bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2000) — Spring 2000 // Printemps 2000, p. 49
THE BOUNDARY HUNTERS: SURVEYING
THE 141ST MERIDIAN AND THE ALASKA
PANHANDLE by Lewis Green. Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press, 1982.
214 pp, illus.
What do most of us know of Canada’s boundary with Alaska? Very little, perhaps, apart from schoolday memories of the “Alverstone Award” when a perfidious English lord evidently preferred Britain’s relations with the United States to Canada’s interest in the Alaska Panhandle. Lewis Green deals with that diplomatic transaction, among others, as he recounts how explorers, traders, politicians, diplomats, engineers and surveyors worked out the boundary on the ground. His story runs from the Anglo-Russian Treaty in 1825 to the completion of the survey in 1920. While Green focusses on the work of the field parties, both Canadian and American, who struggled up fjords, rivers and glaciers to identify and mark the line, his skillful presentation of the political, commercial and diplomatic backdrop provides a nice counterpoint to the surveyors’ stalwart efforts on the ground.
Green remarks in a bibliographic note that the survey reports were generally dry reading. One would not guess that from his book. Some of the surveyors clearly wrote lively, even elegant, accounts of the dangers and difficulties they faced. Green draws on their reports to show their skill, tenacity and sense of humour. The book is well-made, too, with striking photographs and cartoons of the period, helpful maps, a comprehensive bibliography, and the full text of the Anglo-Russian Treaty. This material is aptly chosen and provides solid backing for reviewed by Kurt F. Jensen
Green’s account of the Alaska Boundary Tribunal’s discussions and findings, as well as the surveyors’ annual campaigns. Basing himself on contemporary sources as well as the historians who have written about the Tribunal, Green concludes that Lord fair one, and that he showed considerable Alverstone’s finding was indeed a broadly skill in bringing the Americans along. The real problem was that President Teddy Roosevelt’s crude and blustering tactics (as always, aimed at Congress) left the the impression that the Canadian representatives were being over-ridden and ignored. It did not help that King Edward VII and the British political class were fascinated by the American politicians on the tribunal, Henry Cabot Lodge and Elihu Root, but showed scant interest in the worthy Canadian representatives. (Plus ça change). Despite the clamour of the press in Canada, Laurier wisely saw that the finding was as balanced as one could expect it to be.
Against this background, Green points out that the Canadian and American surveyors, to whom much was left particularly in one un-delineated portion of the tribunal’s map, worked together closely and harmoniously. The effort was in fact a joint one as data, logistics and even personnel were shared. The frontier and engineering adventures recounted will certainly ring true for anyone who has worked on a survey crew. One Canadian party chief, White-Fraser, wrote that his men had had to make their way through “that unpleasant member of the Fig family known as ’Devil’s Club’ whose malignant arms are ever stretched forth to assist the unwary climber, and whose poisoned bristles will make him wish he had never been born.” It could hardly be better said.
Another party chief, Riggs, wrote of the venture as a whole: “It was with rather a lost feeling that we arrived at the shore of the Arctic Ocean and saw the practical completion of the work on which we had been engaged for so many years.” A year later, completing a southern link, he mused that “the years spent in the survey … with all their hardships and almost-insurmountable difficulties have resulted in being the happiest years of my life…. I can do no more than repeat [as in my telegram]… ’Regret my work is completed’.” Would that all jobs left such nostalgia.
For students of history this book is a quiet delight. In his spare, wry prose, Green gives a full account of how the Alaska boundary was drawn and, in doing so, reminds the reader that negotiating a treaty is often (usually?) the easiest part of the process. Nor is it complete in this case. As Green notes in an Afterword, the maritime boundary from Dixon Entrance outward across Hecate Sound is still not agreed. Just last year, an American ship was arrested fishing south of the famous ’A’ – ’B’ line!
Finally, the book may have a special interest for members of the foreign affairs community. Its author, a respected geological engineer who did field work along the Alaska boundary, is the son of a former Secretary of State for External Affairs (as the style then was).
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2000) — Spring 2000 // Printemps 2000, p. 49. Read the rest of this issue →
