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Rangers and military complete historic mission

Jessica Klinkenberg
Northern News Services
Monday, April 16, 2007

ELLESMERE ISLAND - Operation Nunalivut did not start well for Rangers and military personnel, during a sovereignty mission, which began on March 24. One of the three patrols plunged through the ice just north of Grise Fiord.

NNSL Photo/Graphic

Major Chris Bergeron, who led patrol one in Operation Nunalivut, indicates some of the problem areas they encountered during their patrol mission between March 24-April 10. - Jessica Klinkenberg/NNSL photo

"We got sucked into a river, we encountered boulder rocks. From the first day we destroyed two machines," Major Chris Bergeron said.

Bergeron was leading Patrol One, a historical patrol recreating a path attempted in 1906 but ending in failure.

Bergeron is no stranger to the challenges of the North. He has toured extensively with the First Canadian Rangers, who cover all three territories, but he referred to his patrol as hell.

The situation wasn't much better for the other patrols either.

The first patrol battled blizzards and winds as strong as 100-kilometres or more. The second patrol was moving too quickly for supply command to keep up with properly at times, and the third patrol ended up having to be flown directly to their checkpoint in Alexandra Fiord after damaging all of their machines.

"There was boulder rocks, but there was no snow. After that it was hell for them."

Bergeron said that they made the decision to have patrol three flown directly to Alexandra Fiord instead of having them turn back.

"They broke every single machine. They were in pretty bad shape."

Bergeron said the choice to airlift them was made out of concern.

"Morale wise, it was pretty low, I was worried about them."

The Major spoke from the ranger's head quarter's in Yellowknife. He had arrived in Yellowknife the night before on Wednesday, and said he had managed a mere six hours of sleep.

Following a re-supply in Eureka, Patrols one and two split up.

"We had bad weather, blizzard conditions at all times, we didn't see much."

"As soon as patrol two split up they had sunshine, good weather and they got the sun with them at all times."

Patrol one did hit some good weather on the western side of Ellesmere Island.

After the re-supply at a cabin, Bergeron said they pressed on.

"As soon as we turned that corner, that's where hell began.

"We had nine days of blizzard, nine days of snow, and the only thing I saw was a GPS and a map."

Bergeron said travelling in those conditions was dangerous.

"Usually you cannot travel in those kinds of conditions because you have to navigate through with the map, and you have to look at the mountain to locate yourself. But with the intelligence we had it was possible to travel."

The last day of the trip looked promising as they headed towards Alert.

"I said to the boys 'We're going to be okay, we're going to make it to Alert today."

As soon as I said that and we started to travel, we hit 116-kilometre winds, blizzard conditions. It was so hard that we could not put the tents up so we had no choice but to carry on."

"We hit obstacle after obstacle, we hit glaciers, we hit ice walls."

"We could not follow the shore anymore because the pressure ridge pushed the ice against the shores, and we had no place to travel. And we had to go inland.

"Every 500 feet we got stuck."

Bergeron said the entire trip was a battle.

"Every single centimetre we fought for."

Eventually they finally did make it to Alert, where the men were served a hot meal and had a good laugh.

"When we arrived in Alert at 2 o'clock in the morning everyone was sleeping. We opened the door, we walked in as the dirty dozen.

"One of the duty officer's was walking by and looked at us and said 'Who are you?' I said 'I'm Major Chris Bergeron, I just arrived from Resolute Bay and is it possible to get a cup of coffee?'

"And he started to laugh and he said 'I never thought in my life I would see something like that.'

"The commanding officer of CFS Alert came down right away, he knew we were coming. He went behind the stove and cooked us supper, we had supper until 3 o'clock in the morning."

Morale was severely damaged with all of the obstacles that Patrol one faced, and Bergeron said that laughter helped them deal with it.

"You have two options; you laughed and you carried on, or you cried and you died. The thing we did was we laughed our guts out all the time."

"We worked always together, we could not have a better team. It was the only way we could succeed."

Bergeron said he was not eager to repeat the trip, but the experience had forged some strong memories for him.

"I will remember all my life those guys and girls that were with me."