Saglek on the north east coast of Labrador, Canada has been the site of a radar and communications facility since the early 1950's. I was stationed there from February 1969 through to April 1970. At that time the facility was home to approximately 150 men, a third of them Canadian civilians and the remainder US Air Force personnel. Civilian staff were responsible primarily for base operations including power, heat and transportation with the US Air Force personnel responsible for radar and ground to air radio. I worked with a small contingent of civilians who maintained what was known as the BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) communications system - part of a link from Thule in Greenland to Corner Brook in Newfoundland. From Corner Brook the signals entered the SAGE and NORAD early warning and monitoring systems.The BMEWS communications link also served as the telephone and teletype service to the Saglek facility: It used a technique known as "Tropospheric Scatter" to transmit microwave signals over very long distances by bouncing the radio waves off of small, naturally occuring, atmospheric variations in the earth's troposphere.
This page and its associated links are a tribute to the men who worked at Saglek over the years. In the early days the work was extremely physically challenging. In later years, including the time I worked there, the facility was quite sophisticated and much less of a physical hardship - but we were totally isolated from the world and relationships with family members who remained at home were often severely strained.