DIEFENBAKER'S "OPENING OF INUVIK" SPEECH

John Diefenbaker Speech at Inuvik’s Dedication Ceremonies, July 21, 1961
Today is an occasion - for you, for me, and for the Western Arctic. We are here - all of us - to join in dedicating a town for which there is no counterpart in Canada. How else can I speak of such an opening ceremony but as an act of dedication? A promise made to the future of the north and its people, and to Canada.

Everywhere I look today with the fresh eyes of a stranger to the western arctic, history comes rushing to meet me. First the colourful history of this region of the Mackenzie Delta and the Western Arctic coast - history that the fathers and grandfathers of many of you helped to make. History - some of it - that had had time to find its way into books and the children are learning about in the schools to remind them to be proud of a northern heritage.

Explorers and Missionaries:
Here at Inuvik - in the beautiful Sir Alexander Mackenzie School, in Grollier Hall and Stringer Hall - you have the best possible reminder of the lives of man who dared the north as it was in those days equipped with little more than courage. This why our largest schools in the Northwest Territories, and the student residences associated with them, bear famous names - of explorers and missionaries - names known and honoured not only in the north but far beyond it.

First Prime Minister North of Arctic Circle:
That is one kind of history. And there is history of another sort in the fact that I am here with you today - the first Canadian Prime Minister to travel north of the Arctic Circle. I could not help thinking as we flew north from Fort Simpson - and this vast unrolling landscape kept pushing the horizons always farther away - of another Prime Minister of Canada, the first. I thought of Sir John A. MacDonald and how he would have wished to be at this ceremony today.
It was just 75 years ago that Sir John made his famous journey to the west coast by the newly-completed transcontinental railway - an event full of the drama of nationbuilding. He sparked the imagination of Canadians with his vision of a greater Canada - one that would stretch from coast to coast. How he would have relished this moment - his coast to coast dream immeasurably enlarged by this north-south dimension which I doubt ever occurred to that quick mind or for that matter some our better brains of today. For too long we have forgotten the Arctic.

Only A Future For Inuvik:
And there is a third kind of history. The history we are making today and that you will make here in the years to come. This is a town with no past to leave behind - only the future to look to. The future not of one race, or two, but of the people of all cultures who choose to make it their home.
The monument is more than a striking design added to the Western Arctic landscape. Its meaning goes deeper than
that. The design symbolizes the friendship and mutual aid of the peoples and governments - the federal and territorial
governments and the people of the wide community of the Mackenzie Delta. Its three bronze arches curve strongly
upwards from a secure base. The foundation of a friendship that will withstand any weather. The arches meet at the apex in a shining dome that mirrors the trees. In winter the outline will be furred by snow. Snow as clean and free from city grime as the winter pelt of an Arctic fox.

Permafrost:
I wish I could see Inuvik in winter - a town with fewer chimneys surely than any town in Canada and with no
furnaces to stoke! I - who am no engineer - can only guess at the number and complexity of the construction problems that had to be solved to raise up such a town. I say “raise” because it is the word to describe Inuvik - a town built above the permafrost, resting on piles frozen solid as iron. How many thousand piles must have been cut, hauled, and driven in by steam jet to create the foundations! If Inuvik should ever follow Yellowknife’s example and adopt an insignia surely a pile driver rampant should surmount the shield!
One does not have to be an engineer to realize that the construction of Inuvik must have called on the full resources
of Canada’s Arctic building research. For so far north, you are contending with some of the most difficult frost
conditions in Canada. And we are not a country that had been engaged in large-scale Arctic construction in the past
like some other northern countries. Canadians have never attempted to build a town comparable to this so far north.

Construction:
Great reserves of resourcefulness and ingenuity had to be summoned to work out new and special types of construction. You will say - and I agree - that since 40% of our country likes north of the provinces it was time we took major Arctic construction seriously. Inuvik is the teacher, which will stimulate the thirst for more knowledge of the Arctic. I am glad that some many of the men whose work contributed to the building of Inuvik have found it possible to be here today. They must feel proud of their work. They do not need this monument although they must share in it. Their best monuments are all around them. All that the architects, the engineers and the many men who worked for them could do, they have done. Now the future of your community lies in the large part in your hands - to carry the spirit of cooperation that built Inuvik into the years ahead. And they will be important years - for Canada and for the north.
The interesting thing about Inuvik is that it is a modern town yet with the most unmistakable Arctic characteristics. And I do not mean only in the pile construction the system of utilidors that act as such vital supply lines - for essential community service. I do not minimize that fact that here - almost with sight of the northern seas - is a town with amenities that many other of comparable size in southern Canada could envy - school, churches, hospital, a power plant, radio station, hotel, stores, dwellings.... These are essentials. But what gives them purpose and meaning to the north is people.

Residents:
Our northern territories today include many different types of residents - more that at any time in the past. And many of them are here today. There are those born in the north - second and third generation families from many different countries of the world. There are the Indians, the Eskimos and the Metis who have share with them - and still do - life on the land in all sorts of economic weather. There are men and women from southern Canada and other countries who - years ago - came north, made it their adopted land and would not now live anywhere else. And the are the most recent immigrants of all - the men and women whose duties have taken them in the north in recent years, sometimes for long periods, sometimes only on field trips. They are the scientists and the engineers, the administrators, doctors, nurses, teachers, technical experts, welfare workers - a cross section of many of Canada’s most respected professions who are here to work for the north and with Northerners.

Local Workers:
This was not a town that Canadians from the south came north and constructed single-handed. Far from it. Built into the town - in places we cannot see - thousands of man hours of work put there by men from surrounding communities of all races. This urgent need for local labour was in fact utilized in the most practical way and made part of the government’s program of vocational education. Young Eskimos, Loucheux Indians and Metis worked side by side. Some had taken a training course in the use of heavy equipment out the north and came back to jobs waiting for them. But for the majority of young trainees this was the first job of its kind that they had ever worked on. I do not need to remind you - with the facilities you have here for the industrial arts at the Sir Alexander Mackenzie School - how much importance the government attaches to vocational education. This is as true in the rest of Canada as it is in the north where, as you know, vocational training is built right into the curriculum wherever facilities can be provided. Life is hard now on the unskilled and the halfskilled, no matter where they live, north or south. In the Territories this type of trade skill is more than acquiring the ability to drive a bulldozer or build a house or run an engine. It is a particularly vital form of insurance in an economy where the game is subject to cycles and demand affected by the whims of the fur market.

Floods: I have learned with deep regret of the floods suffered this spring by the Aklavik area with the tragic loss of fur-bearing animals, and the hardship this brought to many trappers, many perhaps relatives and friends of yours. Happily, there seems to have been no loss of human life. But 61 families, I am told, had to be evacuated from their homes at Aklavik and many others must have suffered varying degrees of inundation and flood damage. Floods of this proportion - though they be exceptional - illustrate the threat that hangs over a community whose foundations so much at the mercy of the river.

Education: When I see the Sir Alexander MacKenzie School and the residences I regret - and I know that Mrs. Diefenbaker does too - that we are here too late to see the children. When one flies here - even though we flew over a relatively small part of this immense Mackenzie Delta - it is not difficult to know why the problem of providing education for the children who live in far-off hunting camps has to be solved by air lift.

Racial Diversity: Our northern schools have a responsibility even wider than to their own people. Through them Canada has an opportunity that is unique to show the reset of the world that we mean what we say when express our views on race discrimination. Those of you who are familiar with the Bill of Rights I advocated for some many years and Parliament enacted into law for them will know how strongly I feel about discrimination. But here in Inuvik there is more an an invitation to show our deep distaste of according privileges to one race that are not available to another. It is wholly positive opportunity to show the future of the north will be influence by young people who have been taught in a way to honour their racial distinctiveness. This is a pride of race that has no taint arrogance. It is a source of strength.

Research: As you know, the government is building a centre here for Arctic research - for research into resources, into a wide range of problems and possibilities common to an Arctic environment. Its facilities are not limited to government scientists but are to be available to industry and the universities too, research is yet another field where Canada takes her northern responsibilities seriously. It is teamed with what we have done with roads, communications, mining, agriculture, surveying and community development.

World Peace: Perhaps with stimulus from all these developments Canadians will become more conscious of their tri-oceanic inheritance. It took us a long time to progress from the Atlantic watersheds to the shores of the Pacific, but, we did it. Now, there looms the horizon of the Arctic and all it might hold in wealth, knowledge of climate and peace in the world.
Our northern territories look toward a future that few Canadians would have pictured for them even a few years ago. You, and your neighbours in Aklavik and other neighbouring communities, live on wide horizons.

Circumpolar Cooperation: You have a brand new monument in a brand new town. In its graceful upward curves it could be a symbol of the world. It is a symbol of racial unity yet at the same time its sphere is the contour of the world. Would be more appropriate than this new “world” emerging above the Arctic Circle out of the spirit of cooperation that built your town? It is this world - a new world for all the people of the Arctic regions - that we in Canada are working to build