In the current, intense debate about Canadian sovereignty and national defence, the Yukon once again finds itself at the forefront of the conversation. With US President Donald Trump making a series of intemperate and uncalled for threats to Canada’s national sovereignty, the country is tasked to take unprecedented steps to protects its territorial integrity. Canada is also paying the price for decades of neglect of its northern flank.
The nation has been down this path before. In 1870, Canada purchased the vast and unceded lands of Rupertsland from the Hudson’s Bay Company, a transaction facilitated by a British government that was eager to rid itself of its administrative responsibilities for the northern half of British North America. For a quarter of a century, the new country did virtually nothing to assume its obligations for this new territory. Only in 1894, and then at the urging of Bishop William Carpenter Bompas of the Church Missionary Society, did the Canadian government send a small group from the North West Mounted Police to determine the need to enforce Canadian law in the Fortymile region of the Yukon.
The timing of this investigative expedition, and the subsequent decision to place a regular establishment in the borderlands mining camp, proved extremely fortuitous. Canada had a police force, albeit small, in the region when gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896. They brought legal formality and structure to a potentially chaotic frontier mining camp, establishing respect for law and order before the massive influx in the 1897-1898 stampede.
As the prospectors and camp followers flooded into the region and as the Yukon River basin quickly became one of the richest and most famous places on earth, Canada’s concerns escalated. Most of the stampeders came from the United States. They brought with them the aggressive attitudes of the American resource frontier, moderated by their collective vulnerability to the extreme cold and isolation of the Canadian Northwest. The NWMP proved effective in enforcing Canadian laws and mining regulations but the cultural assertiveness of the mining community, the size of the American population, and the increasing US interest in the Klondike worried Canada authorities.
Canada was ill-placed to respond to this unanticipated threat to Canadian sovereignty. The country had no standing army but there was a small militia. The Government of Canada resolved to send 200 soldiers, named the Yukon Field Force, to establish a base at Fort Selkirk and to re-enforce Canadian authority in the region. The heavily equipped unit made the lengthy journey to the Yukon, travelling along the Stikine River to avoid having to go to the Yukon through the United States.
The American threat proved more illusory than real. The gold rush slowed by 1899 and the need for the Field Force quickly declined. The militia was moved out, in stages, between 1899 and 1900, with some of the militiamen deployed to support the British war with the Boers in South Africa. It is not that the US had lost interest in the region. The Americans discovered that they got most of what they wanted out of the Klondike – particularly gold and business opportunities – without annexing or occupying the gold fields.
The Canadian Northwest found itself again on the front lines of continent defence during World War II, particularly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The construction of the Northwest Staging Route through the Yukon started before 1941 and proved to be only the start of the wartime occupation of the Northwest. The Staging Route was followed in 1942 by the construction of the hastily planned Alaska Highway. The parallel development CANOL pipeline and Whitehorse oil refinery placed the Yukon in the centre of military preparations in the region.
The burst of activity faded quickly, for the American victory at the battle of Midway in June 1942 eliminated much of the Japanese threat and resulted in the quick roll-back of American military and construction activity in the Yukon. The Northwest was left with a highway that was poorly located and far from complete. The pipeline and refinery closed soon after the end of the war.
These events – the Gold Rush and the defence of Alaska and the Northwest during World War II – demonstrated the vulnerability of Canada’s Northern flank and the costs of inadequate national preparations for the protection of the area. But the lessons were poorly learned. After World War II, Canada relied on American military protection throughout the Cold War and slowly dismantled the country’s northern military strength. By the 1970s, the Canadian military establishment in the area had all but disappeared, with the country sheltered by the NORAD defence systems and with little on-the-ground presence.
Canada finds itself, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, once again ill-prepared for the geopolitical challenges of our age. And the Yukon, much as in the late 19th century, finds itself once more on the front lines of the effort to assert and protect Canadian sovereignty. Perhaps the next few years will see the establishment of a contemporary version of the Yukon Field Force – a regular, substantial North-based military establishment that goes beyond showing the flag and demonstrates Canada’s determination to defend the Far North. Maybe, just maybe, Canada will finally learn one of the North’s most important lessons: that neglecting the region leaves it vulnerable to external dangers and stops Canada from the vital work of completing Confederation in the territorial North.