Who Owns the Arctic?

Work underway to resolve Beaufort Sea boundary dispute

By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News July 26, 2010

 

Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent (top) and the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy working side-by-side in the summer of 2009 during a seabed survey in the Beaufort Sea.

Photograph by: U.S. Geological Survey, Photo Handout

Canadian and U.S. government experts met quietly in Ottawa last week to begin trying to resolve a long-standing boundary dispute in the Beaufort Sea, a Canadian diplomat revealed Monday.

News of the surprise talks was disclosed during a briefing by Canadian and U.S. officials on a bi-national seabed mapping mission to be conducted next month in the Beaufort region.

This summer's joint Canada-U.S. survey, the third consecutive year in which researchers from the two countries have agreed to collaborate on mapping the Beaufort sea floor, will also include a sonar probe of the contested area itself for the first time.

The Ottawa talks on the Beaufort controversy, held July 22, followed a pledge earlier this year by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon that Canada intends to actively pursue an agreement with the U.S. over where the maritime boundary should be drawn in an unresolved, Lake Ontario-sized section of the Arctic Ocean north of the Yukon-Alaska border.

Canada to start 'non-stop' year of mapping Arctic seabed

CBC News, January 26, 2009

Federal scientists will soon take on their most ambitious effort yet to map the Arctic Ocean seabed, four years before Canada's deadline to try to extend its Arctic sovereignty as part of an international treaty. ...

For the full story, see: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2009/01/26/cda-arctic.html

Beware Danes' Arctic agenda, Canada warned

Dispute over Hans Island shows Denmark is a polar rival, experts says

Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen, May 27, 2008, A5

KANGERLUSSAQ, Greenland - It's Canada's forgotten neighbour, better known as the source of Havarti cheese and puff pastries than as a nation sharing 2,000 kilometres of our coastal waters -- or as a serious rival in the intensifying international competition for Arctic power and wealth.

Blasting the final frontier

Scientists are using dynamite to map the Arctic seabed in a push to claim valuable new territory for Canada

Katherine Harding, Globe and Mail, May 13, 2006

CFS ALERT, NUNAVUT - It's a frustratingly quiet day for the Bombing Lady. 

"Too much snow - we aren't going anywhere today. You can't even see the horizon," Canadian marine geologist Ruth Jackson sighs as a spring blizzard blankets the world's most northerly permanent settlement.

Normally, Dr. Jackson, who received her nickname from people at Canadian Forces Station Alert, would be bundled up in a parka and mukluks as she directs dynamite explosions a few hundred kilometres south of the North Pole. She is leading a one-time push to add valuable maritime territory to Canada's stock of real estate.