Navy Training

I was in the Navy about three days in Toronto and was sent to Quebec City and so I did my basic training, two months, in Quebec City which was very interesting and I became a very early time aware of the, of the bilingual situation in Canada. And one aspect of that in looking back, there were ships being sunk at the time in the Saint Lawrence and that area and of course the many of the French Canadian lads the same as us, did and wanted to join the armed forces. But the ones coming into Quebec City to our barracks they had to be bilingual in order to join the navy and they would let them come in for, there was a six week's English course and if, if they could qualify with enough English in the six weeks basic training they were allowed to stay in the navy but if not they weren't acceptable in the navy and I believe the same thing was in effect in the air force and of course there were French Canadian army regiments but it struck me at that time that these people's families had been Canadian for two or three hundred years and they couldn't join their own armed forces, so I've, I've always kept that.