INUVIK, NT – Canada is getting a new $720 million icebreaker in nine years that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already nicknamed the Diefenbreaker.

The heavy icebreaker is being named after late Progressive Conservative prime minister John George Diefenbaker, Harper announced today on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Inuvik, a town on the Beaufort Sea.

The ghost of Dief the Chief was ever present as Harper made the announcement on the exact spot where Diefenbaker dedicated the community in 1961.

The polar class Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, which will replace the Louis St. Laurent (a late Liberal prime minister), was first mentioned in the spring budget as a piece in the Conservative government’s overall plan to protect Canadian sovereignty in the north, which includes other smaller ships often referred to as slush breakers.

“When it launches for the first time into the frigid Canadian waters, the ‘Diefenbreaker’ … will be a crowning achievement for our country,” Harper said.

He said one day the John G. Diefenbaker will sail the Northwest Passage, “symbolically following the dream of all the brave Arctic mariners who envisioned a northern route from Atlantic to Pacific.”

“As prime minister Diefenbaker said as he stood here in 1961, there is a ‘new world emerging above the Arctic circle,’” Harper said.