Know your Canada/US geography? Think again!

Alaska is ALREADY part of the US. They bought it fair and square from the Russians for $7 million (about 2 cents an acre) in 1867. So Canada CANNOT give them something Canada does not own. Canada has NEVER owned Alaska. Is this a trick question?

Suggest you Google "Seward's Folly." As a Canadian, I got that in school history class at around Age 12-13.

 

Here - I'll do it for you: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sewards-folly

 

Even if Alaska were Canada's to give, at any time in the past, I don't think there has ever been a Canadian Government insane enough to give away 663,268 square miles for a few bits and pieces. Not even the present administration. Just a minute -- maybe Mackenzie King. He might have OK'd it.

"Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, also known as Weird Willie, gazed into his crystal ball, communed with his dead dogs, and saw images floating in his shaving cream. Many historians believe that he was our greatest prime minister ever.

https://www.e-know.ca/regions/east-kootenay/10-facts-about-wacky-wartime-leader-mackenzie-king/

"Know your Canada/US HISTORY? Think again"

 

Related to his “solution” there are vasts parts of Canada adjacent to Alaska that could have been traded in near equal parts, with similar “values,” to alleviate the border issue in some places.

Not a perfect example but the US, with concurrence of the local US tribe that largely inhabits the area (the tribe is also throughout Canada since borders aren’t relevant in that context), gave a different Canadian tribe an island that they still inhabit today. Metlakatla, BC became the “new” Metlakatla, AK. The story fascinates me largely on two levels; the willingness of the members of the group to go exploring to find a new home that worked for them and that the non-American “leader” William Duncan was able to convince the US government to give it to them.

 

Yes - trading land in this context means trading or displacing people. And that's VERY problematic. I admire the way it was done, in the example @JBjunior cited. That took some finesse, obviously. There have been many REALLY disastrous examples of displacement throughout North American history. e.g The Long Walk of the Navajo, and the Trail of Tears of the Cherokee.

There have also been crimes against non-Native people in Canada, viz. the expulsion of the Acadians, who found a new home in Louisiana.

If, in this case, we managed to miss the opportunity for another such calamity -- I'm glad of it. Back then, we (Canada) would likely have bungled it and innocent people would have died. So - one less crime against Native Peoples. Works for me.

 

I meant to provide a link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metlakatla,_Alaska. I haven’t heard of any “downsides” to the deal and they even decided in the 1970s to keep the arrangement.

 

Thanks!

 

Now that somebody brought it up...how DID the Alaska/Canada border happen? Was there an agreement between the British and the Russians? Must've been. I don't think WE negotiated it. Did we?

 

Here's what Google says,

There's no possible way to draw a straight line that would be fair to both sides. The border as it exists came after weeks of negotiations and a partial capitulation by the British to American demands that they control all the rivers that emptied into the Pacific. Feb 14, 2015

With mining activities increasing in interior Canada and Alaska, it became important that the 141st meridian international boundary line be determined and marked to separate the two countries, and in 1906, a Convention was signed by Canada and the U.S. requiring this be done. May 18, 1978

Starting in 1905, surveyors and other workers of the International Boundary Commission trekked into this wilderness to etch into the landscape a brand-new political boundary. The border was unknown in 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia for 2 cents an acre.

https://www.google.com/search?q=alaska+canada+border+history&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS869US869&oq=alaska+canada+border+&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgGEAAYgAQyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABDIHCAkQABiABNIBCjE3MTczajBqMTWoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Here's more detailed info

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_boundary_dispute

 

Hunh. We did sort it out.

 

Sorted - sorta. But there was an aftermath, That was not good for Canadian-British Or Canadian-US relations -- at all.

Wiki:
The Canadian judges refused to sign the award, issued on 20 October 1903, due to the Canadian delegates' disagreement with Lord Alverstone's vote. Canadians protested the outcome, not so much the decision itself but that the Americans had chosen politicians instead of jurists for the tribunal, and that the British had helped their own interests by betraying Canada's.[8] This led to intense anti-British emotions erupting throughout Canada (including Quebec) as well as a surge in Canadian nationalism as separate from an imperial identity.[10] Although suspicions of the U.S. provoked by the award may have contributed to Canada's rejection of a free trade with the United States in the 1911 "reciprocity election",[8] historian F. W. Gibson concluded that Canadians vented their anger less upon the United States and "to a greater degree upon Great Britain for having offered such feeble resistance to American aggressiveness. The circumstances surrounding the settlement of the dispute produced serious dissatisfaction with Canada's position in the British Empire."[11] Infuriated, like most Canadians, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier explained to Parliament, "So long as Canada remains a dependency of the British Crown the present powers that we have are not sufficient for the maintenance of our rights."[12] Canadian anger gradually subsided, but the feeling that Canada should control its own foreign policy may have contributed to the Statute of Westminster.[8"

@Bill Huffman. Can you tell me what the 2015 date here means? I thought this happened in 1903.