On parade

One thing MPs and journalists share is getting to drop in on other people’s lives. A reporter might end up at a fire, a press conference or a rally, seeing people afraid, boastful or energized. An MP gets to do funerals, graduations, birthdays, plant openings, cheque presentations and, today, cadets.

The Lorne Scots is an old and proud regiment, one of the most renown in our history. Today part of that legacy was on parade in an off-season Milton hockey arena, where Cadet Corps 2990 was being inspected. This was a modest affair – 36 cadets at centre ice, and maybe 100 parents in the stands. My job was to sit as part of the reviewing officials, to present a medal, and say a few words.

The kids were trying their hardest – the newbies worried about what foot to start marching on, and the experienced ones concentrating on the perfect salute and achieving the proper swish of a kilt. It was all extremely serious, with a reviewing stand, adults dressed in suits and new shoes, dignitaries from the Legion and the police force, and a 90-minute program of march pasts, drill teams and troop inspection.

There were also endless awards – certificates for service, medals for achievement, trophies for singular performance. The troops did a great job of looking like real soldiers, even though a couple of them in the colour party were carrying ancient rifles about as tall as they were.

Sitting there I remembered my own time as an army cadet (membership was compulsory at the high school I attended), which I absolutely detested at first. I could not hit anything with a bullet, got giant blisters from marching and hated answering to orders (evidently not much has changed). But after a couple of years, and summers at army boot camp, I was infected with the military spirit – rising to be the company commander, and spending an awesome few weeks on a survival march through the Rockies.

My mother gained some hope from this, and expected me to go to Royal Military College, but I became a hippie instead (another insight into present behaviour). However, a huge amount of my quasi-military experience has stayed with me, and for that I am grateful. Same with these kids, I suspect.

Of course, now there are girl cadets. That’s a good thing. And I bet they spend the summers learning about ecological programs instead of how to survive a nuclear attack. But, despite the differences, they are still junior warriors and there are lots of parents who would be pleased as anything to have their kids grow up to be Canadian soldiers. Here, in the Lorne Scots cadet corps, they learn leadership, citizenship and physical endurance. They stand at attention on a cement floor for a long, long time, when some of their friends are busy text messaging each other or skateboarding through somebody’s daffodils.

I gave a medal to a mother whose son graduated from this corps a few months ago and is now in training with the Royal Canadian Regiment. Must be proud of him, I said. “Oh, you can’t imagine,” she said back, as she fingered the gold orb. And I am sure if he ended up in Afghanistan – despite the danger of injury or death or the lack of understanding on the part of many of her neighbours – that she could conceive of no higher calling.

Serving Canada. Second-hand uniforms and 50-year-old rifles in a hockey hall. Or G-wagons, GPS, RPGs and the Taliban. The differences are something a mother would barely notice.