University that wasn't : the University of Canada North, 1970-1985

Abstract

The creation of The University of Canada North, by federal letters patent in 1971, marks the beginning of a revealing episode in northern Canadian history that spans almost fifteen years. The brain-child of Toronto lawyer Richard Rohmer and thirty residents of the two territories, The University of Canada North (UCN) appeared to provide suitable and useful post-secondary education to all northerners regardless of ethnic background,^ to control and contribute to northern research, and, by its very existence, to grant northern society a cachet of stability that it did not yet appear to have. The fact that it was initiated not by government, but by a group of interested individuals placed the UCN both in an emerging northern practice of attempting to find northern solutions to northern problems and in the growing northern rejection of its traditional colonial relationship with the South. The growing strength of the territorial governments and northern First Nations organisations was reflected in northern society by a popular sense of pride and an unwillingness to continue in the established colonial relationship with the federal government This attitude resulted in an intense and widespread desire to wrest control of day-to-day living and governing from the distant hands of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Different groups in the North responded in different ways. The First Nations established organisations to address their concerns. Non-Aboriginal northerners responded by creating societies to provide local solutions and local voices to the insufficiencies they saw. The territorial governments expanded their jurisdictions through a series of transfer agreements with the federal government