Search results

When you're travelling through Northern Ontario east of Thunder Bay, you have two choices--Highway 11, which heads north from North Bay and passes through Temagami, Cochrane, Smooth Rock Falls, Kapuskasing, Hearst, Longlac and Geraldton, then rejoins Highway 17 at Nipigon.  Highway 17, which...

I spent a brief period on the supp list in the early 90's, when my civ job commitments had me moving around too much to really commit to the Res F.  When I finally settled down and wanted to resume working with the Reserves, moving from the Supp List to the Primary Res proved to be a 9 month...

These questions are not mutually exclusive, and are linked.  The more unit there are in a community (yes, in this context, unit = Regiment.  Unit also equals Ind Fd Bty, Sig Sqn, Fd Amb, Nav Res unit, etc. i.e. anything that has its own UIC and unit comd and will be drawing on the recruiting...

Unless I'm missing something, it sounds like you're proposing to...make more Reg F soldiers.  There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but loading Reservists onto Reg F BMQ, SQ, trade and leadership courses is just making Reg F soldiers, but at a reduced rate of pay and sans a lot of...

Likewise, I find little to disagree with in this.  However, I would add one point...that IN SPITE of its shortcomings, we are producing, in the Res F, effective soldiers and officers who are deploying on operations and are carrying their weight.  The system that's producing them may be clunky...

What fascinates me about alternate histories are the "little" tipping points that make up the past.  For example, the first bombing of London during the Battle of Britain was essentially a mistake; on 24 August, German bombers, on a raid against oil installations at Thameshaven and an aircraft...

This is all very true.  We had some phenomenal young men and women attending university and college in Thunder Bay who became excellent soldiers and leaders.  Unfortunately, most of them didn't stick around, because Thunder Bay is one of those places young people to come to for school (both the...

What I'd make of this is that you're in a fortunate and obviously successful unit.  Sadly, this isn't true for most Res F units in Canada.

Except, perhaps, in a very few specific cases--probably in the largest urban centres--I don't believe that recruiting limits are a significant issue and are, in fact, a red herring.  I think most Res F units could recruit like hell and all they functionally end up doing is offsetting attrition. ...

The real problem is that the very nature of what defines a "power" in a global context is in a state of flux.  IMHO, the traditional "triad" of military, foreign aid and diplomatic standing is insufficient to define a country's status as a power in today's world.  I would argue that resources...

I'm aware of this.  But units in some parts of the country are having difficulty even offsetting attrition.  There are many reasons for this (focusing on demographics that just aren't themselves growing, and may even be shrinking; too many units for the available recruiting pool; problematic...

I don't think we are contemplating making it smaller, actually.  We're attempting to make it more efficient and effective in terms of its ability to train Res F infantry soldiers.  The theory is that two units each of, say, 100 personnel (each a company minus) that are located close together, or...

The cap-badge thing is, frankly, a red-herring.  We are witnessing the evolution of a generation of soldiers who, if used to working together, will do so without particular regard to cap-badge.  Again, to take the Royal Regina Rifles and North Saskatchewan Regiment as an example, young soldiers...

What difference does it make?  If the units' collective training is improved, soldiers are able to experience training in more meaningfully-sized organizations, overhead is reduced and, yet, unit identities are retained, then how does this not represent a good compromise solution to an otherwise...

Tactical grouping is, by far, the more palatable option from a wide number of points of view.  Amalgamation, disbandment, etc. are certainly other options, but they involve much more "friction" in implementing.

Okay...I've been off these means for a long time (for a variety of reasons).  I drop back in and, wham, here's a topic that's near and dear. Interestingly, the tone of some of the posts in this thread seem to suggest the Camerons are "going away".  They aren't, in any way, shape or form.  They...

I would love to see an election fought over an issue as important and substantive as foreign policy--Canada's role in the world, in the 21st century.  Instead, we've had elections fought over the most prosaic things like health care, or the ancient, go-nowhere, navel-gazing drivel of "national...

Wouldn't hurt as a training aid for our own use.  Good real-life description of most of the "full spectrum" of ops.

I think this just about sums up the thread.  It's clear that there are those on both sides who have decided what the "correct" answer is, and will find it hard to accept any information that points the other way.  And the harder each side pushes, the harder the other pushes back. As usual, the...

And just to  demonstrate its longevity, T-34s were used in the Balkans in the late 80s and early 90s.  If memory serves, there's still the wreckage of one on a hill-top somewhere between Velika Kladusa and Banja Luka, that was destroyed while indiscriminantly shelling a village.  The local...