Tracing One Warm Line: Climate Stories and Silences in Northwest Passage Tourism

Abstract

This article examines representations of polar cruise tourism in the Northwest Passage as climate change extends the geographic range of open waters and increases the number of ice-free days in the Canadian Arctic. It connects current cruise promotion to earlier exploration histories and investigates the paradoxes that arise in the drive to bear witness to climate change while accelerating its impacts through carbon-intensive travel. It also examines some of the ways that Franklin expedition tourism in particular is being used to reinforce claims of Canadian sovereignty over Arctic resources. Overall, the promotion of this kind of maritime tourism highlights many of the key fault lines between visitor expectations and geophysical and cultural realities in a changing North, raising doubts about whether expanded development of such tourism can succeed in creating climate change ambassadors. The article concludes that the potential for developing cross-cultural environmental justice solidarities depends in significant measure on the tourism industry’s greater inclusion of Inuit perspectives that understand the Arctic not merely as a place to travel through, but as a homeland of earth, sea, and the shifting ice between.

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