As a proper noun, Antarctica has a long pedigree but a short history. It was coined and popularised by the Edinburgh mapmaker J. G. Bartholomew in the 1890s as a label for the supposed south polar continent outlined by John Murray of the Challenger Commission. By 1902 it was ‘slowly coming into use’ and by 1928 had been ‘generally received’ by geographers.

Sir Raymond Priestley served with Shackleton (1907–1909) and Scott (1910–1913), then after the First World War had a distinguished career in university administration. During retirement he spent three years in charge of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (later the British Antarctic Survey). This note seeks to remove an unsubstantiated blemish from that otherwise exemplary record.

For many years, in the course of fisheries investigations, large numbers of fish have been marked by means of numbered metal tags. Other marking methods, such as dyeing, branding and clipping of fins, have all been tried but found to be either unsuitable, or difficult of application, or less satisfactory in some way. Since 1924 the Discovery Committee has marked some thousands of whales. For this purpose it has been found convenient to use stainless steel tubes which are fired into the blubber and remain firmly embedded until the whale is captured and dismembered by the whalers. Whale marking is in fact limited to this method, because these immense animals cannot be caught and later released. In the case of seals it is unlikely that marks shot into the blubber would prove successful because their skin and blubber is thinner than that of whales and, as seals haul out on land and ice at intervals, the mark would soon be torn out.

This article reviews the role that ministerial directives played in shaping the constitutional development of the Yukon Territory 1970–85. These were years of dramatic change, with the form of government shifting from autocratic bureaucracy to responsible democracy. The instrument for this change was the ministerial directive, an order from the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs to the Commissioner, sanctioned by Section 4 of the Yukon Act. The fact that the head of government is the Commissioner, a senior federal public servant, was key to the process.

In a recent issue of the Polar Record an account was given of the establishment by the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition of research stations at Heard Island and Macquarie Island. These stations have now been in continuous operation for nearly three years, and the purpose of the following account is to summarize the progress made during this period.

The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (the forerunner of the Arctic Council) and the Northern Forum are both products of the sea change in Arctic politics occurring in the wake of the end of the Cold War. Both are soft law arrangements and both are lightly institutionalized. Yet these similarities have not provided a basis for collaboration between the Arctic Council (AC) and the Northern Forum (NF). For the most part, the two bodies have behaved like ships passing in the night. This article seeks to explain this lack of collaboration and to evaluate future prospects in this realm. The lack of collaboration is attributable in part to a number of sources of tension or fault lines, including issues relating to core-periphery relations, the concerns of indigenous peoples, divergent constituencies, the Russian connection, and bureaucratic politics and the complexities of political leadership. In part, it stems from ambiguities about the status of the AC and the NF combined with restrictions on the roles these bodies can play. There is little prospect of combining the two bodies into a more comprehensive Arctic regime. But there are opportunities to devise a realistic division of labor and to develop useful coordination mechanisms. The AC, for example, is the appropriate vehicle for efforts to strengthen the voice of the Arctic regarding global issues; the NF is well-suited to dealing with matters of community viability. Ultimately, the two bodies might consider creating a joint working group on sustainable development or organizing occasional joint meetings of the AC's Senior Arctic Officials and the NF's Executive Committee.

The “Canadian north” in the terms of communications means those parts of Canada not enjoying telephone, radio, and television services presently available in the populated-southern belt. Generally this is the area above lat 55 °N in the west and above 52°N in the provinces east of Ontario.