Special Contract

A Story of Defence Communications in Canada

Operational Histories, No. 6

In the fall of 1947, Canadian Armed Forces personnel com¬pleted a heroic mercy mission in the Canadian High Arctic. Operation CANON involved Anglican missionary John Hudspith (Jack) Turner, who had been seriously injured in a firearms acci¬dent at his remote outpost at Moffet Inlet, Baffin Island. The documents in this volume provide detailed insights into this remarkable story of perseverance and courage, revealing logistical and environmental challenges of deploying and sustaining personnel to and in the High Arctic.

By A.G. Lester, Edited and Introduced by Jeff Noakes and P. Whitney Lackenbauer.

JEFF NOAKES, Ph.D., has been the Second World War historian at the Canadian War Museum since mid-2006. He is responsible for historical content in the museum’s Second World War gallery, and until 2016 was one of two historians jointly responsible for historical content in the War Museum’s LeBreton Gallery, which displays the museum’s collection of large military artifacts. He has also been the historian on museum teams responsible for creating or adapting a number of temporary and online exhibitions. He has worked as a researcher on subjects related to Canada’s military and diplomatic history during the twentieth century, and is also the author or joint author of books, book chapters, exhibition catalogues, and articles on subjects related to the First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War, and the Arctic, including Forged in Fire: Canada and the Second World War (2016), and, with Andrew Burtch, The LeBreton Gallery: The Military Technology Collection of the Canadian War Museum (2015). Along with Tim Cook and Nic Clarke, he is co-author of Canada in the World Wars (2016), and with Janice Cavell he is co-author of Acts of Occupation: Canada and Arctic Sovereignty, 1918-25 (2010).

WHITNEY LACKENBAUER, Ph.D., is Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Study of the Canadian North and professor in the School for the Study of Canada at Trent University, and the Honorary Lieutenant Colonel of 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (1CRPG) based in Yellowknife. Whitney is an adjunct professor at the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Mulroney Institute for Governance at St. Francis Xavier University. Previously, he has been Killam Visiting Scholar at the University of Calgary, Distinguished Visiting Professor at Canadian Forces College, and a Fulbright Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. He has (co-)written or (co-)edited more than fifty books and more than one hundred academic articles and book chapters. His recent books include The Joint Arctic Weather Stations: Science and Sovereignty in the High Arctic, 1946-1972 (2022); A History of the Canadian Rangers of Quebec: 2nd Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (2022); The Canadian Armed Forces’ Eyes, Ears, and Voice in Remote Regions: Selected Writings on the Canadian Rangers (2022); Lines in the Snow: Thoughts on the Past and Future of Northern Canadian Policy Issues (2021); On Thin Ice? Perspectives on Arctic Security (2021); Breaking Through: Understanding Sovereignty and Security in the Circumpolar Arctic (2021); and China’s Arctic Engagement: Following the Polar Silk Road to Greenland and Russia (2021). He is married with three children.