The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
In the early 1940s, the Canadian government wanted to establish a police force to patrol the Arctic Northwest Passage, the eastern Arctic, and Allied interests in Greenland. A ship could have traveled south and through the Panama Canal, but there was a fear that such a voyage would be vulnerable to German U-boat attacks. Instead, the RCMP St. Roch, a wooden sail-powered schooner with a back-up engine, headed north from Victoria in 1940, and completed the first west to east crossing of the 7,500-mile Northwest Passage when it finally arrived in Halifax in 1942. On July 22, 1944, the St. Roch left Dartmouth to undertake an east to west crossing of the passage. With its arrival in Vancouver on October 16 that same year, the ship became the first to accomplish the trip in a single year. Six years later, on March 6, 1950, the St. Roch left Esquimalt, B.C., heading south, and arriving via the Panama Canal in Halifax on May 29, 1950. With this voyage, the ship became the first to circumnavigate North America. Sergeant Ted Farrar, who traveled on both the northern and southern trips, became the first person to have sailed completely around North America. Something to Ponder: The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot.
