We military people tend to be mesmerized by our machines. Thus, Canadian submariners have fretted for decades over the need to replace their three precious Oberon class undersea machines at the end of their useful lives. As Julie Ferguson so clearly shows in Deeply Canadian, machines have been only part of the story: at stake was the future of the Canadian Submarine Service itself. And during the years preceding the federal government's decision to acquire the new British-built Victoria Class, it often looked as if a major Canadian asset was "going down the tubes".