Yellowknife (July 04/03) - Capt. Joel Cote co-ordinates all military activity in the Northwest Territories.

Born in Quebec, Cote joined the military in 1991 searching for adventure.

And what an adventure he's had.

Cote has served in Bosnia on peacekeeping and peace enforcing missions and in the Middle East as an observer.

"The worst thing I've ever seen was in the Middle East," said Cote.

Cote described a time when he was trying to feed a starving little girl a cookie.

"All of the sudden, instead of one girl, I had the whole neighbourhood fighting for that cookie and I realized that I had done a bad thing," he said.

Among tales of encounters with dangerous snakes and spiders, Cote remembers a close call he had when he came across a field of land mines.

"It was close enough to make you sweat," he said.

During his second deployment to Bosnia, operating with NATO, Cote was able to take action seizing weapons that were not permitted in the area by the Dayton Peace Accord.

"I wasn't peacekeeping, I was peace enforcing," he said.

Acting as a peace enforcer, Cote was not permitted to carry his own weapon, leaving him to enforce the accord while unarmed.

"There is lots of tension when you say 'hey you with those weapons! Give them to me, you can't have them,'" Cote recalls.

Cote said he was only scared after it was over, because there was no time to be afraid during the tense moments.

Flipping through photographs from his travels, Cote came across a picture of a stray dog in the Middle East. When asked what the dog's name was, Cote smiled and said: "That's Saddam."

Although Canadians in the military are generally supposed to stay away from animals when they are on missions -- because they could prove to be health hazards -- Cote said his troop befriended the dog because it didn't like Iraqis and would bark whenever one came near their camp.

Right now Cote is working at the Canadian Forces Northern area base in Yellowknife as the operations officer.

He facilitates all military activity and adventure training in the North.

"I'm kind of a switchboard that links people," he said.

Cote also takes measures against crisis situations and plays a part in maintaining military presence in the North.

Captain Brian Martin, public affairs officer, said with Cote's field experience, he's perfect for the job.

"With about 40 per cent of Canada's land mass up here, that's a huge area to be co-ordinated," Martin said.

"You just couldn't throw someone into that job."