By Angela Hill

Riding across Canada’s north

Mar 5, 2011 | 6:24 AM

Sgt. Jared Isabelle just came back from an arctic exercise with the Canadian Military.

He was one of the reservists that participated in the Northern Bison exercise in Manitoba and Nunavut.

“I’ve never been up to the Canadian artic before … for me it was going to be a challenge, something exciting, something new,” said Isabelle, the second in command for this platoon.

Isabelle, who grew up in Meath Park, says it is important that the military knows how to operate in cold conditions.

“With the amount of flights going over the pole every day, if a civilian airliner went down there’s got to be someone there to be able to respond to that and be able to operate in the North,” he said.

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“If there is any kind of natural disaster that the military had to respond to in the Canadian arctic, well you have to be able to operate in that and you have to be ready to do that. So you have to have that prior knowledge and that prior training before you just go and do it because you could potentially become a casualty.”

The exercise involved a multi-day snowmobile expedition across the North, where temperatures dipped as low as – 51 C before wind chill.

There were also a few delays as the group was snowed in on more than one occasion.

The exercise taught lots of lessons, said Isabelle.

One of his was how to keep his feet warm while traveling 60 to 80 kilometres a day on snowmobiles and sleeping in tents.

It was a lesson learned after getting some frostbite in his toes, he said. A couple of others on the exercise had frostbite on their face.

The experience was worth the time, he said, from his home in Warman.

“It’s something that everyone participate in the exercise can take back and apply it to their civilian careers lives and know that they’ve done something that a lot of Canadians may not get an opportunity to do.”

ahill@panow.com