The Northwest Passage, as the British came to call it, was a direct sea route from the North Atlantic to the fabulous riches of China. Vancouver admitted that he was expected to reconnoiter for the Pacific entrance to Northwest Passage. Just six months ago, China’s Maritime Safety Administration published a 365-page shipping manual titled Arctic Navigation Guide (Northwest Passage). After all, we’ve been getting everything about the Northwest Passage wrong, all along, and the derangement induced by the phantasm of riches in China is with us still. But Canada’s three coasts, and the great breadth of “a land so wide and savage,” as the great balladeer Stan Rogers put it in his anthem Northwest Passage, is a consequence, too, of a glorious delusion.

Source: National Post September 14, 2016 19:07 UTC