Nuclear-powered icebreaker
On 17 August 1977, NS "Arktika" ("Arctic") became the first surface ship ever to reach the North Pole. "Arktika" was withdrawn from service in 2008 after clocking up 175,000 hours of reactor operation time and covering more than 1 million nautical miles. Rather than be scrapped, there are calls for her to be converted to a museum ship, like her predecessor "Lenin".
HMCS Micmac (R10)
However the selection of the Halifax yard also had several advantages. While Halifax Shipyards had not produced a large number of ships, it had produced some advanced and successful vessels. Two of its 1920 refrigerated freighters, SS "Canadian Cruiser" and were very large by Canadian standards, and remained the largest Canadian steel ships built until the end of the war. The icebreaker built by the yard, CGS "N.B. McLean" was a powerful and long-serving ship as well as one of the largest icebreakers in the word when constructed. The Halifax yard also benefited from the proximity of naval staff at the RCN's Halifax Naval Dockyard adjoining just to the south of the Halifax Shipyard. Finally, an important consideration for the wartime operation of the crucial convoy port of Halifax was the destroyer program's retention of a skilled workforce which helped stabilize the repair capacity of the port. Demand for skilled shipyard works soared in the winter but fell off in the summer causing many workers to leave. The destroyer program kept a large year round workforce available that could be switch from repair to new ship construction as needed.,