With the majority of Canada’s population settled along its southern border, less than 1 percent of Canadians live above the Arctic Circle. Most Canadians will never even visit these distant and majestic northern lands, yet they are widely seen as a core aspect of Canada’s national identity. Stretching deep into the Arctic Ocean, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago covers more than 1.4 million square kilometers and includes three of the world’s ten largest islands. It is home to the Northwest Passage, a shipping lane treated as international waters by the United States and the European Union, but claimed by Canada as sovereign territory—a dispute of growing importance if Arctic ice continues to melt.
As early as 1925, Canada declared sovereignty over the waters between the 60th and 141st western meridians, an immense area of the Arctic Ocean culminating at the North Pole. Soon after, other nations—first the USSR, then Norway, the United States and Denmark—made similar claims to portions of the Arctic. To Canadians, not only is their claim a way of asserting control of the valuable Northwest Passage; it upholds a vital point of national pride.