
October 6, 2017 · 0 Comments
By Avery Park
Not a lot of people from Orangeville get the chance to go to Nunavut, but now all of us are represented by one sign.
This past September, Brett Meyer spent two weeks in Alert, Nunavut, where they have a tradition of putting up road signs from everyone’s hometown.
The reason for Mr. Meyer being so far up north was to help the people at the Canadian Forces Station (CFS) resupply, and sort through all of the extra cargo that gets delivered there.
Meyer is currently an aerospace control operator for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). He is posted to 15 wing Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, but traveled to Alert to help with this mission.
When he wasn’t working, he and a few others would go out and explore the Arctic terrain. Of course, the weather had to agree for them to venture outside.
Meyer explained how this, “group of us even went out and found a few geocaches, which are also the most northern in the world.”
For those who don’t know, geocaching is a worldwide scavenger hunt. There are containers hidden all across the world, and you can track which ones you find. It’s doubtful that many people have found the ones furthest north in the world.
Alert is roughly 800 kilometers from the North Pole, and known as the most northernly inhabited station in the world. For some that have visited there in the past, they make sure to leave a little something behind.
There is a tradition that when you go to Alert, you bring a road sign from your hometown. That is exactly what Meyer did.
When he heard of this tradition, he asked his family friend, Neil Robb, to make the sign. He brought this sign, and proudly mounted it beside the hundreds of other signs.
The majority of the signs were Canadian, which doesn’t come as a surprise, but Mr. Meyer told us that there were signs from Chile, Sweden and Korea.
“It was pretty cool being the first one from Orangeville to bring up a sign because I did see one for Mono, Arthur, and Fergus.”
After the two weeks were done, Mr. Meyer headed to Thule air force base in Greenland, and left his mark as the first person from Orangeville to put up a sign.