Exploration has long been pivotal to southern engagements with northern Canada, but it is most often associated with the nineteenth century or earlier. A Cold Colonialism offers the first extended examination of twentieth-century exploration in the Canadian North. Modern exploration helped southerners establish and maintain distinctive kinds of colonial and settler colonial power over northern Indigenous homelands.

Who explored the North between 1918 and 1965? What forms did exploration take? What did it mean to explorers and others affected by it? Tina Adcock focuses on four representative explorers with richly documented careers: mining engineer George Douglas, surveyor Guy Blanchet, ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and filmmaker Richard Finnie.

Despite limited experience in and knowledge of the Canadian North, these explorers helped southern militaries, industries, and governments exert control over northern peoples and their lands. Each also claimed belonging in and authority over the North in ways that still resonate among southern settlers in Canada today.

Tina Adcock's profile page

Tina Adcock is an assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University. She is the co-editor (with Edward Jones-Imhotep) of Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History. Her work has appeared in Canadian, American, Swedish, and Norwegian scholarly journals and volumes. She was an associate of the Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University from 2017 to 2020.