Six months on top of the world

Details

Published on Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Photos courtesy of Matt Soroka. A picture of mainstreet in Site 31. The smaller buildings, in the rows on the right side, were where the workers slept, while the bigger building in the centre was the cooking hall.

By Tony Eu

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

In May of 1956, Matt Soroka took a trip north. Far north. All the way up, well into the Arctic Circle, to a place known as Site 31.

The trip wasn’t for leisure, however, Soroka was going for work. Far in the north, he joined in the effort to construct the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW line) across the north of the continent.

The DEW line is a series of radar stations along the northern part of not only Canada, but Iceland, Greenland and Alaska as well. It was constructed during the Cold War as a way to detect Soviet bombers and give advance warning of a land or sea invasion. The project was made possible by an agreement between the Canadian and US governments.

By 1993, most of the stations were deactivated. Those that remained were upgraded and integrated into the North Warning System (NWS) and are still in operation today.

Soroka was looking for work when he spotted an ad placed by the Foundation Company of Canada, one of the contractors for the DEW line project. He saw it as a good opportunity and soon he was heading north.

Soroka would end up working as a chef on Site 31, officially called FOX-1, which was located on Rowley Island in Nunavut. He was up there, on contract, for six months. Before he reached Site 31, however, he and the other men going up on contract stopped in Churchill.

The original plan had the men staying in the army barracks located there for the night, before flying out the next morning to FOX-M, located on Hall Beach. Unfortunately, when the men arrived, they found the barracks full. After some scrambling and phone calls, space was made for them and they were able to stay the night. As well as the next seven days.

Inclement weather on and near the camp made it impossible to fly out, so, for a week, the men stayed in the army camp, waiting for the weather to clear. Once it did, Soroka and the others headed out to Hall Beach. From there, they flew to Rowley Island and Site 31, their home for the next six months.

Though they arrived in May, Soroka said that it didn’t get really busy until July 15, when U.S. icebreakers and supply ships arrived.

During his time in the Arctic, Soroka became friends with a family of indigenous people. He ended up trading them some cigarettes for two traditional rings, one for himself and one for his girlfriend, now wife.

Matt Soroka and the indigenous family with whom he traded cigarettes for two traditional rings. One of the rings was for him, the other for his girlfriend, now wife.

After six months in the Arctic, Soroka returned home at the end of October. Construction for the radar station he was working on finished sometime the following year. Site 31 was an auxiliary site for the DEW line, but it was fairly expansive. The location contained an airstrip, a docking facility for resupplying and numerous buildings. It operated as a DEW line station until 1991, when it was converted into an unmanned short-range radar site for the NWS. Since then, the abandoned DEW facility and support buildings were demolished, leaving behind gravel roads, building pads and an unusable airstrip.

The site now only contains a radar tower, communications facility, a small storage building and a helicopter pad for access.