Arctic icebreaker designers fine-tune their work

With their white and red colour scheme and maple leaf decorations, Canada’s icebreakers are designed to promote sovereignty in the High Arctic. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

ON BOARD THE AMUNDSEN — By 2017, people in Nunavut will see a larger and much better-equipped icebreaker than the Amundsen sailing in and around the Canadian Arctic.

This new icebreaker, to be called the John Diefenbaker after the late Canadian premier, will be a powerful work horse, able to go through ice as thick as 2.5 metres.

And its main mission will be to protect sovereignty and carry out Arctic research.

The icebreaker will be a “big, red ship in the North,” said its engineering manager, Ken Hill, which will send a message to the world that “it’s ours.”

At 120 m to 140 m long, new icebreaker will be larger than any icebreaker in Canada’s current fleet, able to carry about 60 crew members and 50 other passengers for up to 270 days a year in the Arctic.

The Diefenbaker, slated to replace the aging Louis St-Laurent, will also be much better equipped. The new icebreaker will carry two helicopters, unmanned drones as well as expanded space for laboratories and other equipment like zodiacs and a barge.

But this icebreaker project, first announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper two years ago, comes with a hefty price tab of at least $750 million. That’s roughly equal to the three-quarters of annual federal transfer of money to Nunavut through the formula financing agreement.

Hill and two of the other new icebreaker’s designers, all members of the Coast Guard, are on board the Amundsen to show their draft plans to scientists and officers to see if they need to make any changes to the design before its construction is put up for tender.

During an Aug. 3 presentation on the Diefenbaker project, a researcher piped up “you forgot my lab.”

That’s something the designers plan to correct before the final design is approved and the pricey contract to build the vessel goes out to a shipyard, most likely in Canada.