After years of helping people plan their financial futures at the Bank of Montreal, Peter Winters thought there was something missing in his life.
So, at age 47, he joined the army reserves.
Sure it would be tough keeping up with all those 20-somethings to make it through basic training but his greatest fear about joining the Rocky Mountain Rangers B Company was what his wife Shauna would think of his plan. As it turned out, she backed him wholeheartedly.
Winters got the idea of enlisting in the army after he met two corporals at the bank. He thought he was too old but they suggested he wasn’t and he followed through as the Rangers’ oldest recruit pursuing his basic military qualification.
Winters has always liked outdoor activities and camping and for four years has been a Scout Canada leader, serving as the organization’s Prince George group commissioner. The father of three boys, aged seven, nine and 12, camping trips with the Scouts meant quality time with his boys. His military training with B Company has given him a whole new skillset of survival techniques that he can now pass on to the kids.
This year, he took his military involvement one step further. As a private in a 40-strong Prince George infantry unit, Winters enrolled in officer training in January which took up three of every four weekends for four months. Then from May-August he was deployed full-time to Edmonton and Wainwright for three months of intense training which put him through tasks he thought he would never be able to accomplish. One of the most difficult was dealing with sleep deprivation while simulating combat situations. For two weeks in July, he was living in a field under a tarp, exposed to the elements.
“You’re working on a 24-hour clock and you have three eight-hour tasks you have to do inside a 24-hour period and when you’re standing on patrol most often you’re not sleeping - it’s one of those things where it’s (testing) being able to function while not sleeping a lot,” he said.
“There was a point where I looked at my watch and I figured I’d averaged 45 minutes of sleep for the last two weeks. Most of that was standing up, on guard duty.”
Like all B Company members, Winters has frontline infantry training and was taught to use the light C9 machine gun, as well as the C7 rifle, and was also trained in the use of grenades.
“I’ve never been the type that says I want to run around with a rifle, I’ve been the one that says I want to serve and be part of something bigger - you want to help and that’s really what we do here,” he said.
“I’m not going to lie, the grenade training was a heckuva lot of fun. It’s that childhood thing. It’s a lot of second-tier fun in the sense that, at the time, you’re miserable. But you look back on it now and I’ve gotten closer to the people on my courses than I have with friends I’ve known for 10 years because there’s a shared experience and shared level of suffering.”
During his basic training, while carrying a heavy pack during a long ruck march, one of Winters’ knees buckled as he climbed a hill. Right away, two of his fellow privates were on either side of him lifting up his pack so he could get back on his feet.
“You build bonds with these people that is beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” said Winters. “It’s hard to understand that outside the army because having that experience is somewhat rare. You build a community by doing this and it’s a very tight-knit community.”
At age 48, he was oldest of his group to successfully make it through his officer training.
Now, as a logistics officer, it’s his job to help run the company, making sure the paperwork is done so bullets arrive in the right places and water and food are in place for the troops. He’s no adrenaline junkie and doesn’t see himself ever as a frontline soldier engaged in a combat. If it ever comes to that, he knows his role will be to make sure those soldiers have what they need.
Winters grew up in White Rock and came to Prince George in 1995 to study psychology at the newly-opened UNBC. He completed all of his military training during the pandemic and was masked up all the time. He said one of his favourite memories of the past 15 years was the day he received his two LT bars which designate him as a second lieutenant and a commissioned officer.
Winters has spent a good chunk of the past year away from home and credits his wife for her efforts to hold the family together in his absence. He had no time off to go home during those three months of officer training and that left just about everything on Shauna’s shoulders.
“Being away from my family was the toughest component,” Winters said.
“My wife has essentially been single-parenting since January and I’ve got to tell you, she’s worth two of me. At the time we were doing this my wife was moving her mother-in-law in and moving houses, so I came back to a brand-new house. She had a lot going on and there wasn’t a heckuva lot I could do from my end. At one point I was on a range in Wainwright having to discuss what was going on with a lawyer and there was machine-gun fire going on behind me, which scared the crap out of the lawyer.”
Being part of an army reserve sometimes means getting the call to assist in domestic operations and several Rocky Mountain Rangers served during the wildfires of recent years and to helped deal with the flooding that devastated parts of the province a year ago. B Company members have been sent to Europe to help train Ukrainian troops.
“We have people here who are currently deployed - we’re as international as we choose to be,” said Winters. “Obviously we’re not currently at war, but we’re certainly in a training and support position.”
Now nearly two years into his military commitment, Winters still works full-time at the bank and says his employer is entirely supportive of his pursuit of an army career, agreeing to give him time off whenever he has to answer the call of duty, whether that’s on a domestic mission or overseas.
“I have a day job and I work for a bank and it doesn’t check all the boxes anymore,” he said. “Honestly, I feel the need to serve our community and I feel the need to serve Canada.
“The idea of deploying at one point, it is attractive. If you’re not going to do it it’s like training for a marathon and not going. I admit, when I started, it was like, I’m not deploying, I’m not going to leave my family, I can’t do any of that. Now that I’m here and see what we can do. There’s a lot we can do in Canada that’s good and a lot of very beneficial things abroad as well.”
Winters has attended the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Civic Centre for several years with the Scouts and plans to be in uniform part for the parade with the Rocky Mountain Rangers this Friday.
“I’ve always felt a profound sense of gratitude and now that I sit on the side of that you always wonder what you can do to be worthy of that gratitude,” he said. “I’m wearing the same uniform, or at least comparable to it, and you’ve got to find a way to make sure you’re worthy of that. In recent conflicts we’ve lost people and I think it’s incumbent upon us to make sure they’re honoured by what we do.”
