Katimavik Military Option: They Yelled at Us!
What Vancouver looked like in 1980, from HMCS Discovery Late in 1979, my Katimavik group left its friendly little Quebec village near the New Brunswick border. We had spent the previous three months getting to know the people there, working on community service projects, singing by guitar all evening, eating bean stew and whole wheat bread, and taking care of the environment. We boarded an airplane (if the guitar had been out, we might have been singing some John Denver ) and headed for the west coast. In Victoria, we were met by a military bus. Katimavikers know what to do with a bus; on a bus, Katimavikers sing! And that’s what we were doing as we entered the gates of the Esquimalt military base for our three-month military option rotation. Our group leaders (military officers) were there to meet us. We were slow getting off the bus, and they yelled at us! This was a big shock to us sensitive granola-crunching tree huggers. But we got used to it. Katimavik is, ...