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CFB Cold Lake

Canadian air force base and wing of the Royal Canadian Air Force

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ1032108 ↗
Source-derived summary

Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake (IATA: YOD, ICAO: CYOD), abbreviated as CFB Cold Lake, is a Canadian Forces Base in the City of Cold Lake, Alberta.

The facility is operated as an air force base by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and is approximately 35 km (22 mi) south of the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR), which is used as practicing grounds by CFB Cold Lake's fighter pilots. The base is one of two in the country housing the CF-18 Hornet fighter, the other being CFB Bagotville. The base's primary RCAF lodger unit is 4 Wing, commonly referred to as 4 Wing Cold Lake.

Civilian passenger service was available through the Medley passenger terminal on the air base. The regularly scheduled air service between Calgary and the civilian terminal was cancelled in June 2011. Unscheduled civilian air traffic is usually directed to Cold Lake Regional Airport.

The facility is named Cold Lake/Group Captain R.W. McNair Airport after World War II Spitfire ace Robert Wendell "Buck" McNair. It is one of three military aerodromes in Canada to be named after an individual, along with Valcartier (W/C J.H.L. (Joe) Lecomte) Heliport and Moose Jaw/Air Vice Marshal C.M. McEwen Airport.

The airport is classified as an airport of entry by Nav Canada and is staffed by the Canada Border Services Agency; however, its use by international flights is currently restricted to military aircraft and personnel.

Editorial summary

“CFB Cold Lake” enters the record as canadian air force base and wing of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cold, Lake and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2011—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Cold, Lake and Canadian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“CFB Cold Lake” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cold, Lake and Canadian provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1032108. The Library of Congress control number is sh2003009883. Authority coordinates are 54.405, -110.279. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow CFB Cold Lake primary sources, CFB Cold Lake archive and Cold research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “CFB Cold Lake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.