Canadian Arctic
Categories: Regions of Canada | Arctic
Technically, the term covers that portion of Canada north of the Arctic Circle. An alternate, more practical definition is that portion north of the tree line (a definition that includes Canada's geographical centre): covering most of Nunavut, and the northernmost parts of the Northwest Territories, Yukon, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and Labrador.
A political definition, referred to as The North or Northern Canada, consists of Canada's three territories: Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut (which includes all islands in Hudson Bay).
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Territoriality
Since 1925, Canada has claimed the portion of the Arctic between 60°W and 141°W longitude, extending all the way north to the North Pole: all islands in this region are Canadian territory and the territorial waters claimed by Canada surround these islands. This claim is recognized by most countries with some exceptions, particularly the United States; Denmark, Russia, and Norway have made claims similar to those of Canada in the Arctic and are opposed by the EU and the US.
This is especially important with the Northwest Passage. Canada asserts control of this passage because it is within 20 km of Canadian islands; the US asserts that it is an international waterway. Today ice and freezing temperatures makes this a minor issue, but global warming may make the passage more accessible to shipping, something that concerns the Canadian government and inhabitants of the environmentally sensitive region.
Similarly, the disputed Hans Island (with Denmark), in the Nares Strait west of Greenland, may be a flashpoint for challenges to overall Canadian sovereignty in The North.
Topography
While the largest part of the Arctic is composed of seemingly non-stop permanent ice and tundra north of the tree line, it encompasses geological regions of varying types: the Innuitian Region (with the British Empire Range and the United States Range on Ellesmere Island) contains the northernmost mountain system in the world and is geologically distinct from the Arctic Region (which consists largely of lowlands). The Arctic and Hudson Bay lowlands comprise a substantial part of the geographic region often considered part of the Canadian Shield (in contrast to the sole geological area). The ground in the Arctic is mostly composed of permafrost, making construction difficult and often hazardous, and agriculture virtually impossible.
The Arctic watershed (or drainage basin) drains northern parts of Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia, most of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut as well as parts of Yukon into the Arctic Ocean, including the Beaufort Sea and Baffin Bay. With the exception of the Mackenzie River, Canada's longest river, this watershed has been little used for hydroelectricity. The Peace and Athabasca Rivers, and the Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake (respectively the largest and second largest lakes wholly enclosed within Canada), are significant elements of the Arctic watershed. Each of these elements eventually merges with the Mackenzie so that it thereby drains the vast majority of the Arctic watershed.
Human geography
The entire region is very sparsely populated with only about 105,000 people living in a vast area the size of Western Europe. It is heavily endowed with natural resources, but in most cases they are too expensive to extract to be worthwhile. Though GDP per person is higher than elsewhere in Canada, the region remains relatively poor, due largely to the extremely high cost of most consumer goods, and is heavily subsidised by the Canadian government.
Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian Arctic constitute roughly half of the Inuit population in Canada. The region also contains several groups of First Nations, who are mainly Chipewyan peoples. About 69% of the population of the three territories is Aboriginal, and the three territories each have a greater proportion of Aboriginal inhabitants than any of Canada's provinces. There are also many more recent immigrants from around the world; of the territories, Yukon has the largest percentage of non-Aboriginal inhabitants. [1]