The Rocky Mountain Rangers have a new commanding officer.
The first, and the one who laid the groundwork for the reserve unit to branch into Prince George, was Lt. Col. John Feller who passed away in June after a lengthy illness.
His replacement, the man who will preside over the reserve unit's actual establishment here, is Lt. Col. Kevin Tyler.
He joined the Canadian army out of high school, trained through the military college system, and has now been a soldier for 32 years. He has been deployed to battle theatres in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and training missions to places as diverse as Australia and the Arctic.
Tyler will, like Feller, be based at Rocky Mountain Rangers headquarters in Kamloops, but will make frequent trips to Prince George especially in the early days of the platoon. The Rocky Mountain Rangers is an army reserve unit which means it is made up of members of the community who train as soldiers on a part-time basis on short-term contracts with the Canadian military.
"There will be four full-time staff in Prince George. I expect that will be one captain and three sergeants, but that is all in the early stages," Tyler told The Citizen in his first interview since attaining the command post. "We've got about 50 application files so far. We expect that of those, 10 to 15 will likely make it all the way through to become members of the unit, and we have a lot more recruiting to do. Forty is our goal for Jan. 1.
There are several tests to complete for each applicant: aptitude, physical, drug, etc. After that begins a slow introduction to basic training, followed by a stint next summer "in Shilo, Manitoba, or some other military training facility to qualify them as full infantrymen," Tyler said. An ongoing cycle through this process would keep the militia unit in Prince George permanently stocked with fully qualified but part-time soldiers.
Tyler said the welcome the Rocky Mountain Rangers has received from the Prince George community was unmistakably positive and surprising even to the unit's biggest proponents.
"It was a long time in coming, it was well known that Prince George wanted a military presence," he said. "Prince George was the largest community in Canada without a reserve unit, so that played a role in all this happening now."
The Rocky Mountain Rangers will hold their next recruiting session, and a major awareness-builder, at the Prince George Exhibition.
In the Canadian military system, reserve units offer part-time employment to individuals who are trained up to the standard of a full soldier, to augment the main missions of the Canadian Forces. Reservists can, under certain circumstances, join the main military for international activities and play a large support role in domestic military activities.
According to the Department of National Defense, The Army Reserve has three roles:
* Existing Reserve units are the framework or structure the Army would use to mobilize or expand the Army should the nation ever need to respond to a large crisis as in the World Wars.
* Located in hundreds of communities across Canada, Canadians connect with their Army through the Army Reserve.
* The Army Reserve augments the Regular Army by providing soldiers, units or specialists to the Canadian Forces.
