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Arctic Yearbook 2013
Natural News, State Discourses & The Canadian Arctic
this is the fact that between 1970 and 1979 – a
nine year
period – 252 stories on the Arctic were
published in Canadian newspapers. Of these 66 per cent, or just over half, framed the Arctic
through an economic or resource lens (on average about 10 per year, or 1 per month). By 2013,
however, over one thousand articles
per year
were published on the Arctic, and of these just over 100
framed the Arctic in economic ways: on average just under 10 per month, nearly double the
coverage of the entire decade of the 1970s. It was not so much that economic reportage declined,
but that other frames of reference grew.
Figure 1: Comparison of frequency of reporting on specific themes in „Arctic‟ news (percentage of
articles on the Arctic), at approximate 10-year intervals, over a 40 year cycle.
Assembling a Discourse: The 1970s Media Accounts
The Emerging Themes
For southern media in the 1970s, it was difficult to imagine the Arctic as more than an abstract
frontier for political and economic development. It was, for all intents and purposes, the edge of
state. In April of 1979, for example, Carey French asked a Canadian
Globe and Mail
readership ‗how
safe are Arctic resources?‘ But she pitched this question in reference to the frozen, rather than
melting, state of the Northwest Passage waters (French, 1979: B1). Referencing Soviet submarine
capabilities in Arctic waters, and reporting on a presentation to the Canadian Arctic Resources
Committee by security expert Harriet Critchley, French wrote: ―taking into account the growing
energy-related activity in the area, the logical solution for Canada is the acquisition of multiple-
purpose equipment and multiple tasking of personnel… Plans for the construction of new patrol
frigates – traditionally thin-hulled vessels – could incorporate some kind of ice capability, thus