STEPHEN BOCKING
science and
SPACES
IN THE NORTHERN ENVIRONMENT
ABSTRACT
Between the 1940s and the 1970s the environment of northern Canada was
transformed, physically and politically. Scientists played a variety of roles in this
transformation, assisting in forming an administrative regime for the region, as well
as, on occasion, critiquing this regime and its environmental implications. These
roles were expressed through a series of ideas and images about the northern
landscape: as the habitat of wildlife populations that fluctuate dramatically, or
conversely, that can be managed to provide a stable yield; and in a second dualism,
as a uniquely fragile wilderness or a resource-rich hinterland balancing environmental
and development goals. These roles and images were the product of interactions
between northern political and economic imperatives, scientists’ ideas regarding
the theories and methods relevant to the North, and the northern environment itself.
Understanding this history requires building bridges between environmental history
and the history of science; a chief means by which this is accomplished is through
“disciplinary space”—a concept that has broader implications for the practice of
history.
THE IMAGE OF NORTHERN scientists, circa 1964, was said to be one of contented
indifference to political matters. They were a hardy few, “plying their erudite
mysteries among the natives and amid the vastness in virtual aloneness and, to
them, happy anonymity.”1 But the claim rang false: scientists were neither alone
nor anonymous. Accompanied by pilots and administrators, guided by priorities
set in southern capitals and universities, scientists had become essential to the
political and economic restructuring of northern Canada.
Historians have described how scientists have participated in exploiting and
sometimes conserving the natural environment. Scholars in other fields have
Stephen Bocking, “Science and Spaces in the Northern Environment,” Environmental History 12
(October 2007): 867-94.
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complemented these efforts, charting the complexity of scientists’ roles in
environmental affairs. Northern Canada offers opportunities to extend this work.
The region presents an unusual, sometimes extreme environment—both a
challenge and an attraction to scientists; scientists have also historically played
a disproportionate role in shaping attitudes and decisions regarding the North.
In this article I seek to explain the paths followed by scientists in the North: the
topics they studied, the ideas that guided their work, their methods, their
influence on decisions, and how these dimensions of scientific work related to
the northern environment. My focus will be on two distinct episodes. In the first,
extending over several decades but culminating in the early 1950s, northern
Canada attracted the attention of ecologists debating the existence and
significance of cycles in animal populations. In the second, which took place
during the 1960s and 1970s, notions of ecological fragility again drew ecologists
to the North, within a political culture newly sensitive to impacts on this
environment.
In these episodes two themes will be most evident. One is the value of
understanding the practical work of scientists, particularly in the field: how they
gather knowledge, and assert its relevance and authority. The second is
consideration of how scientists situate their practice: how, in relation to varied
political and disciplinary contexts, they locate the northern environment, either
defining it as unique, hence requiring special ideas and techniques, or as a place
similar to (albeit colder or less productive) those with which they are more
familiar. These contrasting perspectives will illustrate how between the 1940s
and the 1970s the space occupied by the North—in environmental, political, and
scientific terms—was itself a matter of negotiation, defined as much by its relation
to elsewhere, as by its “essential” features. More generally, I will suggest that
“disciplinary space”—a concept that draws on insights into the geography of
science and the construction of scientific authority—can provide a foundation
for a richer understanding of science within environmental history.
SCIENTISTS AND SPACES
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORIANS tend to adopt a dual vision of science: as a source
of evidence and explanation, and as itself a focus of inquiry. While ecology, public
health, and the historical sciences such as evolutionary biology and geology
continue to inform explanations of environmental change, research in history of
science and related fields has also demonstrated that, like nature and culture,
scientific explanations and social contexts are hopelessly entangled.
Yet concerns regarding a consequent undermining of historical explanations
are exaggerated. As William Cronon has suggested, objectivity’s demise need not
deny the pragmatic use of science in the construction of reasonable and
persuasive accounts of the past.2 Numerous historians have concurred, situating
science within its contexts, both natural and social, and as an instigator of human
action and environmental change.
Some of the most interesting such work has considered the interaction
between science and space, evident in the role of local environments in the
SCIENCE AND SPACES
formation of scientific concepts, and in the spatial relations between places bound
by ties of materials, knowledge, and power.3 In Canada, science has proven to be
an effective instrument in the extension of authority over space: asserting the
material basis for transcontinental aspirations, redefining insect outbreaks as
national phenomena—thereby justifying federal initiatives, or extending
managerial control over the forests and rivers of British Columbia.4
Elsewhere, such studies have displayed the intersection of science, space, and
power, such as in the reengineering of river systems, or the extension of nationstates by survey and census—imposing legibility at the expense of local
complexity.5 These intersections also have been an inescapable element of the
construction of empires, evident in the extension of expert surveillance and
control over colonial resources; or conversely, the overturning of accepted
relations between center and periphery, as scientists encountered novel colonial
environments.6 These episodes have their counterparts in those described by
scholars of contemporary environmental politics: the contested relations between
“global” and “local” forms of knowledge, and the political imperative embedded
within scientific perspectives, expressed through climate models and photos
taken from space that encompass the entire planet.7
The intersection of science and space can be best understood by examining
not just the implications of scientific knowledge, but the material practices
through which scientists engage with the natural environment. Through field
work and subsequent manipulation of data, scientists link prior knowledge with
new observations, constructing results that will be considered relevant and
reliable. Various historians have demonstrated how attention to these practices—
comparing soil samples against standardized colors and textures, surveying and
photographing landscapes from the air, tracing radionuclides through forests,
or distributing and collecting salmon tags—can illuminate the historical relation
between science and its environments.8
Scientists’ efforts to assert the authority of knowledge also merit special
attention. Of course, these efforts, to be successful, must be invisible, permitting
the claim that scientific knowledge represents merely a factual and objective
description of nature. Yet such efforts are also in the realm of scientific work. It
is in the construction of scientific authority—creating “standard” conditions in
the field, analyzing and rewriting data for diverse audiences, stabilizing
knowledge so that it can travel beyond the context of its creation—that the social
context of science is most evident, because it is in these practices that scientists
must be most acutely aware of their audiences.9
In the consideration of science and space, the Arctic is inescapable. Northern
regions have always been places where geography matters: of enormous distances
and challenges, where merely arriving, surviving, and returning once provided
for scientists the necessary authority to speak as an “old Arctic hand.”10 Material
practices mandated by these conditions—once, those learned from the Inuit; more
recently, those imported, particularly by air, from the south—have been especially
important both to creating northern scientific knowledge and assuring its
authority.11 The distinctive northern environment—tundra, permafrost, polynyas
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(areas of ocean that remain open when all else is frozen), dark cold winters, brief
but brilliant summers, migrating caribou—has been for decades a central theme
in northern scientific work. This unique landscape has long inspired in scientists
a sense of wonder and of the sublime, as well as questions as to how knowledge
gained here might carry authority elsewhere, or conversely, how the landscape
might be understood in terms of broader scientific conceptions, such as
Darwinism, Humboldtian science, or Euclidean geometry and other elements of
classical heritage.12 Northern scientific work often also has implicitly challenged
the distinctive identity of the northern environment. When scientists arrive from
elsewhere, pursue questions of interest to temperate zone audiences, use methods
developed in Michigan or Montreal, return in winter to Ottawa to analyze the
data—then even the “place” of research becomes ambiguous. This ambiguity,
however, is also rich in possibilities for understanding the relations between
science and space.
Scientific work in the North has taken place in the midst of evolving political
and economic contexts. In the postwar era the Canadian government sought to
extend its administrative and military authority over the region. These efforts
soon gained an economic dimension, through the search for mineral and energy
resources, particularly after oil and gas discoveries in the late 1960s. After 1970,
concerns regarding the state of the northern environment, as well as a new
assertiveness by northern indigenous peoples seeking self-determination and
control over resources, added new complexities to northern politics.
In the midst of these political shifts, scientific perceptions of the region
changed not once, but several times. From a view emphasizing dramatic,
uncontrollable fluctuations in animal populations, to a view of wildlife as stable
if properly managed; from seeing the Arctic as a harsh and hostile place, or as
uniquely fragile; and then again, as a region that can be both developed and
managed—perceptions of the North have exhibited little constancy. This essay
will examine most closely times of change, when a new understanding of the
environment was constructed. A focus on change presents several advantages.
First, it provides an opportunity to consider the relative significance of nature,
science, and political context in creating and asserting knowledge. Second, during
times of change, ideas about science—appropriate methods and forms of
argument, relations to other kinds of knowledge, practical purposes, all of which
tend to remain invisible in the usual workings of science—emerge and are made
explicit on the agonistic terrain of competing scientific perspectives. Finally, a
focus on change provides narrative space for agency and the contingent actions
of individuals, reminding us that few things in history are inevitable. We begin
with a furry legend.
FROM CYCLES TO SUSTAINABLE YIELD
AMONG THE MYTHS of the North is that of the periodic migration and collective
suicide of lemmings. It lives on as an idiom for mass, unthinking behavior, likely
encouraged by White Wilderness, a Disney film of 1958 that portrayed lemmings
SCIENCE AND SPACES
throwing themselves into the sea.13 It also has the slightest grain of truth—at least
as an effort to account for periodic rapid increases and sudden crashes in
population. Not just lemmings, but Arctic foxes, muskrats, snowshoe hares, and
lynx, as well as some bird species, were known for dramatic cycles in abundance.14
No one, however, had a persuasive explanation for this phenomenon.
Long familiar to northerners, by the 1900s evidence of animal cycles had
begun to be tabulated and reworked into formats accessible to scientists. Most
influential was the evidence (largely based on Hudson’s Bay Company fur records),
presented in 1911 by Ernest Thompson Seton in The Arctic Prairies, and a decade
later by C. Gordon Hewitt in The Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada.15 This
information soon caught the attention of Charles Elton. A student of ecology at
Oxford and veteran of several Arctic field trips, Elton had learned of lemming
cycles in Norway, and studied closely Alexander Morris Carr-Saunders’ work on
human populations. He recognized the relevance of these Canadian records, and
in 1924 pulled together available information to demonstrate a link between
climate (and perhaps sunspots), and animal populations.16 The following year
Elton began work as a consultant to the Hudson’s Bay Company, seeking in the
fur return records of its London archives a basis for predicting furbearer yields.
His 1927 text, Animal Ecology, also featured extensive discussion of population
cycles.17
During the 1930s cycles continued to gain both scientific and practical
prominence. The Matamek Conference on Biological Cycles of 1931 focused
attention on the issue, as did Aldo Leopold’s 1933 text, Game Management.18
Elton’s influence was evident in both, and he continued to shape research through
his own and his students’ work at the Bureau of Animal Population, Elton’s
professional home at Oxford from the 1930s to the 1960s. His impact was felt at,
among other sites, the University of Toronto, where ecologists maintained a steady
focus on the factors influencing animal populations.19
The history of cycles research during this period is complex, but one feature
is especially relevant: the importance of a geographic perspective. This was
evident in views regarding the spatial extent of the phenomenon, as well as in
ideas about how it should be studied. Researchers in Canada tended to see
dramatic fluctuations as peculiarly Canadian phenomena, tied in some way to
the northern climate, habitat, or ecological conditions.20 Elsewhere, this view was
largely ignored. Leopold, for example, emphasized the prevalence of cycles in
American game. And for Elton himself, although Canada formed one focus of his
research, fluctuations were, he stressed “a general phenomenon of world-wide
extent.”21 His focus on Canada was, in part, pragmatic: It took advantage of the
availability of historical records (itself the consequence of an economy reliant
on natural populations), and the support of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It also
reflected his view, held until the early 1940s, that climate was a major factor
affecting populations, and that this would become evident through data gathered
over a large area from ecological communities of relatively few species, and
therefore more likely to exhibit the effects of an external factor such as climate.
Thus his climate hypothesis was tied to his methods: both the review of fur
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records, and the questionnaire surveys that he and his colleagues conducted for
nearly two decades in cooperation with the National Parks Branch. As Elton noted
in 1942, “The questionnaire system is still the only method which gives quickly
and conveniently a general picture of fluctuations over vast areas of the north.”22
Two studies were administered by the Bureau of Animal Population in cooperation
with the Northwest Territories Administration and the Hudson’s Bay Company:
the “Snowshoe Rabbit Enquiry,” and the “Canadian Arctic Wild Life Enquiry.” Each
year several hundred field observers—trappers, RCMP officers, game wardens,
and others sent in their views on whether animal populations had increased or
decreased relative to the previous year. Elton’s group then mapped trends in
population extending across northern Canada. This geographic presentation of
results was not just for convenience, but constituted a means of identifying and
demonstrating vital aspects of population trends.23
Such was the context when, in 1949, William Rowan presented a proposal for
research on cycles in Canadian animal populations. Rowan, a professor of zoology
at the University of Alberta, had maintained for four decades an interest in study
of these cycles. Concluding that the problem required an interdisciplinary
approach combining ecology, behavior, physiology, and other fields, he requested
funding from the federal Department of Mines and Resources and from the Arctic
Institute of North America for an ambitious investigation to solve the mystery
once and for all.24
Rowan’s proposal was apparently well aimed and well timed: These cycles
remained an unsolved problem of northern biology, interesting both scientifically,
because of their relevance to understanding the factors that determine animal
populations, as well as economically, given that furbearers exhibited the most
dramatic cycles, causing hardship for trappers and management challenges for
the fur industry. Yet on April 21, 1950, Roy Gibson, director of the Lands, Parks
and Forest Branch of the Department of Mines and Resources, rejected Rowan’s
proposal, explaining that no funding would be provided. While a study of
population was desirable, a “very highly qualified and authoritative source” had
advised that it need not begin at that time.25
Gibson’s mention of an unnamed authority obscured the considerable debate
that Rowan’s proposal had generated. When Gibson received the proposal, he
sought advice from Harrison Lewis, chief of the Canadian Wildlife Service. Lewis,
in turn, sought commentary from several sources, including the National
Research Council’s Associate Committee on Wildlife Research, a body that
included several of the most experienced Canadian researchers. He also asked
Frank Banfield, a Canadian Wildlife Service researcher then completing his PhD
in wildlife biology at the University of Michigan, to canvas his professors
regarding the study of population cycles. Banfield responded first, conveying his
advisers’ skepticism regarding the “reality” of cycles—violent fluctuations in
populations, they thought, were too irregular to be characterized as cycles, and
were, furthermore, likely only an artifact of northern animal communities that
had fewer species and so were less capable of self-regulation. The Associate
Committee was next: they met on February 3 to consider Rowan’s proposal. They
SCIENCE AND SPACES
Figure 1. Reports about Changes in Abundance of Snowshoe Rabbits, Compared to 1945-46
CREDIT LINE
Reproduced with permission from: Helen Chitty, “The Snowshoe Rabbit Enquiry, 1946-48,” Journal of Animal Ecology
19 (May 1950): 16 (Blackwell Publishing).
The maps indicate changes in reports of abundance of snowshoe rabbits compared with 1945-46.
Increase reports are shown in black, decrease reports are shown in white, no change stippled.
concluded that while a study of animal populations was indeed needed, and Rowan
could participate, he was not the appropriate man to lead it.26
The committee had someone else in mind: Elton. Responding to this
recommendation, Lewis invited Elton to take charge of the project. Elton quickly
replied that he felt well settled at Oxford, but that his colleague Dennis Chitty,
himself a Canadian, would be suitable—indeed he was, in Elton’s view, the only
possible ecologist for such a study. Elton also advised that the study be deferred
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for two years to give Chitty time to wind up his Oxford research. 27 Lewis
accordingly summarized the Associate Committee’s advice and the exchange with
Elton, providing the essential text for Gibson’s letter to Rowan. There would be
no study of population cycles, at least none led by Rowan.
To be sure, part of the explanation for this outcome was personal. Many
scientists had doubts regarding Rowan. As Lewis summed up for Gibson, though
Rowan “is probably entitled to be ranked as a genius of some sort … [it is] fair to
say he is erratic. … Doubtless geniuses are important, but it is in my opinion that
for the carrying on of scientific research supported by public funds, a capable,
industrious, well-trained man is to be preferred to a genius.”28 The provenance of
the proposal therefore diminished its appeal.
But the proposal itself was considered problematic in both concept and
methods. Several biologists saw Rowan’s approach as reminiscent of work done
in the 1930s. It failed, in their eyes, to consider how population study had
advanced—at least in the research centers that Canadian scientists aspired to
emulate. By 1950 population ecology was experiencing rapid change, reexamining
its foundational methods and principles. New techniques of modeling and
laboratory experiment were gaining adherents in Europe and America, and
existing approaches had to take these into consideration if they were to be seen
as reliable.29 At Oxford, Elton and his group had turned away from the “mail order
zoology” of questionnaires, convinced that only intensive research at specific
sites, through survey or experiment, could succeed in unraveling the complexities
of population regulation.30 As Banfield had reported from Michigan, other
ecologists, particularly in the United States, were also questioning the reality of
cycles, as well as the assumption that a single undiscovered factor (like climate)
lay behind this phenomenon, and the reliance on inductive and inevitably
subjective analysis of population fluctuations. Perhaps, as Lamont Cole and a
few other ecologists suggested, “cycles” were simply the apparently random
outcome of many ecological factors—a thicket of complexity that would remain
impenetrable if the only approach were the gathering of endless reams of data.
Such research was all the more dubious for using the testimony of untrained
observers—a social heterogeneity and reliance on local knowledge that put the
authority of its results in doubt.31
After Rowan had been turned away, Lewis and other scientists attempted to
build support for population research. In May, he outlined a proposed study,
extending for an indefinite period, at the considerable expense of $22,350 per
year (then approximately one tenth the entire Canadian Wildlife Service budget).32
The next month, the annual Federal-Provincial wildlife conference passed a
resolution supporting research on cycles. But the moment had passed: as I explain
below, the Canadian Wildlife Service turned firmly toward research on other
topics, pursuing questions that exhibited a strikingly different attitude toward
both research and administration of the northern environment and its people.
These trends in the study of population had geographic implications. One was
evident in the shifting networks between ecologists. At one time, Elton, although
across the water in Oxford, was probably the most influential ecologist in Canada;
SCIENCE AND SPACES
his importance was still evident during the 1950 debate about Rowan’s proposal.
But the center of attention of Canadian ecology and wildlife science had begun
shifting to the south, and in the postwar era promising scientists were as likely
to study at the University of Michigan (as Banfield did), or Wisconsin (as did Doug
Pimlott, the most influential wildlife biologist in Ontario) as at Oxford. As
Banfield’s role in the Rowan debate illustrated, these individuals then served as
a conduit for conveying American perspectives into Canadian discussions of
wildlife and scientific issues.
Geography was also implicated in the situating of population phenomena
themselves. Those who urged study of “cycles” tended to agree with Rowan that
research should be based in northern Canada, where cycles were most evident,
extended over large areas, and were most likely caused by a factor specific to the
region, such as some aspect of climate. The need to thus situate research was
sharpened by various geographic hypotheses: that population cycles typically
lasted ten years in the boreal forest, and four years in the Arctic; and that, as
Rowan argued, cycles tended to begin in the west, and travel east. In contrast,
those who urged study of “fluctuations”—the term itself expressing skepticism
of claims that populations rise and decline at regular intervals—argued that these
phenomena could be studied almost anywhere, ideally in areas small enough to
be subject to experimental control, and understood in terms of phenomena found
everywhere: disease, prey-predator relations, and the like. Given contemporary
perceptions regarding the evolution of population study, those who insisted on
situating it geographically were likely to be considered somewhat behind the
times.
There were, then, scientific objections to Rowan’s proposal. But also important
were changes in the context of northern wildlife science. One was the decline of
the fur trade. With the collapse of fox fur prices by 1950, and the closing of many
fur trade posts, official perceptions of the relative importance of northern species
were reversed.33 The fur trade—a priority as long as the Hudson’s Bay Company
was dominant in northern politics—was displaced by a focus on other species,
especially caribou. As John Sandlos has explained, this occurred for several
reasons, including new views regarding management of the northern environment
and of natives, and the perceived need to avoid the “waste” of resources.34 Caribou
studies were seen as particularly relevant to interventionist native policies,
including relocation. This required, in theory at least, surveying wildlife resources
at new settlement sites.35 While there was some evidence that caribou could be
susceptible to cycles, the possibility was dismissed, in favor of population factors
more “subject to management.”36 A similar orientation was evident in studies of
muskrat, once a focus of research on cycles. The new emphasis was no longer on
predicting their populations, but on managing them. This was evident in local
experiments in Quebec and elsewhere; it was also seen in muskrat research on
the Mackenzie Delta, where Ian McTaggart-Cowan and other scientists
emphasized habitat modification and other practical initiatives.37
But the ties between wildlife science and politics became most evident in the
material practice of science. To see why, it is necessary to consider briefly the
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evolving role of the North in postwar Canada, especially the extension of
administrative and military authority over the region.38 Science was considered
a chief instrument of this extension, providing a basis for managing resources,
asserting sovereignty, and fulfilling other political and strategic goals. As a result,
new scientific perspectives were extended into the North, through geological and
biological surveys and an ambitious program of aerial mapping. Science was
closely integrated with northern administration, and several federal agencies,
such as the Defence Research Board and the Geological Survey, operated research
programs.39 Northern science and politics became intertwined, each justifying
the other: science supporting policy goals, and the exercise of policy enabling
and shaping scientific activity. This was especially evident in the Canadian
Wildlife Service.40 Creation of the Service in 1947 marked a convergence of the
interests of scientists and the federal government. For the government, wildlife
science contributed to progress toward scientific administration of the North.
For scientists, the Service fulfilled several goals. It provided stable support for
research—a long-time desideratum of Canadian scientists, evident in, for example,
an ambitious but ill-timed 1939 proposal for a national biological survey.41 Official
status also strengthened the authority of science in managing parks and other
practical arenas. This was a significant consideration, given the uncertain status
of expert advice in national parks, as evidenced by the willingness of wardens to
contest scientists’ recommendations in favor of their own field experience.42
It was the doing of wildlife research and its tools—that is, material practices—
that most clearly exhibited this intertwining of science, politics, and the northern
environment. Consider caribou research, as pursued by Banfield between 1948
and 1950, and by John Kelsall from 1950 to 1955. Both scientists applied research
techniques, including strip censuses for estimating wildlife populations, that were
widely accepted within the North American research community. Both also
stressed the heavy use of aviation in their research, asserting the value of a “view
from above (Figure 2).”43 Through these practices, Banfield and Kelsall asserted
the objectivity of professional science relative to local knowledge and groundbased perspectives. With these classic techniques of imposing legibility they also
contributed to reordering the northern landscape, making it amenable to
administration.44
But this vast landscape, and the unpredictability of caribou movements, also
ensured that legibility would demand a struggle. When publicizing their results,
Banfield and Kelsall emphasized confidence and minimized uncertainties,
particularly when they indicated an incipient “caribou crisis,” and the need for
control of wolves and hunting by natives. In practice, several years of study and
perfecting of methods were required before they could have confidence in their
own estimates. And while asserting the superiority of aerial survey over local
knowledge, they often relied on pilots and other experienced northerners to advise
them on where caribou were to be found and counted. This use of local knowledge
rarely made it into published accounts of caribou research; nor did significant
discussion of potential errors—although such discussions were common practice
in aerial survey work elsewhere.45 Constructing authoritative estimates of caribou
SCIENCE AND SPACES
Figure 2. Aerial Surveys of Caribou Populations in 1948
Adapted by Eric Leinberger from A. W. F. Banfield, “The Barren-Ground Caribou,” Department of Resources and
Development, Northern Administration and Lands Branch, 1951.
numbers thus relied both on modern research techniques and on the concealing
of their imperfect grasp of the northern environment.
In many ways, therefore, Rowan’s research on cycles was ill-suited to the
postwar environment. Using knowledge and techniques well grounded in the
region (thereby failing to separate professional from local knowledge), while
describing a phenomenon poorly suited to managerial oversight, it could find no
place within the new northern science-based administration. Rowan’s proposal
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marked the close of an era of viewing wildlife cycles as both a distinctively
northern phenomenon and as essential to the region’s economy.46 There was one
final irony. No one had done more than Elton to place northern cycles on the
scientific agenda, but as Gibson’s “very highly qualified and authoritative source,”
he also provided the convenient rationale for their removal.47
THE FRAGILE NORTH
APPROACHED BY AIR, the Mackenzie Delta exhibits few traces of humans amid
water, tundra, and sparse forest. Seismic lines are still faintly visible as open
paths about five meters wide and apparently infinite in length, most dating from
oil and gas exploration between the 1960s and 1980s. As one descends, traces
multiply: roads, an airstrip, the town of Inuvik.48 Signs of tundra erosion also
can be found, caused by the passage of vehicles decades ago. When they disturbed
the thin layer of soil, melting of the underlying permafrost slowly expanded tire
tracks into chasms, a process known as thermokarst erosion. By 1970 these signs,
and conflicting views regarding their meaning, would be near the center of a
national controversy.
The 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay had consequences not just for Alaska,
but for regions to the east. Similar geology along the north coast of Yukon and
the Northwest Territories raised hopes for oil and gas in Canada. The
consequences appeared sudden, and included a reshaping of the economic and
ultimately the environmental landscapes of the territories, yet it was a
transformation that some had sought for over a decade. Since the late 1950s, and
Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s commitment to open up northern resources,
oil and mineral exploration had been increasing, underpinned by the Geological
Survey’s preparatory work, and by incentives to industry. In Ottawa, the priority
was now on pursuing a vision of the North as a hinterland supplying mineral
wealth to the southern economy. In contrast, renewable resources such as caribou
were increasingly seen as mere vestiges of a soon to be displaced native economy.49
But by 1969 another vision of the North had gained prominence, coexisting
uneasily with this vision of an industrialized North. That year Jean Chretien,
Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, told a conference of
scientists “This audience doesn’t need to be told of the often fragile nature of
northern ecosystems and of the serious problems which can arise if man is
thoughtless in how he uses those ecosystems.”50 The same year, Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau spoke of how “Canada regards herself as the trustee for all
mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in
the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago.”51 And the following
February, Trudeau’s government proposed Northern Land Use Regulations
designed to protect this “unique and often fragile” landscape.52 Such initiatives
illustrated how the northern environment—widely seen, on the advice of
ecologists, as “fragile”—had gained national attention.
After 1969, oil and gas exploration and ambitious plans for development
gathered momentum. For their part, ecologists intended to play a large role in
SCIENCE AND SPACES
ensuring that the fragile environment would be considered in this development,
both through public controversy, and through advisory panels and other official
channels. At the core of their argument was the conviction that the North was a
distinctive landscape, uniquely fragile and requiring special care.
This notion of a fragile North had been developing for some time. Once, it
would have been seen as absurd. The history of Arctic exploration had
demonstrated that humans were the fragile party, in a vast and indifferent
landscape—sublimely beautiful, but terrifyingly harsh.53 Nor in the postwar era
of a manageable and legible North was there any implication of fragility, aside
from concerns regarding the status of caribou and a few other species, as well as
the impacts of fire—problems that, at any rate, were seen as suggesting the need
for more, not less, intervention.
In the postwar decade, however, signs accumulated of the human impacts. In
1965 concerns regarding the status of polar bears led to a pioneering circumpolar
agreement on their study, and eventually their protection.54 Evidence of the
presence of contaminants—first radioactive fallout, then pesticides—became
inescapable, tracking growing global concerns regarding these substances.55
These concerns reinforced a growing sense, already encouraged by new
technology, especially aviation, that the North was no longer remote.
Emerging impacts captured the attention of many scientists; they did not,
however, imply a general perception of northern fragility. Instead, this perception
of fragility stemmed from contemporaneous changes in the northern scientific
community. By the early 1960s, novel northern perspectives were emerging.
Ecologists, as well as scientists of other disciplines, were traveling north in
increasing numbers, responding to new sources of support, both financial and
logistical. In 1959, the Polar Continental Shelf Project, created to encourage
research on nearshore areas of the Arctic Ocean, began providing transportation
and housing for scientists. In 1962 the federal government began to subsidize
northern research at selected universities, encouraging creation of a network of
northern studies centers. In 1964, the Inuvik Research Centre opened, providing
a convenient base in the western Arctic. Four years later the National Museum
opened a research station at Polar Bear Pass. In 1969 the International Biological
Program made its entry in northern Canada, with a terrestrial ecology program
on Devon Island, and a smaller limnology study at Char Lake.56 With this support
came new infrastructure for northern research: aircraft, snow machines, and
heated labs, eliminating the need for special northern skills such as the ability
to drive a komatik (an Inuit sled), or even the endurance needed for long-distance
travel in the age before aviation. By 1970, the Canadian Wildlife Service, once the
dominant agency in northern wildlife and environmental research, had been
joined by a diverse array of academic scientists.57
These scientists brought with them a range of new research approaches, on
both traditional topics, such as caribou and polar bears, and on new topics,
such as energy flow within ecosystems. Much of this reflected the extension of
disciplinary perspectives into the region, as academic scientists took familiar
questions in geography, entomology, ecology, and other disciplines, and applied
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them to the northern environment. Together with the diminished need for
northern travel and survival skills, this extension of disciplines diminished
the view of the North as a distinct region. Indeed, the identity itself of the
“northern scientist” eroded away: scientists in the North achieved authority by
deploying the same disciplinary expertise as did those anywhere else on the
continent.58
Yet the northern environment imposed its own imperatives: With tundra,
permafrost, long winters, and everything else it could not simply be an outpost
of southern research programs. Scientists accordingly felt compelled to at least
attempt to reconcile their disciplinary perspectives with the special conditions
of the North. One approach was to examine specific features of the North that
could elucidate phenomena of wider interest. Entomologists furnished one
example: they sought to understand why there are so few Arctic insect species—a
conundrum with theoretical implications for the evolution and ecology of
insects.59 A contrasting approach was to embrace this distinctive environment
by arguing that it demanded a distinctively northern approach. One proponent
of this perspective was William Pruitt of the University of Manitoba. He and a
few colleagues in Canada and the Soviet Union argued that distinctive features
of the North, particularly the presence of snow, required its own discipline of
“boreal ecology.”60 Scientists therefore had contrasting perspectives on the
identity of the North: as a distinctive region, or as one explicable in terms of
disciplines and concepts originating far to the south.
Evidently, these perspectives had a geographic dimension, and as in
population studies a generation before, this was expressed through a proliferation
of networks enabling the flow of scientists, theories, and data between the region
and the rest of the world. These networks took several forms. Some, in effect,
simulated the environment itself, as understood by scientists. For example, the
circumpolar community of polar bear researchers gained impetus from an early
belief—disproved by the late 1960s—that the bears constituted a single
circumpolar population.61 Similarly, Canadian-Soviet cooperation in boreal
ecology was founded on the belief that regions with snow share fundamental
ecological similarities. Other networks (the IBP program was one example) linked
scientists sharing a common approach to ecosystem research.
Such was the scientific context in which, with the convergence of development
and the emergence of environmentalism, the northern Canadian environment
achieved in 1970 a sudden prominence. As did many of their colleagues elsewhere,
numerous Canadian ecologists chose to become advocates for northern
environmental protection. Trading on their authority as scientists, they asserted
that ecology demonstrated the peculiar sensitivity of the North. Beginning with
the generally accepted view that northern ecosystems were less diverse, they
argued that this implied that they were also less stable, and so more vulnerable
to disruption—in short, that they were more fragile. As Max Dunbar of McGill
University, for several decades one of Canada’s most influential northern
scientists, explained in 1968, “Ecosystem stability … is achieved by developing
SCIENCE AND SPACES
maximum complexity (diversity of species) and maximum rate of flow of energy
through the system. It is realized to the greatest degree in tropical environments,
less in temperate zones, and least in polar regions.” Reinforcing the point a few
pages later, he noted that “Arctic populations, as already demonstrated, exhibit
high fecundity, large body size, slow growth, and small numbers of species; the
resulting ecosystems are simple and unstable.”62
This perspective was invoked in both scientific treatments of the Arctic, and
in communications to broader audiences. As John Sprague, an aquatic biologist,
told a 1972 workshop on the Arctic environment, “In more complex southern
systems, the decline or disappearance of a few species is of small importance …
In the Arctic, the loss of a single key species could cause serious disruption …
Fragility of aquatic systems in the Arctic is therefore a valid description because
they lack diversity.”63 As Dunbar himself noted in a popular book on environmental
science published in 1971, the simplicity of Arctic systems, and the consequent
oscillations in species abundance, meant that the “upsetting of this already rather
shaky equilibrium by man’s activity is probably very easy to do, and hence one
must suppose that the north is more, rather than less, sensitive to pollutants and
other environmental dislocations.”64
Ecologists had reason to be confident about this argument. It was founded
on two of the best-supported ideas of their discipline. One was the common
observation that northern ecosystems tend to have fewer species—a feature that
had been drawing ecologists to the North as far back as Elton, and as recently
as the IBP scientists at Char Lake. The other was the generally accepted notion
of a relation between diversity and stability, its relevance to the North
established by scientific networks that, as I have noted, now linked north and
south. During the 1950s and 1960s the diversity/stability hypothesis—already
folk wisdom—received considerable support from ecologists. In 1955 Robert
MacArthur provided theoretical support for the idea. Three years later, Elton
argued at some length that more complex, diverse communities are also more
stable, citing the fluctuations observed in mathematical models of simplified
populations, the occurrence of population outbreaks in habitats and
communities simplified by humans, and the stability of species-rich tropical
forests. The diversity/stability hypothesis became a staple of textbooks and
ecological theory. G. Evelyn Hutchinson grounded his argument for ecosystem
evolution on the view that stability is proportional to diversity, and Eugene
Odum saw some correlation between diversity and stability, even if a causal
relationship remained unclear.65
To this theoretical foundation, ecologists added local evidence of fragility.
Damage caused to tundra by tracked vehicles, the vulnerability to exploitation of
slow-growing fish populations in northern lakes, even the ease with which nesting
birds were disturbed by aircraft —all became manifestations of fragility. Ecologists
combined this theoretical and empirical evidence in different ways. Those like
Pruitt and W. A. Fuller who sought an ecology grounded in the specifics of
northern ecosystems tended to define fragility in terms of local observations. In
contrast, ecologists like Dunbar who saw themselves as members of a wider
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ecological community considered fragility in terms of its consistency with theory.
Their common ground, however, was an effort to provide a contrary view of plans
for rapid development of northern resources. This advocacy reminds us that while
scientists were working within the structure of northern administration, indeed
were dependent on the state for support of their research, they could nevertheless
distance themselves from state policy.66
THE ECLIPSE OF FRAGILITY
IN THE EARLY 1970s northern oil and gas development received far more public
attention than had northern affairs two decades before. Nevertheless, debates in
1950 and in the early 1970s exhibited one similarity: a substantial role for science.
All parties involved, and especially industry and the federal government,
conducted or commissioned enormous, and enormously expensive, environmental
studies—often characterized as “crash” projects to stress their urgency—on the
potential effects of development. This research exhibited several motives. The
government sought an information base with which to assess development
applications, while industry was responding to requirements that applications
include extensive study of impacts; both parties also were seeking to demonstrate,
through the act of research itself, that they were taking environmental concerns
seriously.67
Given the prominence of both science and environmental concerns, it is
noteworthy that after initially serving as common currency in the debate, the
concept of ecological fragility largely disappeared. Instead, the region came to
be seen as a place where such industrial impacts, while potentially serious, could
be managed through the same techniques of environmental assessment and
management being applied elsewhere in Canada. In other words, the northern
environment had no distinctive fragility. Neither did ecologists, who had urged
attention to this fragility, any longer have a special role to play in decisions
regarding this environment.
One illustration is the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, conducted between
1974 and 1977 by Judge Thomas Berger. In his report on the proposal for a natural
gas pipeline, Berger, while briefly noting the simplicity of local ecological
communities, devoted most of his discussion of environmental impacts to specific
features of northern ecology, such as critical nesting sites for birds, caribou
migration routes, and the implications of building on permafrost.68 Other
environmental research documents from this period suggest the same pattern,
of little or no mention of the simplicity or fragility of Arctic ecological
communities.
Part of the explanation for this can be traced to ecologists’ efforts to revise
their discipline’s views on stability and diversity. On the basis of models of
interacting populations, ecologists like Robert May were by the early 1970s
arguing that systems with more species are, in fact, often less stable than those
with fewer. Empirical evidence provided corroboration. For example, the inability
of tropical rainforests to recover from cutting suggested that diversity was not
necessarily linked to a capacity to maintain stability.69 Equally significant was a
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change occurring in the understanding of stability itself. Once considered
primarily in terms of constancy, stability (or, more precisely, resilience) was now
redefined as the capacity of an ecological system to recover from disturbance.
This, in turn, reflected an evolving perspective on the significance of change and
disturbance. Nature was seen less as a static, closely regulated system, than as a
system in motion, subject to disturbance.70
This new perspective became widely accepted among northern ecologists,
particularly those accustomed to thinking in terms of general theory. Dunbar,
somewhat disingenuously, even seemingly denied that he and other biologists
had ever insisted on the fragility of the Arctic: the “popular reputation for fragility
which the Arctic has achieved in the daily, weekly, and monthly press appears to
be based entirely upon the damage that heavy vehicles and miscellaneous
engineering activities can wreak on permafrost terrain, on the tundra. This is a
very specialized and local sort of fragility.”71 Dunbar also explored the application
of resilience theory to northern phenomena. While he noted that several species
in the region might fluctuate in abundance, because their populations extend
over large areas, they were resilient to local disturbances. Lemmings, for example,
could respond to local extinctions by replenishment from elsewhere in their range:
a case of local instability, but broader resilience.72 But the relevance of this new
theory to the North was not uncontested. In particular, Pruitt, having urged the
need for an ecological approach specific to the North, was unlikely to disparage
any northern phenomenon as merely “local.” He also resisted this new theoretical
definition of stability. Boreal ecosystems, he maintained, were indeed fragile.73
But Pruitt was definitely in the minority. For many ecologists, it was not just
theory but experience that encouraged skepticism regarding diversity, stability,
and fragility. The theory simply didn’t fit with field observations. While on a
regionwide basis tundra may be less diverse than a similar area in a temperate
climate, this masked the complex mosaic of microhabitats characteristic of
tundra, resulting in much greater complexity at the local level. In other words,
perceptions of ecological simplicity appeared at least in part to be a matter of
scale. This became especially evident to the biologists involved in the
Conservation of Terrestrial Ecosystems component of the IBP. Between 1968 and
1976 they identified the areas of greatest interest ecologically, and most
vulnerable to development. Such areas tended, not surprisingly, to be among the
most diverse ecosystems in the region. Urging legal protection of these sites
became a centerpiece of biologists’ advocacy efforts—and in these efforts, a theory
insisting that it was less diverse ecosystems that were more vulnerable was
decidedly less helpful.74
Shifts in theory and in the field can help in understanding the eclipse of
fragility, but they cannot provide a complete explanation. Elsewhere, the diversity/
stability hypothesis is still sometimes invoked, as are other “ecological” principles
that now elicit skepticism from ecologists.75 In the North, however, the hypothesis
is no longer invoked, and this suggests other factors were at work. To identify
these, we need, as we did in examining the decline of explanations based on
wildlife cycles, to consider the wider context of northern ecology.
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One aspect of this context was the decline of ecologists’ role in the practice of
environmental management. Regulatory processes for northern development had
a large appetite for expertise. At first, this demand was met by university
ecologists. For example, they were called upon to help examine environmental
problems in the Mackenzie Delta region, and propose appropriate land use
regulations.76 Such tasks, however, were soon taken over by newly created
consulting firms. More responsive than university ecologists to the requirements
of government and industry, these firms soon adopted an active role in designing
techniques for impact research, perpetuating in the North a pattern that became
characteristic across North America, of the separation of basic ecology from
research relevant to environmental regulation and management.77 This trend was
accelerated after 1973, when the federal government adopted a “make or buy”
policy, explicitly favoring consulting firms as its primary source of expert
knowledge, with the goal of building a viable environmental consulting industry.78
In such a context, dominated by consulting firms serving their clients’ desires to
accommodate both development and environmental regulations, the general
ecological concept of fragility could play little effective role. Thus phenomena
such as tundra erosion ceased to be indicators of northern fragility, but simply
examples of poor management practice.
Finally, and most important, the social context of northern science was
transformed during the 1970s. Northern native peoples—constituting a majority
of the territorial population—had remained largely excluded from decisions
affecting the land on which they lived. Over this decade, however, they gained a
stronger voice, such that their views, if not determinative, at least had to be
considered. They asserted forcefully that the land remained essential to them as
a source of country foods, and as the basis of their social and cultural identity.79
As indigenous peoples around the world were beginning to point out, a focus on
preserving pristine wilderness placed this identity at risk.80 Northern natives
therefore formed part of a global assertion by indigenous peoples of local rights
over land. Reinforcing this view, northern natives, as part of the process of
negotiating land claims, had to show that they still occupied the land, traveled
widely over it, and used it to meet food and other needs. Through this exercise
they demonstrated that the North, far from being untouched, was in fact as much
a cultural as a natural landscape, in which the human presence was intrinsic to
its identity.81 Together, these assertions—of the continuing importance of the land
to native well being and identity, and the denial of the notion of pristine
wilderness—were inimical to claims of ecological fragility.
LOCATING THE NORTH
TRACES OF SCIENCE ARE everywhere evident in northern images: of dramatic
cycles in wildlife testifying to the instability of life in this harsh environment;
wildlife capable of a stable yield, if professionally managed; a wilderness uniquely
vulnerable to human impacts; or a region in which both development and some
level of environmental protection could be achieved. Science and scientists have
long been central to northern perspectives in Canada, and have acted as the sharp
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edge of southern intervention, essential to extracting resources, imposing
legibility, and asserting sovereign control.82
But the northern environment was far from a passive object of study. Rather,
it actively shaped scientists’ agendas and practices. Most obviously, its distinctive
natural phenomena—tundra, permafrost, caribou migrations, less diverse
ecological communities—imposed its own selection on scientists, attracting those
seeking knowledge specific to the North, or who believed these phenomena held
more general implications. Scientific practices also had to conform to local
conditions. Technologies of travel and survey—from the komatik to the airplane—
exemplified scientists’ encounter with northern distances and terrain, while
subtly implying certain relationships with northern native peoples. Nature
resisted efforts to have it conform to southern methods and bureaucratic agendas,
as was evident in the difficulties scientists experienced in adapting wildlife survey
techniques to the dispersed patterns of caribou migration, and in the havoc that
natural variability (such as unusual ice conditions) caused in short-term “crash”
environmental impact research projects.83 Perhaps most pervasive was the impact
of the environment on the institutional structure of postwar northern science.
The difficulties involved in getting there and getting around obligated scientists
to rely on public agencies for support. To an unusual degree, therefore, northern
science was closely associated with federal agendas. This was encouraged by the
lack of alternative funding sources. Canada’s National Research Council long
refused to acknowledge in its funding policies the distinctive challenges of
northern research (although, to be sure, the Arctic Institute of North America
provided a partial alternative to public funding).84 Thus the northern environment
was implicated in the coproduction of northern scientific activity and political
and economic affairs.
One question was evident throughout the postwar intertwining of science,
the environment, and development: did this northern space require special
scientific approaches, or could those developed elsewhere be applied here? From
the diverse responses to this question emerged strikingly geographical patterns
of scientific ideas and practice. These included:
· Contrasting views on whether dramatic fluctuations in animal populations
were distinctive to the North, or more widespread, with Canadian researchers
tending to argue the former, and researchers elsewhere the latter,
· Scientific advice regarding caribou populations that was considered more
reliable than local knowledge, although the scientists had little northern
experience, and used census techniques developed elsewhere,
· The view, justified on theoretical grounds, of a relation between stability
and diversity in northern ecological communities, which was subsequently
displaced by the view, again on theoretical grounds, but also based on local
experience, that this relation was doubtful, and irrelevant to local conditions,
· The displacement of ecologists from advisory roles in northern development
and environmental management by new forms of expertise, centered in
consulting firms, that were considered more relevant to local regulatory and
managerial challenges,
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· The formation of the field of boreal ecology by scientists who argued that
regions with significant snow cover have a distinctive ecology, and
· Shifting networks of northern science: initially centered on the United
Kingdom, before being displaced by American perspectives, particularly in
wildlife science; in addition, the formation of circumpolar networks of
science, in such areas as polar bear studies and boreal ecology.
Several analytical perspectives are available to assist in understanding spatial
patterns in the formation, assertion of authority, and application of scientific
knowledge. These focus on the coproduction of science and political authority
within institutions, knowledge relations between center and periphery in states
or empires, and the assurance of the authority of knowledge through its capacity
to travel beyond the context of its creation. However, none of these pay appropriate
regard to the interaction between structures of scientific knowledge and
authority—that is, disciplines—and local environments. Two aspects of this
interaction are particularly neglected. One is that the extension of scientific
authority is often disengaged from formal political institutions, whether empires
or managerial agencies. Instead, it is embodied in networks of professional
relations that exist in space, and may cross political and institutional boundaries.
The second aspect is that often the authority of knowledge is attached not to
forms of knowledge that have the capacity to be mobile, but to knowledge that is
considered relevant to local conditions, and is respectful of local political
imperatives.
These considerations suggest a need for a new analytical perspective on which
to build a better understanding of the roles of scientists in northern Canada, and
more generally, of the interaction between knowledge and space—the chief agenda
of efforts to combine environmental history and the history of science. This
perspective can be provided by the concept of “disciplinary space,” definable as
the territory in which the concepts and methods particular to a discipline are
considered authoritative and relevant. Just as the dissemination of a scientific
theory or method from its point of origin is not simply the consequence of its
inherent virtues, a disciplinary space must be asserted.85 It is thus the physical
manifestation of scientists’ efforts to convince others—other scientists, or those
in a position to apply their results—that the methods and conclusions of their
discipline are locally reliable. When, for example, Canadian Wildlife Service
biologists argued that wildlife biology provided the most reliable estimates of
caribou populations, this exemplified the extension of their disciplinary space
into this region. Similarly, the once-accepted view that northern ecosystems were
more fragile because they had fewer species exemplified the extension of the
disciplinary space of ecology into the North. A third example is boreal ecology:
its adherents have argued, in effect, that its disciplinary space encompasses the
circumpolar region. Disciplinary space signifies, in short, that a discipline has a
geography, and can be mapped.86
This mapping can be pursued in at least two dimensions. One is the cognitive:
a disciplinary space is evident when scientists agree that the phenomena across
a space—the Arctic, all deserts, the entire world—can be explained by, and can
SCIENCE AND SPACES
contribute to elaboration of, the concepts of a discipline. For example, when Elton
argued in the 1920s that patterns of change in northern animal populations had
something interesting to say to ecologists everywhere, he was arguing for the
extension of the disciplinary space of ecology to the Arctic. A second and related
dimension is the social: the networks that bind scientists with common interests,
like that of circumpolar polar bear specialists or the ecologists centered on
Oxford’s Bureau of Animal Population. Both the cognitive and social dimensions
of a disciplinary space bind it together, easing through ties of authority and trust
the flow of knowledge within it.
Disciplinary spaces are dynamic: They expand, contract and shift as the ideas
of a discipline become more or less plausible or useful within a region. The postwar
flow of scientists into the North, carrying with them concepts and methods
learned in southern universities, constituted a major expansion of disciplinary
spaces into the region, with a consequent eroding, as I have noted, of the social
identity of the “northern scientist,” and of the related idea that one needed
northern experience to speak authoritatively about the North. Extending
disciplinary space thus also involved the construction of boundaries between
scientific and local knowledge: one was to be considered reliable, the other as
mere folklore.87 On the other hand, in the 1970s the declining authority of
ecologists in northern regulatory practice signified the contraction of their
disciplinary space. Similarly, skepticism emerging since the 1970s regarding
wildlife biologists’ estimates of caribou abundance illustrates the erosion of their
disciplinary space, and the reassertion of local, indigenous knowledge.88
The North has many identities, defined by the natural spaces of boreal forest,
tundra and ocean; by the political spaces of territories, land claim regions, the
federal government, and circumpolar regimes; and by the disciplinary spaces of
the systems of knowledge by which humans have attempted to make sense of the
region. Scientists have played numerous roles in northern decisions, justifying
its exploitation and sometimes its protection, with their authority and influence
shaped not just by the knowledge they contributed, but by ideas about how the
North relates—physically, politically, and cognitively—to Canada and the world.
Open to, and increasingly threatened by, forces from the south, it continues its
paradoxical existence as a distinctive realm, inseparable from the rest of the
planet.
Bocking
Ste phen Bockin
g is professor of environmental history and policy at Trent
University. His most recent book is Nature’s Experts: Science, Politics, and the
Environment (Rutgers, 2004). His current research projects include a history of
northern environmental science, a comparative study of the science and politics
of salmon farming in North America and Europe, and a study of the history of
urban environmental expertise.
NOTES
1.
I. Norman Smith, ed., The Unbelievable Land: 29 Experts Bring Us Closer to the Arctic
(Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1964), xi.
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2. William Cronon, “Cutting Loose or Running Aground?” Journal of Historical Geography
20 (1994): 38-43; Cronon was commenting on David Demeritt, “Ecology, Objectivity
and Critique in Writings on Nature and Human Societies,” Journal of Historical
Geography 20 (1994): 22-37.
3. As Alan Baker notes, it is important to avoid conflating the significance of specific
places and of the spatial relations between places; Alan R. H. Baker, Geography and
History: Bridging the Divide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 66-68.
However, one theme of this essay is that these geographical phenomena may interact
closely.
4. Suzanne Zeller, Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a
Transcontinental Nation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987); Stéphane
Castonguay, “Naturalizing Federalism: Insect Outbreaks and the Centralization of
Entomological Research in Canada, 1884-1914,” Canadian Historical Review 85 (2004):
1-34; Richard Rajala, Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest: Production, Science, and
Regulation, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998); Matthew D. Evenden, Fish versus Power:
An Environmental History of the Fraser River (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004).
5. Joseph E. Taylor, III, Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest
Fisheries Crisis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999); Donald Worster, Rivers
of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992); James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to
Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
6. Peder Anker, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895-1945
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism:
Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 16001860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin,
eds., Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1997).
7. Sheila Jasanoff and Marybeth Long Martello, eds., Earthly Politics: Local and Global
in Environmental Governance (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004).
8. Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1999); James Corner and Alex S. MacLean, Taking Measures
Across the American Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Stephen
Bocking, Ecologists and Environmental Politics: A History of Contemporary Ecology
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Evenden, Fish versus Power, 84-117.
9. On the issues involved in the assertion of scientific authority, see Stephen Bocking,
Nature’s Experts: Science, Politics, and the Environment (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2004), 16-44.
10. On distance in the north, see Bill Waiser, “A Very Long Journey: Distance and Northern
History,” in Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History, ed.
Kerry Abel and Ken S. Coates (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2001), 37-44.
11. The best discussion of these issues examines Danish Arctic science: Christopher Ries,
“Lauge Koch and the Mapping of North East Greenland: Tradition and Modernity in
Danish Arctic Research, 1920-1940,” in Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of
Nordic Scientific Practices, ed. Michael Bravo and Sverker Sorlin (Canton, MA: Science
History Publications, 2002).
12. Trevor H. Levere, Science and the Canadian Arctic: A Century of Exploration, 18181918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Francis Spufford, I May Be Some
Time: Ice and the English Imagination (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999); Suzanne
Zeller, “Classical Codes: Biogeographical Assessments of Environment in Victorian
Canada,” Journal of Historical Geography 24 (1998): 20-35.
SCIENCE AND SPACES
13. To film this scene, lemmings trapped in Manitoba were shipped to Alberta, then thrown
off a cliff into a river. See Dennis Chitty, Do Lemmings Commit Suicide? Beautiful
Hypotheses and Ugly Facts (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 7, 210. The
spectacle was apparently convincing—one reviewer praised the filmmakers’ portrayal
of the lemmings “making their traditional, mysterious ‘death march’ to the sea”
(Howard Thompson, New York Times, August 13, 1958). On Disney and the staging of
wildlife spectacle on film, see Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature: America’s Romance with
Wildlife on Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 109-31.
14. For an overview of population cycles, see Lloyd B. Keith, Wildlife’s Ten-Year Cycle
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963).
15. Ernest Thompson Seton, The Arctic Prairies (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911);
C. Gordon Hewitt, The Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1921).
16. Charles Elton, “Periodic Fluctuations in the Numbers of Animals: Their Causes and
Effects,” British Journal of Experimental Biology 2 (1924): 119-63. He also repeated
here the legend of mass migration and suicide of lemmings, based on a credulous
account from Robert Collett, a Norwegian biologist (See Anker, Imperial Ecology, 97).
17. Charles Elton, Animal Ecology (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1927); Anker, Imperial
Ecology, 98-99; David Lee Cox, Charles Elton and the Emergence of Modern Ecology
(PhD diss., Washington University, 1979), 28-31.
18. Aldo Leopold, Game Management (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933).
19. See, for example, C. H. D. Clarke, “Fluctuations in Ruffed Grouse, Bonasa umbellus (Linné)
with Special Reference to Ontario,” University of Toronto Studies, Biology Series 41 (1936):
1-118; D. A. MacLulich, “Fluctuations in the Numbers of the Varying Hare (Lepus
americanus),” University of Toronto Studies, Biology Series 43 (1937): 1-136.
20. J. R. Dymond, “Fluctuations in Animal Populations with Special Reference To Those
of Canada,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 41 (1947): 1-34.
21. Charles Elton, Voles, Mice and Lemmings: Problems in Population Dynamics (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1942), “Preface,” unpaginated.
22. Ibid., 462. Much of the administration of these questionnaires was done by Mary
Nicholson and Helen Chitty; in particular, Chitty maintained the surveys during World
War II, when the main focus of the Bureau of Animal Population became rodent control.
23. Helen Chitty, “The Snowshoe Rabbit Enquiry, 1946-48,” Journal of Animal Ecology 19
(1950): 15-20; Helen Chitty, “Canadian Arctic Wild Life Enquiry, 1943-49: With a
Summary of Results Since 1933,” Journal of Animal Ecology 19 (1950): 180-93; Charles
Elton and Mary Nicholson, “Fluctuations in Numbers of the Muskrat (Ondatra
zibethica) in Canada,” Journal of Animal Ecology, 11 (1942): 96-126.
24. Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, Restless Energy: A Biography of William Rowan, 18911957 (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1993).
25. R. A. Gibson to William Rowan, April 21, 1950, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds, Record
Group 109, Box 438, WL. U. 300–9, pt. 3, Libraries and Archives Canada (hereafter
LAC), Ottawa.
26. Frank Banfield to Harrison Lewis, December 18, 1949, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds,
Record Group 109, vol. 395, WL. U. 228 (4), LAC; Harrison Lewis to R. A. Gibson, February
6, 1950, Northern Affairs Program Sous-Fonds, Record Group 85, vol. 88, File 204–2
[1], LAC; J. R. B. Coleman, memo for Deputy Minister, April 19, 1960, Canadian Wildlife
Service Fonds, Record Group 109, vol. 438, File WL. U.–300–9, pt. 1, LAC.
27. Charles Elton to Harrison Lewis, March 15, 1950, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds,
Record Group 109, Box 438, WL. U.–300–9, pt. 3, LAC.
28. Harrison Lewis to R. A. Gibson, December 29, 1949, Canadian Wildlife Service, Record
Group 109, Box 438, WL. U. 300–9, pt. 3, LAC; Marianne Ainley discusses Rowan’s
personality and style of scientific research: Ainley, Restless Energy.
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29. Sharon Kingsland, Modeling Nature: Episodes in the History of Population Ecology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
30. As Elton remarked to Lewis: “the mere charting of fluctuations from a distance,
however efficiently done, will not give us an ecological analysis.” Charles Elton to
Harrison Lewis, March 15, 1950, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds, Record Group 109,
Box 438, WL. U. 300–9, p. 3. On Elton’s postwar approach to ecological survey: Charles
Elton and Richard S. Miller, “The Ecological Survey of Animal Communities: With a
Practical System of Classifying Habitats by Structural Characters,” Journal of Ecology
42 (1954): 460-96.
31. Lamont C. Cole, “Some Features of Random Population Cycles,” Journal of Wildlife
Management 18 (1954): 2-24. On the social heterogeneity of field practice, see Robert
E. Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 194-98.
32. Harrison Lewis, memo for R. A. Gibson, May 17, 1950, Canadian Wildlife Service, Record
Group 109, Box 438, WL. U. 300–9, pt. 3, LAC.
33. Peter J. Usher, “Caribou Crisis or Administrative Crisis? Wildlife and Aboriginal
Policies on the Barren Grounds of Canada, 1947-60,” in Cultivating Arctic Landscapes:
Knowing and Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North, ed. David G. Anderson and
Mark Nuttall (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 172-99.
34. John Sandlos, “From the Outside Looking in: Aesthetics, Politics, and Wildlife
Conservation in the Canadian North,” Environmental History 6 (2001): 6-31.
35. On relocation policies in the North, see Frank James Tester and Peter Kulchyski,
Tammarniit (Mistakes); Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic 1939-63 (Vancouver:
UBC Press, 1994); Alan Rudolph Marcus, Relocating Eden: The Image and Politics of
Inuit Exile in the Canadian Arctic (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995).
On the role of the Canadian Wildlife Service in resource surveys in support of native
relocation, see “Resource Studies for Proposed Relocation of Eskimos,” memo prepared
for meeting of Northern Research Committee, December 29, 1958, Canadian Wildlife
Service Fonds, Record Group 109, vol. 108, WL. U. 8-59; and W. Winston Mair to M. H.
Greenwood, March 14, 1960, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds, Record Group 109, vol.
22, WL. T. 200–Foxes [1], LAC.
36. John P. Kelsall, The Migratory Barren-Ground Caribou of Canada (Ottawa: Queen’s
Printer, 1968), 148.
37. Tina Loo, States of Nature: Conserving Canada’s Wildlife in the Twentieth Century
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 93-120; minutes of meeting of Advisory Board on
Wildlife Preservation, April 28, 1948, Northern Affairs Program Sous-Fonds, Record
Group 85-D-1-A, vol. 147, File part 5=1942-1951, LAC; W. E. Stevens, “The Northwestern
Muskrat of the Mackenzie Delta, Northwest Territories, 1947-48,” Canadian Wildlife
Service, Wildlife Management Bull., Ser. 1, No. 8, 1953.
38. Shelagh D. Grant, Sovereignty or Security? Government Policy in the Canadian North
1936-1950 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1988); Morris Zaslow, The Northward Expansion of
Canada, 1914-1967 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988).
39. D. J. Goodspeed, A History of the Defence Research Board of Canada (Ottawa: Queen’s
Printer, 1958); Morris Zaslow, Reading the Rocks: The Story of the Geological Survey
of Canada, 1842-1972 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1975).
40. J. Alexander Burnett provides an appreciative history of the Service: A Passion for
Wildlife: The History of the Canadian Wildlife Service (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003).
41. Harrison Lewis, memorandum [on proposal for Biological Survey of Canada] to Hoyes
Lloyd, December 18, 1939, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds, Record Group 109, vol.
38, File WL. U. 1-1 [1], LAC.
42. Alan MacEachern, “Rationality and Rationalization in Canadian National Parks
Predator Policy,” in Consuming Canada: Readings in Environmental History, ed. Chad
SCIENCE AND SPACES
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
Gaffield and Pam Gaffield (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1995), 197-212. As Ian McTaggartCowan noted after two years of scientific work in national parks, “[m]any of the wardens
are violently hypercritical of any individual entering what they consider to be their
domain,” hence the need for an independent scientific service (McTaggart-Cowan to
James Smart, December 17, 1945, Parks Canada Fonds, Record Group 84, Series A-2-v,
vol. 2140, File U300, LAC).
Frank Banfield, “Preliminary Investigation of the Barren-Ground Caribou,” Canadian
Wildlife Service, Wildlife Management Bulletin, Series 1, No. 10A & 10B, 1954; John
Kelsall, “Continued Barren-Ground Caribou Studies,” Canadian Wildlife Service,
Wildlife Management Bulletin Series 1, no. 12, 1957.
On legibility and government administration, see Scott, Seeing Like a State. On the
change in attitudes regarding legibility and the North compare comments on caribou
before and after the war: after a 1936 survey C. H. D. Clarke wrote that “It is to be
hoped that there will never be so few caribou that it will be possible to count them”; in
1949 Harrison Lewis commented to the Northwest Territories Council regarding not
knowing how many caribou there were: “It is very difficult to carry on efficient and
reasonable administration of a resource when the Department is so extremely ignorant
about it.” (Clarke, “A Biological Investigation of the Thelon Game Sanctuary,” National
Museum of Canada, Bull. 96 [1940], 101; Lewis statement in extract from minutes of
189th session of Northwest Territories Council, March 24, 1949, Canadian Wildlife
Service Fonds, Record Group 109, vol. 394, File WL. U. 228, pt. 3, LAC).
Instructing Kelsall on aerial survey techniques for caribou, Banfield explained that
“It is better to fly where the pilots and residents say there are caribou to be found.”
(Frank Banfield to John Kelsall, January 4, 1950, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds,
Record Group 109, vol. 395, WL. U. 228 [4]; on contemporary aerial survey techniques
and sources of error, see Helmut Buechner, Irven Buss and Homer Bryan, “Censusing
Elk by Airplane in the Blue Mountains of Washington,” Journal of Wildlife Management
15 (1951): 81-87; and Daniel Leedy, “Aerial Photographs, Their Interpretation and
Suggested Uses in Wildlife Management,” Journal of Wildlife Management 12 (1948):
191-210. Even in 1950 doubts were expressed regarding the accuracy of Banfield’s initial
caribou assessment, but these remained a private matter (Ian McTaggart-Cowan to
Harrison Lewis, November 2, 1950, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds, Record Group
109, vol. 395, WL. U. 228 [4]).
Research on northern population cycles continued: Frank Pitelka initiated a research
program on lemming populations in Alaska, as did Charles Krebs in the Canadian
sub-Arctic. In both cases the focus was on understanding the mechanisms by which
animal populations are regulated: both conceptually and economically, a topic of no
special relevance to the North. See Pitelka, “Some Characteristics of Microtine Cycles
in the Arctic,” in Arctic Biology, ed. H. P. Hansen (Corvallis: Oregon State University
Press, 1967 [paper originally presented in 1957]), 73-88; Charles Krebs, “The Lemming
Cycle at Baker Lake, Northwest Territories, During 1959-62,” Arctic Institute of North
America, Tech. Paper No. 15 (1964). In the late 1950s an unsuccessful effort to develop
a joint Canadian Wildlife Service-university program on populations would
demonstrate that the factors identified in this essay continued to discourage such
research.
There is no evidence that Elton intended for Gibson to use his comments in this way.
He had only suggested delay until Chitty was available.
Author’s observations: flights from Yellowknife to Inuvik, and Inuvik to Aklavik.
An excellent discussion of the political and economic consequences of northern oil
and gas development is Robert Page, Northern Development: The Canadian Dilemma
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986); see, also, David Judd, “Canada’s Northern
Policy: Retrospect and Prospect,” Polar Record 14 (1969): 593-602. For contemporary
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50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
statements of the priority placed on mineral resources in northern development, see
Third National Northern Development Conference, October 21-23, 1964 (Edmonton:
The Conference, 1964).
“Statement from the Honourable Jean Chrétien, Minister of Indian Affairs and
Northern Development,” in Productivity and Conservation in Northern Circumpolar
Lands: Proceedings of a Conference, 15 to 17 October 1969, ed. W. A. Fuller and P. G.
Kevan (Morges, Switzerland: International Union for Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources, 1970), 9.
Statement in House of Commons, October 24, 1969, quoted in James Woodford, The
Violated Vision: The Rape of Canada’s North (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972),
100.
Quoted in J. C. Ritchie et al., “Mackenzie Delta Area Task Force Report,” Unpublished
report, July 31, 1970, copy in library of Arctic Institute of North America, University of
Calgary.
Trevor Levere, Science and the Canadian Arctic: A Century of Exploration, 1818-1918
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Anne Fikkan, Gail Osherenko, and Alexander Arikainen, “Polar Bears: The Importance
of Simplicity,” in Polar Politics: Creating International Environmental Regimes, ed.
Oran Young and Gail Osherenko (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 96-151.
L. A. Barrie et al., “Arctic Contaminants: Sources, Occurrence and Pathways,” Science
of the Total Environment 122 (1992): 1-74; David Leonard Downie and Terry Fenge, eds.,
Northern Lights Against POPs: Combatting Toxic Threats in the Arctic (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).
E. F. Roots, “Canadian Polar Continental Shelf Project, 1959-62,” Polar Record 11 (1962):
270-76; on northern university research in the early 1960s, see Trevor Lloyd, 34-39, in
Third National Northern Development Conference; L. C. Bliss, ed., Truelove Lowland,
Devon Island, Canada: A High Arctic Ecosystem (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press,
1977).
John Sandlos, “Where the Scientists Roam: Ecology, Management and Bison in
Northern Canada,” Journal of Canadian Studies 37 (Summer 2002): 93-129.
The change is especially evident in comparing these more recent disciplinary priorities
to the praise most often extended—in obituaries or elsewhere—to northern scientists
active before the 1940s: celebration of their special northern skills of travel and
survival. Tom Manning, for example, was the “the man who out-eskimoed the Eskimo,”
quoted in Nicholas Polunin, Arctic Unfolding (London: Hutchinson, 1949), 30; see
Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes, 10; and, especially, Sverker Sörlin, “Rituals and
Resources of Natural History: The North and the Arctic in Swedish Scientific
Nationalism,” in Narrating the Arctic, ed. Bravo and Sörlin, 73-122.
J. A. Downes, “What is an Arctic Insect?” Canadian Entomologist 94 (1962): 143-62;
Downes, “Arctic Insects and Their Environment,” Canadian Entomologist 96 (1964):
143-62.
William Pruitt, Boreal Ecology (London: Edward Arnold, 1978). Soviet work on the
ecology of snow helped convince Pruitt of its significance, and he worked on
strengthening ties with Soviet ecologists, beginning with translating and republishing
a 1946 document: A. N. Formozov, “Snow Cover as an Integral Factor of the Environment
and its Importance in the Ecology of Mammals and Birds,” Boreal Institute for
Northern Studies, Occas. Publ. No. 1, 1964. See, also, William Pruitt, “FormozovInspired Concepts in Snow Ecology in North America,” Bulletin of the Moscow Society
of Naturalists, Biological Series 104 (1999): 13-22.
C. R. Harington, “First International Scientific Conference on the Polar Bear, Canadian
Wildlife Service Brief,” August 1965, Canadian Wildlife Service Fonds, Record Group
109, vol. 19, File WL. T. 200–Bears, Polar, file #3, LAC.
SCIENCE AND SPACES
62. M. J. Dunbar, Ecological Development in Polar Regions: A Study in Evolution
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 66-67, 73.
63. John Sprague, “Aquatic Resources in the Canadian North: Knowledge, Dangers and
Research Needs,” in Arctic Alternatives, ed. Douglas Pimlott, Kitson Vincent and
Christine McKnight (Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1973), 171.
64. M. J. Dunbar, Environment and Good Sense (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
1971), 58.
65. R. H. MacArthur, “Fluctuations of Animal Populations, and a Measure of Community
Stability,” Ecology 36 (1955): 533-36; Charles Elton, The Ecology of Invasions by Animals
and Plants (London: Methuen, 1958); G. E. Hutchinson, “Homage to Santa Rosalia; or,
Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals?” American Naturalist 93 (1959): 145-59; E.
P. Odum, “The Strategy of Ecosystem Development,” Science 164 (1969): 262-70.
66. See also Sandlos, “Where the Scientists Roam.”
67. The chief products of these studies were limited circulation report series of many
volumes—“gray literature”—little of which appeared in the formal scientific literature.
68. Thomas Berger, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie
Valley Pipeline Inquiry (Ottawa: Department of Supply and Services, 1977); Page,
Northern Development; Paul Sabin, “Voices from the Hydrocarbon Frontier: Canada’s
Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (1974-1977),” Environmental History Review 19
(1995): 17-48.
69. R. M. May, Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1973); D. Goodman, “The Theory of Diversity-Stability Relationships
in Ecology,” Quarterly Review of Biology 50 (1975): 237-66.
70. C. S. Holling, “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems,” Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics 4 (1973): 1-23.
71. M. J. Dunbar, “Stability and Fragility in Arctic Ecosystems,” Arctic 26 (1973): 183.
72. Dunbar, “Stability and Fragility.” An analogous melding of general theory and local
evidence also contributed to revision of ideas regarding fire in the northern boreal
forest: E. A. Johnson and J. S. Rowe, Fire and Vegetation Change in the Western
Subarctic (Ottawa: DIAND, 1977); Ross Wein and David MacLean, eds., The Role of Fire
in Northern Circumpolar Ecosystems (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1983).
73. Pruitt, Boreal Ecology.
74. Canadian Committee for the International Biological Program, Northern Ecological
Sites (Ottawa: CC-IBP, 1975).
75. Bocking, Nature’s Experts, 69.
76. Ritchie et al., “Mackenzie Delta Area.”
77. Stephen Bocking, Ecologists and Environmental Politics: A History of Contemporary
Ecology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
78. For a contemporary discussion of the consequences of these research policies, see R.
R. Wallace, “Environmental Impact Research: A Time for Choices,” Alternatives 9 (1981):
42-48.
79. George Wenzel, Animal Rights, Human Rights: Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the
Canadian Arctic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991); on natives and northern
politics, see John David Hamilton, Arctic Revolution: Social Change in the Northwest
Territories, 1935-1994 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1994).
80. Ramachandra Guha, “The Authoritarian Biologist and the Arrogance of AntiHumanism: Wildlife Conservation in the Third World,” The Ecologist 27 (1997): 14-20.
81. Milton Freeman Research Limited, Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project (Ottawa:
Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1976).
82. It is surprising, therefore, that studies of the place of the North in Canada rarely
consider science, doubly since scientific activity has exhibited many of the themes
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seen in literary and artistic representations of the North, such as conquest, resistance,
sublimity, distinctiveness, and masculine identity. See Sherrill Grace, Canada and the
Idea of North (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); Renée Hulan,
Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2002).
83. Douglas Pimlott, Dougald Brown, and Kenneth Sam, Oil Under the Ice (Ottawa:
Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1976), 120.
84 . Peter Larkin, “Science and the North: An Essay on Aspirations,” in Northern
Transitions, Second National Workshop on People, Resources and the Environment
North of 60°, ed. Robert Keith and Janet Wright (Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources
Committee, 1978), 119-27.
85. A deliberate analogy is with the political space occupied by a nation-state—the product
of the assertion (through shared institutions, values, economic interests, a soccer team)
of a common identity across a territory. See Scott, Seeing Like a State; and Benedict
Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1996).
86. The concept of disciplinary space is based on a large literature, but three sources are
worth special mention: David Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place: Geographies
of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Robert Kohler,
Landscapes and Labscapes; and Matthew Evenden, “A View from the Bush: Space,
Environment and the Historiography of Science,” Scientia Canadensis 28 (2005): 2737.
87. On boundary formation in science, see Thomas Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science:
Credibility on the Line (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
88. Milton Freeman, “Graphs and Gaffs: A Cautionary Tale in the Common-Property
Resources Debate,” in Common Property Resources: Ecology and Community-Based
Sustainable Development, ed. Fikret Berkes (London: Belhaven Press, 1989), 92-109.