A test facility located on the east side of Vancouver Island, off Nanoose Bay. This facility is responsible for testing a variety of devices, including Sonobouys, Sonar systems and Torpedoes.
This facility may be unique in the Canadian Forces, while it is largely staffed by both members of the Canadian Navy and Navy civilian employees, it also has a small number of US Navy civilian employees. This facility operates under a joint use agreement between the two countries.
Back in the early 1980s, at the height of the Cold War a group of concerned Vancouver Island citizens calling themselves the Nanoose Conversion Campaign (NCC) began to create public awareness of the existence of the Nanoose test range (CFMETR) and the fact that US nuclear vessels were testing warfare systems there.
The local threat of a nuclear accident was a nightmare of another sort, with our government trusting the US military to protect us both from Soviet nuclear bombs and US military nuclear technology (potential accidents with the reactors and the nuclear weapons aboard their vessels).
The more we learned about the base at NanooseBay, and about global militarism and about naval accidents, the more we began to work with the NCC to end the agreement governing the NanooseBay facility and propose responsible economic conversion options for the site.
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