Over the Canadian Pacific Railway station he dropped a signal to be telegraphed to the Air Board in Ottawa, "Making a good 50 miles per hour", then with a wave to lunchtime onlookers, the pilots swung their F.3 out over nearby Lake Nipissing, onwards to Sault Ste.

An 18-man unit operated out of the Dominion Rubber Company building, leased on Oak Street, downtown North Bay, which served as their headquarters, supply depot and living quarters.

Despite the primal ruggedness of Northern Ontario, by July 1936, eight airfields had been hacked out of the wilderness, at Reay, Diver, Emsdale, South River, Ramore, Porquis Junction, Gilles Depot and Tudhope (named after the squadron leader), and the unit was disbanded.

A Royal Flying Corps fighter pilot during the First World War, and close associate of Squadron Leader Tudhope during the latter's exploration and survey of Canada, Dodds had been seconded by DND to the Department of Transport as Inspector of Airways and Aerodromes for the country.

It was far from major built-up areas and its skies uncluttered by air traffic, altogether a reasonably safe arena for young aircrew hopefuls attempting to learn the tricky art of military flying.

Masses of new, desperately needed aircraft shipped from Canada and Newfoundland for the war effort in Britain were being lost in the Atlantic Ocean, their cargo vessels sunk by German U-boats.

A new training site was set up at North Bay, taking advantage of the uncluttered skies and freedom from major built-up areas that had made the airport an ideal BEATP/BCATP candidate.

The Unit responded in kind, such as aiding blood donor drives, entering a team in the local softball league, and participated in shooting where they won and golf competitions, earning a consolation prize.

In fact, North Bay was outfitted with a 10,000-foot runway, one of the longest in Canada, for reasons other than air defence: during war, the base was also a designated recovery site for American bombers returning damaged and/or short of fuel from nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union.

Across Airport Road, the main route to the airfield from the City of North Bay, the rugged Northern Ontario terrain was cleared and the support infrastructure for the station built—headquarters, barracks, dining hall, messes, hospital, gym, motor pool, supply, firehall, RCAF police guardhouse, Protestant and Roman Catholic chapels, married quarters for air force families, and much more.

Construction, services and contracts for the base infused millions of dollars into the community, and by the end of November 1953 the RCAF station was the leading employer in the area: 1,018 military personnel plus over 160 civilians.

3 AW(F)OTU's instructors were the first Americans to serve at North Bay's air base: USAF Major John Eiser and Captain B. Delosier, arriving 9 January 1952.

At that point, 22 Wing was a photographic flying unit stationed at CFB Rockcliffe, Ontario, mapping and charting the country, separate from and unrelated to the air base at North Bay.

Formed on 1 July 1962, 131 Composite Unit was a "catch-all" organization that flew two-seat T-33 Silver Star jet trainers and propeller-engine Beech C-45 Expeditor and Douglas C-47/CC-129 Dakota transports.

As well as hauling cargo and personnel, the unit provided targets for training of RCAF interceptor aircrews, and were used by pilots and navigators on the Northern NORAD Region headquarters staff, at the base, to maintain their flying skills.

6 AC&WU continued as part of the base until 1 December 1952, when it was reassigned to a new, large radar station being built at Falconbridge, Ontario, about 65 miles (105 kilometres) west of North Bay.

While 6 AC&WU had defended airspace in the vicinity of a single city, 5 Ground Observer Corps Unit was watching the skies over all of Ontario, part of Manitoba and a slice of western Quebec, an area larger than France, Belgium and the Netherlands combined.

They relied heavily on "eyeball" reports of aircraft, a particular conundrum if an air attack was made at night, in bad weather, or dense cloud cover when visibility was severely hampered or nonexistent.

By virtue of Canada's frontline position, the Canadian air defence command and control centre was deemed the most important piece of the NORAD "pie", with respect to bombers.

One-third was paid by Canada, two-thirds by the U.S.[42][43] Situated 60 storeys beneath the surface of the Earth (600 feet (180 meters)—deeper underground than most of the buildings in Toronto are tall—the facility was specially designed to withstand a 4-megaton nuclear blast, 267 times more powerful than the bomb dropped at Hiroshima.

Canada and the United States combined are roughly twice the size of Europe—a Battle of Britain-style air defence network was too slow and unwieldy to protect such vast airspace in an age of jet aircraft and nuclear weapons.

No BOMARCs were launched in Canada; squadron personnel from North Bay and La Macaza fired missiles (non-nuclear warhead) at the Santa Rosa Island Test Facility, Florida.

[23][49] Due to the nuclear nature of the missiles all potential Bomarc personnel underwent Human Reliability Program tests to weed out those with "hidden idiosyncrasies, repressions, emotional disturbances, psychosomatic traits and even latent homosexuality".

For example, one of its main hangars, employed to service and house heavily armed jet interceptors, was converted into an ice rink and saw year-round use by hockey leagues, figure skating clubs, and various other civilian entities in and around the City of North Bay.

Deployed as an electronic warfare unit, the squadron trained flying and ground air defence personnel to fight a war when an enemy has disrupted radar systems and radio communications.

Therefore, the base's closing was perceived by the community as catastrophic, and North Bay political, business and civic leaders launched a vocal, dogged, energetic campaign to persuade the Canadian government to reverse the decision.

Maintaining the UGC in warm storage required an outlay of $1,500 per day, with no foreseeable sale or lease of the site on the horizon, and many visitors had remarked about the Dr. Strangelove/mad scientist's lair look of the complex.

The end of the Cold War on Christmas Day 1991 stirred many arguments in Canada and internationally that an era of global safety from major threats had arrived, and entities like NORAD were no longer needed.

In another vivid example, on 11 September 2001, a Korean Air Flight 85 Boeing 747 en route to New York City from Seoul, Korea, headed to Anchorage, Alaska, for a refuelling stop, was ordered to land at Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police boarded the aircraft; their investigation and interrogation of the pilots revealed no hijack, the incident apparently resulting from misunderstandings in the communications between the crew and Alaskan ATC.