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Arctic exploration, part 1- Staking a geological claim to Canadian Arctic sovereignty

In mid June when I arrived in Churchill, along with the other members of Operation Franklin, the ice on Hudson’s Bay was just beginning to break up. A lead of water had opened along the shore and most of the snow had gone.
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HHU coming in for a landing at Resolute Bay.

In mid June when I arrived in Churchill, along with the other members of Operation Franklin, the ice on Hudson’s Bay was just beginning to break up. A lead of water had opened along the shore and most of the snow had gone. It would be several more days before our gear was assembled and our two helicopters, HVR and HHU, were stripped down and loaded into an air force cargo plane for the next leg of our journey. The town, just emerging from its long arctic night, was still littered with winter’s debris. Unlike the tidy military barracks where we were billeted the nearby town was a clutter of castoff cartons and cans. The intermittent barking of tethered sled dogs mingled with the incessant drone of an aircraft inching its way to shore.

A few weeks earlier a DC6 had run out of fuel and pancaked onto the ice just short of the runway. Two of the stricken plane's four engines were now droning day and night in a bizarre attempt to taxi it and its own little ice-flow to shore. It was still there when our C119 military cargo plane lifted off the end of Churchill's gravel strip. I never did learn whether the DC6 made that final kilometre to shore. As we banked over the open lead and headed out across the pack ice of Hudson’s Bay my view shifted to the north and my thoughts to the unknown challenge that lay ahead.

Our official mission was to assess the mineral resources, particularly the oil and coal potential of the Queen Elizabeth Islands. Unofficially we were part of an ongoing campaign to assert Canadian Sovereignty over that vast jigsaw of islands and frozen oceans that sits atop the North American Continent. Canada’s hold on the high Arctic has always been tenuous. The Russians and Scandinavian countries have all challenged Canada’s claim to an essentially empty land, and our prime minister was worried about “de facto exercise of U.S. sovereignty” in the region. No, not Stephen Harper — that is a quote from Louis St. Laurent in the cabinet notes of 1953. Operation Franklin was launched in 1955, more than 50 years before Russia’s flag at the North Pole and “scientific expeditions” by the U.S., Denmark, and Norway triggered the current round of angst about Canadian Sovereignty in the high Arctic.

In 1955, during the height of the cold war, Russia’s new fleet of long-range bombers was of more concern than diplomatic challenges. Construction of the U.S.-funded, Canadian-manned Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was just getting started but as we droned across the vast expanse of barren land I saw no sign of a human presence. Eight hundred kilometres north of Churchill we crossed the Arctic Circle and began our long flight over the ice-bound islands of the Arctic Archipelago. “Global warming” and “climate change” had not yet entered the lexicon of the environmental movement. The northern ocean was still solidly frozen and as we began our letdown into Resolute Bay I spotted several red blotches on the pack ice — places where polar bears had dined on a seal.

The C119, nicknamed the “flying boxcar” was the only Canadian aircraft large enough to take our Sikorsky S55 helicopters. Even with their rotors and masts removed the big choppers barely squeezed into the airplane’s cavernous cargo space. Keeping the nose high to prevent rocks from flying into the plane’s two low-slung props the pilot greased the huge airplane smoothly onto Resolute’s gravel strip and we rolled to a stop beside a couple of old WWII Lancaster Bombers that were still being used for ice patrol.

We were met by some of our advance party who, for the previous month, had been setting out fuel caches. Using a DC3 on skis and an Inuit dog-team and driver to haul the barrels ashore from landings on the pack ice the advance party established a network of refueling stations that allowed our helicopters, even with their limited range, to operate over the entire 200,000 square miles of the survey area.

Although Operation Franklin was a civilian project of the Geological Survey of Canada the Canadian military provided both the initial airlift into Resolute Bay and the use of their mess hall and other facilities after we arrived. There were no commercial outlets of any kind. The cluster of bright orange buildings comprising Resolute Bay housed the Royal Canadian Air Force, the RCMP, an office of the Dominion Observatory, and the weather bureau.

A few Inuit families, living in makeshift “summer houses”, were camped nearby but discretely out of sight. The government moved them from northern Quebec in 1953, ostensibly so they could return to their traditional way of life in an area with more game. In fact many of the relocated people suffered real hardship, regarding themselves as exiles — “human flagpoles” planted on a barren Resolute beach to bolster Canadian Sovereignty in the high Arctic.

While we waited for the mechanics and air crew to re-assemble and test fly our two choppers we reviewed the project objectives with leader Yves Fortier, and advance party leader Fred Roots — both veterans of Arctic exploration. We were 10 geologists, and 10 student assistants backed up by a cadre of cooks, radio operators, pilots, and aircraft mechanics. Some of the geologists had considerable Arctic experience. Others, like myself, were here for the first time. In 1955 I was still a graduate student with a pregnant wife, a student debt, and an unfinished thesis back in Princeton, N.J. Operation Franklin provided a much needed summer job.

Because of my previous mountain experience Fortier asked me to make an extended foot traverse across the Eureka Sound Fold Belt on Axel Heiberg Island — a job that would have to wait until later in the summer when our base camp moved farther north. In the meantime I was assigned to “operations”, a task that involved logistic support for the two-man teams scattered in tent camps across the southern half of the project area. Our helicopters could carry two men (a geologist and assistant) plus their entire camp in the cargo bay. The cockpit where the pilot and navigator sat was accessed by an external ladder and through a side window. Communication between the two compartments was limited to passing notes through a small opening in the back of the cockpit. With the big Pratt and Whitney thumping away at our feet and the main gearbox screaming into my right ear the in-flight noise was deafening.

Working as navigator was without question the most challenging part of my entire summer. The landscape of the southern islands is featureless. Even the shorelines of islands with their multiple raised beaches are difficult to distinguish from pressure ridges on the pack ice. Our maps were rudimentary, without contours, and the big compass between the pilot and me spun crazily, first one direction and then the other, vainly seeking a fix on the magnetic pole somewhere off to the south.

Sputnik, the first earth satellite, was still to be launched and GPS was not even on the drawing boards. Our LORAN worked only when we could actually see the radar dome at Resolute Bay. With one eye on a lap-full of air photos and the other on the fuel gauge it was always a relief to see our destination, a small tent, a fuel drum — mere specks in a vast empty land. I began to count the days until I could get my feet back on the ground and start working in the mountains of Axel Heiberg.