Stephen Harper and the North Pole

Santa Claus is magic. How else could he live at the North Pole, above 4000 metres of frigid water?

The North Pole, indeed, is located near the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Covered by drifting sea-ice, pummeled by high winds, it receives no sunlight for several months a year and is regularly exposed to temperatures of minus 50 degrees.

Stephen Harper may not be magic, but he knows that for many Canadians, the North Pole remains an idyllic location -- complete with Santa's workshop, elves, reindeer, and a candy cane marker.

While Canada makes fanciful claims, Russia acts to secure its position in the Arctic

MOSCOW — The Harper government made a far-fetched bid for international attention earlier this month by claiming the North Pole belongs to Canada.

Lost a bit in the noise was that Ottawa botched a long-established deadline for submitting evidence to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf when it said that it needed more time to scientifically link the Canadian land mass (Ellesmere Island) to the Lomonosov Ridge.

Putin One Ups Canada's North Pole Claim With More Russian Military

OTTAWA - Russian President Vladimir Putin is pawing the snow over Canada's claim to the North Pole.

A day after Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird confirmed Canada is extending its Arctic territorial claim beyond the area mapped by federal scientists, Putin responded Tuesday with a highly visible message to the Russian military.

"I would like you to devote special attention to deploying infrastructure and military units in the Arctic," Putin was quoted saying in televised comments at a meeting of the Defence Ministry Board in Moscow.

Who owns the North Pole?

The ancient Norsemen believed the mountains and oceans were made from the remains of Ymir—an unlucky “frost ogre” whom the gods slaughtered for the purpose of creating the world. Odin and company were not known for tenderness, but they must have had a sense of humour. The undersea mountain range they left at the top of the planet makes that much clear.

Known as the Lomonosov Ridge, this towering, silt-covered furrow on the ocean floor begins from the nexus of Ellesmere Island and Greenland, then runs some 1,800 km beneath the polar ice cap to an archipelago called the New Siberian Islands. About halfway across, there is a single jag that sticks a couple of hundred kilometres toward the Barents Sea. And there, just below the point of the elbow, under about 4,200 m of frigid water, lies the geographic North Pole.