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Operation Boxtop, the Royal Canadian Air Force’s semi-annual re-supply mission to the world’s northernmost community, hit a snag earlier this month— fog kept RCAF planes from landing and left the site with one-third of the fuel expected.

On April 20, a CC-150 airbus departed from Trenton with a team ready to deliver 1.5 million litres of low-sulphuric and jet fuel to Canadian Forces Station Alert, Nunavut — the Earth’s most northern base.

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Alert is “a listening post for picking up radio frequencies from Moscow and wherever else,” says David Gray, a former resident and author of Alert: beyond the Inuit Lands, as well as an important hub for climate and ecological research.

But, 800 kilometres from the North Pole and 2,000 kilometres from the nearest grocery store, sustaining Alert is neither easy nor cheap.

Since 1956, the RCAF has been moving supplies to the base via military plane. This involves massive, annual shipments of fuel — usually in spring — and of dry goods including rations, construction and research materials and the like — in autumn.