08/29/2026
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🇨🇦 Canada just reached the top of the world for the sixth time — and this voyage was about far more than planting a flag on the ice.
On August 16, 2026, the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent — the largest and most powerful icebreaker in the Canadian Coast Guard fleet — arrived at 90° North, the geographic North Pole. She was accompanied by the Swedish icebreaker Oden. It is the sixth time this single Canadian ship has made it to a place almost no human being ever sees with their own eyes.
And the ship that did it was commissioned in 1969.
WHY THIS MISSION MATTERS
Beneath the Arctic Ocean lies a seabed that Canada, Russia and Denmark — through Greenland — all have overlapping claims to. Those claims are not settled by who shouts loudest. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, they are settled by evidence: detailed maps of the ocean floor showing how far the continental shelf attached to a country's landmass actually extends.
That is exactly what this crew went north to collect.
As part of a scientific programme running from 2024 to 2027, the Louis S. St-Laurent is gathering high-resolution geoscience and hydrographic data for Natural Resources Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Canada already filed seabed submissions to the United Nations in 2019 and 2022. The data from this voyage is intended to strengthen and support that scientific case.
A major focus is the Lomonosov Ridge — an enormous underwater mountain range that splits the Arctic Ocean into two basins and sits at the heart of the competing continental shelf claims. Kai Boggild, a scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, is leading the research operation collecting the data.
But this is not only about boundaries. The same seafloor readings help answer fundamental scientific questions: how the Arctic Ocean formed, how it changed across millions of years, and what its geological history can tell us about the planet.
Sovereignty and science, gathered by the same instruments, on the same voyage.
A REMARKABLE MOMENT AT 90° NORTH
For Captain Byron Briggs, this was his first time standing at the top of the world.
He described the moment the ship's GPS finally read 90 North as an even bigger adrenaline rush than he had expected — a genuinely special moment after working the vessel through the ice to get there.
Then the crew did the most Canadian thing imaginable.
They stepped out onto the Arctic sea ice and played a friendly game of hockey. Some of the crew dressed as Santa Claus and his elves for a photograph. Briggs joked that they had managed to rendezvous with Santa himself at the North Pole.
A hockey game, on floating ice, on top of the Arctic Ocean, thousands of kilometres from the nearest rink. It is hard to think of a better image of who we are as a country.
WHO IS ON BOARD
The ship carries 77 people in total:
• 47 core crew
• A doctor and a nurse
• A helicopter flight crew
• A science team of 22
They left home port in St. John's, Newfoundland, on July 8. The crew is expected home in early November. After the pole, the ship heads west into the Beaufort Sea to support the Joint Ocean Ice Study, with Canada's wider Arctic season wrapping up in late November.
That is four months away from family, in one of the harshest working environments on Earth, to collect data most Canadians will never see — but that could shape this country's northern future for generations.
WHAT OTTAWA SAID
Defence Minister David J. McGuinty called the arrival an important milestone reflecting Canada's enduring commitment to the Arctic, saying the mission advances scientific knowledge, strengthens Canada's presence in the North, and reinforces Canadian sovereignty and security.
Coast Guard Commissioner Kevin Brosseau said reaching the pole reflects the professionalism and dedication of the crew and everyone who supports Canada's Arctic operations.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
The Arctic is changing. Sea ice conditions are shifting, and parts of the North that were once effectively sealed off are becoming more accessible to shipping and other activity. Interest in the region from other nations is growing.
Canada's answer has not been noise. It has been presence — nine Coast Guard icebreakers working the Arctic from June to November this season, supplying northern communities, delivering services, and supporting government missions.
And it has been evidence. Sonar sweeps. Seabed cores. Hydrographic charts. Patient, unglamorous science, gathered season after season, that builds a case no one can dismiss.
A 1969 ship, a 22-person science team, a hockey game on the ice, and a set of maps that may one day define the northern edge of this country.
From a hockey game on the ice to a scientific mission beneath it — Canada's sixth journey to the North Pole was never really about reaching the top of the world.
It was about science, sovereignty, and Canada's long-term place in the North.
Canada is going north. 🇨🇦
