North Warning

Wed, 30 May 2007 15:33:49 GMT

North Warning

(Once in a lifetime 1987 –1994)

I have a haunting photograph of the radar site called PIN-M. The picture shows a huge radar radome and various communications antenna arrays clustered around a white and gray clad building. They are being highlighted against a dark winter’s night sky by strategically located floodlights. The building houses the radar rooms, equipment rooms, offices, sleeping and living quarters for the military and civilian personnel assigned to operate and maintain the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar site. It is situated at Cape Parry just north of the 70^th parallel of latitude in the North West Territories of Canada.

The long narrow building, called a building “train”, was constructed with rooms along either side of a long straight corridor. Fire doors close off numerous sequential sections giving the ambiance of a train as a person walks the full length of the building. A second “train” parallels the first. The two trains are connected at the middle by a 150 foot enclosed walkway/utility corridor thus giving the entire complex an “H” configuration. The complex can house upwards of two hundred people.

PIN-M is one of many radar sites stretching across Canada’s northern Arctic coastline; acting as the Continent’s ears and eyes to search and detect for any airborne threat. The DEW line system was built in the mid 1950’s to detect unwanted missiles and aircraft, and transmit this “early warning” information to the Canadian and United States military command of NORAD located in underground bunker complexes at North Bay, Ontario and then onwards to Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

It was this environment that I found myself in the late spring of 1987. I had flown in to supervise a construction crew sub-contracted to install new communication equipment at site. We were part of a major program to modernize the DEW line.

The program called “North Warning System Modernization Program” started in 1986 and continued through 1994. New sites were built and others were modernized with new radar and communication equipment. When all was said and done, twelve long-range radar (LRR) sites, thirty-six new short-range radar (SRR) sites, three Logistics Support Sites (LSS), One Regional Communications Centre (RCC) and the Regional Operations Control Centre (ROCC) were either modernized or built.

I worked for Canac/Microtel, a consortium created by Canadian National Telecommunications and B.C. Telephone to modernize the “long haul communication equipment” that sends information via satellite from each radar site to the ROCC at North Bay.

This was a military project and being of a “sensitive” nature all employees had to be screened and given “Secret” security clearance. Some of us required “Cryptography” and “NATO” security clearance.

As the “Civil Installation Manager”, I was responsible for the installation of all “outside plant” telecommunication structures and equipment; such as 22-foot diameter satellite dishes, 30-foot radomes to house the dishes, equipment shelters, armoured fibre-optic cabling, security systems, weather stations. I had four “installation” crews to get the sites ready for the four “technical equipment” crews that followed in our footsteps. Each six-man crew would “build” a site in a month and a half and complete three sites per construction season. We would push the weather envelope by planning to “start” at the middle of May and work through to the end of September.

I was assigned the additional duties and title of “Transportation Manager” after the incumbent Manager got sick and was forced to retire. Thus I wore two hats. Before his departure, he and his team had the “bulk” material and equipment for each SRR site barged to the nearest beach access along the Arctic coast via Northern Transportation Co. The crates were stacked on the beach and left over the northern winter in order to be available for next season’s work.

In short, I had to get all material, equipment and personnel to the right site at the right time and to ensure that the civil installation was completed on time to bring in the technical installation crews.

Most of my winter-time work was consumed with planning and organizing for the next season; plus preparing other “special” projects that the military would want C/M to perform the following season. I also worked on preparing Requests for Proposals (RFP) for major telecommunications projects in Malaysia and another in Indonesia. Both proposals took me to these countries to scope out the work but that’s another story.

My summer time was spent traveling around the Arctic. I would work with various air charter companies to move the crates of material from the beach to the site using a Civil Installation Crew as “ground” crew. We would then hop over to the next site and move that material into site. The late spring weather could be inclement. The western Arctic was relatively easy compared to the eastern Arctic where we had to dig the crates out of the snow on more than one site on Baffin Island when the summer season was slow to come. Once the material was delivered and the Installation Crew was on site, I would get the other crews mobilized.

The work was going on in 5 geographical zones across the north so I would jump from zone to zone all summer long dealing with material, equipment, and personnel issues.

I also had to get the crates of electronic equipment from our “assembly and test” facility in Coquitlam, B.C. to each site. We used truck, C130 Hercules aircraft, Boeing's 737’s, Twin Otters, Bell 212 and Bell 206L helicopters to get the equipment to site. If we got the equipment from the plant early enough in the season I could ship each site’s six large crates to Edmonton via truck, along with the other scheduled site’s crates. They would be loaded on board a chartered NWT Air’s Hercules C-130 aircraft and flown to the closest major airport of the recipient sites.

Many of the new SRR sites did not have airstrips so helicopters were the only method of access. I would use ski equipped “Twin Otter” aircraft to transport the crates to the sea ice below the sites and then use helicopters to sling them up to site one at a time.

Moving material and equipment into site and then moving Installation and Technical crews from site to site in the different “zones” made for busy summer seasons. I put in many hours flying along the Arctic and Labrador coasts. I observed the natural splendor of the land and marveled at its ability to sustain an abundance of wildlife. From the Alaska border to southern Labrador. The job was demanding at times, however it had its rewards for someone who loves the outdoors.

It was truly an “once in a lifetime” project filled with travel, hardship, drama, danger, adventure, fun comradeship and that was just during my free time. My work time was filled with all of the above and more as it was a 24-hour a day job.

Kangok Fjord

It was mid May and the weather was perfect for flying. Eight Canac/Microtel employees were sitting around the departure lounge at the Iqualuit Airport waiting for transportation. A Bell 212 helicopter was being fuelled up and the pilot would come to get four of us, and our baggage, when that was completed. The other four were waiting for the pilot of Air Baffin’s Cessna 337 to taxi his push/pull machine onto the apron. I had arranged for both aircraft to transport Ivan Foss, Alan Pratt, Jack Grant and myself, along with the remainder of the Civil Installation crew, north to the Kangok Fjord situated on Baffin Island’s mid eastern coast.

The radar site called FOX-CA was located overlooking the end of the fjord. There was a small “post-stamp” dirt runway roughed out along the coast four miles from the site. Our immediate job was to sling the crated communication material from the beach to the site and then leave the six-man crew there to install the Satellite dishes, radomes and ancillary equipment. The Installation window was for the crew was six weeks, however, they could normally beat that schedule and would clamour to get out for a “break” before they headed into their next scheduled site. The nearest big city was Iqualuit.

Both machines arrived on schedule, so we got loaded and were off to our first site of the season. The helicopter left 20 minutes before the 337. We were still in the air nearing the site when we saw the 337 fly past us 500 feet away and then continued on to circle the small airstrip before making a bumpy landing. The 337 was just taking off as we landed near our crated material at the side of the airstrip. The aircraft would be back with another load of baggage and equipment before the day was over.

We walked over to inspect the crates of material while the helicopter pilot and his Engineer inspected the cache of “Jet-B” fuel brought in on last year’s material sea-lift. Satisfied with the condition of the 45-gallon drums, they refueled the chopper.

Our inspection of the crates revealed that most of them were still half buried in the snowdrifts that filled every nook and cranny around the airstrip, even though the surface of the airstrip was bare. The spring “melt” in the eastern Arctic was late this year especially on Baffin Island. I was sure we would find the same conditions at two other sites we were scheduled to go to after completing the move at this site.

We decided that two men would go up top to the site “to position and un-sling” the crates as they arrived. The rest of us stayed on the beach to dig enough snow from the crates to enable us to get our slings and/or cargo net under the crates.

We started off with the easy pickings. The return trip by the helicopter took 15 minutes so we had to work fast to prepare sling loads. The chopper had made five trips before we managed to get the slings under the first bulky eight-foot “cubed” crate. Kris Powell stood on the top of the crate as the chopper hovered inches above his head. He slipped the sling’s metal ring into the chopper’s cargo hook. The chopper rose slowly to take up the slack on the slack slings. Kris jumped to the ground after making sure the slings were not tangled and scrambled away from the hurricane type winds that the chopper was blowing around. The engine noise changed pitch as the pilot applied more torque for the lift. The crate weighed 2900 lbs; which was nearing the “lifting” limit for the helicopter at sea level. Everything stood still as the chopper strained against gravity; then, inch-by-inch, the crate began to rise from the snowy ground until it cleared all obstacles. The pilot started moving the chopper forward giving it more “lift” and we could see the crate being lifted higher as the chopper gained speed.

“Seven more large crates to go”, I said rhetorically to Ivan. We had been working steadily for the last hour and a half and had shed most of our winter gear. Some of the large crates had four feet of snow around them with their bottom timbers frozen to the ground. We had to break the crates free of the ice before we could put the lifting slings under them.

The second crate rose slowly off the ground but just hovered there; a foot off the ground, for what seemed an eternity before the pilot lowered it back to the ground. He hovered there but did not disconnect the sling.

“If he could get the crate clear of the snowdrifts and other crates he could get the forward momentum that would help “lift”, I yelled to Ivan.

I saw the machine take up the slack on the slings again. The crate rose to the same height and stayed there. I motioned to Ivan and two others to rush the motionless crate under the hovering chopper. We pried, shook, pushed and lifted the crate. It began to rise again so we continued lifting until it cleared the snow-bank. We then literally “walked” and “skipped” the crate 75 feet across the snow-covered ground until the chopper had enough forward speed to pluck the crate from us and complete its lift. With speed the pilot had no problem getting the crate up to the site.

On the return, the pilot landed over by the fuel drums. I went over to speak to him as they began off-loading all spare equipment and tools from the chopper.

“Every pound will help”, he said as he instructed his Engineer not to refuel yet as he had enough for at least another two round trips. They even unloaded the Engineer’s personal toolbox.

By this time the guys were eating a late lunch and watching the ice out in the Fjord. Black spots appeared slowly and then disappeared.

“Seals” said the pilot, “there are hundred of breathing holes out there”. We all relaxed in the sun for a half hour. A few of us were wondering about Polar Bears. We didn’t have a rifle so we had to be more vigilant. We were also hoping that the helicopter noise would keep them away.

The third crate could not be lifted. No matter what we did, it would not budge. The chopper just hovered over the crate at full torque while four of us struggled underneath it to free the crate from the snow-bank. After what seemed minutes the pilot reduced torque and jettisoned the slings. He landed while we re-grouped and prepared another load of smaller crates. We continued with other loads that afternoon until it was time to depart for our accommodations. The Installation crew had accommodations up at the site where a “construction camp” had been set up; complete with rigid sided tents for sleeping. I had made arrangements for the helicopter crew, Ivan and myself to stay at the nearest DEW-Line site called FOX-3. It was located at Dewar Lakes, approximately 60 miles to the west. We arrived there by 6:00 PM in time for a hot meal that the cook had kept heated for us.

FOX-3 was a single building “train” site with the large Radar radome and equipment room situated near the center of the train. Twenty plus personnel normally worked and lived on-site although there was accommodation for more people. The site office was next to the equipment room. The kitchen, dining room and main lounge separated the work area from the sleeping quarters. Each of us got our own room with bed, desk, chair and closet. The lounge had satellite TV with numerous movies on VHS tapes. A small pool table took up the remainder of the space. There was also TV in a smaller adjourning room that made it quieter for serious TV watchers. Two washrooms complete with showers and toilet facilities were located in the sleeping quarters section of the train.

After supper I found the pilot, Jim X pouring over the technical manuals for the Bell 212 helicopter. I went and sat beside him. He was perplexed why we couldn’t lift the third crate. We both knew that the chopper had a lifting capacity of over 3000 lbs; and the shipping weight of each crate was clearly stenciled to the side of the crate. The crate we were having trouble with weighed 2850 lbs.

“C-GAHD had no problems lifting all the crates into our western Arctic sites last year”, I said, remembering back to when we moved our material into BAR-BA3 at Storm Hills and the other sites at Horton River, Croker River and then Harding River.

“But then again…. thinking about it…. that pilot was really good”, I continued.

This got a scowl from Jim before he realized that I was just joshing him. He was an excellent and conscientious pilot who had flown the helicopter up from Toronto. He had spent a lot of time flying Air Ambulance around southern Ontario before being assigned to spend the summer in the eastern Arctic working on our contract with Canadian Helicopters Corp (CHC).

We discussed next day’s work for a while before we challenged each other to a few games of “Pool”

We were back at it next morning after picking up the crew from the FOX-CA site. The pilot wanted to try lifting the third crate again so we rigged it up the same as before, but again the chopper just hovered in the sky straining on the dead weight as we pried and pushed underneath in the swirling wind and snow. No go.

We were disappointed but we still had to get the material to the site therefore I agreed to the plan of stripping the crate of it’s top and sides. That would reduce the weight by maybe four hundred pounds however it would increase the risk of having the radome triangular panels damaged during transportation. There was no corner store where we could get replacement panels.

We pried the top off and dragged it out of the way. The sides were more difficult because we had only dug enough snow away to get the slings under the base. It was after digging and prying a side off that we saw that there was ice in the bottom of the crate. After removing all four sides and dragging them away we saw four inches of ice covering the bottom of the crate. Even though we had pried the base up at the edges of the crate to get the slings underneath the center of the crate was still frozen to the ground.

“No wonder the helicopter couldn’t move the crate”, I muttered. The additional weight of the ice alone brought the crates weight up past 3400 lbs and the center was still frozen to the ground.

Mystery solved. I went over to Jim our pilot and explained the situation. He was very relieved to hear it; he thought it was “something that he was doing wrong” or “something the chopper was incapable of doing” that was causing our problems. As a consequence, I had to buy him a couple of beers when we got back to Iqualuit as I had bet him, the night before, that it was his old “junker” of a helicopter that couldn’t lift anything. Beers in Iqualuit were expensive and scarce unless you could get into the Canadian Legion.

The good news was, “we knew what the problem was”; the bad news was, “we had to do a lot more physical work”. We had to dig the remaining five large crates out of the snow-bank, uncrate the top and sides, clear the ice and snow from the base and finally break the base from the frozen ground before we positioned the slings under the base. The helicopter still strained to get the crates off the ground but it went well. We slung the five crates to the radar site before we stopped work for the day.

After we dropped the crew off at the upper site we headed back to FOX-3. While enroute, the pilot got a weather update. A frontal system was developing to the south; snow and low visibility was expected within the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. We had ten loads remaining to be transported from the beach to site before we could clean up and leave the area. Time was becoming a factor.

We got all our material to site on the third day. We disposed of the crating material by burning it in a big bonfire. The fire burned for over three hours and created a twenty-foot diameter hole, six feet deep, in the snow-bank right down to the tundra. There was nothing left besides ashes and rusty nails.

We loaded the cargo nets, sling gear and baggage onto the chopper and flew to the radar site to drop the crew off. We looked around one last time and said good-bye. It was still winter up top and they were in for another blow. They would have to just hunker down and wait it out.

We left FOX-CA heading south, on our 300+ mile trip to Iqualuit, around 2:00 pm. Within an hour we knew we were not going to make it. Our only choice was to turn around and return to our accommodations at FOX-3.

We attempted to get to Iqualuit for the next three days. We had to turn back, due to zero visibility, the first two days.

It was on one of our attempts we were flying a mile from the end of the airstrip at FOX-3 when we saw something sticking out of the ice in a small lake. Closer investigation showed that it was an old grader with just its operator’s cab exposed above water. We found out later, from the Site Manager, that back in 1957 the American air force (USAF) wanted to get rid of the grader by allowing it to sink into the lake when the snow melted. Problem was "nobody" checked the depth of the lake to see if it was deep enough. Oops.

Finally on the third day we succeeded. We spent the night in Iqualuit where we met up with another C/M Installation crew. We hopped on the chopper next day and headed north-east to Cape Mercy where Cumberland Sound's north coast meets the Davis Strait. No surprise, our crated material was also stuck in the snow at the beach below the radar site at BAF-2.

Storm Hills

“Can you see anything from back there?” the pilot queried. The question came through the headset that I had hooked into the helicopter’s intercom system. I was sitting in the “machine gunner’s” seat of a Canadian Helicopter’s Bell 212 looking out sideways as we flew along the Arctic coast on a rainy and foggy day. Our visibility was down to less than two hundred yards and we were flying low through swirling fog.

The question sounded a little odd so I glanced briefly in his direction before I replied. I saw his head turned to his right as he stared intently out through his “open” sliding side window. The large plexi-glass windshield in front of him had gone completely opaque. We had flown directly into a freezing rain-squall and a thick sheet of ice had formed very quickly on the front and side windows of the pilot’s cockpit. The window defrosters were useless; we were now “flying blind” except for the small window opening through which the pilot could see the ground.

“I saw a guyed tower two hundred yards to our left about a quarter mile back”, I replied quickly realizing the urgency.

We had been flying from the radar site at Keats Point to Croker River when the weather turned foul on us. We figured we were within five miles of the DEW-Line’s radar site PIN-1 at Clinton Point so we were heading for their airstrip. Now, we were just searching for a place to land. I felt the chopper bank to the left as the pilot swung the machine in that direction.

“I got it”, the pilot, said as he spotted the blinking red beacon on top of the communications tower through the fog.

“Thanks” came through the headset two minutes later. He had found the end of the gravel airstrip. I watched as he flew sideways slowly down the length of the strip before choosing a landing site near a solitary small maintenance hut at the end.

I looked around the main cargo area where the Canac/Microtel (C/M) Installation crew sat uncomfortably on the removable webbed cloth seats. Without headsets, they were oblivious to the “goings-on” around them. The six of them stirred and looked around now realizing we were about to land. A couple of them had been asleep.

We were ”hop-scotching” from site to site, moving material off the beach and up to the short-range radar (SRR) sites strategically located on prominent high ground along the coast of the Beaufort Sea. We would “work and fly” all day then “overnight” at the nearest manned radar site. We would “move on” the next day, proceeding on our easterly trek. We had completed the sites at Storm Hills (BAR-BA3), Horton River (BAR-E) and Keats Point (PIN-1BD) and were heading to complete the sites at Croker River (PIN-1BG) and Harding River (PIN-2A). This trip covered the coast from Inuvik in the MacKenzie River delta to Coppermine (now Kugluktuk) in the Coppermine River area and was scheduled for ten days.

We rigged the loads for lifting, then stood under the chopper to connect the slings and cargo nets. We maneuvered the crates as they were being lowered, then de-rigged the slings while the helicopter hovered over-head like a humming-bird.

This far reaching hop-scotch trip was giving us ample opportunities to get close looks at the topography of the land and even closer looks of its wild animals and birds. The caribou herds grazing on the low growing vegetation and lichens of the tundra; the wolves lurking around the perimeter of the herds waiting for their chance to pick out the sick or old; the arctic foxes scampering around looking for lemmings; the swans paired up on the thousands of small ponds and sloughs; the flocks of migratory birds settling in for a season of raising fledglings; and the large sleek snow owls pouncing on the lemmings and artic hares.

We saw the “Pingos at Tuk”. I didn’t count them but it is said that there are around 1400+ of them in the Tuktoyaktuk area including the “Ibyuk Pingo” that rises 160+ feet in the air. These conical shaped phenomenons grow when water under pressure in the ground freezes and forces muskeg and ice upward.

We stopped at a deserted building sitting on a bluff overlooking the Amudsen Gulf in the Beaufort Sea. It was made of old crates, boxes and driftwood. Judging from its appearance, it had been there for many years. It had three crude rooms so our guess was that it was some type of old trading post or sealing post. Weird as it sat all by itself on a windswept bluff with nothing around for hundreds of miles; a lonely existence for its long departed occupants (maybe a “deranged” Hudson Bay Company employee fresh from England, Scotland or Ireland). I thought I saw the name “Nick Jones” carved into the wood wall of one of the rooms.

We flew over the “Smoking Hills” located on the east coast of Cape Bathurst, approximately 170 miles (250 km) east of the MacKenzie River delta. Exposed Bituminous shale deposits have ignited spontaneously at several spots in the 300-foot sea-cliffs along a twenty-mile (30km) stretch of coastline. They have been burning for years. Smoke plumes from the burns can be seen for miles and the smell from sulfur dioxide, sulfuric acid mists fumigate the surrounding tundra as well as the helicopter as we flew over.

We flew along the coast looking for whale bones. James Morrison, our pilot, was a pack-rat. He would salvage anything of value with his helicopter. At night, over coffee in the various dining rooms, he would tell stories of his adventures acquiring things from aircraft engines out of wrecked planes to whale vertebrate and bones from the shore. He would stick them in the cargo area or sling them underneath the machine and haul them back to Inuvik. It helped that he was the company’s base Manager as well as Chief Pilot.

“The Site Manager is not sending anyone down to the strip to meet us and is refusing us permission to go to the site,” James said. He had just got off the helicopter’s radio after speaking to the “communications” operator for the site.

“He wanted us to leave the area immediately but when I explained our predicament he relented and said we could use the maintenance shed for shelter until the weather changed,” James continued.

We were mildly irate to say the least. C/M crews had been working and staying at dozens of DEW Line sites all across the Arctic for three years and this was the first time we were refused assistance. I phoned the Site Manager from the telephone in the Maintenance Shed. He still refused us access to the site even after I explained “who we were” and that we all had “Secret” military clearance. I then phoned my military point of contact (POC) in Ottawa on the DEW line phone system. It was Sunday so there was little he could do from his end except phone the Site Manager himself. The Site Manager still refused. Technically he was completely within his rights to refuse; normally, “access” was gained by approved written requests coordinated days earlier. What didn’t help was the fact that the Manager was a “Felec” (Federal Electric) employee. Felec had the contract to operate and maintain the sites across the north and they were not too happy with anyone “modernizing” the DEW line and take away their jobs.

So, there we sat, in a shed a-kin to a cold storage room, but it was out of the drizzle and wind. The weather eventually cleared six hours later. A very cold, damp and miserable group piled into the chopper and flew off into the “wild blue yonder” after “giving the bird” to the site’s Manager as we flew past. We arrived at our “approved” accommodations at Cape Young (PIN-2) close to midnight, over six hours late for supper.

I heard later that the site Manager was seriously reprimanded after word of this incident worked its way through the senior ranks of the military that were working on the modernization project. That made me feel a little warmer.

Willy’s Bandits

“Now this is nice”, I said settling back into the leather seats in the passenger cabin of Adlair’s King Air 100. I took a sip of the “Scotch” that we had poured ourselves from the well-stocked mini-bar in the cabin. We had just taken off from Cambridge Bay in our chartered aircraft and had just reached cruising attitude on-route to Gjoa Haven. The twin-engine machine was cruising along at 250 miles per hour. John Knapp and I were on a “site-ready” inspection trip visiting the sites we were going to install this summer.

We had flown into Cambridge Bay, from Vancouver, the day before and had spent our free afternoon being tourists. During our walk around town we bumped into Bill Lyle, an old acquaintance who stayed at Akaitcho Hall while he attended Sir John Franklin High School in Yellowknife. We got to "talking" and soon he was acting as our tour guide showing us the “fish plant” and other points of interest around town.

“Are there any Musk-ox around this area”, I asked.

“Five or more miles north of here”, Bill replied. “Here, take the truck and go see them”, he continued, throwing me the keys and pointing to the Co-op’s van. His driving directions were simple since there was only one dirt road heading northward out of the village. The road soon petered out into a one-lane track winding its way across the tundra of Victoria Island.

We spotted some Caribou up ahead but they moved off at a slow walk, still feeding on the lichen, when they heard us coming. I had seen Caribou many times before. I have seen them take refuge from the swarms of black-flies by standing underneath the radome platforms at the Tuk radar site, thus forever extinguishing the notion that Man and his structures were detrimental to the Caribou and their free ranging travels. However, I had not seen a Musk-ox so we journeyed on. We finally spotted two but couldn’t get close to them. They would spook and move away when we tried to approach them.

We continued on until we crested a small rise. We saw three Musk-ox feeding down by the bank of a small river. Luckily, the track of road went down behind another small rise that was even closer to them. Hidden by the second rise, we left the van, walked to the top and saw that they were still there, oblivious to our presence. We crouched and crawled down the gentle slope until we were 100-150 feet from them.

There we sat, taking pictures and watching them. Neither of us knew how dangerous they were but I thought they became defensive, rather than aggressive, when encountered by perceived danger. We also thought they probably had poor eyesight because we were sitting out in the open on the barren-lands with nothing between them and us. After 15 minutes I think they either smelled us or saw us because they slowly grouped together and waded in the small river. They stood there for a couple of minutes before deciding to ford the river and trot off into the distance.

To pass the time en-route to Gjoa Haven, John and I chatted about work or just looked out the windows as the ground and Arctic Ocean slipped past far below. I spotted the unique shaped “Hat Island” in the distance so I told him of my experience there two months previously……….

…………We were flying around the area in Adlair’s Twin “Otter” doing an Operation & Maintenance (O&M) inspection trip prior to “handing over” completed sites to DND. We had enough space on the aircraft to pick up and move a C/M technical Equipment crew out of the radar site called CAM-B on Hat Island. The site was perched on a small plateau where a very short, rough airstrip was constructed.

Our pilot, Willy Laserich, had moved the crew and their equipment into site three weeks ago. He was concerned that we would be too heavy to take off safely from the short, rough runway with all of us onboard; so, he decided to land at an abandoned airstrip at the old decommissioned DEW “I” site miles away. He left the “four of us” there while he went to pick up the crew from the top site.

It was 10:30 “pm”. Willy said he would be back with the crew in an “hour” to pick us up. The abandoned strip was quite long so Willy was confident he could take off easily in the STOL aircraft with all of us on-board.

He also obviously thought we would be OK there for the short time he would be at the top site.

There was nothing of interest at the old airstrip. There wasn’t any buildings or shelters where we could relax. One old fuel tank could be seen in the distance sitting on the barren landscape. The cloudy evening sky made the sky look like dusk even though we were in the “land of the midnight sun”.

After two hours the wind started to pick up; when they say “barren-lands” they mean “land devoid of any shelter”. There wasn’t even a boulder big enough to break the wind. We had to sit huddled together on the surface of the airstrip in the cold arctic night. We had our parkas but the rest of our gear was on the aircraft. We didn’t take any food or water either since it was only going to be “one” hour. We couldn’t even make a fire for absence of trees and bushes.

At 1:30 am, after three hours of waiting, we were sure something had happened to the plane and we were now stranded on a deserted island in the middle of Queen Maud Gulf where ice floes were still floating. Not quite the picture I had envisioned in my dreams when I was marooned on a deserted island with sandy beaches, coconut trees and beautiful native women running around bare-breasted. Reality was “huddling together with three other hairy men, with bad breath, on a cold night in the middle of an arctic night with no food or water”.

It was at 2:30 am when I promised myself that I would never let an aircraft or pilot out of my sight again. “Stick close to the plane”.

At 3:00 we built an Inukshuk as a memorial to ourselves, and as a landmark to cache messages for our next-of-kin .……. actually, we made it to stay warm.

At 3:30 we were trying to figure out “who” was on the menu.

At 3:45 am I heard a different buzz over the tormenting buzz of the ever-present swarm of mosquitoes and black-flies. I looked toward the sound and saw a small dot low in the sky turn into an aircraft.

Thus ended my night of camping out in my parka on a small island in the Arctic Ocean at the seventieth parallel.

The reason for the wait was related to the new equipment the Technical crew installed. It had failed a “test” so the Technician had to troubleshoot the problem and then re-test the equipment. “Just one of those things”.

Pictures: (clock-wise from top) More pictures in "Photo Albums"

1) Brian McLeod and Walter Foss positioning antenna crates on platform at Storm Hills

2) Brian McLeod and Walter Foss working under helicopter at Storm Hills

3) Ivan Foss digging out snowbound crates at Kangok Fjord

4) Positioning and Landing Radome crates beside Radar platform at Storm Hills

5) NWS site positions along Canada'a arctic coast - couresty of lswilson.ca/dewline

6) Brian McLeod, Ivan Foss and crew with Bell 212 at airstrip at Kangok Fjord

7) Hooking slings to a hovering Bell 212's belly hook

McSnowWriter's Pamphlet: 11.0- North Warning

North Warning

North Warning

(Once in a lifetime 1987 –1994)