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From: jbtubman@water.UUCP (Jim Tubman)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: the Pentagon / nuclear weapons
Message-ID: <232@water.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Jan-85 10:47:31 EST
Article-I.D.: water.232
Posted: Tue Jan 15 10:47:31 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Jan-85 03:59:05 EST
References:  <1327@dciem.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 28

> 
> >  While I am a rookie politics spectator a long held belief was that Canada
> >was always, and would remain, free of nuclear weapons (except for the
> >ones raining around us during a nuclear exchange).
> 
> It's only relatively recently that nuclear weapons were withdrawn
> from Canada, if I remember rightly.  Who remembers the Bomarcs?
> -- 
> Martin Taylor

As far as I know, the last nuclear weapons in Canada were the Genie missiles
on the CF-101 Voodoo fighters.  The Genie was an unguided air defence
missile --  I guess the theory was that with a nuclear warhead, all you had
to do was point the missile in the general direction of the target and let
it go.  They were retired along with  the Voodoos themselves when the new
CF-18 was brought into  service; some mention of this was made in the media
when the changeover occurred.  The CF-105 Starfighters had a nuclear strike
role, but the government changed their mission to ground attack (!). The
Canadian forces in Europe also had a nuclear artillery rocket, the "Honest
John".  I don't know when it went out of service.

As Canada is undoubtedly targetted by the USSR in the event of a nuclear
war, I don't think that having nuclear weapons on our soil makes any
difference one way or the other.  Any comments?

					Jim Tubman
					University of Waterloo
					...watmath!water!jbtubman