Nova Scotia - Cornwallis

When Cornwallis was a Canadian Military basic training facility, I had come here as a Sea Cadet and again when I joined the Navy. It was completed in the winter of 1942-43 and served as a training facility for new navy recruits until it closed in 1946. It was re-commissioned in 1949 and served as a Navy recruit base until 1968 when the Canadian Forces unified and then was used by all three branched of the Canadian Military. It was closed down in 1994. Just in front of the stop sign were the tracks for the train that took new recruits here from up Nova Scotia and also went South to the Digby ferry terminal.

 The field here once housed the gym and pool but it burnt down shortly after the base became an industrial park, community centers and Pearson Peacekeeping Center. Sea cadets still use the barracks for summer courses, pictured in the background.

In the vicinity of bases throughout Canada, there will be military vehicles for display; generally they will be near war memorials. Here is a British designed Centurion tank. It was originally designed to take a direct hit from an WW2 German 88mm gun but only entered the war just after it ended. It was widely popular and was used by many countries up until the 90's.

 The CF-100 Voodoo entered service in 1961, made by McDonnell aircraft corporation, and remained in service until 1987. Its primary weapons were two nuclear AIR2-A Genie unguided missiles. Political controversy led to the missiles being stored in Canada by US forces and only signed over to the Canadians in die emergency. This meant the Canadian Government could say that they owned no nuclear devices yet had them immediately available.

The Sherman tank was an American designed medium tank that was superior to many of the German light and medium tanks. There were more of these tanks built during WW2 than all other tanks by all sides combined. It was actually the British that named this tank first, due to the practice of Britain naming tanks after American Civil war Union generals that were sent to them under the lend-lease program. The name stuck and found its way back to the States. The British and Canadians also used a variant with a larger 76 mm, called the Firefly, in order to deal with heavier German tanks.

This is the Canadair CT-133 Silver Star, based off of the American T-33 Shooting Star, which entered Canadian Air Force service in 1951 as a training aircraft. It stopped being used as a trainer in 1976 but was still used for communications, simulating enemy aircraft and towing targets until 2005.