No national dream has greater staying power than the vision of northern Canada as a treasure chest. Justice Thomas Berger kept the faith that inspired centuries of exploration in the 1977 report of his three-year Mackenzie Valley Pipeline inquiry, titled Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland.

No one, Berger included, questioned belief in northern resources so rich they have to be tapped. “I have proceeded on the assumption that, in due course, the industrial system will require the gas and oil of the western Arctic, and that they will have to be transported along the Mackenzie Valley to markets in the south,” he wrote.

“Oil and gas development in the Mackenzie Delta-Beaufort Sea region is inevitable,” added Berger. He regarded his main recommendation – a 10-year freeze on pipeline construction for negotiation of aboriginal land claim settlements – as a pause compared to long-range Arctic industrialization that lay ahead.

“Notwithstanding the disappointing level of discoveries so far, the Delta-Beaufort region has been rated by the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources (now Natural Resources Canada) as one of three frontier areas in Canada that contain major undeveloped reserves of oil and gas,” Berger wrote. “Canada has chosen to pioneer offshore oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. We are in advance of other circumpolar nations on this geographical and technological frontier. The pipeline, once built, will stimulate yet more oil and gas exploration offshore and it will lead toward full-scale development and production in the Beaufort Sea.”

Berger was in good company. Government, industry and financial authorities foresaw a new “major petroleum province,” potentially an Arctic Alberta. Late-1970s forecasts called for northern production of 300,000 barrels per day by 1985 and 600,000 barrels daily by 1990. The official visions helped legendary business promoters Jack Gallagher and Charles Hetherington raise king’s ransoms in private and government investment for Beaufort and Arctic Islands drilling marathons by Dome Petroleum and Panarctic Oils.

Three decades later, the northern dream has outlasted the demise of Dome, Panarctic, the original Mackenzie development schemes and a 1980s reincarnation called the Delta Project due to energy supply gluts, price crashes, drilling setbacks and rising construction costs. The current vision is grander than ever, with high environmental hopes stirred into the faith in Arctic wealth.

The national Conservatives’ throne speech last November pledged to “support the development of cleaner energy sources. The natural gas that lies beneath Canada’s North represents both an untapped source of clean fuel and an unequalled avenue to creating economic opportunities for northern people.” Actions to lower “regulatory and other barriers” against northern pipelines “will bring jobs to northern Canada and create employment across the country, just as they will bring new energy supplies to markets in southern Canada and throughout the world.”

The next Arctic reality check comes after mid-2010, when the National Energy Board expects the current pipeline regulatory marathon to finish. Then it will be up to the owners of the Mackenzie Gas Project to decide if northern resources are the stuff of livelihoods yet.

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