Arctic Front: Defending Canada In The Far North

From the CBC:

"The opportunity for us to take constructive steps diplomatically is now being usurped from us by the Europeans," says Whitney Lackenbauer, a University of Waterloo history professor and co-author of Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North.

"They are going to steal the agenda."

I just finished reading "Arctic Front: Defending Canada" by Ken S. Coates, et al. Buy it here.

This is a basic primer on the history of the Canadian Arctic and some its modern issues. There is a good review of the early attempts to subvert Canadian ownership of the far north by the Norwegians, and later the US, Russia, and Denmark. The book also reviews Canada's attempts to exert authority over the northern inhabitants and the various legal and diplomatic issues surrounding the Arctic.

Despite the title and the subject matter, the attitude of the authors was one of disdain for any and all attempts by Canadian Nationalists to discuss threats to the Northern Sovereignty, dismissing these threats as paranoia even as the authors make a point of documenting these issues and threats and their seriousness (which makes the quote from the CBC more ridiculous). But this was only the tip of the iceberg as far as problems with the book and the writing, which has at least some of the hallmarks of poor scholarship and "decision-by-committee" project management.

Some of the issues were basic, like showing a map with Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, in the wrong inlet on Baffin Island, while the book also suffered from some poor editing. The book offered a bizarre "report card", which rated "Canada's arctic track record" and "the government of Canada's current response" (these rated a "F" and a "B-", respectively). Why give a report card with only 2 undefined and broadly stated categories? I guess this is what you get when you combine the creativity of 4 professors.

Most glaring, the entire premise of the book is scattered. At the outset, the profs give the impression that Canada has only a tenuous hold on the Arctic. Later the authors come out and state that Canada's hold on the north is legal and internationally supported. The profs then go to great detail to point out that Canadian research and scientific surveys of the continental shelf is inferior to the work that Russia and other polar-oriented countries have conducted, and that the Russian's work could subvert Canadian claims on the northern resources.

The authors' include suggestions near the end of the book for the future of the north which include various schemes that generally involve cash infusions for various initiatives, suggesting military expenditures by the government and massive economic developments. The authors then undermine these ideas by stating that Canada should take an alternative approach to the region by stating that the arctic could become one large ecologically protected park. This last suggestion is probably one of the most random things I have read by real authors, and a better editor would have seen this issue a mile away.
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I would suggest that these profs go their separate ways and come up with independent and coherent themes for their subject matter. If the theme is "Canada's Arctic Sovereignty Is Threatened by the US!" then write about it in a cohesive writing style. If the theme is "Why Are We Worried about Arctic Sovereignty?" or more generally "What Are the Issues Surrounding Our Modern Arctic", then by all means go for it.

But for the love of God, don't try to combine every thesis into a 215 page book and expect it to make sense or have any real impact on the discussion of the north.