The path to Panarctic: The emergence of an extractive frontier in Arctic Canada, 1948–1958

From the late 1940s to the late 1950s, the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) turned vigorously to the Arctic archipelago, expanding and confirming the colonial premise that the islands of the High Arctic were an extractive frontier for oil and gas. In this paper, the first of a planned pair, we show how the efforts of the GSC were hugely consequential for subsequent corporate hydrocarbon exploration, but were also intimately entangled with other, concurrent strands of militarization and Arctic colonialism. Numerous histories celebrate GSC geologists as heroic pioneers of extraction and northern field science. Both the militarization of the Arctic in the 1950s and the concurrent, infamous High Arctic Relocations have been discussed at length. This paper has a more precise, interstitial objective: to show that the GSC's fieldwork depended on both the infrastructure of Cold War geopolitics and the labour of Inuit who were moved to the region under duress—particularly to the new community of Qausuittuq (Resolute). Regardless of specific commercial outcomes, the version and vision of the Arctic installed by the GSC continues to foreground certain future geographies of the archipelago, while forestalling or marginalizing others. Key messages The intensive efforts of the Geological Survey of Canada in the middle of the 20th century solidified the southern understanding of the Arctic archipelago as a potential extractive frontier. This mid‐century geological fieldwork was entangled with Cold War militarization and dependent on the coerced relocation of Inuit to the High Arctic. The practices and productions of this fieldwork continue to shape some versions of the Arctic future while forestalling or marginalizing others. Résumé De la fin des années 1940 à la fin des années 1950, la Commission géologique du Canada (CGC) s'est vigoureusement tournée vers l'archipel arctique, élargissant et confirmant la prémisse coloniale selon laquelle les îles de l'Extrême‐Arctique constituaient une frontière d'extraction pour le pétrole et le gaz. Dans cet article, le premier de deux prévus, nous montrons comment les efforts de la CGC ont eu d'énormes conséquences sur l'exploration des hydrocarbures par les entreprises, mais ont aussi été intimement liés à d'autres aspects de la militarisation et du colonialisme dans l'Arctique. De nombreuses histoires célèbrent les géologues de la CGC comme des pionniers héroïques de l'extraction et de la science de terrain nordique. La militaris