Exercise Musk-ox was no isolated adventure, but the culminating test of several years of wartime work. In it, vehicles, equipment, and techniques of training and of air-supply, secretly developed during the war, were given an open test to ascertain their usefulness in northern Canada. Because the public had not been aware of this secret work by the services, Exercise Musk-ox was hailed by them as a new idea, but it would not have been possible had not the equipment and methods all been ready and proven before tbe close of the war.

So great had been these wartime improvements that none of those men best acquainted with the north country and with older methods of transportation believed that the ground party had any chance of driving 2600 miles without roads across the Arctic and sub-Arctic in less than 2½ months. Neither was it generally realised that the military purposes had already been served and that this was no tactical exercise but a demonstration of the soundness of military development and an experiment in applying it to peaceful pursuits in the Canadian Arctic.