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The winter sun hasn’t yet risen above Inuvik’s jagged horizon of black spruce trees, but already, more than 150 nervous soldiers have gathered in a community recreation centre.
Tables clear of their breakfast and fingers fiddle with pens, a giddiness akin to the first day of school settles over the room.
Few have traveled this far north before, more than 200 kilometres above the Arctic Circle in Canada’s Northwest Territories. For some, the trip here marked the first time they had ever been on an airplane.
“You are here to be exposed to the Arctic environment,” Lt Col Darren Turner, the land taskforce commander, tells the group, which snaps to attention when he enters. “You are here to demonstrate our sovereignty and that we can protect and defend our territory from all threats.”
Running from mid-February until 9 March, Operation Nanook was Canada’s sprawling military exercise in the hostile theatre of the Arctic. In aircraft and slogging on foot through the tundra, nearly 650 personnel simulate retaking key infrastructure, testing cutting-edge equipment – and, most importantly, learning to survive the cold.
The operation, conducted alongside allies from the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden and Finland, reflects an aim to “project force” in the Arctic, but also to sustain that force amid frigid conditions.
The backdrop of the mission is a recognition that Russia and China – which now calls itself a “near-Arctic nation” – have a growing interest in a region that makes up nearly half of Canada’s land mass. Thinning sea ice has opened up the North-west Passage for a longer window of time and thawing permafrost holds the promise of immense fossil fuel and critical mineral wealth.
The national defence minister, Bill Blair, warned on Thursday that climate change was upending the region and providing “growing access to Arctic resources and shipping lanes that, unfortunately, is enticing other adversarial nations to engage in heightened competition”.
“Both nations are seeking to challenge the existing unipolar world and exert national spheres of influence in the Arctic region,” Maj Andrew Melvin, who oversaw the short-term land operations, told the reservists.
While a direct, armed confrontation with Russia or China is “highly unlikely”, he warned the two countries had sophisticated intelligence-gathering tools and could use the mission to gain new knowledge of Canada’s operations.
“We are out here. We are demonstrating our sovereignty and our ability and capability to operate in high Arctic conditions. They don’t like that. They want to demonstrate through messaging that we are not able to maintain our sovereignty in the Arctic,” said Melvin. “You are here to prove them wrong. You are here to show that what we do, we do the best in the high Arctic.”
But threats to Canada’s sovereignty have also come from a closer quarter.
In recent weeks, Donald Trump has threatened to make Canada the 51st US state, an idea roundly condemned by all Canadian political leaders. While the threats have frayed diplomatic relations, senior military figures say Operation Nanook reflects a “business-as-usual” approach by the two countries’ armed forces.
“We are working with our allies like we would. We don’t let politics get in the way of our professionalism,” said Turner. “We’re professional soldiers, doing our job and fulfilling our purpose. We’ll let the politicians worry about that.”
Most soldiers duck the issue of tension with a longtime military ally. But some are blunt in their rejection of the idea.
“We’re Canada. We’re not a state and we never will be,” says one.
Last year, Canada’s federal government paid C$8.6m (US$4.7m) to acquire a privately owned aircraft hangar – known as the Green Hangar – next to Inuvik’s Norad airbase, following interest from China and Russia.
In March, Blair promised Ottawa would invest more than C$2.5bn in northern military “hubs” – nearly 10 times the previously pledged amount – to build airstrips, logistics facilities and equipment to augment infrastructure already in place.
But hiccups during Operation Nanook highlighted a dire need for greater resources.
As teams moved to transport tens of thousand of pounds of gear to a remote frozen lake, one of the Chinook transport helicopters was grounded until spare parts could be found. But the only source for the parts was a military base near Ottawa and took three days to ship.
Last week, the Canadian Press reported that the country’s spy agency, CSIS, believes the Arctic is an “attractive, strategic and vulnerable destination” for foreign adversaries like China and Russia. CSIS warned that resources projects, shipping and possible militarization of the region could be used by other countries to push into territory already claimed by Canada.
Canada’s governing Liberals intend to revive the role of Arctic ambassadors, with postings in Nuuk, Greenland, and Anchorage, Alaska, to strengthen diplomatic relations.
Much of the focus on the Arctic centres around increasingly navigable waters and the vast quantities of critical minerals and fossil fuels beneath the permafrost.
“It’s about access and it’s about resources,” said Turner. “You can access the north more easily than you have ever been able to. And that’s going to change even more drastically over the next 10 years.”
While Canada has promised to purchase new ice breakers, Russia is developing more powerful ships that can outperform Canada’s current – and future – vessels.
“Once a route is opened, they will come. We need to have an interest in that,” he said. “We need to have the capabilities to interdict, to stop, to block that movement.”
While Canada has designated all Arctic Canadian waters as indefinitely off limits to future offshore Arctic oil and gas licensing, a recent agreement between the federal government, the Northwest Territories and Yukon governments and the Inuvialuit, looks to give greater autonomy to Indigenous groups to develop fossil fuel projects.
“We have so much stranded oil and so much stranded gas,” said Jackie Jacobsen, a former lawmaker in the Northwest Territories.
He said the Inuvialuit Petroleum Corporation’s M-18 project, which aims to convert an estimated 278bn cubic feet of gas into into usable natural gas and synthetic diesel, would help a people who have long seen their lands used by outsiders. The project recent received a C$100m loan from the Canada Infrastructure Bank, with the aim of creating a local supply of fuel for energy, heating and transportation for the next half-century.
“We’re finally the ones that are going to get something out of it. The Inuvialuit will get what’s theirs, not just the big oil companies,” he said.
Jacobsen, who also served as mayor for the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk on the edge of the Beaufort Sea, said if a region was invested in resources, “it becomes an asset worth defending.”
For others, however, the promise of sustained, large-scale investment in the region rings hollow.
“We know we have massive oil and gas reserves, because they found them in the 1960s,” said Invuik resident Ryan Lennie who also works as a Canadian Ranger. “And so Inuvik has gone through the boom and bust. We were told we would have so much investment up here, and then soon, it goes back to nothing.”
The rangers, a unit of the army responsible for remote areas, serve as both scouts for the military and a lifeline for soldiers venturing into the north for the first time.
“It’s hard to know what to make about these claims. But at the end of the day, I’m more worried about the lack of infrastructure we have up here than running into a Russian when I’m out on my snowmobile.”
