¢ eli |e Ane) | ana pth 3 ll it Li) | { : il Ka As Alexander Mackenzie crossed the Rockies to the Pacific in 1793 Captain Alaska Panhandle: Injustice to Canada By HAL GRIFFIN SHOULD the Alaska Panhandle belong to Canada? That’s a bold question and one Unlikely to appeal to the im- Perialists at Washington who, ‘laving made the St. Laurent gov- fthment the executor of U.S. Policy in Canada, pursue the alms of “Manifest Destiny” in a More subtle way. But it’s a Question that inevitably must Project itself in the future as ‘e€ industrial development of fhrthern British Columbia brings og logic of geography into con- ict with the diplomatic heritage Of the past. The Panhandle is that part of laska which stretches from the foitland Canal north to 18,024- ar Mount Elias. By the logic o 3 8eography it should be part h: Canada, for it is the northern alf of the B.C. coast. By the iplomatic conventions of the century, arising out of the ponflict between the imperialist Mterests of Tsarist Russia and gaitain and the aims of the U.S. *Pansionists in the North Paci- ¢, it is now part of Alaska. p,rhe salient fact is that the eg andle was created, during fo. Russian regime in Alaska, Phe cut British North America of that part of the Pacific. poet the U.S. purchased Alaska i Mm Tsarist Russia for $7,200,000 1 1867 it conceived of the Pan- ‘ndle inthe same terms — as b Senator Charles Sumner Oasted, it “set a watchful Yan- . On each side of John Bull te his far-western Canadian pos- Ssions,”? 4 And the Panhandle today per- Petuates this antagonism to Can- ada. denying us half our north-. “tn Pacific coast and posing a qalor obstacle to the future de- i. pment of northern B.C. Navigators of Russia, Spain Britain all contributed to iscovery and exploration of North Pacific. Ussia’s claims were based on the q the the historic voyages of Vitus Bering and Alexis Chirikov in 1741. The Spanish explorers—Perez in 1774, Quadra, Artega and Fidalgo — probing northward to Unalaska, were followed by the British, Captain James Cook in 1778 and Captain George Van- couver in 1792. ‘ Between 1792 and 1794 Van- couver made a detailed survey of the North Pacific coast from the Strait. of Juan de Fuca to Cook Inlet. So comprehensive was his,survey that the boundar- ies of the Panhandle as defined by the 1825 convention between Tsarist Russia and Britain were based on his maps. The 1825 convention was the outcome of a ukase issued by Tsar Alexander I laying claim to all the fishing and fur-hunting grounds of the North Pacific and forbidding all foreign ships to approach within 100 miles of the northwest coast of America south’ to 51 degrees—roughly the north- ern tip of Vancouver Island. “ At the same time, the Tsar renewed for 20 years the ex- clusive trading monopoly of the Russian American Company, founded by imperial ukase in 1799. By the Nootka convention of 1799, which recognized Russia’s claim to Alaska, Spain had sur- rendered all interests in the North Pacific, but the British and U.S. governments lodged vigorous ‘protests. Russia quiet- ly abandoned the ukase, how- ever, when she found itedisrupt- ed relations with foreign traders. The British government, re- flecting the aims of the Hudson’s Bay Company, continued to press at St. Petersburg for a definition of, conflicting British and Rus- sian claims in the North Pacific. When negotiations were begun, Sir Charles Bagot, British am- bassador to Russia, informed Count Nesselrode “that our pre- tensions had, I believed, always extended to the 59th degree of north latitude (the head of Lynn Canal), but that a line of demar- cation drawn at the 57th latitude (Frederick Sound) would be en- tirely satisfactory to us... .” The Russians held out for 54-40 degrees (Portland Canal), 40 miles south of Chirikov’s land- fall of 1741. They maintained “that without a strip of land on the coast of the continent from Portland channel the Russian establishments on the adjoining islands would be left unsupport- ed and at the mercy of those establishments: which foreigners might form on the mainland.” The boundaries of this lisiere, the strip of coast which is now the Panhandle, depended upon Vancouver’s maps. Considering the difficulties his expedition faced, Vancouver had done a re- markable job of defining the coastline, but he assumed. that the mountains ran in an orderly range a few miles inland parallel to the coast as in California and Oregon. The Russians knew little about the mainland but they SIR WILFRED’LAURIER He was bitter about the 1903 boundary award. UTTAR CCRT a 6 HVE TT A ce were determined to deny the Hudson’s Bay Company access to the coast. The Treaty of St. Petersburg in 1825 created the Panhandle and established that the main- land boundary should follow “the crest of the mountains in a di- rection parallel to the coast” but should the mountains be found more than 10 leagues from the coast, then the boundary was to be “a line parallel to the sinuosi- ties of the coast, so that the line of demarcation shall not be any- ‘where more than 10 leagues from the coast.” It was-this treaty, openiy inimi- cal to the interests of a Canada which would not come into be- ing for half a century, that laid thé basis for the Alaska Boun- dary Dispute of 1903. And the injustices are, still a rankling sore with Canadians. Sir George Simpson, governor- in-chief of the Hudsom’s Bay, Company, who visited the Pan- handle in 1841 and again in 1847, stated that it rendered “the interior comparitively useless to England.” He told a select com- mittee of the British parliament in 1857 that the company had leased the Panhandle only be- cause it had been unable to se- cure its removal as a barrier to trade. Despite Russia’s refusal “to grant to any power the privilege to navigate and trade in per- petuity within a country the full sovereignty of which was to be- long to Russia,” it nevertheless leased the Panhandle to the Hud- son’s Bay Company for 10 years . in 1839, at an annual rental of 2,000 fur-seal skins later chang- ed to £1,500, and in -1849 the agreement was renewed for a further nine years. Ironically, the democratic pro- test of the Vancouver Island col- onists against arbitrary Hudson’s Bay Company rule and the need, prompted by the infiux of thous- ands of miners into the Cariboo in 1858, to consolidate the colony of British Columbia, also elimin- ated the opportunity to acquire the Panhandle mainland. Hav- ing sold Vancouver Island to the British government for £57,500 in 1851 and lost its trading mon- opoly on the mainland, the Hud- son’s Bay Company was no longer interested in renewing its lease to the Panhandle. And the young colony itself, absorbed in the continuing struggle for respon- sible government, was more con- cerned with protecting itself against the threat of American expansion than in adding to its vast virgin territory. When the Tsarist government decided to. sell Alaska to the U.S. in 1867 the new Dominion of Canada was only coming into being. Concerned with national, sectional and class differences, occupied with manoeuvres and compromises, even the most vis- ionary of the Fathers of Confed- ‘eration could hardly have been expected to press for acquisition of Alaska when the paramount consideration was consolidating the separate colonies of. British North America against U.S. ex- ‘pansion. Amor De Cosmos, leader of the moyement to bring B.C. into Confederation, proposed the purchase of Alaska in 1870, but the legislature, rejected his resolution after it had been ap- proved in committee. = Deeply involved in Europe _and following an expansionist policy in Asia which constantly brought her into conflict with Britain, the Tsarist regime saw in the sale of Alaska a ready means of raising revenues—Rus- sia’s accumulated deficit for the 20 years ending 1863 totalled $577 million. The Russian Am- erican Company’s hold on Alaska was precarious at best. Com- munications with Russia were primitive (the Trans-Siberian Concluded on next page PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 3, 1953 — PAGE 9 ee pn eon :