Camp history on display

Jul 5, 2019 | 5:35 AM

The public can learn more about Vernon’s role in Canadian military history with the reopening of the Vernon Cadet Camp Museum.

The museum, in the former guardhouse off Highway 97 south of Vernon, is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday.

The idea to create a museum started in 2013 when the building was declared surplus.

Curator Francois Arseneault, a former cadet at the camp, has been collecting artifacts from friends and contributors for many years.

“I myself have been collecting for some 40 years, and it needed to find a home, but some very generous people from across the country have also stepped up and said ‘This needs to be here,'” Arseneault told Vernon Matters.

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He said the facility displays the history of the military camp, which goes back to 1909, and the history of the cadet camp (1949) which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this summer.

“There is a staggering amount of history having to do with the Vernon Military Camp during both the First and Second World Wars. With the First World War, six-and-a half-thousand men trained in 1915 and 1916 each, when the population of the city was only 3,000. Those soldiers went on to Europe and fought in the trenches. They fought in France and Belgium and many of them never came home. They’re buried there, so that’s quite important to remember those gentlemen,” Arseneault told Vernon Matters.

Arseneault says in World War Two, Vernon was an important recruit training centre, and the first school of infantry for all of Canada.

“These are pieces of history that have been lost otherwise for people who are not familiar, so it’s important to incapsulate that history.”

Arseneault said 90,000 cadets have come through the camp since 1949, with more arriving Sunday for this year’s edition.

“It’s the oldest continuous cadet training centre in all of Canada. They come from literally every province in the country. We’ve even had a few exchange cadets over the years from the United States and a few from the Caribbean in the 1960’s, so we want to celebrate their history.”

The museum has over 2,500 items on display, including a look at the type of lodging cadets were used to.

“We have created a full size barracks room. We use a little bit of trickery to make it seem bigger than it actually is. Everything in there is absolutely perfect in its representation of 1977 right down to the soundtrack with (Beach Radio, formerly Kiss FM and CJIB announcer) Frank Martina, and he was on the air back then. We would hear a radio in our barracks no matter what. Somebody always had a little transistor radio so we listened to all the pop radio at the time,” Arseneault added.

Sample barracks room at the Cadet Museum (Pete McIntyre/Vernon matters Staff)