Stories we loved to tell: Digging into a Nazi weather station
Reporter Cedric Gallant learns old military site was also a popular place to fish for Arctic char
This photo was taken by the U-537 Nazi submarine crew, showing the Kurt weather station after installation on the shores of Martin Bay in October 1943. (Photo courtesy of the Canadian War Museum)
In this year-end series, Nunatsiaq News staff look back on their most memorable stories from 2023.
It began with a conversation with my father just before I started my summer position as a reporter in Nunavik for Nunatsiaq News early in 2023.
As a Second World War history buff, he simply asked me: “Wasn’t there a Nazi weather station up north?”
I was intrigued, and started looking into it. Turns out, this question led me to help crack a decades-old mystery.
The Kurt Weather Station was situated on the shores of Martin Bay, near the tip where Nunavik and Labrador converge. It was set up by a group of Nazis who snuck up to Canada’s remote, northern shore in a U-boat in October 1943.
The Nazi Regime was known for having an almost feverish dedication to documentation and paper trails so perhaps not surprisingly the whole mission is documented. A German historian found the paper trail a few decades after the war, and collaborated with Canadian historians to figure out exactly where the Kurt Weather Station was located.
At this point, I was starting to doubt this would even be a story worth publishing for Nunatsiaq News. I figured that it was more of a personal project than an article worth the reader’s time.
Yet I kept digging.
It wasn’t too much later when I stumbled upon an article by Canadian Armed Forces historian Alec Douglas about his trip to find the weather station.
Douglas and his team were the first Canadians officially recorded to see the place, almost 40 years after it was built. He recounts his experience getting there, seeing the structure, and finding it had already been discovered — and apparently vandalized — by someone else.
The batteries were gone and there was evidence that people had been camping nearby. The historian was perplexed. Who had discovered this station before the Canadian military?
I suspected Inuit in the area could have known of the station’s existence, and it was possible that Canadian officials at the time would not have bothered asking them about it.
When I interviewed the Canadian War Museum’s Second World War historian Jeff Noakes, I asked him about the possibility that Inuit in the area discovered the station first.
“We don’t know, unfortunately,” he said. “It would be fascinating to find out if other people had seen it, and what they thought of it.”
So I made some calls.
I’d met a person in Kangiqsujuaq two summers ago who recalled a settlement called Killiniq in the area of the Kurt Weather Station. The Northwest Territories government closed the settlement in 1978 and removed anybody remaining there.
I remembered that the person I was speaking to told me her husband was born there. I sent a message, and was led straight to the Keelan family.
During our phone interview, Michael Keelan, who lived in Killiniq, told me of his first experience finding the weather station in August 1977, four years prior to the Canadian officials.
Even though we may never know who first found the only Nazi infrastructure built on Canadian soil, we know that people from Killiniq had been there.
The reason why is simple: Martin Bay was a great spot to find Arctic char at the time.
I was a student in Ottawa back in the 80s when I had the opportunity along with two other inuks to work a summer job with the coast guard. Coast Guard Louis st. Laurent before it was retrofitted took us for six weeks along the coast of Labrador and up to pond lnlet. On board were two German historians who lead us to the site where the German weather station was. At the time I was not too interested in a piece of old rusted metal tower or the significance of it. Lol
My historical fiction novel Cold Refuge started off with a second u-boat servicing the Kurt weather station in 1944 followed by reconnaissance on the Frobisher Bay airbase before things ran amok and the crew had to depend on their collective wits and those of captured Inuit siblings to survive. With enemy warships and aircraft searching for them-and an RCMP dogsled patrol-and to raid a fuel cache, they sneak into Foxe Basin as winter is setting in. Things get really interesting then, when a war tale evolves into a cross-cultural survival story. Available at Arctic Ventures.
Interesting story, but weird not to start it with the people who lived in the region. Could have discussed more about the people and the area, rather than a historian of a place he’s visited once. Just saying!
Inuit in Gjoa Haven were not believed for a century when they told searchers were told where John Franklin’s ship was.
A Parks Canada rep was claiming credit and shouting…”Parks Canada found Franklin’s ships!! “
….and Dennis Bebington, former MLA, tried taking credit for Zebedee Nungak’s quote…”Canada is not coast to coast. It’s Coast to Coast to Coast.’
That impressed the heck Brian Mulroney and his hooligans cause they learned something. (I was in the Press Box during Meech Lake accord)
Then Dennis Bebington tried taking credit for the quote.
Wonder if there are documentations of where bases were set up during the world war? There is also a supposed unknown location below the surface on the northwestern side on Melville Peninsula where people that lived in the region knew about before communities were set up. Some locals have heard about a hunter finding a stash of rifles and ammunition stored in underground cellars and being afraid to disclose it and just vague presumptions where the exact location may be. Intriguing but really have no idea where to start queries to validate this.
Maybe ken harper should do a story on father Shultz who was German and had a plane . Canadian government was concerned enough to send an rcmp detachment from pond inlet to Igloolik to destroy father Shultz aviation fuel. Fathers Shultz was believed to be meeting up with the u-boats during the war. Would be interesting read.