A ballot box had to be flown by helicopter from Dawson City to West Dawson in the Yukon after an ice bridge, allowing vehicles to cross, melted.Gabriela Sgaga/Supplied
For the handful of scientists at the Eureka weather station in the High Arctic, voting is not a matter of trotting along to the local polling station.
Located at the top of the world, on the remote and rugged Ellesmere Island, even aircraft have trouble reaching the tiny weather base where temperatures can edge as low as -50.
So it took a military operation - with planning by three branches of the federal government and the help of a skilled Air Force pilot - to get ballots to seven Arctic weather forecasters in time for polling day.
At 10:40 a.m. on Wednesday, a Hercules military transport plane landed at the small gravel airstrip at the isolated weather station. It was only 13 below - balmy conditions for the High Arctic - and the researchers rushed out of their living quarters to collect their ballots.
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They had been transported in a special sealed box, provided by Elections Canada, in a joint operation planned with precision with the federal Environment Department, which runs the weather station, and the Department of National Defence.
Some of the researchers were voting for the first time, and the sight of the huge military plane landing to ensure they were enfranchised filled them with awe, according to Don Lavallee, Eureka station’s program manager.
Speaking on Friday from the Eureka base, where phone reception is patchy, Mr. Lavallee explained how he converted the back of his pickup truck into an impromptu voting booth where his staff could cast their ballots on the runway. They marked their X’s next to candidates’ names, while the Hercules’s engines whirred in the background.
This was the second attempt to get the ballots to the forecasters, whose job includes detecting blizzards and squalls by sending up weather balloons.
The first one earlier this month was aborted as harsh cross winds would have prevented the Hercules C-130 from landing safely.
“If there was an election in December, odds are they wouldn’t be flying in,” Mr. Lavallee said.
A voting kiosk is flown across the river from Dawson City to West Dawson by helicopter.Gabriela Sgaga/Supplied
The plan was only made possible because the Hercules was en route from 8 Wing Air Force Base in Trenton, Ont., to bring supplies to Canadian Forces Station Alert, around 500 kilometres north of Eureka.
At the remote station, 800 kilometres south of the North Pole, Canadian military signals intelligence staff serving three- to six-month tours were waiting for their ballots with their provisions.
Elections Canada and Environment Canada asked if the Hercules could modify its flight route and stop off at the Eureka weather station on the way back.
“The delivery and collection of advanced voting ballots to Canadian Forces Station Alert and Eureka Weather Station were successfully co-ordinated with the support of 8 Wing/Canadian Forces Base Trenton,” said National Defence spokesperson Cheryl Forrest.
The operation was one of several organized by Elections Canada to get ballots to Canadians living in remote regions, including to more than 20 lighthouses off the coast of B.C. by helicopter.
On tiny islets and ocean bluffs, dozens of lighthouse keepers cast their votes on helipads.
On Sable Island, a tiny island off the coast of Nova Scotia, known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic because of the scores of shipwrecks off its shores, special ballot voting kits were delivered by plane to a handful of Parks Canada employees there.
Up in the Klondike, a contingency plan was launched in Dawson City after preparations were thwarted by the timing of the election. An ice bridge - so solid that during the winter it is safe to drive across the Yukon River to West Dawson - had already melted but not enough to launch the spring and summer ferry.
That meant that some of the inhabitants of West Dawson could not safely get across the river to Dawson City to vote.
Michael Lauer, Yukon’s returning officer, decided the only way to enfranchise West Dawson residents who hadn’t yet voted in advance, was to hire a helicopter and fly his staff across with a ballot box. The helicopter landed near the ferry terminal and the elections staff set up on an impromptu polling station near the river bank.
News of the enterprise reached the ears of some miners digging for gold nearby. They were among the 22 Canadians who turned up to vote at the outdoor polling kiosk.
Mr. Lauer also established a special voting kiosk in Beaver Creek, the western-most community in Canada, to give local Indigenous voters and border officers and others living there a chance to vote.
To get ballots to Old Crow, an Indigenous community north of the Arctic Circle inaccessible by vehicle, Mr. Lauer found the best way to get his staff there was by a small plane with scheduled flights to the remote community.
The small team of elections agents checked the secure ballot box in with their luggage on the Air North flight. On the way back, sealed in a special security bag, the ballot box full of votes again travelled with the suitcases.
“We try our best to make the vote accessible to all electors,” said Elections Canada spokesperson Matthew McKenna.
“In a country as vast as Canada, that can be a challenge.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article included an incorrect reference to the Eureka Weather station in the second photo caption. This reference has been removed.