On patrol with Canadian forces securing the Arctic as global threats grow

On patrol with Canadian forces securing the Arctic as global threats grow

A simple row of spruce trees marked the finish line for Canadian army reservists and combat members after a marathon two months pushing through one of the harshest environments on Earth: Canada’s vast Arctic.

The patrol, which ended on Friday in Churchill, Manitoba, was the largest northern mission in the history of the Canadian Rangers – a branch of the Canadian Armed Forces responsible for monitoring the country’s remote regions. For 5,200km (3,200 miles), they moved across the Arctic, following a route that had not been attempted in 80 years.

They drove snowmobiles across ice-covered terrain, navigating blizzards and high winds as they travelled for hours between remote northern communities. Some nights, they camped on the ice in tents as temperatures plunged to -60C (-76F).

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NATO ready to defend every inch of Arctic from Putin

Nato will defend Norway’s Arctic territory against a Russian invasion “from the first centimetre” after learning from Ukraine, the commander of the Norwegian army has said.

For decades, Nato’s plan for defending the High North from Russia was a fighting withdrawal from the northern Finnmark region by British Royal Marines and Norwegian troops, buying time until US reinforcements arrived to help retake lost territory.

Yet President Putin’s war has demonstrated how difficult it is for a large force to move forward under drone-saturated skies, and President Trump’s increasingly bellicose rhetoric against Nato has thrown American support into doubt.

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In Canada’s Frozen North, With Canada’s Frozen Soldiers

Canadian soldiers transported M777 howitzers to the High Arctic to show their ability to fight in an increasingly contested part of the world. It did not go as planned.

Canada’s military ambitions in the Arctic hinged on a frozen door that wouldn’t open.

Hundreds of troops landing on an island in the High Arctic last month were confronted with wind chill temperatures of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, frigid even by the area’s standards. The cold kept the locals in the Victoria Island hamlet of Cambridge Bay indoors, suffused the air with tiny ice crystals called diamond dust, and sealed a 30-foot-tall door at an airport hangar.

“It’s frozen,” said an air force detachment commander, “frozen shut.”

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As Arctic Threats Rise, Canada May Need to Lean on the United States

For the past seven decades, Canada has been the junior partner in a military agreement with the United States to protect the Canadian Arctic.

The Canadian and American flags could be seen billowing at a distance in the all-white Arctic landscape — the Maple Leaf visibly lower than the Stars and Stripes.

The asymmetry had a simple explanation. Flags across Canada, including this one in the hamlet of Cambridge Bay in the Canadian High Arctic, were flying at half-staff to mourn the recent mass killing at a school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.

But its symbolism, however unintended, was a reminder of Canada’s increasingly uncomfortable situation in its Arctic region: Unable to defend it by itself, Canada remains dependent on the United States, whose president has repeatedly threatened to annex it, and who has also set his eyes on Canada’s Arctic neighbor, Greenland.

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Canada wants to build up its long-neglected Arctic. The hard question is how

Ottawa wants to modernize a region in the north that’s about six times the size of Texas, ‘just like in the 1800s’

Picture an Arctic territory, marginalized by its own country, almost entirely lacking roads, ports and power sources, but rich in mining potential and suddenly feeling vulnerable to outside threats.

It’s not Greenland; it’s the Canadian Arctic.

After decades of underinvestment, Ottawa is now turning its attention to the country’s north amid an outbreak of nationalism and new spending, in reaction to provocations by the Trump administration.

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Mixed reviews for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s northern defence plan

OTTAWA — Canada’s $35-billion plan to strengthen defence along its northern frontier is getting mixed reviews.

While Canada has a history of making lofty plans — especially when it comes to its underfunded and under-equipped military — the devil always ends up showing itself in the details.

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The Northwest Passage Will Be Decided by Capability, Not Law

Recent attention has focused on Greenland as a focal point of Arctic strategy, a reminder that geography once treated as peripheral now sits squarely within the logic of continental defense. A similar shift is unfolding elsewhere in the Arctic, though with far less public notice. The Northwest Passage—the network of sea routes threading Canada’s Arctic Archipelago between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans—has moved from a seasonal curiosity to a corridor of growing strategic consequence. As activity increases, questions long treated as theoretical, including the legal status of those waters, are being pushed toward practical resolution.

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