A Career Cut Short

I joined 746 Communication Squadron in Calgary as a private. I was trained to be a radio operator at the time. For the most part the people that I worked with were great. It was scary. You get on the bus and everybody there is yelling. Your parents kind of wave good bye and then off you go and all of a sudden you re adulting really. I mean you are becoming a responsible soldier at this point. You don’t really know how to do that and, of course, BC was a totally different experience. Vernon was very, very hot there so even just adjusting to the temperatures. There were days that we couldn’t, we weren’t allowed to train because it was just over the index. Unfortunately I did have some experiences there that have later become an issue. I was assaulted by my instructor. And at the time, we’re talking early 90’s. There wasn’t, either the understanding or the system in place to deal with that. So unfortunately that impacted my career right off the get go in a very negative way because I was very dedicated to what I wanted to do and what I wanted to accomplish and that was cut short.