Matthew S. Wiseman

Frontier Science
Northern Canada, Military Research, and the Cold War, 1945–1970
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024

By Matthew S. Wiseman

Between 1945 and 1970, Canada’s Department of National Defence sponsored scientific research into the myriad challenges of military operations in cold regions. To understand and overcome the impediments of the country’s cold climate, scientists studied cold-weather acclimatization, hypothermia, frostbite, and psychological morale for soldiers assigned to active duty in northern Canada.

Frontier Science investigates the history of military science in northern Canada during this period of the Cold War, highlighting the consequences of government-funded research for humans and nature alike. The book reveals how, under the guise of “environmental protection” research, the Canadian military sprayed pesticides to clear bushed areas, used radioactive substances to investigate vector-borne diseases, pursued race-based theories of cold tolerance, and enabled wide-ranging tests of newly developed weapons and equipment.

In arguing that military research in northern Canada was a product of the Cold War, Matthew S. Wiseman tackles questions of government power, scientific authority, and medical and environmental research ethics. Based on a long and deep pursuit of declassified records, archival sources, and oral testimony, Frontier Science is a fascinating new history of military approaches to the human-nature relationship.

Prizes

Praise for Frontier Science

“An important new contribution to the history of Canada’s Defence Research Board and North American defence, Frontier Science offers important insight on ways in which defence scientists and policy makers sought to master the Arctic domain as part of Canada’s North American and North Atlantic alliance contributions. Wisemen employs a range of evidence and perspectives, including those of Indigenous peoples, to capture the intersection between the history of science, defence policy, and settler-colonial understanding of Canada’s north in the quarter century following the Second World War.”

2024 C.P Stacey Award Committee: Yves Tremblay (Directorate of History and Heritage, National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa), Lee Windsor (University of New Brunswick), and Caroline D’Amours (Royal Military College of Canada)

“With care and commitment, Matthew S. Wiseman has written an original account of military and scientific intersections in the north of Canada after the Second World War. This book does much to pull military history out of narrow enclosures and into necessary conversations with other fields, but the principal feature of Frontier Science is the skillful synthesis of difficult archival sources to tell a crucial and neglected story.”

Matthew Farish, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Toronto

“In Frontier Science, Matthew S. Wiseman brilliantly exposes the interrelationships among military research projects in northern Canada, some of which studied and marginalized Indigenous peoples in a comparative and racialized framework. Reflecting settler-colonial narratives of domination over nature and continuing a wartime mindset in the early postwar period, Canada’s Defence Research Board funded government and academic scientists and medical personnel to undertake controversial and, at times, cruel experiments.”

Isabel Campbell, Senior Fellow, Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, University of Toronto, and Adjunct Research Professor, Department of History, Carleton University

“Combining thorough research and a careful eye for detail, Matthew S. Wiseman has filled an important gap in northern Canadian history and made a vital contribution to understanding the role of the military in shaping Cold War Arctic science. Scholars in Canada and beyond will find Frontier Science essential reading.”

Peder Roberts, Associate Professor of Modern History, University of Stavanger

“Of the numerous ways in which the book succeeds, Wiseman’s ability to provoke an emotive response through a rigorous review of the archival record is an enduring one … Wiseman has ushered in a wider dialogue that should draw previously distant fields of northern history and geography into closer conversation.”

Mark Stoller, Assistant Professor of Geography, Queen’s University, Canadian Historical Review 106, no. 4 (2025)

“Wiseman’s study of Arctic science during the Cold War reminds us of a time when Canada’s commitment to the Far North was more urgent, science-based, and, most importantly, far-reaching, based as it was on the prospect of war with Russia, a nuclear power with long-standing Arctic capabilities and aspirations … essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the development of the Canadian Arctic after the Second World War.”

Ken Coates, Professor Emeritus, Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan, The Northern Review 58 (2025)

“Frontier Science is a careful, thoughtful, and well-informed study of how war and conflict were fundamental to science’s conduct and expansion in northern Canada between 1945 and 1970. Environmental historians and historical geographers of North America and the circumpolar North will find much to interest and challenge them in this book, which has great potential to stimulate new lines of thinking about human-environment relations.”

Tina Adcock, Associate Professor of History, Simon Fraser University, NiCHE (2025)

“Here the Arctic – or the more nebulous geographical term ‘the North’ (33–35) – takes centre stage as the crux in the relationship between science and the Canadian military in the decades after the Second World War, both as a natural laboratory and as a borderland that required protection from the Soviet threat … through his use of newspapers, oral histories, government publications, and a wide diversity of archival collections, Wiseman provides a wonderful narrative of an overlooked history. Frontier Science is a necessary and timely addition to the bookcases of those interested in histories of extreme environments, Cold War science, and modern Canada.”

Daniella McCahey, Assistant Professor of History, Texas Tech University, “Science in a cold climate,” Metascience (2025)

“Frontier Science is a well-researched and interesting work that contributes important new understanding of the character and significance of scientific and engineering research and experimentation in the North, as these arose from the heightened international military interest in northern lands and bodies in Cold War Canada.”

Liza Piper, Professor of History, University of Alberta, Technology and Culture 66, no. 1 (2025)

“This valuable original contribution to Canadian science history scholarship provides a detailed account of science actors and activities that took place during the Cold War period in the far north of Canada … This volume has contemporary relevance given our planet’s changing climate due to carbon gases being added to the air, global warming, and its potential impact on the Arctic environment, as well as efforts to limit the same. Wiseman’s book will be of interest to various Canadian historians in other cold climates, as well as to a new generation of Arctic climate scientists.”

Janice Denoncourt, Associate Professor of Law, Nottingham Trent University, British Journal of Canadian Studies 37, no. 1 (2025)