Did you know Nanoose Bay once played hard ball with the U.S. Government?
Stumbled upon this information today and thought it was kind of interesting.
Nanoose Bay is the site of the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental Test Range, chosen for easy recovery of the unarmed torpedoes from the ocean bottom. The torpedo testing range in the Georgia Strait off Vancouver Island has been operating since 1967, testing torpedoes, sonar, sonobuoys and other maritime warfare equipment. The federal government owns the land used for the range. The foreshore is owned by B.C. and used by the federal government under a sixty-year agreement signed in 1988. The Nanoose Bay seabed was also owned by British Columbia and leased to Ottawa.
Ottawa allows foreign governments – principally the U.S. Navy – to use the facilities. Nanoose Bay has four test ranges, the most important of which is called Whiskey Golf, measuring 24 kilometres long by eight kilometres wide. This range is used to test air, ship and submarine-launched torpedoes, usually between 500 and 800 each year. In 1996, the U.S. Navy indicated that it had saved $2 billion over 30 years by using the Nanoose Bay range. Unlike test ranges in California and Hawaii, Nanoose Bay’s average depth of 410 metres, and the unique seabed, makes it easy to retrieve torpedoes.
To protest U.S. overfishing of B.C. salmon, British Columbia issued a 90-day notice of cancellation of the licence in May 1997, unless the U.S. agreed to sign the Pacific Salmon Treaty
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http://www.inntheestuary.com/a-little-history/
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