Chilliwack Remembers ~ History ~ CFB Chilliwack ~ Quotes From The Past

Quotes From The Past

A Quick Hop Over The Fence

“In those days, the fence along Vedder Road was not as imposing, and after hours (about 9:00 p.m. for officer-cadets) we would hop it and go to Violetta’s Restaurant for this “world-famous wiener burger” (two split wieners fried and placed in a hamburger bun).

The same might also happen if we were legitimately out of Camp playing ball on the Pop Inn Diamond. There was only one fast food place, and that was the A & W on the Vedder Road, just outside Chilliwack which was on the main road because there was no interchange at the Highway 1 as there is now. In fact, the World Plowing Matches were held on what is now Cottonwood Corners asphalt. The same was true of the Camp itself – where we used to have mine-warfare training in open fields along Keith-Wilson Road, we now see the Technical Services complex (built when the Army closed out the facilities in Vancouver) and the Regimental Headquarters, and we have to prod in the ground in Chilcotin instead. Our land for training was further reduced when Camp Melville up the Chilliwack River was closed and the land sold in 1962. We still did road training on the Sapper’s Highway behind Promontory Hill, but that also was closed in favour of the current heavy equipment training area.”

Col Don Rochester – November 1991.

Sapper Highway And Other Road Projects

“Sapper Highway led up to a place called Melville Camp which was in operation for one year. We abandoned that in 1955 or 56. It led to the Chilliwack Lake Road. It’s either the road that now goes up through Slesse Park where the Slesse Monument is or it’s a bit this way of the area where we had some “H” huts and we did some training. We had an area, a leased area, in there that we used for training in those days. They constructed the highway up to there as a road training project. That road remains today.”

Col Sam Dunbar – November 1991

Flooding Of The Parade Square

“I think it was during the time I was here as Chief Instructor that the surface on the Parade Square had deteriorated and they decided it had to be repaved. This was the responsibility of the Camp Engineer who had a young officer, from university, working for him during the summer. He allowed him to do the designing. Which he did. I guess he had no experience and no one checked his design. He didn’t allow sufficient slope for drainage. So they paved the Parade Square and, then, discovered they had great lakes of water all over it. I can remember the RSM (Regimental Sergeant Major) being greatly agitated when he looked out one morning and saw ducks swimming in the ponds on his Parade Square.”

Col Don Rochester – November 1991

Culture Shock

“We went through a phase in the early ‘60’s of training Eskimos, Inuit people, in heavy equipment here. They were taught other things in other places. I was the course officer of the first course they went through. Needless to say they not only didn’t adapt to military training, they thought it an hilarious way for grown up people to act... The Inuit people, students, were very, very quick. They have an incredibly high mechanical aptitude. But they were not literate in our sense about numeracy or reading and writing or what the red, green and orange light means. They’d never seen a horse. They were terrified by horses. Their culture shock we shared. Their mimicking of the Base Sergeant Major and the way he walked was also something that we found funny behind the scenes and kept a poker face on. It was a national program so that northern facilities like airstrips and airfields and what not could be sustained by Inuit people. The ones we were training would get jobs looking after northern runways and northern airfields.”

Col. Bob Moore – February 1992

Other Noteable Quotes

After I had spent my time as a photographer with PR in UNEF,I was called in by Col Rochester who was CO. He said he was going to do another tour there and asked me if I would too. I looked at him and he looked at me, and though I had great respect and loyality to him I said,"Sir, You have only your mother at home and I have a wife, your mother cannot divorce you, but my wife will surely divorce me if I stay for another tour".