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THE DEW LINE YEARS: VOICES FROM THE COLDEST COLD WAR. By FRANCES JEWEL DICKSON. Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia: Pottersfield Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-895900-87-3. 208 p., b&w illus. Softbound. Cdn$19.95.
Stretching more than 3000 miles from Alaska to Greenland along the 69th parallel, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was a tremendous feat of geographical engineering that re-shaped the North American Arctic. Conceived as a response to the Soviet bomber threat in the early thermo- nuclear age, this technological marvel embodied the Cold War marriage of science and geo-strategy. It was also a human story, lived by personnel who conceived, built, and operated the radar and communication system. Several studies have traced the origins of the system, notably Joseph Jockel's (1987) No Boundaries Upstairs, and others, such as R. Quinn Duffy's (1988) The Road to Nunavut, have documented myriad impacts of the radar network on northern indigenous peoples. First-time author Frances Jewel Dickson, a retired public servant and the daughter of a pilot who lost his life on the DEW Line in 1957, should be commended for compiling an interesting series of anecdotes that reveal the experiences of the workers and pilots who worked the line.
Dickson's accessible narrative, based largely on corres- pondence with nearly one hundred DEW Line veterans, paints an alternate narrative of the Cold War...