Radio, satellites and builders: what the Canadian Armed Forces do in Aldergrove

Drive 264 Street north of Aldergrove and you pass a long stretch of fenced forest with tall masts poking out of the trees. Most people know it as “the navy base.” That’s true, but it’s only part of the story. Three quite different military jobs happen on or beside that land, and none of them involve ships.

Job one: listening for the navy

In 1942 the navy decided its Pacific radio needed a quieter place to listen than the busy dockyard at Esquimalt, where interference was a problem. It chose Aldergrove for a receiving station, with the transmitters across the valley at Sumas and later Matsqui. The first buildings were ready more than a year later.

By January 1950, the navy’s own magazine, The Crowsnest, was describing “Aldergrove Calling”: the station traded messages with Australia and New Zealand as well as with naval divisions across Canada and Naval Headquarters in Ottawa.

The names changed as the military did. It was commissioned HMC Naval Radio Station Aldergrove on June 1, 1955, became HMCS Aldergrove on July 1, 1956 (land stations were commissioned like ships, so the sailors got a ship’s badge and their own cap tally), became Canadian Forces Station Aldergrove in 1967, and has been Naval Radio Section Aldergrove, a detachment of CFB Esquimalt, since 1996.

It still works. National Defence described it in 2012 as part of the system handling long-range communications across the Pacific and the Arctic, with Aldergrove’s receiving antennas paired with transmitters at Matsqui, serving both the navy and the air force. That year it announced a $1.1 million electrical upgrade, including a new emergency generator. This year’s federal project notice covers new foundations for the existing antennas, replacing temporary anchors put in during 2023.

Job two: catching data from space

This is the part almost nobody knows about. In 2009 the federal government picked Aldergrove for the west-coast ground station of Polar Epsilon, the military’s satellite surveillance project.

Today that work runs on the RADARSAT Constellation Mission: three Canadian radar satellites launched on June 12, 2019. Polar Epsilon 2 reached full operational capability in June 2022. It combines the satellites’ radar images with the identification signals ships broadcast, so Canada can find and track vessels in its ocean and Arctic waters day or night, through any weather. A 2025 Canadian Space Agency paper names Aldergrove and Masstown, Nova Scotia, as the two Defence reception stations. The same satellites’ data also helps with disaster response and environmental monitoring.

Job three: the builders of 192 CEF

Right beside the communications site is 192 Construction Engineering Flight, an Air Force Reserve unit. It’s one of four flights in 14 Construction Engineering Squadron; the others are in Gander, Pictou and Lunenburg County. The squadron recruits and trains reservists to put up military shelters and infrastructure fast, wherever they’re needed. In 2013 the flight moved from the trailers it had worked out of for years into a new armoury.

Their work has gone a long way from Aldergrove:

• Kandahar, 2008. Members deployed in November to build shelters, with power, generators and ventilation, for Canada’s Air Wing in Afghanistan, and finished in six weeks. The flight received a Canadian Forces Unit Commendation for it.
• Mount Strachan, 2014. The flight helped design and build a memorial at the crash site of a T-33 jet on the North Shore mountains. The stone base was prepared in Aldergrove.
• Behind the scenes. A 2021 Air Force profile followed a father and son, both reserve plumbing and heating technicians at the flight, whose trade keeps deployed troops in showers, washrooms and working kitchens.

It’s very much active: an October 2026 reserve job posting for the flight gives Aldergrove as the place of work.

Where cadets fit in

Cadets aren’t part of the Canadian Armed Forces. The CAF supervises and supports them, but a 2026 agreement with the cadet leagues describes them as youth organizations. Two local corps have military connections:

• 169 Royal Canadian Sea Cadet Corps Columbia says it parades at the 192 CEF building in Aldergrove.
• 746 Lightning Hawk Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets is based in Hangar 5 at Langley Regional Airport. Its sponsoring committee says it has dropped its former $300 yearly fee for 2026/2027. In May 2025 its cadets, with 861 Silverfox Squadron, got a tour of the airport, including a march on the runway.

More on joining is in our guides to cadets in Langley and 746 Squadron.

A sailor in the community

The station’s people have always been part of Aldergrove. The Alder Grove Heritage Society recently remembered Chief Petty Officer Cliff Watt, who served at the station and was also a local firefighter and a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Agricultural Association. The society credits his work on the Utilities Commission with bringing better water service, sidewalks and streetlights to town.

And a rare moss

The land matters for nature too. A 2025 federal assessment of Roell’s Brotherella moss lists a population recorded on Defence land at Aldergrove in 2016. The site also holds wetlands along the upper Salmon River; our Naval Radio Station page has more on those.

This Remembrance Day, our Langley Remembrance Day guide lists the ceremonies, including Aldergrove’s.