Word: arctics
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, Baffin, Parry, Ross and Franklin, intrepid seamen and scientists whose names memorially dot the Arctic, were some among dozens who sought a key to the Northwest Passage to Asia across America's ice-locked top. But not until 1906 did any man navigate completely across the Arctic. Roald Amundsen, Norway's hero-explorer, in a three-year trip and with the loss of one of his seven men, traversed the first Northwest Passage*-Baffin Bay, Barrow Straight, along the west coast of North Somerset Island to Cambridge Bay and out to Beaufort...
...This lies at the extreme northerly point of North America's mainland, 2,000 miles directly above Minneapolis, and separates Boothia Peninsula from Somerset Island. (Barrow Strait, 150 miles further north, separates Somerset Island from Cornwallis Island.) Bellot Strait, situated on the 72nd parallel 400 miles inside the Arctic Circle, is also just 150 miles north of the North Magnetic Pole-so close that ships' compasses are useless. Explorers have known that if it were used it would cut 100 mi. from the Baffin Bay-Barrow Strait passage, save 400 miles if the still untraversed Fury and Hecla...
Last week this new, shorter Northwest Passage's navigability was dramatically demonstrated as Hudson Bay Company's Eastern Arctic Patrol Nascopie sounded her way through Bellot Strait. Snow shrouded the Arctic dusk as head on through the haze came the bow of another ship. Nascopie's Captain Thomas Smellie's incredulous hail got a booming reply from veteran Arctic Trader Patsy Klingenberg, from the deck of the Schooner Aklavik, eastbound to Baffin Island, and astonished Eskimo cheers from both crews echoed through the rock-bound channel. That night captains of both vessels described from their anchorages...
...prospector and promoter named Gilbert LaBine, who had started a company called Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd., was driving his dogsled across the frozen surface of Canada's Great Bear Lake, which is cut by the Arctic Circle. He spotted a vein of curious, glossy stuff which looked something like anthracite coal, with gleams of yellow, pink and green, recognized it as pitchblende. Surveys and assays showed that the deposit was rich and copious. In 1933 a refining plant was completed at Port Hope on Lake Ontario, 3,500 miles away. The Great Bear Lake find broke the Belgian monopoly...
...inevitable seasonal progression last week the North American wheat harvest rolled into the red-gold acres of Montana, South Dakota and Minnesota. Northward away from the declining sun the harvest will sweep until the snow flies around the threshing machines in Canada's Peace River district on the Arctic's frontier. Through vast areas of Canada's Prairie Provinces the harvest's conglomerate followers will pass swiftly, for those flat lands have been seared by drought, wasted by rust until the Dominion has resigned itself to the lightest wheat crop in modern years...