There has been no time since the end of the Second World War when it could not have been said that the Canadian Eskimos were at a critical point in their history. The north has become a part of the world as a whole, and the Eskimos, caught in the course of world events, have become subject to changes that affect every aspect of their lives. This is inevitable, and all concerned recognize it as an inescapable fact. Some writers have simplified the current situation among the Canadian Eskimos as a struggle between the old and the new. They have pointed to the privation that was so often an unavoidable accompaniment to primitive life and have argued that there can be no return to such conditions. This approach does not lead anywhere, for nobody has seriously suggested a return to the primitive. It is true that the Eskimos may not be any happier now than they were in former times; in outward appearance they seem in fact to be markedly less happy. A return to the old days might therefore be appealing, but nobody, and least of all the Eskimos themselves, considers it to be either possible or desirable. To suggest the contrary is to set up snowmen only in order to knock them down.

A third field season in the joint research programme of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) and the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) was carried out between November 1971 and January 1972. For accounts of previous work in this programme, see Polar Record (1968); Evans and Smith, (1970); and Robin and others (1970). The personnel from SPRI working in the field during the past season were S. Evans, C. H. Harrison, D. J. Drewry, G. K. A. Oswald, M. R. Gorman, and (from the University of Gent and Expéditions Antarctiques Belges) H. Decleir. A. Clayton and J. Whittington of the SPRI staff assisted in data reduction.

Ostrov Vrangelya, lat 71–72°N, long 178°E–177°W, is the largest island in the eastern Soviet Arctic. It has an area of 7 673 km2 and extends approximately 120 km east-west and 60 km north-south (see Fig 1). Five different flags have been raised on it—those of Great Britain, Canada, United States, Imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union—and it has had four different names in English since its first sighting by a white man: Kellett Land, Plover Land, New Columbia, and Wrangel Island. However, since 1924, no nation has disputed Soviet possession of the island.

This instalment of our list is dominated by the search for Sir John Franklin's missing North-west Passage expedition (see 1845–48). The search began in 1847 and continued intensively until 1854, when Dr John Rae finally found the first clues regarding the fate of the expedition. An important feature of the search was the large number of sledge expeditions, which set out from the searching ships in spring. By this means, many thousands of kilometres of new coastline were discovered in a relatively short period, mainly during the spring months of 1851 and 1853, and much of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, which was largely unknown before 1850, was added to the map. In nearly every case, the sledges were man-hauled by an officer and six or seven seamen. We are listing all of the searches for Franklin, as we listed all North-west Passage expeditions, including some that did not touch Canadian shores.