Hans Island

As the war in Ukraine drags on, Canada and Denmark have resolved the dispute over Hans Island, which has been fought with bottles of booze.

By finally agreeing to share the island, Denmark and Canada will now have a second border. In 1983, Canada issued a land-use permit for Hans Island to a petroleum company to research the effect of sea ice on drilling rigs. Then, Canada and Denmark decided to draw a line between the two countries down the middle of Nares Strait, the waterway between them.

Canada and Denmark have reached an agreement to divide a tiny uninhabited island in the Arctic, ending a nearly 50-year-long international dispute between ...

"The dispute between Canada and Denmark over Tartupaluk or Hans Island has never caused issues for Inuit," said Kotierk in a media statement. Breum visited the island by helicopter in 2018 and describes it as a "beautiful," desolate piece of history. Michael Byers, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, has been calling for a peaceful resolution to the dispute for decades. Byers says the two countries decided to draw a line along a geological feature that can be seen on satellite images. Russia has planted flags staking claims to the Arctic region. "It's possible this will become a tourist destination." And then knowing that you are on top of the 50-year-old conflict of international magnitude is really odd because there's nothing there. One will be Canadian, the other will be part of Greenland which is part of the Danish kingdom. Martin Breum, a Copenhagen journalist and expert on the Arctic, said he's been briefed by government officials in Denmark on parts of the deal. The move comes as NATO allies have joined together in a united front against the Russian invasion in Ukraine. "It's not exactly a 50/50 share," he said. The Canadian government posted an order-in-council this week confirming the Hans Island deal.

News item: Reports say Canada and Denmark will today announce a resolution to a 50-year-old dispute over who owns Hans Island, a tiny, barren, ...

In the end, cooler heads prevailed and it was decided to let the referees sort things out. In 1872, arbitrators led by German Emperor Wilhelm I sided with the U.S., and that was that. The opposing forces kept building until both benches emptied, sticks and gloves all over the ice, though nobody threw any punches. We spend all our time fussing about our rambunctious neighbours to the south, yet it seems the real menace is the quiet guy upstairs, the one we never think about. The Pig War was ignited 163 years ago tomorrow, on June 15, 1859. Actually, it was Canada that got aggressive in 2005. (I think I saw him put his hand on Greenland’s girlfriend’s butt, too.) It was the culmination of a smouldering disagreement over whether the islands between Haro and Rosario straits belonged to Britain or the U.S. (Indigenous inhabitants might have had a third option, but they weren’t consulted.) It was the sort of move you could get away with when the opponent is a lightweight like Greenland. But what about the U.S.? Who knew Greenland was such a threat? Got to admit Canadians don’t know much about Greenland. It might be twice the size of B.C., and it might only be 15 kilometres from Canada in places, but its population of 57,000 is only half that of Saanich. OK, the Hans Island fuss was less a battle than a long-running property-line disagreement with a neighbour many of us didn’t know we had.