Join the Northern Voyager Experience

A Royal Canadian Navy cutter, the Defender, from Canadian Forces Base Halifax is used to provide 1 Canadian Rangers Patrol Group with critical search and rescue and small craft training on Great Slave Lake near Yellowknife during Operation Nunakput 2016. Photo by PO2 Belinda Groves, Task Force Imagery Technician

RAdm John F. Newton,
Commander Maritime Forces Atlantic ~

As sailors of the Royal Canadian Navy, we take pride in our inheritance of skill in patrol of the North Atlantic and vast Pacific Ocean. Recent experiences in operations that ranged from the Black Sea, to the Gulf of Guinea, and deep into Indo-Asia-Pacific have reasserted our global “deployability”.

In a new undertaking, 20 hand-picked sailors will gain experiential learning in a bold and completely new task. They will set sail on a once-in-a-lifetime voyage of Canada’s longest waterway, the Mackenzie River.

In celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary, four force protection cutters will join Operation Nunakput 17. The flotilla will follow the waters that drain into a great watershed of northwestern Canada, from Great Slave Lake to the Beaufort Sea. On a voyage extending 4,000 kilometres to the sea and back, sailors of the Royal Canadian Navy will witness their land and peoples in a manner that very few have experienced.

How to apply
Over the next few weeks, the MARLANT Formation Chief, CPO1 Pierre Auger, will lead a selection process for the Nunakput boat crews. Personnel interested in obtaining more information should contact Chief Auger directly at Pierre.Auger@forces.gc.ca. Those wishing to participate are to make their interest known through their unit chain of command.

Operation Nunakput
Operation Nunakput is a sovereignty operation conducted annually under the command of Joint Task Force North. The mission is undertaken jointly with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Environment Canada, and Provincial Government partners in order to ensure maximum sovereignty expression in the sparsely populated North.

Military participants include the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group and five of their Patrols along the Mackenzie River. In the air, 440 Transport Squadron will sustain the mission using the venerable Canadian bush plane, the CC-138 Twin Otter. Canadian Army personnel will support the mission with Ranger Instructors and logistics.

After successfully testing the feasibility of force protection cutters during Nunakput 16, four of these high powered jet boats have been prepared for the 2017 mission.

Each cutter will be crewed by four sailors, male and female, selected from the two coastal Formations, national headquarters and Naval Reserve. The first group will execute the down-bound transit from Yellowknife, the second the up-bound leg. Inuvik, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, will be the crew change and turnaround point. Each group will spend about seven days on the Mackenzie River, and between two and three days total in transit to and from the mission. The overall mission window is July 4 to 20.

Nights will be spent camping out in the great Canadian Boreal Forest. Field craft and small boat operating skills will be learned from Rangers. Engaging with fellow citizens living in remote communities will ensure that the mission is both a memorable experience and key learning opportunity as the navy prepares to take delivery of the Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels.

Indeed, the skills learned on Nunakput are formative requirements for those who will routinely voyage north in HMCS Harry DeWolf and the other ships of the class.

This will be an epic adventure, an important learning moment, and thrilling Canada 150 celebration. The mission commander is Lt(N) Jeff Horne, the second in command, Chief Petty Officer Second Class Currie.