When Canada Was A Nuclear Power

A post by the esteemed Vodkapundit on the Genie missile sure brings back some history.

Many people don't realize this, but for a brief period, our peaceful neighbor to the north was a nuclear power.

Yes, the Canucks had nukes.

Canada had CF-101 Voodoo Interceptors equipped with nuclear-tipped Genie rockets, not to mention nuclear-tipped BOMARC missiles and 16 nukes for the Honest John system deployed in Germany. Funnily enough, the first airplane model I ever built as a kid was a CF-101 with a Genie missile slung on it.

Wisely, to prevent the Canadians from using these weapons to take over the world, because otherwise only the facts that it was hockey night and Canada already had a lock on the world's supply of Labatt's was holding them back, the US maintained control of the warheads. So while the US kept the launch codes, they were in Canada under a joint control arrangement. Had push come to shove, they would have been fully released to Canadian Forces users for deployment. Thankfully that never happened.

It wasn't exactly secret that the weapons were there and Canada had them, but it certainly wasn't well known or talked about.

I remember the shocked looks among the bien pensant in Toronto who loved to claim that Canada was a peaceful nuclear-weapon free nation that only used nuclear energy for peaceful purposes -- unlike those warmongers to the south -- when in 1984 the Voodoos were retired and it was mentioned the nuclear tipped Genies were being retired with them.

"We're retiring what?!?"

Priceless.