New Deal

In a cavernous Victorian office in Ottawa's forbidding Langevin Block, the Northwest Territories Council last week held its 171st session. The six public servants and one private citizen who make up the council are rulers over 1,253,438 square miles--more than a third of Canada--and over 12,028 whites, Indians and Eskimos whose cabins, tents and igloos dot the continent's most sparsely settled land (see map). For 42 years the council has met infrequently and in secret. Last week, for the first time, the session was public. Henceforth meetings will be monthly and open to all.

Credit for the Arctic new deal goes to Dr. Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside, new Deputy Minister of Mines & Resources, Commissioner of the Territories, and chairman of the council. He sees no need for secrecy. The mantle of mystery which has shrouded the Arctic is being stripped away by radio, airplane and Caterpillar tractors, and its government may as well be exposed, too. No less important, the council roster now includes for the first time a representative of the people governed: hulking (6 ft., 227 Ibs.) John G. McNiven, mine manager for Negus Mines, and--as a fellow councilor describes him--"the very picture of a husky, hardrock miner."

Bush Taxi. Ontario-born John McNiven now lives in Yellowknife, on the desolate northern shore of Great Slave Lake, center of the new gold rush (TIME, May 13). As the only municipality in the sprawling empire, Yellowknife presented the council last week with unaccustomed problems. For instance: though 420 miles from the nearest railhead and 450 from a highway, Yellowknife has a flourishing taxicab business, carrying passengers between town, airport and mines. The local administration wanted the right to regulate the cab business. The council said yes. It also gave the boomtown authorities power to deliver water (there is no plumbing), to dispose of garbage, and to levy a dog tax.

No other settlement poses such problems for the council. Most are minute colonies which shift with the fox population (which in turn shifts with the migrations of lemmings, on which foxes feed).* All are satellites of the Hudson's Bay Company's 42 trading posts.

A Tag & a Rifle. Half the people of the Northwest Territories are Eskimos, and their tribal ways have been difficult to fit to Canada's 20th Century social legislation. Exhibit A is the baby bonus. On Feb. 28, no less than 3,101 Eskimo children were registered for family allowances made available on July 1, 1945. But administration is difficult. In the first place, an Eskimo child has only a temporary name until he is about ten years old. In addition, families are always on the move. The Mounties have tried to solve the problem by giving each child a dog tag, with a code letter and number, which makes him identifiable no matter how often he changes his names or how far his family wanders.

But the Eskimo idea of what it takes to feed a baby on Baffin Island is different from that of a mother in Ontario. Since the Eskimo boy early learns to stalk his meals he needs a rifle, but the Government says no rifles can go to children under ten. Last week the council was faced with a poser: some Eskimos wanted to pool their allowances to buy a boat --to help get food for their children. The council was not sure. It put the question over, to see if the money could not be raised elsewhere.

* Arctic America has two species of lemming, similar to the Scandinavian but not so addicted to mass suicide by drowning, because their travel is mainly overland.

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