Originally formed at the end of World War II in 1945 as the Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment (CARDE), the intent was to keep the research teams built up during the war in Canada, as opposed to moving to the United States.
Neither was accepted for production, but the basic research was used with local defence contractors to build up familiarity with the new technologies.
As part of this project a lengthy study of the upper atmosphere was undertaken from instrumented balloons.
Due to this research CARDE was later involved in the design of a US-Canada-Mexico meteorological sounding rocket, the Metroc.
The result was the CRV-7 rocket, which had roughly twice the speed of the existing US design, and with enough energy to be able to puncture Warsaw Pact aircraft hangars.