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Operation Nanook coming to Inuvik
Community will be base for exercises starting next month

Mark Rieder
Northern News Services
Monday, July 20, 2015

INUVIK
The town's senior administrative officer, Grant Hood, said he is looking forward to having Inuvik be the centre of attention during the upcoming Canadian Forces exercise Operation Nanook.

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Cpl. William Hong from the Canadian Army Advanced Warfare Center repacks a search and rescue parachute during Operation Nanook 2014. - photo courtesy Cpl. Aydyn Neifer, JTFN

"I think we're getting major national attention which can only be a positive for tourism," he said.

Operation Nanook is an annual exercise that takes place in different parts of the North.

Maj. Frank Cannon, with Canadian Forces Northern Area Headquarters based in Yellowknife, said one of the main outcomes of the operation is to identify what groups or individuals the Armed Forces can turn to in the case of a real-world emergency in the region.

"We need to go through each of the major communities in the North and determine who are the players involved, so if we have to conduct a major operation and have to deploy, what assets the community has that we can use," he said. The operation will draw personnel from across Canada, with as many as 650 on the ground at one time.

"The majority of the participants are not coming from Yellowknife," said Cannon, "In this case they're coming from New Brunswick. It gives us an opportunity to give people exposure to the Arctic that normally would not."

There are three scenarios being acted out in this year's operation. One is a wildfire scenario happening at Fort Smith. Inuvik will be the base of operations for an oil spill scenario in the eastern Beaufort Sea and Amundsen Gulf. It will begin with a table top discussion held by the various governmental agencies in the territory and last four days. It will be followed by a community training event headed up by the Canadian Coast Guard in Ulukhaktok and will run for three to five days.

The final scenario will be an Arctic security task in response to a theoretical sabotage event initiated by North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) warning indicators in the vicinity of Tuktoyaktuk and Sachs Harbour. It will include both land and marine threats to the Northern Warning System.

Last year, Operation Nanook took place in Nunavut. The last time the exercise came to Inuvik was 2012.

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