Yellowknife (Jun 12/06) - April 16, 2007: A very bad day for the Northwest Territories.

Some terrible water-borne illness has made its way from Delta Junction, Alaska, into the NWT, inflicting casualties, including deaths in communities across the territory.

Exercise director Maj. Marc Beauchemin oversees the operations room while Capt. Linda Shrum and Maj. Rob Handwick keep tabs on information flowing in from Exercise Narwhal - a military exercise designed to ensure the North remains vigilant to terrorism threats. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo

A passenger airliner has plummeted to the ground near Tuktoyaktuk with 267 souls on board. In Arctic Bay, Nunavut, an early morning earthquake has rocked its residents out of their beds.

And now the unthinkable has happened. A group of terrorists is attempting to sabotage the flow of oil and gas from Norman Wells.

It's the beginning of a very busy day for Joint Task Force North - the Department of National Defence's Northern contingent based in Yellowknife.

In the command post, Capt. Nick Gallagher tells the gathered media that the water-borne attack appears to have been a ploy by the terrorists to distract authorities from their real target along the Mackenzie Valley pipeline route.

"They're using the water contamination as a disguise from the main effort," says Gallagher.

"From our intelligence, it's a six-to-eight men team. They're looking to sabotage the oil and gas industry."

It's an RCMP operation, but 205 troops have been deployed from a military base down south. What's shocking about this terrorist attack, are reports that two of these of infiltrators are Canadian Forces reservists, who have knowledge in explosives.

All of these events seem highly unlikely, but in this new age of terror since Sept. 11, 2001, especially after the news broke last week that police arrested 17 terrorist suspects who were allegedly plotting attacks in Southern Ontario, nothing should be taken for granted, says Col. Norm Couturier, commander of Joint Task Force North.

"There is no doubt that Canada is not living in isolation from the rest of the world," says Couturier.

"The threat is against Western Civilization, so we're a part of that coalition because of our opposition to terrorism."

These latest military games are the second phase of Joint Task Force North's Exercise Narwhal.

Last September, the force conducted a "table-top" exercise - devising possible scenarios that could take place up North.

Next April, actual troops will be deployed in the field for the third and final phase of the exercise.

Right now, the force is focusing on command post operations in attempt to see how well the group operates from its Yellowknife base.

The exercise is vital, says Couturier, to ensure that the sparsely populated North is well protected from any terrorist group that may view it as an easy target. "The North is not prohibited from being a target," says Couturier.

"We cannot allow it to be a weakness, a soft underbelly."

Canadian Forces are going through a large-scale change overall, he says.

The old days of focusing on sending peacekeepers oversees is giving way to ideas of maintaining homeland defence.

"The Canadian Forces have inherited a new role," says Couturier.

"In the past, Canadian Forces typically were designed for expeditionary forces. We played at home in an ad hoc role only when there was an emergency or something like that.

"Starting on Feb. 1, under the directive of (Canadian Forces Chief of Defence Staff) General Hillier, we transformed the Canadian Forces so that we would conduct domestic contingency operations."

Phase two of Exercise Narwhal concluded Friday.