NWS: it’s working people who make the radar run

The domes of the North Warning System’s radar station in Cambridge Bay are cloaked in blowing snow, as the temperature hovers at around -45 C. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

John Boyle, business projects manager with Nasittuq, walks down one of the narrow corridors at the North Warning System’s radar station in Cambridge Bay. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Seen here in the spring, the three radar domes at the North Warning System’s radar station in Cambridge Bay lie close to the community airport. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — As Mitzi Wall says goodbye to two of her staff at Cambridge Bay’s North Warning System radar site, tears well up in her eyes as she prepares for her bittersweet departure on Feb. 20.

In three days she’ll leave for Goose Bay, Labrador, her home. When her break finishes in mid-March, she’ll head out to a new posting: the NWS radar site at Hall Beach.

For the past three years, Wall, as site manager, has spent shifts lasting six weeks or longer on site.

She spent Christmas of 2009 there, making personalized stockings for her co-workers and filling them with toys and treats. On the morning of St. Valentine’s Day this year, everyone arose to find chocolates outside their door.

“It’s a life that’s hard to get out of,” Wall says of the eight years she’s spent rotating among radar sites, including three years at Cambridge Bay.

The station is special place: you can see an earplug dispenser in the cafeteria, right next to the coffee; full firefighting gear hangs by every door; and carpets bear a message that says “safety starts here.”

There’s also a surprising number of comforts: a full weight and exercise room, a sauna, television lounges and even a small canteen that sells snacks and T-shirts decorated with the North Warning System’s distinctive logo.

Wall, like the others on site, works for Nasittuq Corp., a joint venture between ATCO Frontec Corp. and seven Inuit organizations, through Pan Arctic Inuit Logistics Corp., owned by a coalition of Inuit birthright corporations.

A 2001 deal with the federal government gave Nasittuq the contract to operate and maintain the NWS sites, a contract which is now up for renewal.

Wall says Nasittuq employees now feel as if they belong to a large extended family spread across the North.

But it’s a special family, too, because everyone has a big job: to keep an eye on Canada’s northern airspace.

“There’s a lot of pride to say you’re part of the northern defense of Canada,” Wall says.

Through its radar stations across the Arctic, the NWS provides surveillance of airspace from aircraft incursions or cruise missile attacks, monitoring a 4,800-kilometre-long and 320-kilometre-wide swath from Alaska to Greenland.

Today’s NWS system replaced the former Distant Early Warning system or DEW line of the 1950s, after Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and U.S. president Ronald Reagan signed a defense deal in 1985.

This saw the DEW-line replaced by the NWS and the creation of forward operating locations — like the one in Iqaluit— for fighter interceptor jets.

The NWS now consists of 15 long-range radar stations and 39 short-range radars, of which 36 are located in Canada. It’s controlled by the northern segment of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint organization of Canada and the U.S., which provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and defense for the two countries from the Canadian Forces base in North Bay.

You can’t miss the NWS station in Cambridge Bay. Known as “Cam Main,” its three white radar domes — one large and two small — are the first thing when your flight approaches the airstrip and the last things you see when you leave.

Built in 1953, Cam Main once had more than 100 military staff and workers on site, but when the NWS was set up, only selected DEW line stations were upgraded, automation was increased and some DEW line stations were closed.

Today, only NWS stations in Invuik, Cambridge Bay, Hall Beach, Iqaluit and Goose Bay are staffed by on-site workers.

So, while in the past workers had to analyze information from radar themselves, now this information is transmitted by satellite directly to the NORAD facility at North Bay.

This means that during the winter there are fewer than 20 workers on site. They run everything, from the power plant and sewage system to the cafeteria.

Teams also fly out by helicopter in teams to visit 13 nearby unstaffed sites four times a year— even during the winter.

In summer, more than 60 people work on site, many hired from Cambridge Bay.

“To the maximum that we can, we’re hiring local people,” Wall says.

On some Nasittuq projects, about 55 per cent of the workers are Inuit. At Cam Main this winter, about five are people from Nunavut, like Samson Ittunga, a heavy equipment mechanic.

Originally from Taloyoak, he now lives in Yellowknife, dividing his two-month work rotations between Hall Beach and Cam Main— a routine that he says suits him well.

Other Inuit workers, including Valerie “Pokok” Ohokannoak, a graduate of Nunavut Arctic College’s culinary arts program, live in Cambridge Bay. She works in the kitchen — and, thanks to training money from Nasittuq, she continues to study towards her Red Seal trades qualification as a full-fledged chef.

As part of its mission “to provide our customers with exemplary technical and management services, while increasing opportunities to Inuit partners,” Nasittuq gives a share of its earnings back to its Inuit partners.

But it also contracts work to Inuit businesses, and provides community support, such as donations and food trays for events, jobs, training and scholarships.

Nasittuq is now looking for a local person interested in training for Wall’s management position and others who are keen to work at NWS summer jobs.

Wall, a Nunatsiavut land claims beneficiary, is one of Nasittuq’s success stories herself.

“I was taken into Nasittuq and trained — my company’s been good to me,” she says. “It’s not going to be easy to leave.”