Unless you have spent long hours flying over Canada’s Arctic, it is difficult to grasp its scale, its harshness, or its emptiness. And yet this forbidding territory is becoming one of the most strategically important parts of our country’s future.
Why does it matter? Who else is interested in it? And what must Canada do to protect its sovereignty?
The supply flight from the air base in Trenton, Ont. to Canadian Forces Station Alert, the northernmost station on Ellesmere Island, takes roughly the same time as to fly from Trenton to Ireland. And from about an hour north of Trenton onward, there are almost no settlements to see; only rock, ice, water, and wilderness.
