Eyes North

Three news items last week underlined the growing Canadian-American military interest in the Arctic.

Defense Minister Douglas Abbott announced that Churchill, Manitoba had been chosen as an experimental station to test and develop military equipment. The Canadian press said that the recommendation had been made by the Joint U.S.Canada Permanent Defense Board, that eventually 5,000 Canadians and 5,000 U.S. troops may be stationed at Churchill. Washington denied that U.S. troops would be sent there, said only military observers would go to Churchill.

The R.C.A.F. announced that a survey party, flying low over the vast, frigid Foxe Basin in the Arctic Ocean, had rediscovered the Spicer Islands, first found by a Massachusetts whaler in 1897 and then "lost." Flight Lieut. J. F. Drake of Vancouver said that runways could be constructed on two of the marshy islands but that they would be ". . . hazardous operational bases."

Back in Canada as U.S. military air attache in Ottawa was Colonel Jack C. Hodgson, 49, who had been commander for 20 months of the wartime U.S.A.A.F. in central Canada. (His predecessor as attache had only the permanent rank of lieutenant.) One of Colonel Hodgson's last acts as commander of the theater had been to turn over to Canada four airfields, one the big field at Churchill with its paved, 6,000-ft. runways, and ten scattered weather stations throughout the north. This brought the current number of U.S. military attaches in Ottawa to three ground forces officers and five airmen. It also plainly hinted that defense in the Arctic was an airman's job.

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