My Visit to Connaught, Canada
Last summer I was given the opportunity of a lifetime; I was lucky enough to be selected to represent the ACF in Canada on the Cadet Leader Instructor Marksman course. Fourteen of us were chosen to go along with two officers. When we first got there the weather was scorching, which was great considering the week before it hadn’t stopped raining! We were divided up and allocated our tents which slept approximately eight people and living in such close proximity meant that we very soon made friends. For the first few days we were eased into the course, sorting out the rifles and whatnot until we were finally integrated with the Canadian cadets. |
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There were fifty of us in ‘Alpha’ company altogether, 36 Canadians and 14 from the UK. Unlike our Annual Camp in the UK however,they have staff cadets who do most of the organising and who look after the cadets and there are only a few adults who supervise (but you don’t get to see them very often). |
You’d have thought most of our time would have been spent at the range, well it wasn’t. We did spend a few days a week at the range but we also did a lot of other activities. In our first week one day was devoted to a camp sports day complete with an inflatable slip ‘n’ slide and a dunk tank. There were also many other activities, which included sightseeing and shopping at the weekends and even going to a water park. For three days, as part of our course, we had to go on an ‘FTX’ – field training exercise – it wasn’t really a highlight to be honest. |
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Sleeping in the middle of nowhere, eating ration packs worse than our own, getting bitten endlessly by the hordes of mosquitoes and other insects and then being drenched by torrential rain wasn’t that much fun; although we did have a camp fire and roasted marshmallows. |
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A month into the visit we had a whole week devoted to teaching lessons and how to teach, different techniques, how to plan lessons etc. That week went slowly but I learnt a lot from it; hopefully, I will be given the opportunity to practice my new skills now that I’m back. The main events of the visit came towards the end of our time there. For our first competition we had to travel to another cadet camp called Blackdown, which happened to be a seven hour coach ride away. |
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It was nowhere near as nice as Connaught, the camp we had been staying at, but we did get to go to Niagara Falls as it was nearby – what an experience. Our first competition was the Ontario Rifle Association Shoot, which felt like a warm up competition before the main event and got us used to the set up etc. |
The next was the National Cadet Full-bore Competition. This wasn’t a civilian competition like the previous one, but a cadet one, only there was the Canadian national team shooting as well as the UK cadet rifle team.Finally, it was the Dominion of Canada Rifle Association Meeting. |
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This is the biggest shooting competition in the whole of Canada and lasted for a week.It was fun to shoot but it was very hot; at one point people were nearly fainting from exhaustion and dehydration; mainly because we had to carry all our equipment between ranges which could more than a mile apart. |
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One of the highlights was a special dinner that was held for the winner of the DCRA. It was held at the Chateau Laurier, one of the poshest hotels in Canada and I was one of only six cadets invited to go - it was amazing! Overall, it was an incredible experience and if I could do it again I would, even with the six o’clock wake ups, the maple syrup on everything at breakfast (including the bacon!) and the millions of mosquitoes (even in the showers). It was an incredible, once in a lifetime experience and I made such amazing friends.
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