Excerpt from "An Overview of Trends in Northern Studies Undergraduate Course Offerings at Canadian Universities, 1972-1997," by Amanda Graham and Maureen Long, Yukon College, 1995. Paper presented at the Circumpolar Universities Conference, Luleå, Sweden, June 1997.
Northern Studies, as a separate area of study at some of Canada's universities, had its beginnings in the early 1960s. Research in the North had expanded in the years after World War II, largely as a result of increased government administrative activity. The first geographer was hired by the Canadian government in 1943 (Robinson 1987). The 1940s saw the establishment of the Arctic Institute of North America (AINA) and expanded support of northern research and study by American foundations, particularly the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation (Lloyd 1988). In 1947 AINA began publication of Arctic and began publishing occasional monographs. Those publications, others, like Polar Record (founded 1931) and the work of government researchers gradually increased the amount of literature available both to the general public and to academics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s "several university-based northern research institutes, centres, or other more loosely organized groups emerged" (Kupsch 1973, ii).Most northern research, at least until the early 1960s was conducted by university academics, government researchers and "post-graduates—who had often come to Canada after receiving a first degree elsewhere" (Lloyd 1988, 11). However, the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources (created 16 December 1953) soon realized that the effect of that research was making itself felt in the universities in growing numbers of northern studies courses. In an address to the 10th Anniversary Meeting of the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (ACUNS), Trevor Lloyd, a founder of ACUNS and its first Executive Director, pointed out that Northern Affairs interest in northern studies was first aroused because of "the need to ensure a sufficient flow of competent personnel to meet the government's growing northern administrative responsibilities" (Lloyd 1988, 12). At that time, in about 1961, the department agreed to support students to do research in the North under a arrangement known as the Northern Scientific Training Program (NSTP). In order to receive these funds for their students, the department required that the universities establish formal northern studies committees to disburse them. In 1962, the first grants, totalling $21,000, were handed to the committees of 6 universities (Alberta, British Columbia, Laval, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and St. Paul) (DIAND 1994, Table 1).
The establishment of the NSTP marks, perhaps, the formal beginning of Northern Studies in Canada. In October 1967, representative of the committees held their first annual meeting: the First National Northern Research Conference. The Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Arthur Laing told delegates that a southern university should look into offering correspondence courses in the North (Laing 1967). In the late 1960s, some universities had, indeed, developed extension departments to offer correspondence courses to northern residents or had begun to consider ways to make its own programming more relevant and attractive to northern students (Kupsch 1973). In 1969, several professors at the University of Western Ontario established an informal working group to discuss the idea of a northern university of some kind, perhaps one taking advantage of new communications technologies (Graham 1994).
The increased northern research activity that accompanied the "opening of the Canadian North" and the expanding populations there had caused northern residents to consider how they themselves might come to play a larger role in northern development. A university of the North was one solution. There had been interest in the territories since at least the early 1960s in establishing a university in the region. Much had been proposed but little actually accomplished (see Graham 1994). However, the enthusiasm that a small number of people expressed for the idea pointed to the importance of the universities' increasing their offerings to northerners and to their students. The time was ripe for an expansion of northern studies courses.
In 1974, at the fifth National Northern Research Conference, "the suggestion of a cooperative national body to represent all Canadian universities active in Northern research, surfaced" (Lloyd 1988, 12). Three years later, the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies was formed at a meeting in Churchill, Manitoba, with a membership of twenty-five universities. Northern Studies had, in a sense, become an accepted areal study in Canadian universities.
The purpose of this paper is examine three sets of data on undergraduate Northern Studies courses offered at Canadian universities in 1972/73, 90/91 and 96/97 to determine what trends are evident. The study is not intended to be exhaustive or highly accurate; the data sets are uneven, the likelihood of selection error high, and judgement was required in many cases to classify a course to a particular discipline. What we present here is only a general sense of where Northern Studies has been and where the field is going at the undergraduate level in Canada today.
Despite its many flaws, however, the results of this survey are suggestive. Between the academic years 1972/73 and 1996/97, there is an increase in the average number of northern studies credits per institution of 56.8% between 72/73 and 90/91 and of 77.4% between 90/91 and 96/97. In all years, human sciences and humanities courses substantially outnumber the physical and life science offerings, representing 92.9% of credits in 1972-73, 87.6% in 1990-91 and 90.4% in 1996-97. This may reflect differences in programming, which often delays specialization in the life and pure sciences until the Master's level.
Between 1990 and 1996, we see striking increases in courses offered under other, newer, multidiciplinary rubrics, Native Studies in particular and, to a lesser extent, Canadian Studies, International Studies, Environmental Studies and Women's Studies. This seems to occur at the expense of some of the established disciplines (such as anthropology, biology, sociology and political science). What is particularly interesting is the result of comparing the disciplines in which NSTP-assisted research was conducted to the disciplines of courses offered. In both 1990/91 and 1996/97, the years for which NSTP data are available, the physical and life sciences account for 54.8% and 79.6% of the studies, while the human sciences and humanities account for 85.0% and 88.1% of the undergraduate northern studies credits in those same years.
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