Title: The erection of the tablet on Parry's Rock by Captain Joseph-Elzéar Bernier
Place: Winter Harbour, N.W.T..
Date: 1st July 1909.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Unknown

National Archives of Canada, negative no. C-029604

On 8 December 1953, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent heralded the creation of the new Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources by conceding that previously Canada had "administered these vast territories of the north in an almost continuing state of absence of mind." When Great Britain first proposed to transfer its claim of sovereignty over the Arctic Islands to the new Dominion, the Canadian government was not overjoyed.

In the three centuries before the 1870's, exploration in the Arctic had been stimulated by the desire to discover the elusive Northwest Passage. Arctic exploration had primarily been a British imperative, the golden age of Hudson, Foxe, Frobisher, and Baffin of Ross, Parry, Franklin, and McClure.

Request in 1874 by a British subject for permission to erect buildings for a whaling base on Baffin Island and, more seriously, from an American seeking to start a mica mine there, left the British government in a dilemma.

Accordingly, on 30 April 1874 Lord Carnarvon, the British Colonial Secretary, wrote to Lord Dufferin, the Canadian Governor General, inquiring whether or not "territories adjacent to those of the Dominions on the N. American Continent, which have been taken possession of in the name of this Country but not hitherto annexed to the Dominion of Canada." Somewhat irritated that his question had been ignored, Carnarvon sent another dispatch on 26 August 1874 pointedly requesting a reply. Eventually, on 10 October 1874, the Canadian government passed an Order-in Council stating that Canada "is desirous of including within the boundaries of the Dominion the Territories referred to, with the islands adjacent." In response to Carnarvon's further request on 6 January 1875 for advice on the formula for the proposed annexation, Canada passed another Order-in-Council on 30 April 1875 stating that an act of the British Parliament would be most useful as the transferring instrument in order to remove any ambiguity, but also requesting that no such action be taken until after the next session of the Canadian Parliament.

This penny-pinching lack of vision of the Liberal government of 1873-1878 was typical. For two and one-half years, the Liberals did nothing. Finally, in response to Carnarvon's growing annoyance over this inaction, another Order-in-Council was passed on 29 November 1877 acknowledging that nothing had been done because "there did not seem at that time any pressing necessity for taking action" but that, "as the reasons for coming to a definite conclusion now appear urgent", a suitable resolution would be submitted to the forthcoming session of the Canadian Parliament. At last, on 3 May 1878, the Canadian Parliament formally passed an address to the Queen requesting the transfer of the Arctic Islands to Canada.

A new Colonial Secretary, Sir Micheal Hicks-Beach, doubted that an act of the Imperial Order-in-Council would draw less international attention and create less foreign annoyance over the transfer of jurisdiction. It would also mean that the imperfectly explored Islands would not have to be described as precisely as in a formal statute. He wrote in this vein to Ottawa in April, 1879, and once again the Mackenzie government failed t act for over five months. The returned Conservative government of Sir John A. Macdonald was eager for the transfer, declaring in an Order-in-Council on 4 November 1879, that the British proposal was "in the highest degree satisfactory". The British government on 31 July passed and Order-in-Council stating that "From and after September 1, 1880, all British territories and possessions in North America, and all islands adjacent to any such territories or possessions, shall (with the exception of the Colony of Newfoundland and its dependencies) become and be annexed to and form part of the said Dominion of Canada.

Although Canada had received the British claims to sovereignty on 1 September 1880, it did not exercise that sovereignty for many years. Until 1895, at which time the British Parliament also passed an act to confirm and reinforce the Imperial Order-in-Council of 1880.

Famous northern expeditions by the Norwegians Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, and Roald Amundsen; travels by Knud Rasmussen of Denmark; and most notably the attainment of the North Pole by Robert Peary of the United States all cast doubt on Canada's control over the Arctic. The Laurier government decided to send expeditions throughout the Arctic Islands to "plant our flag at every point". The most notable northern voyages then were those of William Wakeham on the Diana in 1897 to Hudson Bay and Baffin Island; of A.P. Low on the Neptune in 1903-04 around Baffin, Ellesmere, and Somerset Islands; and of J.E. Bernier on the Arctic between 1906 and 1911 to scores of northern islands. Canadian Arctic presence became much more than an 1880 slip of paper. On 1 July 1909, Bernier formally erected a tablet at Winter Harbour on Melville island "to commemorate the taking possession for the Dominion of Canada of the whole Arctic Archipelago..."

The construction of projects during World War II, consisted of the Alaska Highway, Canal pipeline, and the Northwest Staging Route airfields followed the postwar years by the erection of schools, hospitals, and housing; the buildings of roads, bridges, and harbours; the sponsorship of fishing. mining, and wildlife industries; and the administration of justice, health and education, and social concerns.

When St. Laurent established the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources in 1953 as the first department ever to be almost exclusively devoted to northern administration, he hoped that this would "give new emphasis and scope to work already being done, and to indicate that ... such greater emphasis (be) made a continuing feature of the operation of government." John Diefenbaker's northern vision and programmes, the discovery of Arctic oil and gas, the various pipeline debates and commissions, certainly validated St. Laurent's prediction. Canada's northern destiny seems secure; the absent-mindedness that almost cost Canada the Arctic Islands had been thoroughly repudiated.