Re-Shaping of 22 Wing/Canadian Forces Base North Bay & The 21st Century
22 Wing/CFB North Bay has continued as the centre for the air defence of the country, and partner with the United States in NORAD guarding the air sovereignty of the continent. In the late 1990s plans were enacted for a new air defence facility to replace the aging Underground Complex. The complex's air defence electronic, communications and computer systems—the leading edge of early 1980s technology—had become antiquated, struggling to cope with the demands and crises of an Internet Age world. Moreover, the cost of operating a decades-old, shopping centre-size subterranean complex was rapidly becoming prohibitive.
On 20 August 2003, Prime Minister, the Right Honorable Jean Chretien turned soil inaugurating the construction of a new above ground complex. Three years later, 12 October 2006—43 years and eleven days after the Underground Complex's birth—a brand new, state-of-the-art surface installation was opened by Minister of National Defence, the Right Honorable Gordon O'Connor, officially taking the baton of air defence operations from the Underground Complex. The new installation was named the Sgt David L. Pitcher Building, in honour of a Canadian Forces Air Defence Technician who was killed in the crash of an E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, call sign Yukla 27, at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, on 22 September 1995. The aircraft ingested birds into two of its four engines during take off; all 24 crew members were lost.
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