For the past seven decades, Canada has been the junior partner in a military agreement with the United States to protect the Canadian Arctic.
The Canadian and American flags could be seen billowing at a distance in the all-white Arctic landscape — the Maple Leaf visibly lower than the Stars and Stripes.
The asymmetry had a simple explanation. Flags across Canada, including this one in the hamlet of Cambridge Bay in the Canadian High Arctic, were flying at half-staff to mourn the recent mass killing at a school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.
But its symbolism, however unintended, was a reminder of Canada’s increasingly uncomfortable situation in its Arctic region: Unable to defend it by itself, Canada remains dependent on the United States, whose president has repeatedly threatened to annex it, and who has also set his eyes on Canada’s Arctic neighbor, Greenland.
