Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
and in 1616 William Baffin explored Baffin Bay). The
interest in sea ice conditions in the Canadian Arctic
waters predated Canada's federation. It started with the
quest to discover the Northwest Passage, a water route
between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, along
the northern coast of North America via waterways amid
the Canadian Arctic. A first attempt was undertaken
by the British Royal Navy in 1818 in an expedition led by
John Ross. The most famous attempt was the ill‐fated
expedition led by British Royal Navy officer Sir John
Franklin in 1845 that ended mysteriously the following
year when the ship was trapped in ice and the entire crew
died of hunger and the harsh winter conditions.
The initial interest of the Canadian government in the
Arctic was inspired not by studying sea ice but by the
exploration of unknown lands and people. Sea ice was
always an issue but not the focal point. A milestone event
was the first Canadian 3 year expedition to the western
Arctic in 1913. It was the largest multidisciplinary scien-
tific Arctic expedition at that time, and it had a signifi-
cant impact on the local people (culturally, industrially,
and in terms of trade). Four small islands were discov-
ered as a result of this expedition in 1915 and 1916:
Brock, Borden, Meighen, and Lougheed, all located
north of Melville and Prince Patrick Islands. These were
the last major islands discovered in the High Arctic and
the only ones discovered by a Canadian expedition.
The Royal Canadian Air Force completed the first aer-
ial reconnaissance of sea ice in the Hudson Bay and
Hudson Strait in 1927-1928. This was a significant, yet
risky, operation because aviation was still in its infancy.
Because of this and the inherent danger associated with
remote area reconnaissance, this activity was not resumed
until more than a decade later. During the 1940s, particu-
larly in the early period of World War II, the Canadian
Federal Department of Transportation (DOT) had begun
regular aerial and ship‐based surveillance of sea ice in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. The intention was
to determine the date when marine navigation in the
St. Lawrence River became feasible. This was in response
to a critical need for manufactured supplies from Canada
to support the war effort in Europe. The DOT, however,
did not have the technology and the means to commence
a sea ice forecasting program to support shipping and
other marine activities during the ice cover season.
Derived by two motivations, the interest of Canada in
sea ice increased after World War II. The first focused on
the eastern coast of Canada for trade purpose and the
second on the Canadian Arctic for security and sover-
eignty purposes. As a result, the ice reconnaissance and
forecasting program in Canada started to develop.
The first drive of increasing trade activities between
Canada and Europe required extending the shipping sea-
son in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Labrador Sea.
Prior to the 1950s the marine shipping activities in the
eastern Canadian waters were restricted in winter during
the ice formation season. Canada did not have the tools
and structures to acquire information about sea ice at
that time.
The second drive was the potential threat to Canada
and the United States by a possible attack from long‐range
Soviet bombers flying across the Arctic. This required the
development of a radar warning system in the Arctic to
prevent this possibility. Upon agreement between Canada
and the United States, a contract was awarded in 1954 to
start construction of the system. This became known as
the Distant Early Warning (DEW) system. Heavy con-
struction equipment had to be shipped to the Arctic to
establish the system, and that set in motion an influx of
ships, escorted by U.S. icebreakers, in the summer of 1955.
Obviously, that would not be possible without gathering
information about sea ice. Although much of the con-
struction material was transported on U.S. ships, it was
felt that a Canadian flag icebreaker should lead the opera-
tion in order to confirm Canada's sovereignty in the
Arctic. It was also felt that the program should be military
operated to mimic the U.S. icebreaker operations.
The first Canadian icebreaker was launched in 1954
and christened Her Majesty's Canadian Ship (HMCS)
Labrador
. It was commissioned to the Royal Canadian
Navy (RCN) on 8 July of the same year. Figure 11.2 is a
photograph of the ship. HMCS
Labrador
was the first
ship to circumnavigate North America in a single voyage.
She also searched the water of the Beechey Island (coor-
dinates 74.71°N, 91.85°W) in a mission to discover the
wreckages of Sir John Franklin's expedition. With the
availability of the icebreaker to reach deep into ice‐covered
waters and the ability to gather data on sea ice from a
shipboard platform for the first time, a team of ice experts
had to be found to embark on this task. Three meteorolo-
gists were selected to receive training in the U.S. Navy in
1954 on ice growth, properties, and its interaction with
meteorology as well as communication support systems
to ships. Upon their return to Canada, they started their
work out of the Shearwater weather forecast office at the
Canadian Force Base (CFB), located in Shearwater, Nova
Scotia, on the eastern shore of the Halifax harbor. A
group of ice forecasters and technicians gradually grew
in number and experience and that led to the inaugura-
tion of the first Canadian ice forecasting office, called
Ice Forecasting Central (IFC), which operated out of
Shearwater in the spring of 1958. The function of the IFC
was twofold: (1) to operate and maintain a real‐time ice
information service in Canadian waters and (2) to provide
ice information and forecast in direct support of marine
and fishing operations in ice‐rich waters.
By 1958 the DEW system construction was completed,
but the requirement for continuous supply through
