Arctic military trips reinforce sovereignty
Updated Fri. Feb. 10 2006 6:30 AM ET
Canadian Press
Canadian soldiers are planning an epic series of Arctic trips this spring to reinforce sovereignty and prepare for emergencies arising from increased use of northern skies and waters.
Up to 52 soldiers in five patrols will snowmobile 4,500 kilometres, building airstrips on the sea ice, cataloguing buildings they spot on the way, and laying the groundwork for two High Arctic bases.
"The more military activities we have in that region, the better it is for assertion of sovereignty," said Col. Norman Couturier, commander of Canada's northern forces.
"Sooner or later, we know there will be emergencies in that region. We have to be ready to operate in that area."
The patrols will be conducted by the Canadian Rangers, a largely aboriginal reserve unit that is Canada's primary military presence in the North.
The patrols in Operation Nunalivut - Inuktitut for "the land is ours" - will leave from different points in mid-March and converge about a week later on a tiny island south of Lougheed Island.
Two patrols will leave from Mould Bay, an abandoned Environment Canada weather station on Prince Patrick Island. One of those will head east to Resolute Bay, the other will head east and even further north to another weather station on Ellef Ringnes Island, where it will be joined by a third patrol, resupply and start heading south.
A fourth patrol will be heading west from Grise Fjord on Ellesmere Island. A fifth will head west from Resolute.
Two of the patrols will rendezvous on Melville Island; the other three will meet somewhere near Edmund Walker Island, a rocky piece of nothing in the middle of a frozen ocean.
"It's going to be rough," said Maj. Chris Bergeron, commander of 1 Canadian Rangers Patrol Group.
"I'm talking about patrols meeting in the middle of nowhere on the ice."
Gov.-Gen. Michaelle Jean has been invited to the Edmund Walker rendezvous. Her office is considering the request.
Patrols will climb glaciers and cross remote mountain passes. Twin Otters from Yellowknife-based 440 Squadron will fly before them, warning of open water and scouting out the safest and most efficient routes through the sometimes towering jumble of ice.
The patrols can only carry enough supplies for a week, so they will have to build airstrips on the sea ice so resupply planes can reach them.
Along the way, they will catalogue any structures they see that may have been left behind by the generations of explorers, miners and oil drillers that have travelled the North.
Cameron Island, for example, has an old oil well that may still have a usable airstrip and dock.
"There are old mines, there are abandoned sites," said Couturier. "We just really want to know what's out there."
Such structures could be handy in an emergency, Couturier said.
Operation Nunalivut is also the first step in turning the two abandoned weather stations into "turn-key" base camps that could be quickly activated in an emergency.
Mould Bay, shuttered in 1997, still has snowplows and trucks. Its living quarters look as if they were abandoned yesterday, with someone's old guitar still leaning on the sofa.
"If we can make sure the runways are usable and make sure we have limited caches of fuel and so on, that would be great," said Couturier.
Commercial air traffic over the High Arctic has grown rapidly over the last decade. Transport Canada figures show 142,000 commercial flights in 2004, most of them passenger flights by large jets.
As well, many experts predict there will be increased shipping traffic as global warming reduces sea ice and opens navigation.
The rendezvous plans are also part of preparing for an emergency, said Couturier.
"We want to train them so if we give them a GPS co-ordinate, they can get to that point. If we had a plane going down, we could give the GPS co-ordinate to three or four patrols and say rendezvous at that point.
"We want to give them lots of practice."
Arctic issues surfaced in the recent federal election campaign, with Stephen Harper's Conservatives promising to boost Canada's military presence in the North with new icebreakers, a deepwater port in Iqaluit, new aircraft and a winter warfare school in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
Couturier welcomed the government's northward gaze.
"The profile of the Arctic has been raised," he said.
"I don't think it would have mattered which government would have gotten into power, there would have been more emphasis on the North.
"This is something we've had in mind for quite some time."
