Bring back the Bomarcs

Dear Mr George Bush:

We folk in North Bay have a great deal for you!

We've been following your country's Missile Defensive Initiative for some time now and we just realized there is a precedent for being a partner with you in your effort to secure the skies and space above North America against our enemies. The original deal may have been before your time or perhaps it was about the time you were training to fly in Vietnam, but that is beside the point.

Our then Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, made a deal with your people to have a missile defence system installed in Canada, in fact right here in North Bay. It is a funny thing how things seem to repeat themselves, but the pendulum has now swung again to missiles instead of fighters.

Maybe those Top Gun fellows that you folks have aren't as hot as they looked! But if you do want a backup system, we have a fighter airstrip here too that you could use.

Back in the fifties, the missile was called a Bomarc (we spell it that way because we're bilingual up here) and it was supposed to be able to fly into the sky, find an in-coming Russian Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile and Ka-boom, blow it to shreds.

They didn't tell us here in North Bay that these missiles had atomic warheads, but then they didn't tell us much back then in the Cold War days. Some folk were worried about the debris falling on us but fortunately we never had to fire one.

For your information, these Bomarc missiles were controlled from two very secure underground sites, one down there in your Colorado Mountain and the other right here in North Bay! The missiles themselves were just up the highway at a secret site the Russians never found.

We think you will agree that it is important that you have a very secure control site for the missiles (we would like to call the new missiles Les Bomarc II) and our site in North Bay could serve for the new missile defence system office. In fact, our military is closing the underground bunker in favour of a less secure above-ground site. (There was an admiral in charge of our military the year they made the decision to go to the surface; likely they were saving money again.) We were thinking of using this big underground chamber to store computer punch cards like you use in an election, so you could probably get it very cheap.

One thing is the same as it was back in the fifties, and that is we don't have much money in reserve here in the north. But like the fifties, we can do a good swap with you. The last time we exchanged the Avro Arrow and a whole bunch of technicians that helped you down there in Cape Canaveral and Houston. It was good to see you get those rockets up in space, finally, but it did take you a long time to get your fighters up to the design of the Arrow!

This time we can swap you our secret design for the flying saucers that we have in beta test. Yes, we know some of your people claim to have seen one of our prototypes, but the new ones are much better. We thought that X-Files show was onto us for a while, but we got them sidetracked down into Texas by letting slip a little loose talk about Martians. Once again though, we are having problems getting armaments on the saucers, the same problem we had with the Arrow. But we do have a very good little company named Research In Motion working on the laser guns and the communications. We can't give your CIA access to their files, but the code word would be 'Blackberry.'

Anyway, what we were thinking was that we have a couple of used mine pits just north of here, out in the boonies, that would make great missile launch sites. You know how Sceptre had that crater with a moveable cover and it looked like a lake in James Bond? Well, we've got two of those pits, one called Sherman (named after your General Sherman) and the other Adams (after one of your Constitution guys) that we could rent out real cheap.

Our own Ontera company (sort of like a small Bell Atlantic) says both launch sites can be connected with fibre communications from our underground facility, so you could launch the missiles just by pushing a button on your phone (or if you have one of those little Personal Access Devices called a Blackberry, you could use that -just dial *911*).

We even have a company in North Bay that can make the blue Fabrene covers for the 'lakes' to fool those Russian spy satellites. (It's the same company that made the body bags for your Dad's war in the Gulf, so you know they can be trusted to make good lake covers.)

The thing is, we are not sure if you should talk to our federal government about this since they are in a bit of a minority position right now and can't agree on much.

Maybe you could just send that Ms Condoleezza Rice to talk to our Mayor. He's pretty sharp, so she would have to a watch her step, but if she offered to buy some of our $1 (Cdn) an acre land, he'd sure go for it!

We were wondering though if your Ms Rice would have any trouble getting back into your country, seeing as she has two 'e's and two 'z's in her first name? You know, what with her complexion and all? Anyway, if you can't work that out, you could send that retired general Powell as we were kind of partial to him. Our mayor is used to working with generals and we're sure they could cut a good deal over a cup of Tim Horton's coffee.

We've got some housing for your staff up here too. We have some modest accommodations right on the air base that would be very good with a little fixing, which the city would pay for. Your senior staff might enjoy living in a nearby township on one of the two lakes which are very nice in the summer (July and part of August).

You don't have to worry about health care for your staff because we'll look after them in our new hospital as if they were our own. The new hospital should be ready about the same time as your scientists perfect your missile system so it works 100%. By the way, any drug prescriptions they might need are cheaper up here. In fact, they can get their drugs right at a Wal-Mart, just like down there in the United States.

So anyhow, if you think you might like to dicker out a deal for some Bomarc IIs up here, just give us a call. We're open for business, especially with the US of A.