Military in town

PARRY SOUND - More than 1,000 Canadian troops are coming to town for the military exercise, Spartan Bear.
As of Wednesday, members of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, the group ahead of the main body of 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade (CMBG), are in town. The 2 CMBG follows on Monday, and are here until May 10, from their homebase of CFB Petawawa. Spartan Bear takes them as far north as North Bay and southwest to Meaford, and includes towns and communities in Parry Sound-Muskoka.
Soldiers will be over-nighting and stationed on public and private property throughout West Parry Sound, including the Foley Fairgrounds and the Parry Sound Smelter Wharf.
In Seguin Township military personel will build two temporary bridges, one along Highway 518, the second beside the existing Shadow River bridge on Highway 632 in Rosseau.
On Tuesday, Captain Mark Timms brought town council up to speed on the exercise.
“A soldier is either deployed, resting from a deployment, or preparing to deploy,” Timms explained. “In this case, when I say preparing to deploy what I mean is maintaining a certain degree of soldiering skillset. If we think of soldiering like an athlete, or a sport, if an athlete is not actively competing, that athlete is actually training.”
Exercise Spartan Bear will have the soldiers focusing on their defensive skills moving an entire brigade and equipment from one area to another, Timms said.
“(The exercise) provides dynamic training based on conventional war-fighting skills with focus of defensive operations, setting the stage for the future high-readiness of the brigade, which will enable it to support any Canadian Forces mission that we’re asked to support in the future,” he said. “It focuses on defending something. So we’ll actually dig in and defend a position in the training area of land-force in Meaford, Ontario, but the road to Meaford, from Petawawa takes us up through North Bay, through the Town of Parry Sound, down to Orillia and we’ll set a staging area in Collingwood and finally move through Collingwood actually to Meaford.”
Although they will do their best to not interrupt the day-to-day life for Parry Sounders, Timms said there may be some disruption as they move through the region.
1,000 soldiers
“If you can imagine over 1,000 soldiers moving through an actual Canadian city, there may or may not be some pattern of life disruption. The idea from our perspective, is to actually achieve our training without pattern of life disruption for normal Canadians that are just trying to go about their daily business. That’s why we engage the OPP and your emergency management coordinator to figure out exactly the best way to do that,” he said. “There may be some points where normal Canadian citizens are asked to just pause for a second while a packet of military vehicles goes through. That said, all that information with the specific locations of those control points and the times that they’ll be in effect will be shared with your OPP.”
Ask questions
Although the main focus for the military is training, Timms stressed that the public is more than welcome to approach soldiers to ask questions or strike up a conversation.
“The focus for us, for the duration of our stay in Parry Sound and essentially all the way through Ontario, through Meaford, will be on training. That said, we are the Canadian Forces, every soldier involved in this exercise will adopt and open and congenial posture and certainly open and approachable to any Canadian that has any questions.
“We very much realize you don’t necessarily get to see soldiers too frequently so if you have any questions, by any means, feel free to approach soldiers to ask them questions and they will answer them to the best of their ability,” he said. “But please don’t feel slighted, after they’ve entertained a conversation with you for a few minutes, they excuse themselves to carry on with their training tasks.”
Coun. Bonnie Keith thanked Timms and all the men and women who serve on behalf of Canadians.
“Personally I’m really glad to be a Canadian and I’m really glad to see this exercise occurring throughout the community,” said Keith. “I think it shows me personally that my tax-paying dollars is being put to good use and also I want to personally thank you for all the men and women willing to serve in the Armed Forces for our country, it’s something I think that many of us appreciate.”

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