Greenstockings was the name that the members of Sir John Franklin's first Arctic Land Expedition gave to a young Dene woman during their winter residence at Fort Enterprise in 1820–21. All the officers' journals remark on her physical beauty, a reputed beauty that subsequently put her at the centre of numerous rumours and accounts. Historians know little about her other than her physical attractiveness and her age, although Greenstockings might have borne a child to one of Franklin's officers, and male jealousy over her might have put the expedition at serious risk. In spite of the paucity of factual information, Greenstockings has been cast as a central character in a poem by Franklin's first wife and in an award-winning book by Canadian novelist Rudy Wiebe. These and other pieces of information show the way that different perspectives can allow for different representations of historical figures.

United States policy toward the Antarctic in the 1950s culminated in the treaty that bears the continent's name — the same treaty that continues to govern relations in the far south. Washington succeeded in promoting the admirable objectives of scientific advancement and international cooperation. In doing so, it also forfeited what many officials believed to be the more important objective of formalizing a national sovereignty claim to halt further erosion of the rights associated with its mammoth expeditions. Trapped by having repeated their non-claimancy, nonrecognition policy, which Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes had announced in 1924, US officials scrambled for alternatives. They finally chose to formalize their policy-making paralysis, rather than a claim, by proposing a treaty that called for a political status quo moratorium, in accord with the Chilean Escudero Plan. That decision impressed some experts as unwise, but it was sufficiently expedient to win the signatures needed for ratification.

Although Jane Franklin has acquired a well-deserved reputation for stoicism and perseverance in the search for her missing husband (a central theme of nineteenth-century polar exploration), there remains evidence that she was prepared to resort to the surprising measure of the use of spirit mediums. The suggestion that she, or any Arctic explorers on the spot, had heeded such methods, led to a bitter public debate in the 1890s, involving survivors of the search for Franklin. Not only is it a particularly strange and absorbing story, but there also emerges evidence that Lady Franklin's papers may have been deliberately censored in order to preserve her credibility.

The Inuvialuit Region of the Canadian western Arctic continues to support a variety of land-based activities as part of the regional mixed economy. Tourism development, one of the newer elements of the mixed economy, has potential to conflict with beluga whale hunting, one of the traditional activities. The paper asks the question: can local employment be created through nature-based tourism development in Inuvik, Aklavik, and Tuktoyaktuk in the Inuvialuit Region in ways that support the local mixed economy and minimize conflict with the traditional sector? Results of interviews with Inuvialuit elders and tour operators indicate that both parties regard tourism as a desirable employment option and a creator of economic benefits, with relatively few economic drawbacks and relatively little environmental concern. The problem, however, is that tourism also brings with it social impacts and cultural drawbacks that are, in the Inuvialuit view, mostly related to (a) intrusiveness of tourists, especially in relation to the beluga hunt; (b) representation of the aboriginal hunt in a negative light; and (c) commodification of culture. On the balance, nature-based tourism development has the capability to support the local mixed economy, subject to resolving the conflict between beluga whaling activities and tourists. Fundamentally, however, the conflict is between Inuvialuit lifestyles and values versus the values and expectations of tourists.

During World War II, the threat of a German invasion along the north coast of Siberia led to the Soviet High Command developing a plan to build a railroad through the Urals to the port of Salekhard and beyond. Following the War, these plans were reworked to defend against the threat of American aggression. The ‘Mertvaya Doroga’ or great Stalin railroad or polarmagistral was intended to run from Chum, a small station on the Vorkuta railway, through the northern Urals to Salekhard and from there through Nadym to Igarka and Noril'sk. A second railway was to go from Vorkuta to the port of Amderma, while a third included a great net of railroads around Arkhangel'sk. Slave labour was used to construct these railroads, but despite massive programmes run by the Soviet secret police, the railroads were never completed or efficiently constructed. The death of Stalin in 1953 signaled the end of the construction of the Arctic railroads.

This paper describes a two-decade search for a means of giving cultural and/or contextual identity to contemporary architecture in Arctic Québec. Although the search took place in Arctic Québec and for the Inuit of that area, it is proposed that the process and the examples could be useful for the Arctic in general. The notion of global uniformity in architecture is presented and the possible disappearance of the identity of any small cultural group and its consequences are considered. The lack of visual indicators in contemporary Arctic architecture is discussed, and it is suggested that the buildings were not designed for the Inuit people or for a very harsh climate in an unusual physical environment. A few examples of buildings from the early 1970s to more recent times, which display some hint of cultural or contextual sensitivity, are discussed. Definitions for culture and context from various architects, theorists, critics, and organisations are given. An analytical framework that correlates Arctic cultural and contextual sources with three different perceptual levels of expression to be integrated into a design at various levels of architectural representation is set out. A research project on culturally appropriate Inuit housing and several architectural design studios on a variety of building types are then delineated, giving a brief account of their genesis as well as a discussion of their cultural/contextual sources of inspiration, the perceptual level of expression, and the level of architectural representation.