Symphonies of solitude from the north.

• Author: Werner, Louis
• Position: Glenn Gould's photographs of Canada's north

TO ANYONE NOT CANADIAN, the answer to "Where is North?" might seem laughingly self-evident. The North is ... well, up north somewhere. Somewhere indeed, because Canadians know better. They know, for instance, a compass sometimes points "North" in any direction at all. Heading down into Canada from the top of the globe, one travels due south for some 1,725 miles, the distance from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Iquitos, Peru, just to reach Great Bear Lake--still pretty far north on most maps.

Few Canadians seem to care about the North's exact location. For some, it lies anywhere above the Arctic Circle--that imaginary polar circumscription at 66 degrees, 17 minutes north. The Circle is more relevant to astronomy than geography, however, for at its latitude on one day each year the sun never sets and on another it never rises. Moving "up" from there, the number of nightless and sunless days increase until, standing at the pole, the entire year consists of just one long day followed by one long night.

If indeed the North and the Arctic are one and the same place, where then is the sub-Arctic? Certainly not down south. Following the nomenclature of High Arctic and Low Arctic, should there also be a northern North and a southern North? As simple a mark as a circle on a map clearly cannot locate so complicated a notion as North.

From a builder's point of view, the permafrost line--where the ground never thaws--might best define the problem of North. Just ask anyone who has dug a foundation into the rock-hard frozen earth. But this line loops and curves, doubles back and zooms north or south depending on the underlying geology. A straighter edge is drawn at the North by the western provinces' upper boundary, but such a purely administrative delineation through otherwise unmarked terrain seems somehow odd. Odder still is the definition of Arctic oceanographers, who would have you believe the North begins wherever water happens to freeze at a particular temperature and salinity reading.

Hunters say the treeline is what sets apart the North. Emerging from the sheltering forest into the windswept tundra, there they stop to reload ammunition for a wholly different kind of game. But treeline--roughly determined by a July isotherm of 50 degrees fahrenheit--is of little comfort in the depths of January. And like permafrost, the forest margin meanders erratically up and down across the top of the world.

Most Canadians in fact only care to think about the North when they remember winter. For them, it is simply cold, dark and icy. For others, North is the land of summery opportunity--gold mines, oil wells, and fishing banks. Obviously, the North--defined by latitude, temperature, sunshine, or money--is many things to many people.

But for Canada's artists and intellectuals, the North is a less tangible and more imaginary place. It matters less where it is than where a person is in relation to it. The writer Farley Mowatt, author of Never Cry...