Legal Appraisals of Canada's Arctic Sovereignty

388 Pages·2015·2.97 MB·English

Documents on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security

LEGAL APPRAISALS OF CANADA’S
ARCTIC SOVEREIGNTY:
KEY DOCUMENTS, 1905-56

Peter Kikkert and P. Whitney Lackenbauer
Documents on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security (DCASS)
ISSN 2368-4569

Series Editors:
P. Whitney Lackenbauer
Adam Lajeunesse

Managing Editor: Ryan Dean

Legal Appraisals of Canada’s Arctic Sovereignty: Key Documents, 1905-56
Peter Kikkert and P. Whitney Lackenbauer
DCASS Number 2, 2014

Cover: Map from Laurence Collier, Memorandum Respecting Territorial Claims in the Arctic to
1930, 10 February 1930, National Archives of Australia, A981, ARC 1, Arctic, British Interests

Centre for Military and Strategic Studies Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism
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Permission policies are outlined on our website
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Legal Appraisals of Canada’s Arctic
Sovereignty:
Key Documents, 1905-1956

Peter Kikkert, M.A.
and
P. Whitney Lackenbauer, Ph.D.

Contents

Introduction: Legal Appraisals of Canada’s Arctic Sovereignty, 1905-1956 ............... vi
International Law and the Acquisition of Territory: A Complicated History ... xi
The Documents: Appraising Canada’s Sovereignty in the Arctic ................... xxi
1. Memorandum, W.F. King, Chief Astronomer, to Hon. Clifford Sifton, Minister
of the Interior, Report upon the Title of Canada to the Islands North of the
Mainland of Canada, 23 January 1904 ..................................................................... 1
2. Memorandum from L.C. Christie, Legal Adviser, to Prime Minister, Ottawa,
Exploration and Occupation of the Northern Arctic Islands, 28 October 1920 ........ 8
3. Memorandum, J.B. Harkin to W.W. Cory, Deputy Minister, Department of the
Interior, 7 April 1921 [excerpt] .............................................................................. 12
4. H.R. Holmden to A.G. Doughty, Memo re the Arctic Islands, 26 April 1921 .... 13
5. James White, Technical Adviser, to O.D. Skelton, Under Secretary of State for
External Affairs, Memorandum Respecting MacMillan Expedition to the Canadian
Arctic, 25 May 1925 (with corrections dated 29 May 1925) ................................... 47
6. Governor General Byng to His Excellency, The Right Honourable Sir Esme
Howard, 4 June 1925............................................................................................. 56
7. Governor General Lord Byng to British Chargé d'Affaires in United States,
Telegram 73A, 12 June 1925 ................................................................................. 65
8. Charles Cheney Hyde, Office of the Solicitor, to the Secretary of State, 18 June
1925 ...................................................................................................................... 67
9. Irving N. Linnell, Canada’s Territorial Claims in Arctic Ocean, Department of
State, Division of Western European Affairs, 13 July 1925 ..................................... 69
10. Suggested Draft Note to the British Embassy, Department of State, Division of
Western European Affairs, 16 September 1925 ...................................................... 71
11. Department of State, Division of Western European Affairs, Territorial
Sovereignty in the Polar Regions, 6 August 1926 ................................................... 72
12. Hydrographic Department, Admiralty, Notes on the Governor-General’s
Despatch to Washington, No. 104 of June 4th 1925.............................................. 92
13. Rough Draft, Annexation of Territories in the Polar Region: Memorandum
Prepared for the Committee of Foreign Policy and Defence by the Admiralty, 1926
[Excerpts] ............................................................................................................... 93
ii
14. Document A: To Be Circulated to Members of Antarctic Committee at Imperial
Conference, Prepared by Dominions Office [Excerpts] .......................................... 99
15. Document B: Confidential Document for Use of His Majesty’s Government,
Prepared by Dominions Office, 1926 [Excerpts] .................................................. 103
16. Admiralty Remarks on Dominion Office Draft, Memoranda A and B, 1926 .. 107
17. General Staff [Lieutenant-Colonel H.D.G. Crerar], Department of National
Defence, Canadian Political Rights in the Arctic, 28 January 1930 ....................... 109
18. Laurence Collier, Memorandum Respecting Territorial Claims in the Arctic to
1930, 10 February 1930 ....................................................................................... 119
19. Note to File, Ellesmere, 14 November 1930 ................................................... 139
20. S.W. Boggs, Department of State, Office of the Historical Adviser, The Polar
Regions: Geographical and Historical Data in a Study of Claims to Sovereignty in the
Arctic and Antarctic Regions, 21 September 1933 [Excerpts] ............................... 142
21. T.L. Cory, compiled for the Northwest Territories Council, British Sovereignty
in the Arctic, 3 June 1936 .................................................................................... 150
22. Under Secretary of State for External Affairs to the Deputy Minister of
Transport, 4 May 1946 ........................................................................................ 212
23. Memorandum from Head, Third Political Division, to Legal Division,
Sovereignty in the Arctic, 6-8 May 1946 .............................................................. 214
24. Memorandum from Head, Third Political Division, to Associate Under-Secretary
of State for External Affairs, [c. 6-8 May 1946] .................................................... 216
25. Ambassador in United States, Washington, to Acting Under-Secretary of State for
External Affairs, 5 June 1946 ............................................................................... 222
26. Memorandum from Associate Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs to
Secretary to the Cabinet, 24 June 1946 ................................................................ 224
27. James H. Brewster, Report on the Arctic, Atlantic Division Air Transport
Command, Headquarters, Atlantic-Division Air Transport Command, Report on the
Arctic, 1946 [Excerpts] ........................................................................................ 225
28. Department of State, Polar Regions, Policy and Information Statement, 1 July
1946 [Excerpts] .................................................................................................... 243
29. Office of the PC/S Intelligence, US Army Air Force (USAAF), Problems of
Canadian-United States Cooperation in the Arctic, 29 October 1946 .................. 247
30. E.R. Hopkins, Legal Adviser for External Affairs, Legal Aspects of Sovereignty in
the Canadian Arctic, 22 January 1949 .................................................................. 257
iii
31. Vincent C. Macdonald, Canadian Sovereignty in the Arctic, March 1950 ...... 280
32. Department of State, Policy Statement: Polar Regions, 1 July 1951 ................ 314
33. K.J. Burbridge, Legal Division to Acting Undersecretary, External Affairs, 23
February 1954...................................................................................................... 316
34. External Affairs, The Sector Theory and Floating Ice Islands in the Arctic, 30
August 1954 ........................................................................................................ 318
35. Foreign Service Despatch, U.S. Embassy, Ottawa, to the Department of State,
Washington, Canadian Sovereignty in the Arctic Archipelago by Jean R. Tartter,
Third Secretary, 10 March 1955 .......................................................................... 323
36. Jean R. Tartter, Third Secretary of Embassy to the Department of State,
Canadian Territorial Claims in the Arctic, 3 May 1955 ........................................ 332
37. Canadian Sovereignty in the Arctic, 15 August 1956 ...................................... 336

iv
v
Introduction: Legal Appraisals of Canada’s Arctic
Sovereignty, 1905-1956

In his landmark study on territorial acquisition, legal scholar Robert Jennings
noted that “the mission and purpose of traditional international law has been the
delimitation of the exercise of sovereign power on a territorial basis.”1 Since
Columbus set sail in 1492, popes, jurists and empires had constructed a wide array of
legal arguments to justify Europe’s territorial aggrandizement and seizure of land
often occupied by Indigenous Peoples, most notably the doctrines of discovery,
cession, occupation and conquest. While there was “remarkable stability in these
doctrines,” legal historian Andrew Fitzmaurice suggests, “they were subjected to
ceaseless reinterpretation.”2 As states and jurists adjusted the law of nations to suit a
wide range of legal and political circumstances, no clear formula for territorial
acquisition emerged.
When Canada’s chief astronomer Dr. William Frederick King started to research
and write the first legal appraisal ever produced on Canada’s Arctic sovereignty in
1904 (Document 1 in this collection) he did so at the “zenith of European
jurisprudence,” when international law formulated by European states and jurists
spread throughout the world.3 Despite the growing professionalism and enthusiasm
of international legal jurists, the legal discourse on territorial acquisition and the
establishment of state sovereignty remained underdeveloped, unclear, and shrouded
in layers of complexity. Even as legal constructions like the doctrine of effective
occupation appeared to become more consistent and cohesive, jurists and states
consistently found room for interpretation and exception.4 The growth of Europe’s
formal empires during the last decades of the century highlighted that multiple
versions of imperial sovereignty often existed contemporaneously, producing a
1 Robert Jennings, The Acquisition of Territory in International Law (Manchester: Manchester
U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1 9 6 3 ) , 2 .
2 Andrew Fitzmaurice, “Discovery, Conquest, and Occupation of Territory,” in The Oxford
Handbook of the History of International Law, eds. Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), 840.
3 Milos Vec, “From the Congress of Vienna to the Paris Peace Treaties of 1919,” in The Oxford
Handbook of the History of International Law, eds. Fassbender and Peters, 654.
4 Vec, “From the Congress of Vienna,” 672. See also Daniel-Erasmus Khan, “Territory and
Boundaries,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, eds. Fassbender and
Peters, 225-49.
vi
convoluted legal landscape.5 Far from being black and white, a tangle of juridical
writings and state practice made the legal regime on territorial acquisition murky and
grey.
In this confused legal environment King and the other authors of the first
documents in this collection tried to bring the North American Arctic Archipelago
into the realm of international law. In so doing, they applied the unclear and
inconsistent rules of territorial acquisition to the unique and challenging
geographical, political and legal terrain of the polar region. There was little legal
precedent and few guidelines for how a state could establish sovereignty over
uninhabited or sparsely populated areas like the Arctic islands, remote from centres of
power and where -- as legal scholar Donald Rothwell has explained -- “there was no
immediate intent to colonise as distinct from acquire.”6 These unique conditions
called for adaptations to the law, and the extension of the “taxonomy of
occupation.”7
When Canadian legal and political experts featured in this document collection
attempted to evaluate the strength of Canada’s terrestrial claims in the Arctic
Archipelago and to develop strategies to secure them, they faced a bevy of
complicated questions. What rights did a state acquire when one of its citizens
discovered new land and performed purely symbolic acts, such as planting a flag or
installing a cairn? How could states extend their jurisdiction over inhospitable and
often uninhabitable lands? What level of occupation or control would be required to
secure title to land in the Arctic? Did the unique conditions of the Arctic allow for a
relaxation of the rules used in more temperate zones or demand a completely new set
of rules?
Even as the decisions in important legal cases like Palmas Island, Clipperton Island
and Eastern Greenland clarified the requirements of territorial acquisition in the
1920s and 1930s, the judicial nature of polar sovereignty remained ambiguous. In his
1946 evaluation of Canada’s claims in the Arctic (Document 27), American
intelligence officer James H. Brewster captured this uncertainty:
5 See Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1460-
1 9 0 0 ( C a m b r id g e : C a m b r i d g e U n i v e r s i ty Press, 2010) and Antony Anghie, Imperialism,
Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005).
6 Donald Rothwell, The Polar Regions and the Development of International Law (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 2.
7 Fitzmaurice, “Discovery, Conquest, and Occupation,” 858.
vii