‘Bit of a lark:’ Canadian miner files claim on disputed Arctic island
A longtime mining geologist and developer has come up with his own solution to Canada’s long-running Arctic sovereignty dispute with Denmark.
John Robins has filed and been granted a mineral exploration claim under Canadian law to Hans Island — a remote pimple of rock between Ellesmere Island and Greenland that lies exactly on the international border.
“It was done on a bit of a lark,” said Robins, who’s involved with a number of Vancouver-based mining companies. “The reason I applied for it is more just to stir the pot a bit.”
Hans Island, an uninhabited 1.3-square-kilometre knuckle of rock in the middle of the Kennedy Channel, has been the focus of a half-jocular, half-serious boundary quarrel between Canada and Denmark that began in 1973.