September is a busy month
for 3045 Army Cadet Corps. The training
year is in “full-swing”, routines need to be established for new recruits, and
regular training needs to be done. The
two main events that occur this month are the community cleanup and the
Operation Hill Top, an annual fall field training exercise (FTX).
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| Breakfast |
The corps returned to the area behind the airport for the
community cleanup. (Community members
don’t actually help the corps, unless they’re cadet parents). Cleaning up a section of the community, as
in, ridding it of garbage, fits into the citizenship training component of the
cadet program. And it also teaches
cadets the importance of taking care of the land. Much of the garbage that humans produce is
not biodegradable and much of it that is, takes too long to breakdown.
The beach cleanup occurred on September 1, during the
Labour Day long weekend. We all gathered
at the local Anglican church for breakfast, happily prepared by a cadet
parent. Breakfast consisted of egg
muffins with cheese & bacon, and juice boxes. Attendance was taken and I did a quick
briefing with everyone. The corps was
able to procure a pickup truck, an atv, and a trailer for transportation. We stopped by Frank’s shop to pick up all the
necessary supplies we would need to ensure a successful cleanup.
We left the pickup truck near the airport terminal. There’s no road down to the beach area. Most of the cadets piled into the trailer and
were driven down by the atv. I chose to
walk down to the area. I rode in the
trailer last year and it was too bumpy for me.
Last year I vowed to ride on the atv but I forgot about the resolution. The walk down was not bad.
By the time I arrived, the cadets were busy setting up a
white tent near the old wood pile. An
iceberg sat out in the open water. I
took pictures of the surrounding landscape, noting all the garbage and debris
strewn about. The garbage is not
deposited here by people from the community; it’s too far out of town. What happens is when the ice melts in the
summer and the waterways become open, any garbage that’s left on the ice or
along the shores of Arctic Bay are carried by the currents to the shoreline
behind the airport.
The cadets placed the Coleman stoves and lunch boxes
inside the white tent. I instructed the
senior cadet to form everyone up.
Everyone was given plastic gloves and two orange garbage bags. The cadets were divided into two groups and
would pick up garbage inland and along the shoreline. Large, heavy items were to be grouped into
piles and left for the atv & trailer crew to collect.
Even though I’ve been coming to this place with the
cadets for the last four years, every time feels like the first time because
there’s always something new to discover lying on the ground. You can learn so much about people just by
collecting the things they throw out. I
didn’t believe it myself until I became a teacher and observed what my students
leave behind in my classroom.
Over the next several hours, the cadets & I roamed
the area, picking up various kinds of trash and organizing large items into
piles. The large items consisted of:
tires, wooden boards, and large plastic toys.
It will take too long to write all the smaller items we collected, so
I’ll give you all the short version: candy wrappers, chip bags, oil cartons,
pop cans, clothes, and toys. I was
surprised to see a cadet sneaker lying on the ground. I also picked up a Snoopy doll that became
our mascot for the day. For lunch we
feasted on MREs: Meals-Ready-to-Eat.
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| Lunch time. |
In the afternoon, I spotted a cruise ship out near the cliffs
several kilometres away. I was able to
take a picture of it with my camera but the zoom feature was not able to get a
clear name of the ship. I wondered if
the ship would anchor in the bay and the tourists would be allowed to explore
the community on foot? (I would later
learn that the ship turned around and left).
One of the cadets caught a lemming and placed it in an
empty plastic Folgers can. The little
critter looks like a gerbil. I can’t
remember if he took it home as a pet.
I’ve joked with my students before that I want to catch 300 lemmings,
attach harnesses to them, and see if they can pull a qamutik (sled) like sled
dogs do.
I took a group photo of the cadets standing behind the
many orange garbage we had filled. I
would upload the photograph to the community’s Facebook page later that day,
with a caption explaining what we did and why we did it. The shoreline behind the airport looked a lot
cleaner and neater. The garbage bags and
large items were packed into the trailer and driven to the pickup truck. The items were transferred over because the
atv & trailer had to go back down to bring the cadets back up. I walked back.
The large pieces of wood were left behind. They would be burned at the cadet bonfire in
mid-October.
Operation Hill Top 18 commenced on Saturday, September
15. There was no snow on the ground but
the weather was getting colder and windier.
I dressed to expect snow because we were camping by the Second
Bridge. (The bridge is located on the
Road to Nanisivik, on higher ground, and there is a flat area next to it. A perfect place for a camp site).
Once again, we had breakfast at the local Anglican
church. This time, however, breakfast
consisted of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast.
I quickly learned the value of securely packing food near the end of
breakfast. A concerned citizen called
the church to tell us there was a congress of ravens acting wildly on the back
of one of the pickup trucks. Several
cadets went outside and shooed the birds away.
The birds had been attacking the packages of hot dogs I had bought for
the FTX’s evening bonfire. They were
lying in an exposed cardboard box. The
ravens had managed to eat one pack of 12 hot dogs. Thankfully, I had bought more than one pack.
The drive to the Second Bridge took about thirty minutes. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any snow on the
ground when the convoy arrived at the camp site. Global warming at work! The cadets unloaded both pickup trucks and
immediately went to work setting up a white tent & a green tent. We weren’t staying the night this time but part
of the outdoor training is to know & demonstrate how to properly set up
tents.
The main task of the FTX is for the cadets to complete a
7km hike. The first-year cadets just
have to walk the distance while the second-year cadets have to walk & carry
backpacks. The Rangers escorted the
first-years while I escorted the second-years.
My group walked towards the old Nanisivik Airport, a trek that required
us to walk uphill. We followed the
gravel road while the weather got colder & windier. There was snow on the ground. Along the way, we explored four large steel
culvert pipes lying on the side of the road.
They probably arrived on the sealift and were deposited there for future
installation. Frank picked us up at the
7km mark and drove us back to the camp site.
The cadets learned how to light & turn off a Coleman
stove. They used these newly acquired skills
to cook their own MRE dinners. The adult
staff supervised.
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| Dinner |
In the evening we gathered around a wood pile for the
bonfire. We used Firestarter sticks and
naphtha to get the fire started. We
burned wood and cardboard boxes. The
wood comes from discarded pieces of sealift boxes. I should have arranged to have my sealift box
brought to the site to be burned. We
roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. The
bonfire was finished after 90 minutes.
I took a group
photo of the cadets before I had them take down the green tent. Frank said to leave the white tent up and he
& his nephew would come back tomorrow to take it down. Personal equipment and camping equipment were
packed into two pickup trucks and we drove to Arctic Bay. The cadets were dropped off at their houses. Another successful FTX completed.
