Among the collections of the Scott Polar Research Institute is the manuscript of the New Georgia Gazette, a newspaper completed on board ship during William Edward Parry's first expedition in search of a North-west Passage, 1819–20. The expedition stimulated much interest at home partly for its achievement in discovering half of the North-west Passage, and for its novelty as the first expedition deliberately to spend a winter in high Arctic latitudes. It is thus no great surprise that, after the expedition's return home, a printed version of the Gazette was published, for it provides a vivid insight into life on board ship during that unprecedented Arctic winter. However, at the back of the original manuscript of the newspaper is a play written during the expedition under the title, The North-west Passage, or voyage finished, which was not included in the publication. The reason for its exclusion is not given, but it cannot have been due entirely to the dissatisfaction of Parry, who was happy enough to refer to it in his narrative of the expedition (Parry, 1824, p 127), or to its lack of success, since it was most favourably reviewed at the time of its performance. Nor was the play ever entirely forgotten. In Jules Verne's novel, Les aventures du Capitaine Halteras (1861, part 2, p 426) Dr Clawbonny comments ‘Parry composa lui-meme pour les fetes de Noel une comedie tout a fait en situation; elle eut un immense succes et était intitulee Le Passage du Nord-Ouest ou la Fin du Voyag’. Paul-Emile Victor (1968, p 223) also mentions the play's existence, but it was only very recently that this full text of the play was rediscovered at the back of the original Gazette.The manuscript of the play is neatly handwritten in an unknown hand and occupies 19 pages measuring about 20×32 cm.

‘No scheme of Canadian historiography yet advanced is wholly satisfactory because none as yet takes account of the occurrence of the North’ (Morton, 1970, p 31). Where Canadian historiography has been silent, studies of Canadian federalism have chosen to ignore. The Northwest Territories (NWT) and die Yukon Territory have certainly never been major actors in national political forums, nor have they yet to play a significant role in the political processes surrounding the two major preoccupations of Canadian federalism, namely the economy and national unity.

The Arctic Data Buoy Program described in this article is designed to provide certain fundamental data from an inaccessible region, using automatic devices rather than costly manned stations. The first effort in that direction was the Soviet Drifting Automatic Radiometeorological Stations (DARMS) programme of the 1950s and 1960s (Olenicoff, 1968). These buoys reflected the then state of technology which involved the use of heavy storage batteries and a method of location by high frequency (HF) radio wave triangulation (Figs 1,2; Table 1). Restrictions of that system—high cost, weight, and limited range and accuracy of HF radio wave triangulation— apparently caused the Soviet Union to terminate the programme. At about the same time satellite navigation and data transmission technology, developed in the United States, created a new generation of data buoys. These buoys can accommodate a wide range of sensors, data compression and pre-processing devices and hull designs, for stationary use on land, as moored or drifting ocean data buoys, or on sea ice; they can be installed on land, in the ocean from ships, or by parachute drops from aircraft.

The six men of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Northern Party were stranded on Inexpressible Island (Fig 1) from late February to September 1912. During that period their lives were profoundly influenced by prevailing surface wind and sea ice conditions in Terra Nova Bay. Members of the party lived under the most primitive conditions, enduring more than seven months of strong, persistent winds. The western part of Terra Nova Bay remained largely free of ice in 1912, thus preventing the group from leaving until there was sufficient daylight to cross the Drygalski Ice Tongue. This open water, however, may also have assured their survival for it attracted enough seals and penguins to provide them with a continual though limited supply of food. Despite these adverse conditions some of the men, Raymond Priestley in particular, kept detailed journals which provide the only in situwintertime observations for this area. Analysis of Priestley's wind and ice record provides strong confirmation of our model for the wintertime persistence of open water (a polynya) in Terra Nova Bay.

The most ambitious field project of the 1979–80 austral summer season in Antarctica was conducted in the Ellsworth Mountains (Fig 1), when 42 scientists and technicians studied a variety of geological problems in an area which included both the Sentinel Range to the north and the Heritage Range to the south (Fig 2), from about 77°15'S to 80°30'S and 80°W to 87°30'W.