RCHA

I just got back from British Columbia, where I spent two days visiting an old high school friend who works with the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery (RCHA). There is a small group of RCHAs stationed at the "Summit" on Roger's pass, half way between Golden and Revelstoke on the Trans-Canada Highway. Their job? To shoot artillery rounds at the side of mountains when there is danger of avalanches. In other words, they provoke controlled avalanches in order to save lives.

The downside to the job is that they have to live in this awful quiet and serene place for six weeks of excruciating sacrifice. My friend had to leave Petawawa to come to these awful mountains. He is heart broken; he cannot wait to get back to the Ottawa Valley.

The cannons (155s) that they use are Korean War vintage with replaced recoil mechanisms. They remain remarkably accurate. Here are a couple of pictures of the WMDs.

In this one, you can see the unknown visitor and the proud Sergeant Diaz standing next to one of the cannons. Diaz tells me how much he prefers these old guns to the newer ones we later purchased from the French. Yeah, I know! I'll have to pass up the opportunity. That is a story for another day and post.


Here, one can see a bit more detail of part of the gun's mechanisms. I'd love to spread rumors that I took it out for a spin and fired a few rounds into a few mountain summits. But those rumors are all false. In reality, once I found out that a shell would not reach Ottawa, the whole magnetic thing with the gun sortta went away.


Here you can see the only four highly-trained experts in the whole country who are authorized to drive the trucks that haul the guns to the shooting sites.



And in this one, one can see the irreverence of the trained transport people for the might and power of the WMD. Ah, the embarrassing pains of the division of labor.

As an aside, but an important one, we need to pass the country's hat to collect some money to send to Premier Campbell for the repair of BC roads. We are spoilt in Alberta, and we don't know it. Here, the secondary and tertiary roads are in better shape than the stretch of highway (Did I mention that it is the Trans-Canada we're talking about?) between Field and Roger's Pass. The bumps and potholes there made me quite nostalgic for the roads in Quebec.