We signed on with the Navy at such Reserve Divisions as HMCS Tecumseh, Queen Charlotte, Malahat, Star, Montcalm, Queen, Unicorn, Brunswicker, Chippawa, or at whatever unit was closest to home.

After signing on, having the medical, the uniform issued, you found yourself on a train taking you hundreds of miles away to HMCS Whatever to begin this new life. The train trip gave everyone plenty of time to look back upon the wisdom of their choosing to "join up". When the train arrived at its destination you struggled onto the platform burdened with hammock and kit bag and whatever surplus luggage you foolishly thought necessary to have. Immediately there was chaos. People in authority were everywhere, all yelling at once, calling rolls, mispronouncing names, suddenly selecting out some poor individual who was slow to respond, or who had his hat on the back of his head, or forgot to say "sir", and dressed him down in the awful silence that would make his embarrassment complete.

"Home" for the next five or six weeks would be some great barn of a place filled with rows of steel bunks. If you were lucky they were two-deckers; some were three-deck monstrosities that demanded mountain climbing experience to achieve the upper level.

Pandemonium reigned those first few days. No one bothered to tell you where the washrooms (heads) were, or where you were supposed to eat, and of course when you did find out, it was too late to avail yourself of either, for the instructor was yelling "fall in for divisions", whatever that was supposed to mean. Of course you were late, and soon found out that each day began with inspection, and you'd failed to shave, brush your uniform, polish your boots, etc., etc., and you were promptly subjected to dire threats of a quick departure from this world. Somehow you learned to get all of these things done, and on time, though there never seemed enough of that to go round.

Parade training seemed to be the "basic" in Basic Training. Wherever we went we marched, to meals, to classes, to church. We marched to the tune of "get those arms up" "get in step". "eyes front" "speak up" "pipe down" We marched with bands and without; route marches, and marches to nowhere. We nursed blisters those marches and ill fitting boots brought on; we ached in every joint, some we didn't know we had.

The instructors seemed to be impervious to fatigue; they were there at dawn, they were there at nightfall. They never walked, they marched; and they always wore gaiters as a badge of office. They wore their uniforms with ever so slight violations of the accepted standards; tapes maybe two inches too long, hat tally bow an inch or two forward of what they imposed on their charges, and their collars drawn back to add a jauntiness to their attire. They maintained a steely eyed glare that must have induced eye strain. They never smiled, and they spoke in a language only time could make intelligible. The word 'attention' came out as anything from "hyaah" to "ho"; 'stand at ease' became "stundut heez"; 'left, right' became "hef tite", and so on.

There was the question of money. Funds had a way of rapidly dwindling if and when you got paid. There were frequent visits to the canteen at meal time to buy chocolate bars to take the place of the unpalatable food; there was boot polish and kit-bag locks to buy; shaving cream and razor blades; writing pads, and envelopes, and stamps, to maintain the link with that other world you knew.

Yes, the third week was the turning point. You found you could endure the marching, the PT, and the single thud of thirty or so heels hitting the pavement together became the metronome you responded to. "You'll Get Used To It", the old song explained, and you did; you did things automatically now, responding with "sir", and saluting everything in sight to be on the safe side. There was less confusion, and you learned to sleep through just about anything, except classes of course.

With the end of Basic Training in sight, each began to wonder how trade school would be. Now we would go on to HMCS Cornwallis on the east coast, getting a little closer to the sea and to what we were supposed to be training for. Perhaps to the gunnery school or the torpedo school, or a technical school for engine room and stoker training, or communications at St. Hyacinthe, or perhaps directly to a ship tied up in some remote harbour.