Guarding the Northwest Passage

An item from the Legion Magazine.

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New podcasts profile military women

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

Eleanor Taylor was just 17 years old when, oblivious to any gender barriers real or imagined, she joined the infantry with a simple plan to find excitement and adventure in the world beyond the small Nova Scotia town where she grew up.

Having overcome the challenges of basic training, she would go on to lead combat troops—men, all—travel the world, and push far beyond those first, modest career goals before retiring a lieutenant-colonel after 25 years.

Now a wife, mother of two and reserve officer with 36 Canadian Brigade Group in Halifax, Taylor has no regrets.

Guarding the Northwest Passage

Story by Sharon Adams

On June 16, 1903, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and a crew of six left home waters in a herring boat to sail to Canada in search of a way to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic Ocean across Northern Canada. He was the first to navigate the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, reaching the Bering Strait in 1906.

The feat was welcomed by merchants, traders and governments on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The passage could cut 7,000 kilometres off the trade route from the west to east coasts of North America via the Panama Canal.