Defense
Brent Richter, of The Province, reports that the rising sub caught at least one resident by total surprise.
“It was just the freakiest thing. I’ve never seen a submarine before in my life,” local resident John Buchanan told Richter. “I looked over at Anvil Island and there’s this bloody submarine. This thing is huge, eh?”
The 2,500-ton sub rose up out of the water Friday, Feb. 8, right in front of Buchanan's video camera. Buchanan, a caretaker with the Squamish Environmental Society, just so happens to have a YouTube channel loaded with short videos of wildlife around Howe Sound.
Well the subscribers to Richter's channel were in for a treat: he uploaded the video right next to all the birds and badgers, complete with spooky music.
Later identified, Buchanan talked to Richter, who presumably explained to the conservationist that it was a Canadian submarine, purchased from Britain, and on a training mission.
Without skipping a beat, Buchanan changed his tune, "I don’t want them out there every day with their sonar, do I?” he told Richter. “But I don’t know enough about them to know what the environmental consequences of what their manoeuvres (sic) may be.”
Buchanan's right about that much, sonar has been shown to interfere with wildlife. And though there have been several unconfirmed reports about Russian subs near U.S. territory, Canada, as of yet, is under little threat of foreign invasion.