Good morning. Reporting from the Far North is valuable to all of us, even when it freezes your cameras solid – more on that below, along with news on the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait. But first:

• The RCMP are investigating an Alberta separatist group that was ordered to pull down a list of voters following a court injunction
• Trucking companies lose millions of dollars a day as a glitch in the federal system causes delays entering Canada
• FIFA congress in Vancouver exposes rifts weeks before Canada hosts World Cup

Hello Canada! I’m Gavin John, a Calgary-based journalist who has spent much of the past decade reporting on Canadian defence, often from places most Canadians will never see.

I’ve always believed the best way to understand a story is to stand inside it. As a photojournalist, that usually means working in conditions that are uncomfortable at best and, at times, genuinely dangerous. National defence reporting only amplifies that reality. It demands proximity not just to operations, but to the people carrying them out.

For the past several years, that work has taken me north, following the evolving story of Canada’s Arctic security and, in particular, the Canadian Rangers.

This February, I joined a portion of 1CRPG Long Range Patrol as it participated in Canada’s yearly Operation Nanook-Nunalivut. The goal: Travel 5,400-kilometres by snowmobile to Churchill, Man., from Inuvik, NWT, without any road infrastructure.

As an embedded civilian journalist, I am not blind to the mutual wariness between news media and the military. The metrics of success couldn’t be any more opposite; bylines and readership mean little compared with physical aptitude and shared suffering.

Trust in those austere environments isn’t given. It’s built slowly, over time, often kilometre by kilometre.

And there are a lot of kilometres.

On patrols, I’ve walked hundreds; by snowmobile, I’ve travelled more than a thousand. I’ve worked in temperatures below –50, where exposed skin burns in minutes and even basic tasks become logistical problems. I’ve sat through blizzards where the wind feels like it might strip the skin from your face. I’ve been so physically depleted that I’ve hallucinated light on the horizon.

Some moments may sound extraordinary, like crossing the Arctic Ocean by snowmobile under a clear, moonlit sky, but they rarely felt that way in real time. More often, I was focused on staying upright, staying warm and not becoming a liability to the people around me.

Photography, in those moments, comes second. Or sometimes not at all: After two weeks in the field, all three of my cameras froze solid.

Objectively, much of it is miserable. It’s cold, exhausting and, occasionally, frightening.

It’s also necessary.

Because what stays with me isn’t the hardship, it’s the people. Rangers I’ve travelled with – Maya, Pat, Travis, James, Angela, Julia, Jim, Tony – are not abstractions of policy or symbols of sovereignty. They are, quite simply, Canadians. They have the same mix of certainty and doubt, confidence and vulnerability, as anyone else. (And I’ve came to trust them with my life entirely.)

That’s something I think sometimes gets lost when we talk about the military.

Coverage of defence and national security should be rigorous – skeptical, even. Yes, it deals with power, resources and decisions that carry real consequences. But it also needs to remain grounded in the reality that the institution is made up of individuals carrying out the orders.

And increasingly, these stories matter.

Canada’s defence posture is no longer a niche topic. Questions about Arctic sovereignty, global conflict and shifting alliances are now part of everyday conversation. Those discussions need to be informed by what’s actually happening on the ground.

That’s why being there matters.

It’s not about glorifying hardship or chasing extremes. It’s about understanding, with as much clarity as possible, what Canada’s defence actually looks like beyond policy documents and press releases. And we can’t understand that story from southern offices alone.

To do that, you have to go.