Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 10/02) - Somewhere in between boy scouts and the armed forces, 70 teens are trudging through knee-deep snow on Pickerel Lake, about 60 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.

Sgt. Ryan Knight, from Yellowknife, learns how to fire up a misbehaving Coleman stove.

Decked out in military green winter garb, they look like young soldiers. And they are, in a sense. These are air cadets, four squadrons come together from across the North: youth from Yellowknife, Faro, Whitehorse and Iqaluit.

It's the first time they have assembled as one North-of-60 contingent, giving them a chance to celebrate two air cadets birthdays: the 60th of the entire movement, and the 30th of the 825 Yellowknife Squadron.

Their birthday gift is a weekend-long air crew survival exercise. That means lessons in map-reading, ground to air communication, shelter-building, even search-and-rescue grid techniques.

But the lessons aren't limited to what's being taught.

'We're important here'

Standing near the lake's shoreline, Fred Sage is lecturing on how to construct an A-frame shelter. The shelter is designed to keep one person warm for a night in an emergency, he explains.

Round-faced and wearing glasses, Sage stands out by his authoritative tone, but not by his appearance: he is hardly older than the cadets he is teaching.

With some assistance, he lashes together three poles into an ungainly pyramid. He then grabs a pine bough, which is used to construct the shelter's side wall. Tearing off a small branch, he shows how the needles have to be pointed down to allow precipitation to run off the outside.

"Have you guys ever built a shelter like this before?" Sage asks.

A flight sergeant who is in his fourth year with air cadets, Sage joined because he wanted to be a pilot. This summer he gets his first chance when he attends the cadet glider school in Comox, B.C.

"It's probably one of the best youth organizations there is," he says. His lecture on constructing an A-frame is one reason why: "we get lots of responsibilities."

Then he adds: "We're important here."

They're also tough. Temperatures fell to -30 C over the weekend, and it is too far to run for home. In exchange for bearing the cold, the squadrons will award each cadet with a -30 certification.

Sage is part of a group of cadets who have gone a step further: he is -40 certified, meaning he has spent 48 hours camping in that frigid temperature. "We did it in four-hour shifts," he says. "You work four hours and sleep four hours."

While Sage teaches, Rory Kilburn meanders through the different training sessions. He stands out partly because he is decades older than the cadets, partly because he is wearing blue.

Kilburn is a lieutenant-colonel and the chief of staff for Canadian Forces Northern Area. His personal experience with the cadets is limited: he spent a year with the Comox squadron. But he makes a point of hanging out with the cadets whenever he can.

"They're kids and they're doing something that I consider worthwhile -- they're outside learning," he says.

Kilburn has travelled all across the North, and he says the cadet movement has positively impacted many of the small communities strung across the arctic. One of the things he has noticed is yesterday's cadets returning to their communities to teach and mentor today's recruits.

"Especially here in the North, that means they're getting good role models," he says.

Military dreaming

At 18, Edward Peart is getting an early start on role modelling. A warrant officer in his fourth year with the cadets, he is the camp's regimental sergeant-major. In English, that means he is overseeing the camp's operations.

Peart joined because he wanted to be a fighter pilot. He changed his mind when he discovered that it's not the glamour job one sees on "Top Gun": "it's a lot of paperwork and not much flying," he says.

Now he wants to fly tactical helicopters, or maybe join the army's ultra-exclusive Joint Task Force Two (JTF2) special forces commando unit . For Peart, like for most, cadets isn't just military training. It's training for life, in a real-time theatre.

"I've learned how to problem solve here better than anywhere else," says Peart. "When you're out in the field and it's raw and it's right here, you have to come up with a solution right away."

That's what Capt. Steve Daniels has in mind when he explains that a military role for cadets is "tertiary." Despite the air force trappings, the program is really about training citizens, says the Yellowknife squadron commander.

"We teach them a bit about life and about teaching themselves," he says. "We teach them to see that working as a team, you can get a phenomenal amount of work done."

For the cadets themselves, that translates into several important things: a chance to travel, an opportunity to pursue a pilot's licence and the ability to bond with a group of similar-aged youth on a wind-swept lake 60 kilometres north of Yellowknife.

In the final tally, this isn't as much about learning how to stay alive if your aircraft crashes as it is simply absorbing the lessons that come with discipline, responsibility and a healthy respect for the elements.

In the words of Peart, "I've been to Florida to watch a space shuttle launch. I've gotten my glider's licence. There's just so many things like this that you can't get anywhere else. ... (Air cadets) teaches you discipline, and you reap the rewards."