Between the lines of a routine handout about an ostensibly routine military maneuver, Canadians got a quick glimpse at the lowering future.
Next Feb. 14, said the National Defense Department, a small Canadian Army force, probably as few as 45 highly trained officers and men, plus some hand-picked observers from other nations, would start out from Churchill, Manitoba, on the west shore of Hudson Bay, in a maneuver called "Operation Musk-Ox." In cabbed, high-powered, 4½-ton snowmobiles,* Canadian-designed for the invasion of Norway, they would plow northward through long Arctic nights and through...