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Air Force One (Churchill)

1:07 p.m., CDT

Air Force One, with the President at the controls, had slowed down to 250 knots. To the citizens of Churchill, Manitoba, 2,000 feet below, the Boeing 747 appeared to be hovering there like some great goose followed at a respectful distance by a brace of ducks. The new pair of Canadian Armed Forces CF5 fighters trailed the 747 in formation, about four hundred yards behind and a thousand feet above.

The President banked the big bird in a shallow turn to the left. On the approach to Churchill coming in from the south he had passed over the entrance to the harbour, north of the grain elevators, over the Old Fort on the west side of the Churchill River, and then circled so that he could have a good view of the inner harbour. There were no buildings on the west side of the narrow river mouth, but on the east there were the rail marshalling yards and dock facilities with huge cranes. There was still one ship in the port taking on a load of grain, probably the last of the year. The navigation season at Churchill, which had begun at the end of July when the ice broke up, was just about over.

To the south of the dock facilities lay the town of Churchill, and beyond it the single CNR line that led south to Thompson and Winnipeg. To the east of the town was Fort Churchill, a military base and airport during World War II. The airport, which had survived the post-war years, was paved with an east-west runway sufficiently large to take even the 747.

The airport was bustling with activity as the President swung the big plane in a wide arc overhead. Several vehicles were working on the loading of five Hercules aircraft and several other smaller planes. The President said to the captain, “Ever been here before, Mike?”

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“Well, let me tell you a little about this place. You can see that the river flows north into Hudson Bay. It’s very narrow. The port is right at the river mouth. During spring break-up, the ice which flows down the river piles up against the ice which is blown in from the north, and so Churchill, which was supposed to be a major ocean port for the Provinces of Western Canada, has been restricted to a shipping period of from 50 to 80 days a year, depending on the weather. What’s more, the water is so shallow in the port that only ships under 30,000 tons can get in. As a result, Churchill has never really been able to attract much business except the shipping of grain from the Prairies. There are a few ships that move to and from Europe and bring in booze and things like that, but Churchill has been severely hampered by the short shipping season, the shallowness of the harbour, and by the high insurance rates on ships entering Hudson Bay.

“But things are beginning to happen pretty fast here. The Hercs on the ramp there are running drilling rigs straight north into Baker Lake and beyond, and also into the Chesterfield Inlet region, about 350 miles north. There have been three major copper finds and one nickel discovery in the area, and more exploration work is being done. You may have noticed that about 15 miles south there’s a bridge under construction. It’s a combined railway and motor vehicle bridge, which will make it possible for the CNR to continue north right up to Chesterfield and Baker Lake. That railway is under construction now and should be ready in the next year. Alongside it there will be a highway.

“The whole thing is built on eskers. They’re long beds of gravel that were left behind after the last ice age. They stretch all the way from Churchill straight north.”

“Sir, how on earth do you know all that?”

The President chuckled. “Mike, right now it’s my business to know. I was here a few years back and had a good look around then, and I made sure I was well briefed before this trip. Before we left, I thought I might take a look at Churchill, and in the next three or four minutes you’ll see why. We’ll do one more circuit around the town and the airport and then head out due east.”

He went on. “The railway and road I told you about are really the beginnings of a transportation and development corridor that’ll stretch all the way from here straight north to Resolute and the centre core of the High Arctic Islands. That corridor already exists as far as air transportation is concerned. An enormous amount of machinery and equipment is now moving from Chicago, Detroit, Toronto and Winnipeg straight into Resolute, and a lot of that supply comes into Churchill for transfer into the Baker-Chesterfield Inlet area.

“Just about the time I was here last, the Canadian government had a special committee called the Great Plains Group. They came up with a proposal to build a new deep-water port on the west coast of Hudson Bay to take ice-strengthened ships up to 500,000 tons which could move ore or liquid natural gas and minerals from the High Arctic. Some bright boy on the committee remembered the eskers, and suggested why not take this fantastic supply of gravel and build a causeway from Churchill straight out into Hudson Bay to the point where there is deep water. That’s exactly what they’ve done, Mike. It’s about the only imaginative thing the Canadians have done in the North in the last decade.”

The 747 was to the east of the airport now, heading north. The President pointed west toward the old harbour and said, “Mike, you see the west side of the old harbour mouth near the Old Fort location? That’s where the automated railway and road lead out to the causeway. It goes north about a mile into the bay, turns east-northeast and runs in a straight line for twelve miles. We’ll follow it out.”

With that the President put the wheel of the 747 gently over to the right, turning the aircraft until it was running parallel to the causeway. The dull gray strip of gravel matched the overcast sky which hung low above the plane.

“There, Mike, you can see the setup now — a three-track railway, a six-lane roadway, and a double pipeline.

“The railway was used to build the causeway. It has an automated loading and off-dumping system that was hooked into the eskers to the west. They moved millions of tons over the period of two years that it took to get the causeway and the basic framework of the port built. We should be able to see the port any minute now.”

The captain said, “Mr. President, why are you so interested in looking at this port? Is it of some particular importance to the U.S.?”

“That’s a good question, Mike, and the answer is, It sure is. See those pipes on the causeway? One is for crude oil and the other is for natural gas. The southern end of each of those pipes plugs straight into the Chicago-Detroit area. The northern end, just up ahead of us, will plug into crude oil and liquid natural gas tankers coming in from Venezuela, the Middle East and Algeria, as well as from the High Arctic Islands if the Canadians will get off their butts and give us access.”

The captain nodded and pointed straight ahead. “There’s the port, sir, at twelve o’clock.”

Churchill Newport began to appear out of the haze. From the end of the causeway the port faced south like a huge wishbone. Each arm, like the causeway itself, was a great long pyramid of gravel stretching from its broad base on the floor of the Bay to the surface of the water and then above it to a height of thirty feet above high tide. The top of this great structure, 400 feet wide, carried the road, rail and pipes that had been built for loading and off-loading, and around the entire inner edge were huge docks made of cement which had been floated in and sunk.

The President pointed and said, “Do you see those big cement caissons, Mike? They’re built like that because of the ice. If an ice-breaker has to be used to open the port, it could ram its way past those things, and because their walls are sloped rather than vertical, the ice would ride up instead of jamming.

“It’s ingenious, isn’t it? You have to hand it to them. They’ve thought it all out. They’ve even got a system inside that pre-fab port to keep the water from freezing. They drive compressed air through a series of pipes laid under water, and if that’s not enough, they pump heated effluent from the town of Churchill to keep the water above freezing point. Between that and the fact that the new port faces south away from the prevailing winds, they should be able to prolong the shipping season well beyond the normal period.

“When you consider all this, you can see why I think this is so important for the United States and why I want to take a good look at it. I can sit on my can in the White House and have people tell me all about it, but I’m the one that has to deal with the energy crisis and I’ve got to know what I’m talking about.”

Col. Wypich nodded in agreement. “I get the picture now, Mr. President, and you’re dead right.”

“I only wish I’d been able to come up before,” the President added. “I would have if I’d been able to shake myself clear. When the native people began blowing up the Mackenzie Valley pipe ten days ago I knew that the time had come to get hold of the situation before it was too late.”

He brought the aircraft out of the turn and said to Wypich, “O.K., Mike, if you’ll plug in the latitude and longitude of Resolute Bay on the INS and get clearance from Churchill tower I’ll set her up for the climb to 40,000 feet, and tell the fighter boys we’ll meet them on top.”

Leaving a trail of black smoke and diminishing noise, Air Force One climbed sharply and disappeared into low gray cloud just north of Churchill Newport. The faithful Canforce CF5’s fell in behind and entered the cloud cover at the same time.