OPPORTUNITIES ABOUND !! Canadian Armed Forces Years Service 1972 - 1994 Welcome and thank you for joining me on a nostalgic tour of 21 of the best years of my life spent in service to Canada. The Canadian Forces offers incredible equal opportunity career employment in numerous areas of interest to anyone with a desire to serve, a willingness to work hard and an adventuresome spirit. The recruiting slogan said, "Be All That You Can Be" ... I was caught by the challenge.

At the tender young age of 19, in the Canadian Forces Recruiting Center in Calgary, Alberta 14 September 1972, my father, Major Lyn Brasseur, then Commanding Officer of 43rd Radar Squadron, Penhold, Alberta, "swore me in". I pledged the Oath of Allegiance, signed on the "dotted line" and became a member of the Canadian Armed Forces (Air Element) in the rank of Private with the assigned trade of Administration Clerk 831.

My adventure began as one of a group of 60 other women from all across Canada headed to Basic Recruit Training at C.F.B. Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, and was followed by basic trades training at the Canadian Forces School of Administration and Logistics at C.F.B. Borden, Ontario. My first posting was to the Orderly Room of 14 Dental Unit Detachment, C.F.B. Winnipeg, Manitoba where I served as a typist in the dental office.

It was not long after starting my job as a typist, that I found myself bored, frustrated and furiously pounding away on a stubborn old WWII issue manual typewriter!!! I did not feel that I was "being all that I could be" and subsequently applied for commissioning under the Officer Candidate Training Program. Amazingly I was selected!!!