A closer look at the Canadian Rangers, the military’s ‘eyes and ears’ in the North

W5’s Jon Woodward on the significance of Canadian Rangers in northern Canada and why calls to double their rank may face obstacles.

This is the fifth part of a multi-part series by CTV W5, embedded in the Canadian military’s Operation Nanook, as international interest by adversaries in Canada’s Arctic ramps up.

In a white canvas tent, on the Arctic ice, is where you’ll often find Emmanuel Adam.

It’s where Adam has spent months at a time in the harsh, frozen lands around Tuktoyaktuk, a hamlet on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

“This morning was 30 below. Turned out nice,” he quipped during an interview with W5 as a cold wind whipped by.

Adam, 71, is a master corporal in the Canadian Rangers, known as the eyes and ears of the Canadian Armed Forces in the North.

He’s at home in the rugged, isolated areas that can’t be easily reached by other soldiers.

He’s sharing his knowledge of the land with what Rangers often call the “Green Army” of recruits training here in Operation Nanook.

In the North, they are green in more ways than one.

“If you didn’t have that knowledge, you would learn by trial and error,” he said, leaving unstated that an error out on the ice can be fatal.

This year, Operation Nanook brought some 450 member of the Canadian Armed Forces to Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, as well as about 110 members of the armed forces of other nations, to the Arctic ice to train.

For Canada, an important piece of this exercise was to demonstrate capability on the terrain. And the Rangers are a crucial part of that.

Wearing their red hoodies, they are often found on snowmobiles, watching the soldiers and protecting them from predators, finding routes across the otherwise impassable ice and snow, and sometimes just helping them survive the cold.

“Everything we know down south about surviving doesn’t really fly up here,” said Jim Davison in an interview on Parsons Lake, about 60 km north of Inuvik.

He and his crew had just loaded up snowmobiles and sleds full of supplies on a Chinook helicopter, and were just about to head to a camp to help the military scientists there stock up.

“Finding shelter is a lot harder. Finding warmth and supplies like firewood – that doesn’t exist up here. The elements get you real quick,” he said.

The Rangers make the North accessible to Canada’s military, said Whitney Lackenbauer, the Canada Research Chair in the study of the Canadian North. He’s also an honourary Canadian Ranger.

“Literally, there’s, nothing like the Canadian Rangers anywhere else,” Lackenbauer said in an interview in Tuktoyaktuk.

“By having that foundation, having that footprint, it allows us to pull assets, pull resources up to the North to operate if we need to,” he said.

• Part 1: Canada faces dual adversaries on its northern frontier
• Part 2: ‘The cold doesn’t like you': soldiers test gear and mettle in Arctic exercises
• Part 3: How the Canadian and U.S. militaries turned a frozen lake into an airstrip for an enormous plane — in just days
• Part 4: How cutting edge military tech tested in the Arctic could change northern warfare

There are only about 5,000 Rangers, who must cover a vast territory – some 40 per cent of Canada’s land mass.

That’s led to calls by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to double their ranks.

That’s a proposal welcomed by veteran Ranger and politician Jackie Jacobson. He says Ranger training helps children avoid the drugs and depression that have ravaged this northern hamlet.

“We lost 23 people here last year in this community,” he said. “It’s sad when you don’t have to sing off the songsheet for the funeral.”

Jacobson said he wants more Rangers trained – but there are not enough Ranger instructors.

“We need more active military guys to come out. The ranger instructors we do have are getting burned out. Getting burned out to the point where one instructor has five or six communities across the Arctic. Yukon, Nunavut, NWT. The biggest concern we got, we need more of them,” he said.

For tips on Arctic security, or any other story, please email Jon Woodward.