Marine Transportation Services

[2][3] Colonel James Cornwall, one of the principals of the Northern Traders Company,[3] ran his first steamer, a stern wheeler The Midnight Sun,[4] on the Lesser Slave River in 1904.

After that portage, freight was transferred to a tugboat pushing a 50-ton barge to Fort Franklin (now Délı̨nę) on Great Bear Lake.

Five vessels in the fleet, the George Askew, the Watson Lake, Horn River, Sandy Jane and Great Bear, did not include "Radium" in their name.

[9] Construction of Distant Early Warning communication sites along the Arctic Ocean coastline in the 1950s provided an opportunity for the company to expand and engineer larger and more efficient tugboats and barges.

In 1975, then under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard Northern Division of Transport Canada, it became the sole marine shipper in the Canadian Arctic operating of out of Churchill, Manitoba.

This purchase of NorTerra gave the IDC complete control of Canadian North, NTCL and other companies that were jointly held.