The Cold War is over now. The spring in our step has gone. Those of us who served on the Pinetree Line are living out our final years in retirement. Often as I lay awake trying to find that rest I no longer need I hear the hum of the radar scopes. I hear the lonely click of footsteps on the tile floor of the halls in the ops building as some fighter Cop on break makes his or her way down the empty corridors to the canteen on the midnight shift. There in the harsh lights of the fluorescent tubes they pour a steaming coffee and join a table with one or two others doing the same.

On the evening shift there would have been a card game and much laughter, now it is more subdued as everyone struggles to stay awake and get through the shift. Someone leaves with two hot cups of brew headed for the Duty Controllers’ cabin which housed the officer in charge and the Ops B. Out the floor to ceiling plate glass window of the cabin several people can be seen wearing headsets and pushing magnetic rods across a horizontal plotting board below. Straight across out front are the tote boards. Some boards display the status of fighter squadrons in the region, others show the current weather at sites we deal with, still others show the maintenance status of adjoining radar stations. Two stories down on a raised dais the murmur of voices drift out from the Identification Officer and the Surveillance Clerk. Fax machines clatter, voices crackle from the monitor room were some diligent youngster listens to the emergency channels and the practice intercepts going on, much like a scene out of an old Battle of Britain movie.

Everyone speaks in hushed tones out of respect for those trying to catch a few winks in any hideout they could find. Sleep comes reluctantly nowadays – back then we could kick our feet up on another chair and fall asleep in an instant. Romances blossomed from the mingling of these men and women. Marriages took place, families were raised and grew up on these lonely outpost. Lonely they may have been, still, those that served on the Line will never forget those years.

Now the silver heads gather in Legions and Wings all across Canada and relive those days. The World Wars will be remembered by all Canadians, most will never know of this group of warriors who stood between the populace and the nuclear threat from the Russians. Oh, a few airline pilots who flew our skies back then knew we were there; few others did. Some NordAir pilots will remember a screaming CF100 appearing out of a blackened sky bent on identifying the “unknown” because the pilots relied on an air-filed flight plan that NORAD could not accept as legal identification. The Berlin Wall came down and the war came to a quiet close. Only those that served will remember the sights and sounds that made up NORAD. I roll over and fall into a fitful sleep hearing a distant voice say, “Charlie Echo 24 230 at 120, Charlie echo 18 faded...

Ken can be contacted at nobid@shaw.ca