The Beginning of my Career

Well, you know, even now it’s a bit of a blur. A lot of things happened at the time because I had no experience with the military. I was very young at eighteen years old. So I think I told the young officer at the time I just want to be one of those guys that carry a gun and stomp around the bush and he kind of looked at me and said, “Son, have I got a job for you!” So it turned out that the infantry officer was part of the choices and so I chose it without really understanding what trades were there. I just thought that it sounded pretty adventurous, pretty cool and so from there we did the paperwork and shortly sometime after that we did the pledge of allegiance. I was then a member of the Canadian Forces and was just waiting for a flight to Cornwallis, Nova Scotia to start recruit training.
Interviewer: Specific to the infantry training, what did that entail?
Well, is was kind of an expansion on everything that we did in Cornwallis really but just in far more depth so a lot more musketry, dealing with weapons, marksmanship, basic infantry, combat tactics, communications, reconnaissance patrolling, just all those skill sets that you need from weapons to first aid, to patrolling, to navigation. So all the basic skill sets you would require that would allow you to be operationally deployed with your unit in the field and carry out the duties of an infanteer.