Canada: NORTHWEST TERRITORIES: For Sale

If it had not been for the U.S. Navy victory at Midway, the story might have been different. But there it was: in an official exchange of notes made public last week, Canada dropped her option on the 550-mile Canol pipeline (TIME, March 5), built by the U.S. at a cost of $134 million when oil in the north seemed a vital requirement against a possible Japanese invasion of Alaska. Now Canol was on the open market, and there were no takers.

No maintenance has been done since the U.S. abandoned it last spring, leaving behind millions of dollars’ worth of equipment (trucks, tractors, jeeps, etc.). Camp Canol, at its peak a roaring movie set of a place populated with black-bearded men and an occasional ginghamed girl, is today a ghost town where a lonely watchman lives and only a single curl of smoke reaches skyward in the early twilight.