the federal Minister of the Interior.2 But though a Commissioner was appointed in the person of Lieutenant-Colonel F. White, Comptroller and Deputy Head of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, no Council was chosen and no new ordinances were promulgated for sixteen years. 3 During this lengthy interval the ordinances of the defunct Territorial government were administered and enforced along with the body of federal law by the Mounted Police throughout the vast expanses of the north. 4 At length, stirred by an awakened interest in the Northwest Territories, in 1921 the federal administration appointed a six-man Council to assist Commissioner W. W. Cory, who had succeeded White in the previous year. 6 Down to 1947 this government was manned entirely by senior federal civil servants, drawn mainly from the Department of the Interior and its successor, the Department of Mines and Resources, but including also Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioners, Superintendents-General of Indian Affairs, and, after 1938, Undersecretaries of the Department of External Affairs. Two Councillors-Dr. Charles Camsell (who became Commissioner in 1936), and the late Mr. R. A. Gibson-served for the entire period from 1921 till after World War II. It cannot be disputed that the Council was fortunate in the high level of ability of its members, but they could give only brief attention to the

1c. C. Lingard, Territorial Government in Canada (Toronto, 1946). L. H. Thomas, The Struggle for Responsible Government in the Northwest Territories, 1870-97 (Toronto, 1956). 2Statutes of Canada, 4-5 Edw. VII (1905), c. 27. IWhite was superannuated from his positions with the Royal North West Mounted Police at the end of 1912 but was continued as Commissioner of the Northwest Territories because the duties were not onerous (Canada, AuditorGeneral, Annual Report, 1912-13, "R" 3j; Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1917, 1736). •C. A. Dawson (ed.), The New North-West (Toronto, 1947), p. 20. F. H. Kitto, The Northwest Territories, 1930 (Ottawa, 1930), pp. 25-6. W. C. Bethune, Canada's Western Northland (Ottawa, 1937), p. 10. 11Actually the government began by appointing a four-man Council early in 1921 and then increased the membership to six in June of the same year.

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affairs of the Territories. Possibly they were unduly concerned to shield the native inhabitants from inevitable changes and, like administrators elsewhere, were somewhat unsympathetic towards those groups whose interest and presence in the Territories were essential if that region were to progress along modem lines. The Council also lacked fiscal powers, having little control over the levying of taxes or the expending of government funds. In essence it was an inter-departmental advisory committee, co-ordinating the activities of several federal departments within the Territories; and its decisions, whether administrative or legislative, relied for implementation upon the funds and personnel of those departments-notably Indian Affairs, Mines, Justice, Public Works, and National Defence, as well as its immediate connection, the Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch of the Department of the Interior. None of these departments could spend more than limited sums on the Territories, and poverty perpetually interfered with Council's plans to better conditions there. For most of the inter-war period the system of government encountered little opposition by reason of the extreme backwardness of the Territories and the low level of its economic and social development. The lands "north of sixty" attracted only a few hundred white residents dispersed among numerous isolated posts along the shores of Hudson Bay, the Arctic Ocean, and the waterways below Fort Smith. The census recorded only 1,007 white people and metis of a total population of 9,316 in 1931.6 The white settlers formed very minute groups amid the larger mass of natives and never numbered more than a few dozen in any one locality. Most were adults with few dependents in the Territories, and most were transient rather than permanent settlers. They were agents of large corporations or institutions, and it was to these rather than to a distant government that they looked for the provision of their various needs while in residence. Their primary function, whether as fur traders, mission workers, or government employees, was to serve the aboriginal population, and, like the administration, they were little disposed to support innovations which tended to disturb the existing pattern of living. Small grants for education and health to assist the missions' welfare work, a considerable police establishment, a network of wireless stations, measures to protect the wildlife industry-these were the chief aids demanded and secured from the government. In truth, the absolute necessity of assistance by government or the large corporations for survival in the hard environment of this northern frontier bred dependence rather than independence among the settlers. 6Census of Canada, 1931, II, pp. 492-3.

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Prior to 1930 the only element of discontent with the existing order was the small group of free traders, white trappers, and their connections "outside," who represented the entrepreneurial element, as opposed to the prevailing bureaucratic outlook of the agents of the great institutions. But after 1929 aviation and prospecting for minerals introduced many new settlers and called into being at Great Bear Lake, Norman Wells, and Yellowknife, mining camps with some prospect of permanence. The white population of the District of Mackenzie doubled and trebled, and aggregations numbering hundreds of individuals were brought into being for varying periods of time. Many of the newcomers, employees of large corporations like Eldorado Gold Mines, Imperial Oil, or Consolidated Mining and Smelting, which conformed readily to the pattern established by the older institutions, found little conflict with the existing system of administration except in so far as it affected habits of life and work to which they were accustomed elsewhere in Canada. But others, independent prospectors, small businessmen and the like, were restless and aggressive, and regarded change not with dread but as a necessary condition for their own advancement. They lived apart from, and largely independent of, the native inhabitants, and did not feel the same concern for their welfare as did the administration or the older settlers. Once minefields became stabilized, miners and businessmen began to bring their families into the North, and by 1939 a community like Yellowknife resembled other towns elsewhere with its variety of specialized trading, professional and technical personnel. The newcomers, conforming to modern modes and standards, criticized the low levels of welfare and educational services and the absence of certain customary amenities and comforts. They resented the many limitations upon their freedom of action imposed for the protection of the aborigines, the missions and the fur trade, which, they alleged, were retarding the development of the Territories along modem lines. Self-reliant and accustomed to elective municipal institutions and to a voice in provincial and national affairs, they attributed their difficulties to the concentration of authority in the hands of a bureaucratic clique ruling by remote control from far-off Ottawa. From these residents of the modern town of Yellowknife and the smaller group of settlers at Fort Smith came the main challenge to the system of government and society led by the second Council of the Northwest Territories. Council's response to the new economic and social environment being fashioned in the North was twofold. On the one hand, faced by appeals from the mining industry for assistance of sorts and amounts not visualized previously, it began to meet more frequently and to play a

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greater part in directing the expenditure of the somewhat larger federal appropriations for the Territories which were forthcoming after 1936. On the other, in an effort to cope with new conditions, it transformed itself into an active legislating institution. Meetings had been rare-less than one a year-prior to 1929. But in 1930 Council held eleven sessions, while towards the end of the decade it met at two- and three-week intervals for all except the summer months when members often inspected the Territories to gain first-hand knowledge of conditions. And whereas new ordinances had been promulgated only rarely before 1929, by the thirties Council found it frequently necessary to revise those inherited from the former Territorial legislature or to enact others to meet the needs of the day. For the old ordinances, having been drafted for an agricultural society around the turn of the century, bore little relevance to the needs of a northern fur trading and mining empire of a generation later. 7 After attempting various expedients Council was forced to enact such measures as miner's lien, workmen's compensation, and small debt ordinances, as well as to license and regulate a whole series of occupations and employments making their appearance in the North for the first time. 8 Problems of liquor regulation, schools and local selfgovernment began to obtrude increasingly upon the Council's deliberations, raising the uncomfortable question whether the established order was adequate to satisfy the requirements of new settlers, imbued as they were with outlooks, attitudes and values common to the provinces to the south and east. Liquor afforded perhaps the best illustration of the conflict between old and new. The existing system of "nominal prohibition" was a relic of the first Northwest Territories, retained out of solicitude for the natives' welfare, or simply from sheer inertia. A resident could import two gallons of liquor or one barrel of beer per annum under permit "for medicinal purposes," the consignment being turned over to the purchaser upon surrender of the permit. Needless to say, the simultaneous arrival of an entire year's supply was accompanied by a few days or weeks of 7Council frequently encountered inadequacies in the pre-1905 ordinances. It repealed two ordinances as dangerously lax in 1937 and had poor success in efforts to apply ordinances to meet the changed conditions of the Territories-for example, in using the Masters and Servants Ordinance (1904) to enforce mechanics liens. In 1956, a Revised Ordinances of the Northwest Territories at last was issued. BSee annual reports for various years of the Departments of the Interior and of Mines and Resources. The writer also was able to consult the Minutes of the Council of the Northwest Territories (hereafter referred to as Minutes) through the kind permission of Mr. R. Bouchard, former Secretary of the Northwest Territories Council.

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riotous living, followed by a "thirst profound" of many months' duration -the white settlers' counterpart of the traditional feast-and-famine pattern of native existence. The system was hypocritical and it encouraged widespread drunkenness, bootlegging, and illicit distilling. It may even have increased total consumption by inducing moderate drinkers to purchase the full authorized amount of liquor. Certainly the quantities imported each year rose even more rapidly than did the numbers of eligible residents. The introduction of government liquor stores began to be urged as a means of fostering temperance if not total abstinence, particularly since the new settlers appeared to view the right of following their traditional habits of liquor consumption as a fundamental liberty.9 While Council refused to establish liquor stores in fur trading centres because of the danger to native trappers, it was willing to accommodate the mining community at Yellowknife, particularly since, like any selfrespecting modern government, it wished to earn revenue from the traffic. Eventually it was arranged that the Saskatchewan Liquor Commission would fly supplies to Yellowknife and operate the retail store there, the first supplies arriving from Regina in June, 1939, while shipments of beer began to arrive by boat from Edmonton in August. Prices were well below those of smuggled liquor, and the store's financial success exceeded expectations.10 Eventually, indeed, as a measure of compensation, Yellowknife obtained a beer parlour and a cocktail lounge-both of them open round the clock, six days a week. More serious was the question of education, a function undertaken by Roman Catholic and Anglican missions with financial assistance from the Departments of the Interior and of Indian Affairs.11 This arrangement spared government funds; but schools were situated where they best served Church interests, teaching personnel were selected primarily for religious rather than pedagogical attainments, and sometimes instruction tended to be shaped to religious goals to the neglect of practical ends. Increasingly the missions' monopoly of education drew criticism. Residential schools were attacked on the one hand for separating native children from the life to which they would have to return; and on the 9See annual reports of the Departments of the Interior and of Mines and Resources, also Minutes, 1340, 1668-6, 1766. lOMinutes, 1340, 1351-49, 1430, 1460-59, 1636, 1667-6, 1774, 1796, 1877, 1942. 11 See M. Zaslow, ''The Development of the Mackenzie Basin, 1920-40" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1957); also Trevor Lloyd, ''The Geography and Administration of Northern Canada" (unpublished Mss., Canadian Institute of International Affairs Library, Toronto) . Dawson, The New NorthWest, pp. 260-1. Minutes, 543, 1655-3.

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other, for failing to offer training in employments other than hunting and trapping. They were even less suited to the needs of the larger numbers of white children then residing in the Territories. The educational level was limited by the attainments of the teachers and by the abilities and interest of the native children who comprised the majority of pupils. Besides, many newcomers were unalterably opposed to the denominational-and some to the unsegregated-nature of mission schools. Council was aware both of the discontent and of the inadequacy of the existing system to meet the requirements of the new settlers. To Fort Smith parents dissatisfied with the local mission school in 1938 it suggested the formation of a public school district under the Schools Ordinance. True, the new district was without any power of taxation, but sufficient money was collected from fees, donations, fund-raising activities, and the government grant to enable a log-cabin school to be opened for eighteen pupils in December, 1940. 12 By contrast, in Yellowknife the school question was solved as part of a wider problem of local self-government. During 1938-9 a school had operated as a private, voluntary enterprise, but in the autumn of 1939 a school district was formed, trustees were elected, and by 1941 a three-roomed school was in operation with grades one to seven being taught on the Alberta model. Funds were secured from property and poll taxes levied by the local municipal government as well as a $1,000 grant from the administration.13 Non-sectarian education can be said to owe its inception in the Territories to the new settlers. Until the late thirties the Territories were also innocent of local government institutions, the settlements being too small and primitive to require formal corporate organization. The missions and government offered educational, medical and hospital facilities, and relief, while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took care of law enforcement and a multitude of other tasks. Companies provided electric power, housing, and hospital care for their own establishments and employees. Major public works-wharves, airfields, local roads-were constructed by the federal government, if at all. And any real emergency found the residents united to aid the needy, combat an epidemic, or hunt down a murderer. But this state of affairs no longer was adequate, for the newcomers expected social and communal services far beyond the levels attainable through voluntary aid, missionary benevolence, or meagre federal 12Minutes, 49, 56, 238, 414, 485, 825, 847, 1409, 1460, 1924. Edmonton Journal, July 28, 1939; fan. 16, 1940; Dec. 10, 1940. G. Breynat, Cinquante ans au pays des neiges ( Montreal, 1946-8), III, pp. 228-9. 13Minutes, pp. 1433, 1461, 1943. Dawson, The New North-West, p. 256.

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assistance. The growth of certain settlements during the thirties aggravated such problems as fire prevention and public health, and by 1939 every community along the Mackenzie waterway was facing a sewage disposal problem of varying seriousness. Yellowknife, with its one hundred resident families, its one thousand or more inhabitants, and its wide range of business enterprises, posed a whole variety of problems in law enforcement, unemployment relief, local public works, public utilities, building standards, and business regulations which could only be solved by the settlers themselves. 14 Consequently, in 1938 Council began to receive petitions for the formation of a local government for Yellowknife, and by April, 1939, it was contemplating a part-appointed, part-elected village council under the chairmanship of the appointed stipendiary magistrate. The Local Administration District Ordinance of 1939, which inaugurated the Territories' first municipal government at Yellowknife, provided for a council of two elected and three appointed members to advise the Territorial administration in Ottawa on local matters and to assess and tax property for local improvements. The Trustee Board took control of poor relief, health, and sanitation, schools, fire and traffic regulations, and local public works, and it collected revenue from property and poll taxes and from business licences. 15 Though in the years prior to 1939 most of the settlers' complaints centred upon practical economic and social problems, there was also considerable agitation for governmental reforms. Even in the 1920's, when the white population was small and scattered and only a few hundred trappers and traders did not depend either upon the administration or the great corporations for their livelihood, the movement for constitutional change was afoot. Not surprisingly, however, it lacked leadership, clear direction or articulate expression, and it aimed in tum at securing representation on the Territorial Council, at the appointment of an intermediate Advisory Council, at separate membership in the House of Commons, or at all three simultaneously. Unrest over recently inaugurated controls over trapping and trading inspired a petition for parliamentary representation which D. F. Kellner, Progressive M.P. for Edmonton East, presented to the House of Commons during the session of 1924. 16 Again in 1927 a proposed royalty on fur in the form of a fur export tax evoked a cry for constitu14Minutes, 1472A-1470 (15 pages and photographs), 1566 et seq., 1940. 15/bid., 1464-2, 1727, 1773, 1786, 1875, 1926, 1917-10, 1945. Dawson, The New North-West, pp. 28-9. t6The New North-West, p. 20. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1924, 2994.

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tional change which found a leader in Colonel J. K. Cornwall of Northern Traders Limited, a concern second in size only to the Hudson's Bay Company in the District of Mackenzie. Eventually a petition, reportedly signed by 500 residents, was submitted by Cornwall to Prime Minister King on behalf of the "North West Territories Association" urging "that no such royalty be collected or imposed, nor areas set aside as game preserves or bird sanctuaries until the North West Territories are represented in parliament by a duly elected representative in the interests of the residents, and we humbly petition the Government to appoint a committee to investigate and report on conditions as existing in the Territories." 17 The agitation gained a measure of national press publicity on the theme of "no taxation without representation" 18 but when J. F. Moran inspected the District of Mackenzie on behalf of the administration in 1928 he reported that no real desire for parliamentary representation existed, though the feeling was widespread that Ottawa was "insufficiently conversant" with local conditions. 19 In 1931 the continuing unrest found a spokesman in W. F. Cooke, a Fort Smith trader, who circulated copies of a petition throughout the District and secured signatures from virtually all the white residents of some settlements, including even company traders and missionaries. His petition urged the election of members to the Territorial Council and the transfer of the seat of government from Ottawa to Fort Smith: We, the undersigned petitioners, all bona fide residents of the Mackenzie River District of the North West Territories, most respectfully submit, for your careful and sympathetic consideration, the hereunder: (I) that the present Administration be changed and the following substituted; (II) that a Commissioner be appointed with wide powers and to reside at Fort Smith, N.W.T.; (III) that the aforementioned Commissioner be assisted by an Advisory Council of ten members, all of them residing in the Mackenzie District; (IV) that five of the councillors or members be elected and the other five appointed by the Government; (V) that the Commissioner be appointed permanent chairman of the aforementioned council and that he and the ten councillors convene at least once 17 File 7304, Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, "Elections -Northwest Territories Council" (hereafter referred to as File 7304), made available to the writer through the courtesy of Mr. R. A. Bishop, Secretary to the Council of the Northwest Territories. A petition and letter from J. K. Cornwall, dated Jan. 16, 1928. Edmonton Journal, Dec. 5, 1927. 18For example, Edmonton Journal, Sept. 7, 1927; Brandon Sun, Sept. 9, 1927; Montreal Gazette, Sept. 19, 1927; Vancouver Province, Sept. 18, 1927; Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 6, 1927---clippings in File 7304. 19File 7304.

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a year and that the members be allowed a nominal fee plus travelling expenses, while travelling to and from and attending such convention. 20

This and other demands for a broader-based, more democratic form of government led Council to discuss the question at its session of November 9, 1932. 21 Not unnaturally, it defended the existing system on the grounds of economy, efficiency, and its disinterested concern for the welfare of all the inhabitants. It pointed out that Council members were unpaid and were in a position to draw upon a wide range of specialists within the civil service for free advice. Furthermore, Ottawa was a more convenient centre of government for the Territories as a whole than was Fort Smith, which was only the gateway to the Mackenzie valley. Thanks to the wireless, Ottawa could maintain speedy, regular contact with all parts of the Territories, while missions, mining companies, and fur trading organizations which employed the bulk of the residents could be dealt with more conveniently from the national capital. Furthermore, Council charged, a Fort Smith government would be strongly influenced by the white settlers of that locality to the detriment of the native population scattered throughout the entire Territories. 22 The beginning of mining added a new element of discontent in the form of prospectors, mining company employees and businessmen of many sorts who were attracted to the District of Mackenzie. Resentment among participants in the rush to Great Bear Lake brought the formation of a prospector's organization and expressions such as the following from the Bear Lake Miner of June, 1933: Taxation without representation has been the fate of the Northwest Territories for many years. This huge territory has hitherto been ruled from Ottawa by Orders in Council. The voice of the great Northlands has perforce remained silent. The time has now come when every effort should be made to see that this section of Canada is represented in the House of Commons by at least one or more members. Armchair rule of such a country at a distance of 4000 miles lends itself to what might perhaps be called abuses. 23

As the Yellowknife boom developed during the years after 1937, 20File 7304. The petition and covering letter are dated Dec. 20, 1931. Other copies of the petition, with signatures, are also in the file. 21Minutes, Session No. 37, 298-6. 22Further arguments in the same vein appear in a six-page memorandum prepared September, 1930, by 0. S. Finnie at the instance of A. U. G. Bury, M.P., for Edmonton East-in File 7304. 2 3CJipping in File 7304. See also Edmonton Bulletin, April 27, 1939, for an argument on the need for parliamentary representation because of the District's development and also the desirability of maintaining closer touch with the local situation than was possible through a Council "made up of Ottawa civil servants, many of whom have never been in the territories."

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settlers' complaints against alleged neglect and governmental indifference increased, particularly when a short-lived newspaper, The Prospector (1938-9), appeared in Yellowknife to focus and publicize their grievances. 24 The assault of The Prospector centred mainly upon concrete abuses-the absence of authority to undertake fire prevention or sanitary control, the delays in confirming mining claims and in securing other necessary action from Fort Smith or Ottawa, the lack of local public works and a public school, and above all, the iniquitous liquor law. But periodically it was led to take up a cudgel on behalf of constitutional reform, thereby assuming, almost unawares, the historic role of the press in opposing undemocratic, distant government. In February and March, 1939, the resentments of the inhabitants found voice in a series of rather chaotic and occasionally crude articles, "Step-Children of Ottawa," contributed by J. M. McMeekin. These accused Ottawa of being indifferent to the problems of the new white settlement and concerned only to protect fur trade and mission interests. Development of the North was being hampered by Ottawa's apathy to the needs of the mining industry and of the newcomers: It is eight years since the discovery of radium-bearing ore on Great Bear Lake. It is nearly five years since the first stakings on Yellowknife River. During all the excitement, all the spending of public and private money .•• not one improvement has been made in the conditions under which prospectors and mining people, who are trying to open up new territory .•. and by so doing, create new Canadian wealth . . . are laboring, has been made by Ottawa . . . . There are so many interlocking departments, each with a finger in the administration that it is virtually impossible to get a plain answer to a plain request for information or opinion. And this applies not only to the attempted interpretation of the Mining Regulations but to every, or almost every query submitted to Fort Smith or to Ottawa. 25

The administration was eager enough to secure a revenue from the inhabitants, but it offered them no voice on the Council nor even information regarding government activities: WE MUST HAVE SUPPORT FROM OTTAWA, NOT SLUGGISH INACTIVITY OR EVASION.

We need many things;-

WE NEED REPRESENTATION, to take the form, preferably of a representative council, locally elected and including if desired, delegates from other parts of the Territories, the Council to control a Parliamentary representative, who would be in Ottawa. 24 Mimeographed, 4 to 8 pages per issue. Available in the Legislative Library, Parliament Buildings, Edmonton. 25The Prospector, Feb. 11, 1939.

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WE MUST BE KEPT INFORMED as to the actions of our servants, the Northwest Territories Commission. All the official information that has been received here in many months has been in the form of a whole raft of cute little schedules which provide for the issuing of Licences for the carrying on of every occupation except bootlegging. WE WANT A COMPLETE REVISION AND SIMPLIFICATION OF THE QUARTZ MINING REGULATIONS. Last summer it took six weeks to get Form "B" giving

title to claims staked.... 26

The settlers' complaints were echoed by their business connections in Edmonton who found fault with the Fort Smith agency and with the whole system of Territorial government because of delays, unsympathetic consideration of their requests, and the absence of any definite programme for the orderly development of the District. 27 In 1935 the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce requested that the Deputy Commissioner should be a resident and exercise the full functions of the Commissioner while in the Territories so as to "co-ordinate the activities of all government departments and press to fulfilment consecutive policies of development." 28 Council's reply was that one of its members already resided at Fort Smith and in his capacity as District Agent and Chief Mining Inspector was empowered to carry out many of the duties suggested. But Council conceded that the individual in question was a relatively recent appointee and perhaps lacked sufficient assurance to exercise his functions with the desired expedition and efficiency. 29 The question of a voice for the Territories in Parliament was urged, as we have seen, as early as 1924 during the course of the general agitation against the unrepresentative and remote administration. In 1929 Minister of the Interior Charles Stewart spoke in favour of conferring parliamentary representation upon the Territories, but his proposal was merely to add them to the Yukon constituency. 30 In the years that followed the claims of the District of Mackenzie to membership were urged by the Nor'West Miner and the Northwest Prospectors Association, by the Edmonton and the Alberta Conservative Associations, and by a number of newspapers across the Dominion. 31 On February 22, 1938, the matter was referred to in the House of Com26fbid., Feb. 18, 1939. 27File 7304, John Blue to the Commissioner in Council, Feb. 6, Edmonton Journal, March 1, 193S. 28File 7304, Blue to T. A. Crearer [sic], Jan. 30, 1936. 29File 7304, memoranda from R. A. Gibson and D. L. McKeand to Turner, Feb. 13 and 25, 193S. 80£dmonton Journal, Oct. 26, 1929; March 4, 1930. BICa/gary Herald, Feb. 19, 1938; Brockville Recorder and Times, Feb. 23, Prince Albert Daily Herald, Feb. 23, 1938; Edmonton Bulletin, Feb. 23, Edmonton Journal, Dec. 29, 1938-clippings in File 7304.

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J. L. 1938; 1938;

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moos by Mines and Resources Minister T. A. Crerar, who reported that the District of Mackenzie might soon require representation in Parliament if its progress continued at the same pace. 32 The marvellous growth of the District during these years also awakened the interests and appetites of the provinces to the south and encouraged them to propound their own solutions for the future government of the rich mining districts. As early as 1927 the Edmonton Journal bad suggested that Alberta take over administration of the Territories, asserting that the white settlers wished to be annexed to the Foothills province. 33 A decade later, at the end of 1937, British Columbia's expansionist premier T. D. Pattullo urged the extension of the 120th meridian boundary of his province with Alberta northward to the Arctic and the incorporation of the Yukon Territory and the western part of the District of Mackenzie into the Coast province. 34 Saskatchewan, too, cast covetous eyes on the Great Slave Lake district lying immediately north of its own recently discovered minefield on Lake Athabasca. Alberta was aroused by these encroachments upon its domain-"The Mackenzie valley is already annexed to the province of Alberta geographically and commercially," proclaimed the Edmonton Bulletin of April 14, 1938-and staked its own claim in the form of a resolution passed by the provincial legislature in March, 1939, which called for extension of its own boundaries northward to the Arctic Ocean on the grounds that the federal government was "too far removed to superintend" the development of the area which was feasible "only by and through Alberta."35 The coming of World War II brought a halt to the growth of the District of Mackenzie by terminating prospecting activity and gradually closing the producing gold mines. With the departure of those entrepreneurial elements which had spearheaded the campaign for reform, the forward movement towards self-government was suddenly arrested. But the revival of prospecting after 1944 and a new influx of settlers from the south renewed the drive, with the administration, finally alert to the need of attracting settlement to the Territories, moving at least half-way to meet the wishes of the inhabitants. Local government institutions and public schools have been extended as the need has arisen and a greatly enlarged programme of assistance to native inhabitants was inaugurated. The governing Council has been augmented by members resident in the 8 2Montreal Gazette, Feb. 23, 1938. Edmonton Journal, Feb. 23, 1938. 38£dmonton Journal, Sept. 7, 1927. 84Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1938, pp. 726, 4501. 35Alberta, Legislative Assembly, Journals, 1939, pp. 99-101.

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Territories and today comprises elected as well as appointed members. It meets annually within the Territories, its legislative sessions are public and reproduce the Speech from the Throne, the budget, and other features traditional to legislatures under the British system. Parliamentary representation has been achieved and at present the District of Mackenzie elects its own member to the House of Commons in Ottawa. In short, the present status is about equal to that of the old Northwest Territories around the year 1890. However the present-day Territories offer a promising innovation in at least one noteworthy respect. The native inhabitants now participate alongside the whites in the public life of the District, and in other respects are exchanging their position as wards of the state for one of equal citizenship. As the population of the North increases and as the natives become more truly part of its new economic, social, and political life, the progress towards full self-government may be expected to continue. But is it destined to culminate in partition of the Territories among existing provinces or by the formation of new northern provinces on the basis of equality with the rest? This is something time alone can tell. The general theme of the 1958 meeting of the Royal Society is forward-looking, centred upon the potentialities of the great Northwest. The position of a historian, glancing backward into the past, is not a little ambiguous within such a context. However, even the historian's approach possesses value for the future since the correct understanding of the past should prevent the repeating of old mistakes and help clarify the situations arising in later days. It is to be hoped that the present ~t·Jdy has thrown some light upon considerations which are as pertinent today as they were in the years prior to 1939 and that it may help indicate possible courses of action for the future. At the outset of this paper the situation in the Northwest Territories was linked, albeit with some hesitation, to the long train of constitutional conflicts which played so vital a part in the evolution of the British Commonwealth. Was this mere fancy or presumption? The campaign, after all, was no mass movement of an aroused people, nor did it produce leaders of great moral and intellectual stature or emotional fire. There is little of the Chatham or Fox, the Baldwin or Smuts, the Gandhi or Nkrumah to be discerned in J. K. Cornwall, W. F. Cooke, or J.M. McMeekin. No great issues of principle were involved and none were pursued with relentless perseverence. Above all, the element of struggle was virtually absent, for the regime was quite prepared to make concessions when faced with a genuine demand and need for change.

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Morris Zaslow

The writer's main justification in reducing this tale of constitutional evolution to paper has been that it merits examination because of the vitally significant historical category of which it is a part. Besides, is the situation really so inferior, so unworthy of being ranked with the classic constitutional struggles? Were not its failings those of Canada as a whole-the pragmatic approach heedless of intellectual consistency, the confusion about ends and means, the concern for practical results of a most material sort? Similar criticisms can be advanced against the reform movement in the British American colonies of a century ago. Finally, is the story without its own rationale, its own integrity in terms of the primitive environment in which it occurred? Rather it is to the credit of both sides that a conflict waged under such circumstances was resolved, not in accordance with planners' blueprints or idealistic theories, but in conformity with the economic, social, and cultural maturing of the Territories themselves.