When it makes the daily news cycle, Canada’s vast and increasingly passable Arctic is often framed as a frontier of opportunity—for new trade routes, booming cruise tourism, military strategy, and scientific research. But behind this popular narrative lies a systemic story of loopholes and mismanagement, in a region where systemic abuses and governance gaps remain dangerously underreported.
Beset by Ice investigates the conditions that have led to a rise in unsafe Arctic shipping, and what this means for Indigenous residents, national sovereignty of Arctic nations, and global climate governance. On a historical backdrop ranging from Inuit traditional foodways, to the doomed Franklin expedition, to the Cold War, this project will explore how climate change is fundamentally remaking the region.
From Russian scientists and soldiers showing up unannounced in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, to Chinese vessels foraying into the Northwest Passage, to stranded Argentinean sailors fighting off polar bears with emergency flares, this project will pull back the curtain on this region’s secretive know-a-guy culture to reveal climate change’s most urgent impacts.
