RESOLUTE BAY, Nunavut - A 24-member Canadian Forces patrol headed out Saturday on an 8,000-kilometre trek by snowmobile to confirm Canada's sovereignty in the High Arctic and to check for signs of polar bear hunters.
It will be the longest distance every travelled by a sovereignty patrol in Canadian history.
"My guys are pumped up. They're ready to conquer the entire Arctic alone to make it," said Maj. Chris Bergeron, commanding officer of 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group.
"We've got lots of obstacles to go through but we have a good chance to make it."
The three-week patrol, launched at a cost of almost $1 million, will include members of the Regular Forces and Canadian Rangers, who are part-time reserve soldiers.
They will go in three teams and will face stretches of open water, hard rock, impassable ice and will have to winch machines up a waterfall.
Two teams will drive to Eureka, a remote weather station on Ellesmere Island and from there travel around the island before joining up again at Canadian Forces Station Alert at the northern tip of the island.
Alert is the world's most northernly permanently settled community. It conducts signals intelligence gathering.
In addition to establishing a military presence, the sovereignty patrol will evaluate the terrain and infrastructure of the High Arctic, including old landing strips and abandoned buildings so that rescue officials will be prepared for the eventuality of a crash or forced landing due to increasing commercial air traffic over the region.
"We want to test what they have learned in the past, such things as how to make a landing strip, how to converge at a location on the ice, how to stand up a camp, and how to communicate ground-to-air with the air force by radio," said Bergeron,
A third team will head to Alexandra Fjord, a former RCMP post on eastern Ellesmere Island, to look for any evidence of incursion in the area by Inuit from Greenland hunting for Canadian polar bears.
Bergeron said they did a reconnaissance last year that turned up evidence of incursion.
"We saw some tracks coming from the east.
"They will patrol for four days to see if they can see any people and where they're from."
The patrol, named Operation Nunalivut 07 after the Inuktitut word for "land that is ours," will be supported by more than 50 members of the Canadian Forces and will get air support from two Twin-Otters based in Yellowknife.
Sovereignty patrols began five years ago with a trip to the Magnetic North Pole to extend Canada's military presence into the largely unpopulated areas.
