Welcome to Camp Nanook: good eats, warm shelter

The mobile kitchen units churn out three meals a day for hundreds of people at Op Nanook’s camp in Resolute Bay. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Before you eat at Op Nanook’s camp, you are supposed to wash your hands at a portable sink. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Up to 550 people can be housed in the tents at Op Nanook’s camp in Resolute Bay. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

RESOLUTE BAY — Here’s the ingredients for keeping more than 400 people happy in the morning, every day for two weeks: take 1,200 dozen eggs, 6,000 pounds of fresh fruit and 30 cases of bacon.

That’s what the 400-plus residents of Camp Nanook in Resolute Bay have eaten for breakfast since they arrived earlier this month for Operation Nanook, Canada’s major military exercise in the North.

Every morning at 7:00 a.m. you can see men and women in their camouflage green and brown fatigues, along with Canadian Rangers in bright red hoodies streaming towards the tent city’s kitchens.

First, they stop at an outdoor sink to wash up; then they line up for a hot breakfast.

Instead, it’s all steam from the hot food, piles of eggs, pancakes and bacon, lots of bacon, prepared in mobile kitchen trailers which are well-travelled, having been to Afghanistan back to Montreal and now to Resolute Bay.

Covered in canvas, the units let in the light— and cold — and if it snows, which it can in Resolute, Master Seaman Andrew Mellis says he’ll “just pull out a shovel” and some extra tarps to throw over the top.

Other challenges include the planning involved in ordering food for hundreds of people two weeks ahead of time from Yellowknife (which is stored in refrigerator sea containers outside) — because if the weather goes down on the day of re-supply, you can run out of food and end up eating “individual meal packages,” which come in pouches.

So far during Op Nanook, that’s only happened once.

Bad weather can also make it challenging for diners who have to take their plates out of the kitchen trailers to the condiment tent stocked with everything from mustard to hot sauce and then into an eating tent.

In between the two, a brisk wind can see mashed potatoes end up on the ground while rain may lead to soggy toast.

For Inuit Canadian Rangers at the camp, there’s another option: a tent stocked with country food such as char.

Food is big at the camp, said Lt. Alastair Lombardo, Op Nanook’s camp logistics officer.

Good food is “critical,” he says, particularly for those coming in off the land: “it’s essential you get a hot meal.”

The camp, contracted out to ATCO by the federal government, can house up to 550 in 40 weather havens, which can hold 13, and in 16 tents of seven — all equipped with floors and heaters, which are “somewhat comfortable,” according to the camp managers.

The camp also features inflatable tents for storage, which look like the inflatable holiday lawn decorations popular on many porches in the South.

And there are stand-alone tents earmarked for everything from sales of t-shirts and candy bars to “morale,” that is, for peace and quiet.

The first to arrive at the camp were eight firefighters on June 28 and by Sept. 26 everyone and everything will be gone.

But the idea is for the camp to be self-sufficient as long as it’s standing, but leave no footprint afterwards, said Capt. Guillaume Beauce, the Op Nanook camp engineer.

Water comes in from Resolute Bay’s Char Lake, where it’s stored in huge plastic bladders for use in toilets and showers — up to 30,000 litres can be stored in each one.

To keep the water unfrozen, it’s always recirculating.

To date, about a million litres have been used — all with the proper permits for use in place, Beauce notes.

As for the waste water, it’s taken to the airport lagoon.

Getting rid of the six truck loads of solid waste materials is harder, “ the largest challenge,” Beauce said.

Medical, metal and hazardous materials will be shipped south. An incinerator, brought in for Op Nanook by ATCO burns the rest.

That includes the cigarette butts collected regularly from the “butt stations” — equipped with some basic firefighting gear — around the camp.

There’s no composting or evident recycling in place, but an effort is made to divide waste into wet and cold because that helps the incineration effort.

Power for the camp comes from 145 Kilowatt diesel generator.

Overall, it’s a camp that resembles those in Afghanistan, say many of the armed forces who have been there.

The difference here being the greater distances from major centres and, of course, the risk of running into a polar bear.

“Predator patrols” by local Canadian Rangers go out hourly by foot and on all-terrain vehicles to make sure no polar bears, drawn by the smell of all that bacon cooking, decide to wander into the camp.