Аннотация:Given the low standard of contact between environmental and military historians, it is unsurprising, if regrettable, that the relationship between military activity and natural landscapes in Canada has received minimal scholarly attention. This paper seeks to open space for such an environmental history of militarism and militarization. Focusing on the Cold War and its aftermath, the essay documents the history of military activity on Canadian soil, with an emphasis on the North, specifically examining a set of crucial projects and operations that redefined not only physical terrain but associated imaginative understandings of nature. The history of Cold War Canada is littered with suitable examples, from early military exercises and the construction of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar line to more recent missile tests and low-level training flights. While it is crucial that these are understood in environmental terms, a genealogy of military activity in the Canadian North reveals changing and at times contrasting approaches to the military-environment relationship. Equally, however, as northern nature was viewed through a series of shifting strategic perspectives, it remained a target of state-driven modernization linked consistently to military objectives.
