This article is over 5 years old and may contain outdated information.

History

Throwback Thursday: Changing Arctic maps

  • Aug 12, 2015
  • 383 words
  • 2 minutes
Expand Image
Advertisement

Image: Septentrionalium Terrarum description (Northern Land transcribed), by Gerardus Mercator, 1595. (Map: Library and Archives Canada. e004414662)

The Arctic is hot. At least with Canadian Geographic readers. Our readership surveys identify Canada’s Far North as one of the top three topics (wildlife and parks are the other two).

And so over the years, the magazine has written tons about our nation’s polar region, including a particularly interesting spread back in the January/February 2007 issue (which, coincidentally, featured a cover story on life on a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker) on the history of cartography in the Arctic.

The story (“Northern exposure”—nice!) by Jeffery Murray, then senior archivist at Library and Archives Canada (since retired), notes that Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition and subsequent searches for it did much to map as yet uncharted regions of the Arctic. Murray also notes that: “For a period, more was known about the Arctic islands and the Northwest Passage than about the boreal hinterlands of Ontario and the Prairies.”

The maps accompanying the piece are representative of cartographers changing understanding of the Arctic over three centuries. There’s a 1595 map by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator with a magnetic rock at the North Pole, to which all waters allegedly flowed into the centre of the Earth. There’s a 1715 projection by Dutch mapmaker Frederick de Wit, which shows the shorelines of northeastern North America taking shape. And there’s an 1876 chart by Englishman Edward Stanford in which much of Canada’s Arctic coastline is well defined, though there’s still a large “Unexplored Polar Region” around the North Pole.

Only four years after Stanford’s map was created, the British government transferred sovereignty over the Arctic islands to Canada (on July 31, 1880), “recognizing the impossibility of using the Northwest Passage as a shipping route” as Murray writes. Of course, climate change is likely to necessitate redrawing Arctic maps in the future, and a northern shipping route may one day be possible.

Canadian Geographic Education, the educational program arm of Canadian Geographic’s publisher The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, published a new tiled circumpolar map earlier this year. It represents the most detailed Arctic project today. Interesting to consider that one day, it may also be just another chapter in a story of the cartographic evolution of the Arctic.

Advertisement

Are you passionate about Canadian geography?

You can support Canadian Geographic in 3 ways:

Related Content

People & Culture

On thin ice: Who “owns” the Arctic?

As the climate heats up, so do talks over land ownership in the Arctic. What does Canadian Arctic Sovereignty look like as the ice melts?

  • 4353 words
  • 18 minutes
Arctic Frontiers conference 2019

Environment

Five key takeaways from the Arctic Frontiers conference

The uncertainty and change that's currently disrupting the region dominated the annual meeting's agenda

  • 2651 words
  • 11 minutes

Environment

Highlights from the 2022 Arctic Report Card

Warming trends continue due to human-caused climate change

  • 1408 words
  • 6 minutes

Environment

Four things to know about Arctic policy and sustainable ocean management in Canada and Norway

The Royal Norwegian Embassy and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society teamed up for two days of talks on the future of the Arctic and the “blue economy” in Norway and Canada

  • 1179 words
  • 5 minutes