[7] It takes its name from the Royal Navy vessel HMS Alert, which wintered 10 km (6.2 mi) east of the present station off what is now Cape Sheridan in 1875–1876.

On July 30, 1950, nine crew members of an Avro Lancaster aircraft, operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), died in a crash while making an airdrop of supplies to the station.

In April 1971, a party of federal and Northwest Territories (NWT) government officials arrived in Alert in an attempt to reach the North Pole.

The 1971 expedition was led by Stu Hodgson, former Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, and included in his party were representatives of the prime minister's office, the Canadian Armed Forces, the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, as well as a large media group including Pat Carney of Gemini Productions, Ed Ogle of Time magazine, Val Wake of CBC News, and a television crew from California.

Some of the incidents surrounding this event are recounted in Val Wake's memoir My Voyage around Spray with Apologies to Captain Joshua Slocum.

In early April 2006, the Roly McLenahan Torch that was used to light the flame at Whitehorse, Yukon, for the Canada Winter Games, passed through Alert.

[14] While the Canada Games torch was supposed to pass over the North Pole, bad weather prevented a Canadian military Twin Otter from making the trip.

In August 2006, Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, made a visit to Alert as part of his campaign to promote Canadian sovereignty in the north.

On November 8, 2009, the 2010 Winter Olympics torch relay arrived at Alert via airplane from Churchill, Manitoba, reaching its most northerly point on land.

Difficult conditions at such a remote northern location have resulted in several incidents, two of which have involved fatalities: Since the beginning of the JAWS project, the Canadian Armed Forces had been interested in the establishment at Alert for several reasons: the JAWS facility extended Canadian sovereignty over a large uninhabited area which Canada claimed as its sovereign territory, and its proximity to the Soviet Union made it of strategic importance.

In 1957, Alert Wireless Station was conceived as an intercept facility to be jointly staffed by personnel from the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and the RCAF.

The station became a key asset in the global ECHELON network of the AUSCANNZUKUS intelligence sharing alliance, also known as "Five Eyes", with Alert being privy to many secret Soviet communications regarding land-based and sea-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test launches and many operational military deployments.

[5] Only six persons are now responsible for actual operations, and control of the facility was passed to DND's Information Management Group following the disbanding of CF Communications Command with force restructuring and cutbacks in the mid-1990s.

With Canada's commitment to the global war on terrorism following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Arlington County, Virginia, CFS Alert has received renewed and increased funding to expand its SIGINT capabilities.

On April 1, 2009, the RCAF officially took responsibility for CFS Alert from Canadian Forces Information Operations Group (CFIOG).

On April 13, 2006, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the heating costs for the station had risen, as a consequence of which the military proposed to cut back on support trade positions by using private contractors.

[24] By 1984, the number of ongoing monitoring programs and the amount of experimental research had outgrown the abilities of the weather station to maintain, and plans were made for the construction of a permanent observatory.

This population, while initially small, grew to upwards of 250 in the 1970s and 1980s, before being downsized in the 1990s when information gathering operations were relayed to CFS Leitrim near Ottawa for collation, reducing the on-site staff considerably.

Its current population ranges from a winter minimum of 65 to a summer maximum of 110, plus a variety of short-term visitors, who can swell the total to 150 or more.

[26] Alert is 12 km (7.5 mi) west of Cape Sheridan, the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island, on the shore of the ice-covered Lincoln Sea.

Alert is the fourth-driest locality in Nunavut and averaging only 158.3 mm (6.23 in) of precipitation per year, the vast majority of this occurring as snow.

Being far north of the Arctic Circle, Alert experiences polar night from October 14 to February 28, and midnight sun from April 7 to September 4.