Mike Desmeules
Starting his military career as an administrative clerk, Mike Desmeules served in both the Navy and the Army and deployed to both Egypt and Rwanda.
Jonquière, Quebec
Rwanda
Mr. Desmeules was born in 1950 in Jonquière, Québec. With little work in his hometown community, Mr. Desmeules decided to join the Canadian Armed Forces, considering it as an opportunity to travel. At 18 years of age, Mr. Desmeules initially joined the Navy taking up the service occupation of administrative clerk. With this occupation being very generic to all branches of service, Mr. Desmeules later joined the army and, in 1975, he accepted an opportunity to travel to Egypt with the Signal Regiment. In 1995, Mr. Desmeules accepted a posting to Rwanda, again in the administrative field of occupation. Upon returning to Canada, Mr. Desmeules made the switch back to navy service and retired with 30 years of service. Mr. Desmeules and his family then took up residence in Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Heroes Remember interview
View all of Mike Desmeules's videosOpportunities at Sea - HTML5 Transcript/Captions
I was posted to, after my course in,
did my basic training in St. Jean, Quebec,
and I went to Borden, Ontario to take my
administrative course and
I got transferred to Halifax.
Now when I was in Halifax,
I worked on the base and after the base I
got transferred on board a ship.
HMCS Skeena was my first ship, I went.
And on that ship I had the opportunity
to go do a trip with the NATO,
the NATO forces.
It was a good experience to
work with the other countries and
visited a lot of places.
That was great, that's what I
wanted to start with so,
early at a young age,
I already was travelling so was happy
about that one. I loved the sea,
it was different and working with a
bunch of guys was like a big family.
It was, the guys were great and
we all got along and it was fine.
I mean, I never had any problem
aboard a ship.
Where they served
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