Canada: THE SERVICES: What Do You Think?

Between the lines of a routine handout about an ostensibly routine military maneuver, Canadians got a quick glimpse at the lowering future.

Next Feb. 14, said the National Defense Department, a small Canadian Army force, probably as few as 45 highly trained officers and men, plus some hand-picked observers from other nations, would start out from Churchill, Manitoba, on the west shore of Hudson Bay, in a maneuver called “Operation Musk-Ox.” In cabbed, high-powered, 4½-ton snowmobiles,* Canadian-designed for the invasion of Norway, they would plow northward through long Arctic nights and through temperatures 50° or more below zero. Three thousand miles later, after a gigantic U-turn on the roof of the earth (see map), “Operation Musk-Ox” would arrive at Edmonton. The only breaks in 81 days of isolation would be the visits of R.C.A.F. supply planes bringing fuel and food.

Purpose of “Operation Musk-Ox,” said National Defense, is to study “winter operations generally in the Arctic weather zone,” to assess “the mobility of oversnow vehicles.” But everyone knew that any foreseeable war would not be won—or even fought—with tracked motor vehicles. What soldiers knew was that the polar icecap was no longer an impenetrable natural defense on Canada’s topside. So “certain technical research projects in Arctic air and ground warfare will [also] be studied. . . . The expedition is expected to obtain information of immense value.”

What information—bases? Sites for launching rocket bombs? Reporters who asked such questions got only a grin and an answering question: “What do you think?” Without once mentioning atoms, a Cabinet Minister somberly said: “We all know that invasion of North America, if and when, will come from the north, not the south. . . . We have to be ready. . . . We have to be able to live, travel and fight in the cold.”

* Bigger “weasels.” by three tons than the U.S. Army’s