A Disciplined Geography: Aviation, Science, and the Cold War in Northern Canada, 1945–1960

Near Lac Bienville in northern Quebec, Nicholas Polunin reflected on recent events. Just a few days before, the botanist had attended an Oxford encaenia, enjoying ceremonies, celebrations, and chats with the Churchills and other notables. But now, after flights across the Atlantic and into the Arctic, there he was, on 8 July 1946, alone in a leaky tent, about to begin a summer of collecting. “Such is modern life,” he wrote, “and in this age of science and speed we must accustom ourselves to such vicissitudes.”¹

Polunin was struck not just by the contrasting amenities of Oxford and northern Quebec, but by the differences between this trip and his previous expeditions to Canada. He had last visited in 1936—a voyage that required several weeks cruising up the Labrador coast and was limited to areas accessible by ship. In contrast, in 1946 he planned to travel widely across the eastern Arctic, sharing space on Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) survey air-craft. The contrast exemplified the advantage that air travel offered to Arctic scientists. “Conquering” space and time, aircraft made the region more accessible, rendering it no longer the preserve of hardy explorer-scientists.²

Yet travel by aircraft had other consequences as well for the relation between technology and the practice of science. In this article, I examine the linked histories of aviation and science in northern Canada during the early cold war era. Several episodes in northern science will be considered, with a focus on McGill University in Montreal. During this period, McGill was the most active center in Canada for northern research, in a city that was, thanks to the Arctic Institute of North America (AINA) and the support of federal agencies, itself an epicenter of northern research. After the 1946 field season, Polunin traveled to McGill to take up his duties as professor of botany. My focus, however, is not on Polunin, but on the McGill Department of Geography. Led by Ken Hare, McGill geographers viewed aviation as the basis for reconsidering the practice of science in the north. Their work demonstrates how aviation affected the questions that scientists asked, as well as the ways in which their knowledge was recognized as reliable and authoritative. At a time when laboratory science was becoming dominant, aviation provided a way of reasserting the authority of field evidence. McGill geographers did so, however, by constituting the airplane and the mapping laboratory as the site of geographic research, distancing the field from the site of knowledge production. At McGill and elsewhere, aviation also reshaped how scientists viewed the landscape and northern indigenous peoples, and it encouraged an integration of northern science within the southern-based scientific community.

Aircraft were also essential to scientists’ political roles. During the early postwar era, Canadian policies for the north were framed by the cold war imperative of securing the continent against Soviet attack. This presented two challenges to Canada: not just to contribute to continental defense, but, in the face of a substantial American presence (and its view of the Arctic as a single continental space), to assert its own authority over the north. The Canadian government managed this tension between continental security and national authority by insisting on approval of and participation in Arctic military initiatives, and also by supporting and publicizing civilian initiatives: mapping, resource development, expansion of transportation networks, wildlife conservation, and the social and economic development of indigenous peoples. For McGill scientists, however, American and Canadian objectives presented not so much a tension as an opportunity, as they benefited from both bi-national and American initiatives (including AINA and the Carnegie Foundation), and from Canadian military and civilian efforts to assert national authority over the north. The common element was the aviation technology that reshaped scientists’ views of nature and scientific practice while providing the material basis for integrating their work with evolving northern political priorities.

Technology, Objectivity, and Control

Recent work on technology and science provides a foundation for understanding aviation and northern science. The impact of technology on scientists’ views of nature and scientific...