The Canadian Rangers assert Canada’s sovereignty in isolated but strategically vital areas of the North. As a part-time reservist patrol the Canadian Rangers perform a variety of annual duties to ensure that there is a visible presence in some of the most remote regions of the country. Governor General Adrienne Clarkson presents Honory Iitogitok with his Cana- dian Decoration for dedicated service with the Canadian Rangers. Rankin Inlet, May 8, 2002.
c an one turn an interest in the north into a contribution to the north? In terms of building and construction issues, keeping in mind the housing crisis across the north, I called up the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the National Research Council in Ottawa to see what new research or projects were going on. Jean-Marc Lamothe, of the Institute for Research in Construction, National Research Council outlined their model of innovation clusters for new research. An innovation cluster is defined by public and private sector partnerships and networks in a significant concentration of innovative companies around a nucleus of research and design facilities. Among other things, IRC will explore the possibility of a community- based cluster to develop sustainable northern communities, based in the North, in partnership with northern and federal organizations.The first step is a forum in May, in Whitehorse, followed by a feasibility study to see if it makes sense to invest and develop a northern innovation cluster devoted to some construction aspects. Clearly one must be in the north to be involved. The old model of living in the urbanised south and working on behalf of the north determined, and was determined by, a relationship between the federal government which maintained sovereignty over Canada’s north (its waterways and its resources) and a Canadian culture which sees The North as a distant colony upon which we can project ideas, myths, experiments in living. The north, to many Canadians, is the clean splinter of ice in our collec- tive character that distinguishes us from the indulgent climate to the south. Its value to many of us is notional. Sherrill Grace explores this in Canada and the Idea of North , show- ing how the North is visualised, articulated, written about; how it is narrated and by whom. The north is a Canadian reflex — its presence has shaped Canada in ways far beyond its geophysical mass. Grace’s premise is that ‘no matter who, when, or where we are, we are shaped by, haunted by ideas of North, and we are constantly imagining and con- structing Canada-as-North, as much so when we resist our nordicity as when we embrace it’. The north of the mind is constructed as a series of icons, of potential futures. It acts as a mental safety valve for the clumsy squandering of resources in urban Canada. Adrienne Clarkson in a BBC interview with John Simpson said ‘it’s knowing that the north is there, that is Canada’. This powerful and figmental north is actually marginalised by Harold Strub in Bare Poles. Building design for high latitudes . Here the north is a land with a geophysical history, with a global context to its inhabi- tation, its climate, its rocks, lichens and foxes, its thousand year old artifacts lying on its surface. This is not only an extensive manual on how to build in the north, it is also a significant discussion of how the north works. The fault lines of language, European contact, dependence and globalism impinge on every aspect of Northern life. Strub details windows, Inuit humour, a rocky parallelogram that is a city lot, the sound and optical qualities of arctic air, the owls, the ravens — if I keep writing sentences that are lists it is because this book is so intense, so rich it cannot be reduced even in a review. Strub discusses everything, from autochthonous culture to the longevity of factory errors in prefabri- cated buildngs. Two good books and a website Stephanie White
Strub says at one point (p14) ,
Like other third worlds, Canada’s north suffers from polemical and inap- propriate interference in the running of its affairs. Real sovereignty in the north is the climate and the indigenous people whose long struggle to regain self-determination has had to combat both romantic con- ceptions of the North and the ambivalent self-interest of the federal government, which has militarised it while reluctantly moving slowly through the land claims negotiations. Northern Canada is a Third World country in everything but name. It is underdeveloped. It is rich in non-renewable resources but unable to exploit them because of high develop- ment costs and low international commodity prices. It has a system of highways inadequate to the task of shipping goods to markets. It has native culture in collision with imported culture. It has an immature political system. It has high unemployment and lacks a stable pool of entrepreneurial and technical skills. It is short of capital investment.
Harold Strub. Bare Poles. Building design for high latitudes. Carleton Library Series, McGill- Queens University Press, 2001
Sherrill E Grace. Canada and the Idea of North. McGill-Queens University Press, 2001
www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/aboutUs/ corporatereports/vision2006/ vision2006_pillars_e.html)
Stephanie White is editor of On Site review and usually writes about bridges on this page. But books are bridges, here from south to north and back again.
On Site review 11
76
Spring 2004
Architecture of the Circumpolar Region
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