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Military Helicopters Over Toronto

By David Topping

Throughout this week in the build-up to the G20, military helicopters from Canada and the United States have been flying through the city. Through the window he sits beside on the thirtieth floor of the new Telus tower, David G. Tran—a product manager in Telus’ marketing department—has had one of the best views of them. On June 22 and 23, he explains, he brought his telephoto lens to work and took the photos above, of “Canadian Air Force and United Marine Corps helicopters flying at low altitudes and close proximity through Toronto’s Financial District and landing next to the CN Tower on a makeshift helicopter landing pad.”
Photos by David G. Tran.

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  • http://undefined Andrew

    Remember this? Remember how we all had a good laugh?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMsqEph7a8I

  • http://undefined Kevo

    There were some good shots of helicopters from this person too (plus she has the original sizes up and in 1 or 2 of them you can see the guys taking pictures of the skyline out of the helis): http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmaraj/

  • http://undefined rek

    United States Marine Corps? I don’t think we have a Canadian military division called the United Marine Corps. Why is a foreign military patrolling our city?

  • http://undefined CaligulaJones

    Well, its not as if we can use our fucking police ‘copter, can we…

  • http://undefined David Harrison

    >Why is a foreign military patrolling our city?
    Presumably they are here due to our participation in NATO, which would mean that they are under Canadian command.

  • http://undefined Kevo

    They’re practicing for Obama. You really think that the US would trust anyone else with their president’s security… they probably have F-18s and F-22s flying in circles over the American side of the border just in case.
    It’s the Marines who take care of his helicopter rides (hence “Marine One”), while the air force does his plane rides (“Air Force One”). Seems kind of stupid to me, but that’s what you get for not having a unified force like we do.

  • http://undefined Robsonian

    We’ve clearly got other more pressing issues with how our own duly-constituted police force and government are patrolling our city.
    The US helicopters are here to fly the Pres. around, that is all. It’s a major undertaking which generally involves moving his protection detail around in the green chinooks and decoy blackhawks in addition to the one he’s in.
    To get from Washington DC to New York these guys fly the Pres to Andrews AFB in a helicopter, put him on a plane to New York, fly him to Wall St. from the airport there in a different helicopter, etc. etc.

  • http://undefined Kevo

    @jonnyr00 – From what I’ve heard they usually have 2 to 4 other helicopters that look the same and then basically play a shell game with them as they fly so that it’s hard for someone to track which one the president is in, it’s pretty crazy what goes on. :P And that’s on top of the other jets and attack helicopters I’m sure they have around too.

  • http://undefined CaligulaJones

    Er, no.
    The One has landed at Pearson, and is on his way via Marine One to Huntsville.
    This is what Marine One looks like:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marine_One_Whitehouse.jpg
    It flew here in the belly of a C5.
    He certainly isn’t flying around Toronto in one of the ‘copters seen above, although Marine One may very well have a double.

  • http://undefined CaligulaJones

    Addendum: trust me to not click on all the pics. Yes, that is Marine One in some of the pics. So, yes, that means they might land Him directly from Huntsville downtown.
    My bad.
    Flame away.

  • http://undefined friend68

    Do you think every country that the US President visits has blog commenters that get in a tizzy that US military aircraft brings him there?

  • http://undefined CaligulaJones

    I dunno. Does any other county have this much of an inferiority complex?

  • http://undefined rek

    June 22nd and 23rd.
    Not today. Not yesterday.
    Obama wasn’t here.
    “Why is a foreign military patrolling our city?” — patrolling is the key word here. I said nothing about escorting Obama (since, as above, he wasn’t in the country at the time).

  • http://undefined kujoatc75

    Anywhere in world POTUS travels via helicopter, Marine One is used. There are two different groups of helicopters. The Chinook shown in the photograph is a support helicopter used to transport lower level aides, while the “White Top” Blackhawk (VH-60) is used to transport the higher level aides for longer trips; most often seen is the VH-3 used by the President when he travels to and from Andrews Air Force Base. The all green helicopters are flown from MCAF Quantico (Green Side) and the white tops are flown from NAF Anacostia (White Side)

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Checkmate. :)

  • http://undefined US_TeufelHund

    Thank you for being so good to us while we were in Toronto to transport President Obama. Everyone we met in Toronto was very friendly. You have a very nice city. Thank you again.