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WEB EXTRA: Intercepting The Bear

August/September 2016

Giving foreign borders a buzz was a routine practice of former CF-18 pilot, turned rock start astronaut Chris Hadfield

By Herb Mathisen

Chris Hadfield speaks in Budapest in May 2016—the celebrated astronaut was at one time a CF-18 pilot, testing the boundaries of the Canadian Arctic. Photo by Elekes Andor

Chris Hadfield speaks in Budapest in May 2016—the celebrated astronaut was at one time a CF-18 pilot, testing the boundaries of the Canadian Arctic. Photo by Elekes Andor

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  2. WEB EXTRA: Intercepting The Bear

It’s 1985 and a group of Soviet “Bear” bombers—long-range, four-engine Tupolev Tu-95s—are approaching Canadian airspace off the Labrador Coast. A group of CF-18 pilots (including future space-travelling troubadour Chris Hadfield) race to intercept them not far from where, in 1928, early Fokker Universals staged the Hudson Strait Expedition. Hadfield finds the bombers humming in the darkness, miles above the Atlantic, floods them with light and then escorts them on a course out of Canadian airspace. Hadfield would go on to repeat this multiple times in his career. And that’s because it’s a game—military powers like Russia and the U.S. routinely buzz each other’s boundaries to test reaction times and thus prompt similar responses. It’s occurred dozens of times in the last decade in Canada’s Arctic. In 2009, CF-18s intercepted Russian bombers 190 kilometres northeast of Tuktoyaktuk, NWT.

August/September 2016

Illustration by Beth Covvey

Running out of aces

Mike Murphy’s harrowing flight during Yellowknife’s smoke-pocalypse

By Katie Weaver

Illustration by Beth Covvey

January 28th, 2023 January 28th, 2023

August/September 2016

An airship hanger in Svalbard, Norway. Photo - Public Domain

Airship Lost

Six balloon-men disappear into the Arctic air, never to be found again

By Daniel Campbell

An airship hanger in Svalbard, Norway. Photo - Public Domain

January 28th, 2023 January 28th, 2023

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Up Here Publishing
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Yellowknife, NT
X1A 1B9  Canada
Phone: 867.766.6710
Fax: 867.669.0626
Email: editor@uphere.ca

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