In the central plaza of the accommodation block at His Majesty's Canadian Ship Venture is a bronze statue of a Venture cadet circa 1954, which was commissioned and donated by the Venture Association on 12 September 2004.
Venture Plan was established in 1954 to address critical Royal Canadian Navy officers shortages that were not being addressed by existing intake plans. Venture was commissioned as the Royal Canadian Navy Junior Officer Training Establishment and located in the Esquimalt dockyard. Its role was to train junior naval officers of the executive, engineering, fleet air arm and naval supply branches during a two-year term of academic education. After that basic training, the various branches received different professional and educational training appropriate to their branch.
In September 1963, Venture Plan was superseded and intake shifted to the Short Service Officer Plan for maritime officers. In 1968 with the adoption of integration, the Canadian Forces Officer Training Establishment was founded and Venture was phased out and returned to the Esquimalt dockyard.
With the army’s withdrawal of the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry from Work Point Barracks, Venture was relocated from the dockyard to several of the ex-PPCLI buildings at Work Point in the fall of 1994.
