Army reservists have been sleeping out in the open and digging trenches by hand this week at the military base in Meaford.
These soldiers are from 33 Canadian Brigade Group, which has reserve regiments in northern, central and eastern Ontario. They’ve come to the Army Training Centre – Central in Meaford because it suits their needs well.
“Meaford typically holds a lot of these RQIPs (rank qualification infantry-private courses),” says Course Officer Captain Mike Young. Meaford runs the course for full-time regular force members regularly, and army reserve training is designed to meet the same standards as Canada’s full-time regular force.
Capt. Young is a member of the Irish Regiment of Canada in Sudbury. He trained in Meaford at the beginning of his career around 20 years ago, and has deployed to Afghanistan, Jordan and Ontario long-term care homes during the pandemic. He’s now instructing this current group of reservists which has been in Meaford for about seven weeks.
Thursday morning, they awoke out in a field to a simulated attack, using blanks, as the final push of their summer qualification course to become infantry privates.
They’ve been out in the woods and fields of the base’s sprawling property, sleeping on the open ground with no tents, just their packs and bedrolls. “If you can find the tank ruts, it kind of snuggles you in a little bit, and makes it a little more comfortable,” says Young.
They sleep with all of their gear handy, that way if they come under attack in the middle of the night, (part of their training) they can react quickly.
These soldiers have been eating individual meal packs, wearing their fighting gear which includes helmets and vests with armoured plates, first aid kit, and ammunition (in this case blanks) adding extra weight to the task of digging their own trenches during a hot week in August. Young says digging into trenches varies in difficulty from clay to sand to rocks, noting, “You want to be able to stand in them.” That’s close to six feet down.
Defensive combat strategy is what this last part of the course to become a private is focusing on. “Think of it like a WWII style trench where we’ve got a front line and we’re stopping an enemy advance,” says Young.
On Tuesday night, it dumped rain on the soldiers sleeping out in the open – an unpleasant experience, but one they could easily encounter on a real deployment.
Young explains, “We’re training infanteers. We’re training the backbone of the military, we’re training the backbone of the combat arms of the military. It’s not always sunny, it’s not always a light breeze, it’s not always in the daylight. It’s going to be muddy. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to be all of these adverse terrain, adverse weather conditions. It really doesn’t matter,” says Young, adding, when the opportunity comes up to train, they do it in the existing conditions.
He adds, “There’s a difference between surviving in that weather and learning to thrive in it, which is really where the infanteer needs to be. They need to exist in that weather pattern as well as be able to operate in it, be able to react to the enemy, be able to still conduct their tasks.”
Darko Prodanovic is an Ottawa lawyer who has been a reservist with the Governor General’s Foot Guards for about a year, and has spent the summer in Meaford on the course.
He says, “I wanted a new challenge. Something physical, something intense, something very, very different than anything I’ve done before. I spend most of my days at a desk staring at a computer screen. This is almost the exact opposite of that.” He adds, “Honestly, I thought it would be a lot of fun and it turns out it has been a lot of fun, so I think it’s an excellent second job and I’m having a great time.”
Mason Umphrey is a medical responder from Beaverton, who works for a private ambulance. He’s also a racetrack fire rescue team member and now for the past year, an army reservist with the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment in Peterborough. He joined the reserves to continue his family’s rich military history.
“We’re just here to become the best we can for the people of this country. It’s a great honour to be a part of something like this,” says Umphrey, who was in good spirits, despite the overnight rain and mud followed by manning a machine gun in a trench in full gear in the blazing afternoon sun.
“That helps strengthen your mindset, the infantry mindset because sometimes when we do get called, it’s hard things. We have to really focus on being really mentally tough and being resilient. When things happen we’ve just got to push past whatever happens,” says Umphrey.
Upon successful completion of the course, they’ll all earn the rank of ‘private’ and go back to their home reserve regiments, or to Petawawa to take part in a large, brigade size exercise called Wolfpack Guardian. 33 Canadian Brigade Group has a wolf on its arm patch and Capt. Young explains, its “We operate as a wolfpack,” noting “What we train here is teamwork. You’re never one person working alone. You’re always working in a team.”
The Government of Canada’s website says its goal is to have 71,500 regular force members and 38,800 reserve force members by March 31st, 2032. As of this past April, we had 67,827 regular force members and 32,444 reserve force members.
It says in the fiscal year 2025/26, the Canadian Armed Forces enrolled 7,310 regular force members, surpassing its recruiting target by over 350 members. They say it was the highest number of enrolments in more than 30 years.
The near-term goal is to enrol 8,200 members in the 2026/27 fiscal year.
This past spring, the Army Training Centre – Central in Meaford was the first in Canada to transfer its command authority from the 4th Canadian Division, to the Canadian Army Training Centre. The change is part of a large-scale army modernization plan that reorganizes its divisions by their function rather than geography.
Across the country, there will be a Defence of Canada Division (mainly of part-time soldiers, domestic operations and surge capacity), Manoeuvre Division (primary combat force), Support Division (infrastructure, technical, personnel, engineers etc) and Training Formation (schools like the Meaford base).
As part of this modernization, the Army Training Centre -Central in Meaford is preparing for an increase in soldiers and staff over the next several years.