Baseball Cap
Object
2024.5.1
Dark blue baseball cap with a white, circular logo depicting a red maple leaf and "Air Force" written across the front.
The Royal Canadian Air Force, which has existed in its current iteration since 1924, is the branch of Canada’s armed forces responsible with aviation-operations. Post-1966, it has worked jointly to defend the country alongside the United States via the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Since the dawn of aviation, and especially after the invention of ballistic missiles, the Canadian north has been of great interest to both Canada as well as the United States. Although the average map does not show this clearly, Russia lies only a short distance away across the Arctic. At the same time, it is remote, leaving security a difficult task for Ottawa and Washington D.C. That said, the north’s sparseness leaves some space to detect incoming threats early, either through patrols or RADAR-stations, before they reach major North American centres; Canadian and US defence-planners have much to think about. Whitehorse, as the largest population-centre in The Yukon, as well as the Canadian Territories generally, is a lynchpin in northern defence strategies. In consequence, Erik Nielson International Airport has seen many military aircraft between the Second World War, Cold War, and since then up until modern day. Sections of Whitehorse, namely the Takhini neighbourhood, owe their layouts to military facilities and housing. Areas of what is now Porter Creek were formerly air force dumping-grounds, and even the Yukon Transportation Museum was a lounge and retreat for servicemen!