Tolerant allies: The Joint Arctic Weather Stations,Canadianization,and Canada–United States relations in the Cold War Arctic

Joint realities and constraints on Canadianization

The emergence of the Canadian North as a strategic theatre during the Second World War and early Cold War is well documented. Early bilateral negotiations over the construction of High Arctic weather stations must be situated within the context of Canada’s post-war anxieties about an emerging superpower increasingly concerned about the northern approaches to North America. Rather than conceiving of JAWS as an American continental defence program foisted upon the Canadians who succumbed to American pressure and concealed what was essentially a military program under “civilian cover,” ⁶ a reassessment of the archival record yields a more nuanced picture. The USWB (a civilian agency) spearheaded the program as a component of a post-war effort to gather sufficient weather data to produce accurate long-term forecasts with civilian economic and industrial benefits. The same forecasts were, naturally, of interest to the American military, which provided logistical support. Canadian officials, assessing the weather stations in sovereignty and security contexts, misconceived the civilian program as a military one. ⁷

Cabinet approved the binational JAWS program on 28 January 1947. ⁸ Canada would contribute the officer-in-charge (OIC) and half the personnel at each station. All permanent installations at the stations and adjacent airstrips would remain Canadian property, thus allaying sovereignty concerns. The United States would provide the other half of the personnel, construct “temporary” buildings, and cover costs for meteorological equipment, transportation, fuel, and supplies. The executive officer, as the senior American at each station, would oversee American staff subject to the Canadian OIC’s policies and would report to the USWB on technical matters. ⁹ Over the next four years, five JAWS stations were established along these lines at Eureka (1947), Resolute (1947), Isachsen (1948), Mould Bay (1948), and Alert (1950), using United States air and sealift (see Figure 1). ¹⁰

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Locations of Joint Arctic Weather Stations (JAWS).

From the onset of JAWS, the Canadian government hoped and planned to assume full responsibility for station resupply and operations. When C.D. Howe announced the program in March 1947, he explained that the assistance of American personnel would be “invaluable until sufficient technically qualified Canadian-trained personnel are available.” ¹¹ Some public servants were keen to see immediate Canadianization. Hugh Keenleyside, for example, expressed displeasure with Canada’s decision to contribute only half of each station’s personnel. “I am sure that our Government would not accept such a prospect with enthusiasm and would be likely to take a very dark view of any suggestion that the responsible Canadian authorities could not train a sufficient number of qualified technicians in less than five years,” he wrote to Ambassador Lester Pearson in Washington. “So far as this Department is concerned, we believe that it is quite possible to train the necessary Canadian personnel, and in a much shorter time than would seem to be envisaged in the draft note … We also consider that such action should be taken.” ¹²

The Department of Transport (DoT), responsible for recruiting Canadian personnel to serve at the stations, disagreed. Canadianizing the High Arctic stations with entirely Canadian staff was unrealistic. The department had already committed to Canadianizing eight American-operated stations in the north-eastern Arctic, and the United States provided significant funds, supplies, building materials, sophisticated meteorological equipment, and transportation capabilities to enable JAWS operations. ¹³ Accordingly, the DoT refused to commit to a timetable for Canada to assume full responsibility, and the USWB would continue to supply half of JAWS personnel “until sufficiently trained Canadian staff are available.” ¹⁴

In the late 1940s, with the United States bearing full practical responsibility for JAWS construction and resupply operations, Canadian politicians tended to link the civilian weather station project to the broader suite of expanding continental defence projects proposed and pursued by its superpower neighbour. Accordingly, fears of American security agendas overwhelming or undermining Canada’s Arctic sovereignty featured prominently in most high-level discussions in Ottawa. Capability gaps limited Canada’s options, particularly inadequate Arctic icebreaking capacity. Without physical evidence of Canada’s participation in supplying the weather stations, could Canada credibly claim this was a “joint” project? Capacity was “the key to the Arctic,” insisted a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) report on the 1948 sealift. “Whatever the cost, the Canadian government must control this key to our Arctic Islands.” ¹⁵

In this context, Cabinet Secretary Arnold Heeney argued in the fall of 1948 that it was time to consider a “government policy of Canadianization” similar to that successfully implemented in the northwest during the latter stages of the Second World War. ¹⁶ Within months, the St. Laurent government adopted an official policy dedicated to discerning measures that would “keep the Canadian Arctic Canadian.” ¹⁷ The central component of this strategy focused on greater Canadian involvement in resupplying JAWS, so the first priority was procuring vessels. ¹⁸ Despite high-level cries for Canadianization, the DoT could not comply, owing to delays in ship construction and the prioritization of shipping in Hudson Bay and the St. Lawrence and Saguenay Rivers. ¹⁹

In any case, the American “threat” was overplayed. The archival record reveals no insidious plot by the United States Navy to monopolize the JAWS sealift or build a rival sovereignty claim to the High Arctic islands. The United States officials emphasized that the joint program was in their “national interest” and should be expanded “to obtain even greater coverage throughout the Arctic,” but limited budgets, personnel, and ships, coupled with competing naval operations “of a higher priority” in the North Pacific, strained resources. Canada had to do more to help, the United States chief of naval operations told USWB chief Francis Reichelderfer in September 1949, so that “available United States effort and funds [could] be utilized for the establishment of additional weather stations in other critical areas.” The United States Navy recognized that Canada did not have the capacity to contribute immediately to resupply efforts and thus agreed to provide American ships for the 1950 and 1951 operations. It refused to commit to efforts beyond that time. ²⁰

For its part, the United States Air Force (USAF) had clearly led efforts to build the stations, and its role in aerial resupplying dominated the early years of the program. The RCAF established a small station at Resolute in 1949 to coordinate High Arctic operations, and it contributed one North Star to the 1950 spring airlift. Two RCAF aircraft supported the 1951 spring airlift, and the RCAF officially “assumed responsibility” for aerial resupply operations—but continued to “invite” USAF contributions. In practice, it remained heavily reliant on United States support. ²¹ The next year, the RCAF resupplied Mould Bay and Isachsen out of Resolute, while the USAF continued to resupply Alert and Eureka out of Thule. What had begun as a United States-dominated resupply effort had transitioned to a truer partnership.

Ottawa’s aspirations to Canadianize maritime resupply took longer to realize. In January 1952, the secretary of state for external affairs was “pleased to extend an invitation to the United States to participate in the annual sea supply mission in the summer of 1952 and to enter Canadian waters and ports for that purpose.” ²² In reality, neither of Canada’s new icebreakers was ready, and the United States had to spearhead the operation. “This rather typical and misleading sentence must have induced wry smiles on the faces of American officials,” historian Gordon W. Smith noted. “The plain truth was that, up to that time at least and apart from the presence of a few Canadian observers and scientists, American ‘participation’ had amounted to practically everything that was done, and without it there would have been no sea supply voyages.” The Canadian “invitation” revealed an “anxiety to preserve at least the outward appearance, or illusion, of Canadian leadership in these activities taking place on Canadian territory and to some extent in Canadian waters.” ²³ Ottawa readied for a more significant contribution the following year when the DoT planned the shakedown cruise of its new icebreaker, CGS D’Iberville, ²⁴ and hoped to assume responsibility for the sea supply of Resolute and Eureka, “thereby carrying the flag into the interior of the Archipelago” and relegating United States operations to “the fringe” station at Alert. ²⁵

The “delicate balance of manpower in the Northern Arctic”

Plans to gradually Canadianize JAWS resupply operations did not allay lingering sovereignty concerns in Ottawa, particularly as major continental defence initiatives fixated on the Canadian Arctic in the early 1950s. In December 1952, R.A.J. Phillips at the Privy Council Office prepared a note on 10 “unfortunate incidents” involving the United States in the Canadian Arctic in the previous three years, as well as a list of potential developments that could affect sovereignty policy. Having visited the High Arctic earlier that year, he noted that, “until now the main activity in that area has been the weather station programme. We have maintained our tenuous position by providing half the staff. … Any new US activity is bound to change the delicate balance of manpower in the northern Arctic.” During the war, Phillips continued, Canada had gone to great lengths to “preserve” its sovereignty in remote areas “where Canadians are out-numbered.” Although “the US administration has been eminently reasonable during the past six years that we have been working together in the Arctic,” thus removing any worries about formal challenges, “de facto US sovereignty” issues could embarrass the Canadian government. Phillips offered 11 proposals to reduce the risk, the first of which was to take over the maintenance and operation of the joint weather stations. ²⁶

The push to Canadianize JAWS reached new heights as North American defence planners contemplated how to conscript the Arctic for continental “defence in depth.” ²⁷ In late 1952, St. Laurent’s Cabinet learned that the Americans would eventually want at least 40 radar stations across the Arctic, which would require hundreds or thousands of American personnel to construct and operate. ²⁸ Canada had neither the resources nor the experience to mount an independent polar watch, and joint participation in strategic air defence systems ensured a modicum of defence against unwanted American “help.” ²⁹ Ottawa permitted the United States to install an experimental radar station in the western Canadian Arctic in 1953, which served as a prototype for the 63 radar stations that ultimately formed the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line.

Building the DEW Line would bring thousands of American personnel into the Arctic, resurrecting primordial Canadian worries about sovereignty. In response, several Cabinet ministers declared their eagerness to Canadianize “as many activities in the Canadian north as possible.” Canada did not have the resources to match the coming wave of American military activity in the Arctic, but it could achieve the impression of effective occupation if it assumed full responsibility for all civil programs. Given that the JAWS program represented the largest single project on the Archipelago, the Advisory Committee on Northern Development (ACND) asked the DoT to estimate the potential costs of Canada doing so. ³⁰

The ensuing report explained how JAWS provided critical meteorological information to Canada, the United States, and Europe for civil and military forecasting. It could not be allowed to falter. Recruitment of adequate personnel had proven “a serious problem,” and the DoT would need to recruit an additional 23 employees to replace the American personnel. This increased demand would be especially hard to satisfy, however; Canada had already committed to run other Arctic weather stations to improve the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s forecasting capabilities. Any delay in securing adequate staff for the High Arctic stations “would tend to reduce the observing program, and this would carry with it serious penalties in loss of information.” Moreover, the JAWS installations relied heavily on American equipment and supplies, and Canadianizing resupply would be a “slow process,” requiring even more employees. Finally, Canada’s financial outlay for the project (C$200,000) would more than treble, to at least C$675,000. The report did not end with a clear recommendation, but its tone strongly cautioned against rejecting American participation. ³¹

Vigorous bureaucratic debate in Ottawa ensued. All sides recognized that Canada’s limited resources precluded an immediate takeover of JAWS, and successful Canadianization would come down to “a matter of timing.” The ACND drafted a memorandum to Cabinet “recommending that Canada take over the complete operation of the joint weather stations as soon as time and resources permit,” ³² which stressed effective occupation as well as a trade-off between rising civil and defence costs. Canada could not afford to cover half the costs of Arctic defences against Soviet bombers, but it could compensate by assuming greater responsibility for civilian projects. Accordingly, the memorandum again recommended that the government approve, “in principle,” the Canadianization of JAWS “as soon as feasible,” and that “all necessary measures be taken” towards this end. ³³

The end of the JAWS program’s first five-year term in late 1953 also prompted discussions in Washington about a possible American withdrawal in the face of new budgetary restrictions. Reichelderfer, however, sought supplementary support for the program “as a military requirement”—by now a typical tactic that he used to try to secure funding for civilian programs with applications for defence. ³⁴ Far from seizing an opportunity to expand American military influence in Canada’s High Arctic, however, the USAF avoided making any new commitments to JAWS. ³⁵ Nevertheless, the popular media in Canada continued to link the weather stations and continental defence, with some journalists depicting JAWS as an example of Canada’s subservience to Washington. For example, in November 1954 Maclean’s editor Ralph Allen accused the St. Laurent government of “timidity, parsimony, indifference and sloth” in its Northern policies, holding up JAWS as a prime example of Ottawa’s failure to prove that Arctic activities “really [were] our show again.” ³⁶

Despite ongoing Cabinet concerns about “effective occupation,” ardent appeals from the interdepartmental ACND, and media pressure to fully Canadianize JAWS, proposals to have Canada assume full responsibility for the High Arctic stations again fizzled in the mid-1950s. Instead, a stable bilateral working relationship continued, with officials from both countries renewing the arrangement on an annual/periodic basis without penning a more formal agreement. ³⁷ Writing in 1956, E.F. Gaskell of the Privy Council Office reflected on the program’s successful record:

As a general observation, I would say that the informal arrangements governing these activities constitute a rather unique situation. Here is a major project involving two countries and a very considerable capital investment flourishing after nearly ten years without having been authorized, in the first instance, by a formal Exchange of Notes. However [unconventional] this may be, the informal agreement—for it is largely that—has paid ample dividends in productive activity. ³⁸

Instead of unnecessarily complicating or undermining this pragmatic arrangement, St. Laurent’s Cabinet— now much better versed on the issues after years of deliberations—focused on Canada assuming full responsibility for air and sea supply operations “as soon as practicable.” ³⁹ The United States continued to support all five stations, but Canada assumed an expanding share of the resupply enabled by a growing fleet of Canadian icebreakers and increased RCAF capacity. American military logistical support to the program decreased apace. “The USAF continued to participate in the airlift as needed and according to circumstances,” Smith observed, “but little innovation turned out to be necessary as the years went by, and arrangements and procedure for the resupply tended to become rather standardized and routine.” ⁴⁰

Last call for Canadianization

In the late 1950s, the Canadian government considered the annual bilateral meeting that it hosted to devise JAWS operational plans to be a prestigious affair, involving senior government officials and elaborate dinners. When senior USWB officials noted that JAWS planning had become routine and might be undertaken by lower-ranking officials (or even cancelled in favour of written exchanges), polar operations director Glenn Dyer refused. Any suggestion of scrapping the conference or sending junior officials would lead the Canadians to surmise that “the Weather Bureau is not as enthusiastic or as interested in the Arctic activity as Canada would wish them to be.” If Ottawa believed that an annual conference was necessary, Dyer insisted that the Americans had to be respectful and continue sending similarly high-ranking representatives. ⁴¹ Though a small gesture, the continuation of the planning conferences affirmed a strong American commitment to the joint program. Far from being an overbearing partner, the Americans went out of their way to satisfy and accommodate their Canadian partners.

Nevertheless, Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, first elected in 1957 and re-elected with a resounding majority the following year, articulated a bold “Northern Vision” that generated national interest in Northern development. The transition in government also invited Cabinet to reconsider established paths charted by civil servants under the previous Liberal regime. ⁴² Advocates for fully Canadianizing JAWS relied on the same political arguments that led Canada to assume operational control of the DEW Line stations on its territory. Northern Affairs minister Alvin Hamilton wrote to his Transport counterpart in January 1959, applauding the RCAF’s new responsibility for DEW Line operations while lamenting Canada’s limited “effective occupation and control” in the Arctic. Consequently, he insisted that Canada had to “assume complete control of all civil government responsibilities,” resurrecting old ideas that had been floated under the previous government and abandoned for pragmatic reasons. ⁴³ Hamilton amplified this alarmism in subsequent correspondence. The United States had cooperated thus far, but he alleged that this had come “at the expense of our effective sovereignty.” Ottawa had to bar the Americans from carrying out any function of government in the region, and the weather stations were “by far the most important government activity in this area.” To an outsider such as Hamilton, the project’s relaxed routine seemed dangerous. He did not understand the collaborative relationship that allowed JAWS to run so smoothly and was unfamiliar with the formal and informal agreements that guided the program, as well as practical relationships at the stations themselves. Instead, he saw dangers everywhere: “I have not the slightest doubt myself but that in the eyes, say, of the Soviet Union the joint stations are evidences of the United States occupation and that as such the present relationship acts contrary to the policy the government has decided on,” the minister asserted. “I think the arrangement could at some time be a source of embarrassment and I do not see any reason why this risk should be run.” ⁴⁴ Since Canada had always said it would assume full responsibility for the stations at the earliest opportunity, he assumed that “the United States would welcome any move on our part to take over what is so obviously a Canadian responsibility.” ⁴⁵

Transport minister George Hees rebuffed these contentions and furnished a positive narrative of why the JAWS relationship had evolved fortuitously for Canada. Although the United States played a “predominant” role when the stations were first established, Canada gradually assumed more responsibilities and diluted the proportionality of United States contributions. Furthermore, continuing to leverage American resources in the High Arctic had allowed Canada to independently establish and operate several additional weather stations in the Arctic Archipelago. ⁴⁶ As a “highly integrated joint operation,” JAWS served as a source of “pride” for both countries’ weather services. The United States extolled the relationship “not because they believe they have any permanent rights in these stations but merely because … the nature of the cooperation” was so unique and longstanding. If Canada “forced” the USWB to withdraw its personnel, it would upset this dynamic and deprive Canada of access to other American programs “which we could never hope to undertake ourselves because of manpower and financial limitation[s].” Furthermore, JAWS benefited directly from USWB financial and personnel contributions. At a time when the DoT sought additional federal funding to take over several United States-operated airstrips in Northern Canada, Hees argued that Canadianizing the JAWS program would squander limited resources for no apparent benefit because the American presence at these stations posed “no threat to our Canadian sovereignty.” ⁴⁷

Transport officials with the most intimate knowledge about the program insisted on the value of continued American involvement. “The joint participation of these Joint Arctic Weather Stations, far from being a threat to Canadian sovereignty, on the contrary strengthens Canadian sovereignty, inasmuch as the United States recognizes Canadian laws and [is] meticulous to observe the regulations governing the Northwest Territories,” Andrew Thomson argued. “In effect, therefore, the presence of American staffs working along with Canadian staffs serves to strengthen and establish very firmly Canadian sovereignty.” ⁴⁸ Canada managed most of the resupply by this point and benefitted from priority access to specialized United States equipment for upper air observations. Canada would accrue no benefit from ending what had become a strong symbol of bilateral cooperation. If Hamilton was worried about Canada’s sovereignty, Hees insisted, the country should spend more on airstrip operations, communications, ice reconnaissance, and marine patrols—all of which would have a “much more important bearing on aspects of Canadian sovereignty” than Canadianizing JAWS. ⁴⁹

The DoT’s continued denial of an American sovereignty threat, along with its insistence that Canada benefitted materially from the JAWS partnership, helped to ward off further discussions about Canadianization for the next eight years. The countries had institutionalized their continental air defence relationship in the then North American Air Defense Command, the DEW Line had settled into a routine also exemplifying bilateral cooperation and respect, and Arctic security and sovereignty slipped to the political backburner. In this context, even Canadian civil servants eased into a more casual attitude regarding JAWS. External Affairs sent fewer representatives to now-shortened annual planning meetings because the proceedings had become “largely a matter of administration.” ⁵⁰ JAWS had settled into an amicable routine, run by administrators in both Canada and the United States who enjoyed a longstanding trust relationship and practical approach to collaboration. When delegates to the annual planning conference celebrated the program’s twentieth anniversary in February 1967, Dyer praised how “this programme had served a unique purpose in that it had demonstrated, most effectively, the results that might be achieved by friendly cooperation in a field of mutual interest,” and how it “might well serve as a classic example for the inspiration of other agencies having a need to engage in cooperative activities of this kind.” ⁵¹

From JAWS to HAWS

Ironically, this meeting in early 1967 marked the beginning of the end for American involvement in JAWS. The Canadians announced their intention for the RCAF to turn over responsibility for the aerial supply of the stations to charter flights by Canadian commercial carriers the following year. The expectation that the United States would shoulder a portion of this financial burden, in addition to higher fuel costs at Resolute, would have increased the United States Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) portion of program costs by US$40,000. When the ESSA budget suffered a “very serious cut” that year, the agency recommended that Canada either absorb the additional costs or consider closing Isachsen so that both countries could support the remaining four joint stations. ⁵²

From its inception, the JAWS program had been susceptible to budget limitations and pressures. These factors now sealed the partnership’s fate. Ottawa stepped in to cover the additional expenses, but the ESSA’s resource problems worsened. In November 1969, the Americans hinted to the Canadians that they might have to end their involvement in the JAWS program because President Richard Nixon had directed United States agencies to reduce their assistance to “outside agencies.” ⁵³ Consequently, in early 1970 the ESSA decided to completely withdraw from the JAWS program to save US$600,000 (roughly 45% of program costs) annually. ⁵⁴ Both countries agreed to a gradual phase-out that would ensure the uninterrupted flow of data from all five stations, and the United States agreed to leave all of its equipment at the stations after it withdrew.

Contextual factors made this decision appear political, resurrecting orthodox assumptions about sovereignty concerns as the primary driver for Canada–United States Arctic relations. In 1969/1970, the ice-strengthened tanker SS Manhattan transited the Northwest Passage, provoking a crisis over whether the waters in the Arctic Archipelago constituted an international strait or fell under complete Canadian sovereignty. ⁵⁵ When news leaked to the press that the United States was withdrawing from JAWS, speculative stories assumed that Ottawa had forced the Americans out of the program as part of Trudeau’s attempt to assert Canada’s Arctic sovereignty more aggressively. ⁵⁶ After more than two decades of successful bilateral and binational cooperation, a mistaken media narrative threatened to recast the joint program’s fate as a symbol of divergent national interests in the wake of SS Manhattan. Canadian and American officials alike expressed annoyance when some of their peers drew the wrong conclusions from the coincidental timing of the two Arctic events. Patrick McTaggart-Cowan, who had strongly defended American involvement in JAWS throughout his career, believed that the cooperative program had fallen prey to Canadian “ultra-nationals.” ⁵⁷ Such beliefs were completely unfounded—Ottawa’s chronic insecurities about Arctic maritime sovereignty had nothing to do with the American decision to withdraw from the program. A draft briefing to President Nixon in September 1970 confirmed explicitly that the pull-out was “at the initiative of the U.S.A.” ⁵⁸

The United States Ambassador to Canada offered a detailed justification for the American decision. The withdrawal was “based entirely upon the need of the US Weather Bureau to trim its budget and reduce operations,” Joseph Scott noted. “It has recently been paying 45% of the cost of the program. Its share will be taken over by the Canadians, who will operate the network at the same level in the same way and provide, at no cost, all weather information obtained to the US Weather Bureau.” In case any doubt remained, Scott categorically dismissed “speculative stories” in the Canadian media about Ottawa pushing the United States out of the program. Any suggestion that the American withdrawal reflected a Canadian initiative was patently “untrue,” with the ambassador reiterating unequivocally that the decision had been made in Washington.” ⁵⁹

In the ensuing years, both countries worked closely and cooperatively to ensure a smooth transition. Canada augmented its capacity to train upper air technicians and administrative staff, and secured upper air instruments previously provided by the Americans when they pulled out of Alert in 1970, Isachsen and Mould Bay in 1971, and Eureka and Resolute in 1972. The newly created Atmospheric Environment Service within the Department of the Environment assumed full responsibility for the now-rebranded High Arctic Weather Stations (HAWS). There was no hostile takeover ending what a twenty-fifth anniversary booklet had described as a “shining example of international co-operation for the advancement of science and the welfare of mankind.” ⁶⁰

In retrospect, the conventional, dominant narrative that emphasizes the ongoing American threat to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty seems misplaced with respect to the JAWS story. While sovereignty animated the debate over Canadianization, the practical application of the concept saw Canada gradually assume responsibility for resupplying the stations, in forms and at a pace that its growing capacity allowed. In the early years “the United States carried out this task practically alone, with only token Canadian participation,” Smith observed. “As time went on, however, Canada took over an increasing share of the load, and eventually it became almost as completely a Canadian show as it had originally been American.” ⁶¹ While day-to-day JAWS functions continued to play out through well-established joint engagement and shared responsibility at the station level, Canadian officials increasingly directed the larger operational theatre—a scenario welcomed by their American counterparts. When the full Canadianization of the stations came in the early 1970s, it was not at Canada’s behest but a consequence of American parsimony and a recognition that, by this point, Canada could certainly manage and afford to run the stations on its own. For all the episodic political bluster about the need for Canadian control, these “tolerant allies” had demonstrated how joint partnership yielded mutual advantages and practical benefits for a quarter century.