Canada’s Military Wants to Prove It Can Defend the High Arctic

In Canada’s Frozen North, With Canada’s Frozen Soldiers Canadian soldiers transported M777 howitzers to the High Arctic to show their ability to fight in an increasingly contested part of the world. It did not go as planned. Supported by Canada’s military ambitions in the Arctic hinged on a frozen door that wouldn’t open. Hundreds of troops landing on an island in the High Arctic last month were confronted with wind chill temperatures of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, frigid even by the area’s standards. The cold kept the locals in the Victoria Island hamlet of Cambridge Bay indoors, suffused the air with tiny ice crystals called diamond dust, and sealed a 30-foot-tall door at an airport hangar. “It’s frozen,” said an air force detachment commander, “frozen shut.” That left the force’s Chinook helicopter out in the cold. As Canada’s armed forces launched their biggest-ever Arctic exercise, soldiers blasted mobile heaters in an effort to open the hangar door and haul in the Chinook, which had been grounded by a mechanical problem and the extreme temperatures. If the frozen door showed the unforgiving difficulties of operating militarily in the Arctic, it also underscored how far behind Canada is compared with bigger Arctic powers jostling for power at the top of the globe. A lot depended on the Chinook flying. In a few days, it was supposed to airlift two four-and-a-half ton M777 howitzers so that they could be fired in front of a V.I.P. delegation of military officials. The firing of the howitzers — for the first time this far up north — was meant to send a strong message that Canada was ready to wage war in the Arctic. “We have to deploy to, and operate, like in any part of Canada in order to exert our sovereignty,” said Warrant Officer Thomas Hughes, a leader of a 33-soldier snowmobile patrol whose members pitched tents on frozen waters the night before their departure from Cambridge Bay. They had planned to push along a lonely stretch of Victoria Island for five days, with the Chinook as backup to evacuate anyone injured. But if the helicopter couldn’t take off, it was not clear how far they would be able to go. Arctic Ocean GREENLAND ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO ALASKA VICTORIA ISLAND YUKON NUNAVUT Cambridge Bay NORTHWEST TERRITORIES CANADA Hudson Bay 400 miles Related Content Advertisement