Here’s a heartfelt one-finger SALUTE to the naval ass-hat who decided to close the dockyard 1 1/2 hours early with several hundred people in line.
People had been there for up to 2 hours only to be turned away. You’ve got it on the website as open 10-4, if you were going to shut down at 2:30 the least you could have done was give people some advance warning. —This is your idea of a public relations exercise?
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.
Heh. F-U-D-N-D. That’s actually pretty clever.
HAHA F. U. D. N. D., too cute, BTW it is a shiity public relations exercise.
How about Delta Uniform Mike Mike Yankee, you could go on all day with the phonetic alphabet
they probly closed early, because the old bag from england is here, and wanted to see what other crap, she could suck us into buying, for the navy.
LS pretty much summed it up.
I wonder how much Ark Royal is going for. Be hella kule to have an aircraft carrier in harbor again. Wish I’d been a ‘gonian when the Bonnie was still around.
I dont know why they closed early but I was pretty pissed off as well when they did after standing in line with my impatient 7 year old.
Maybe if you got there a little earlier like the rest of the people did (some lined up at 8am when it only opens at 10am), then you’d have gotten in. Don’t blame for navy for your poor sense of time and punctuality.
That’s right the ships were open until 4pm, not the line to see them. Obviously the ship tours were quite sucessful and that there were enough people in to take it to 4pm. Instead of bitching, you should thank DND for letting you know so that you didn’t waste another hour and a half waiting.
I thought the tours were great. I went yesterday and today. I did the aircraft carrier today and that tour was great. A lot of people showed up, but we arrived very early. The three hour wait in the line was worth it. You should have realised that they’d be swamped with people and shown up earlier. No sympathy.
I did the tour this morning/afternoon as well. Showed up at 9:45 and had about a two hour wait. Also noticed signs all over the place stating that gates would close at 3:30.
However, yesterday was handled very poorly. No signage, nothing like that and people who had been there since 12:30 (perhaps earlier than that!) were turned away with no warning whatsoever. If the plan had been to close the gates at 2:30 they should have let people know. No excuse for that.
The good news is that there are more ship visitations scheduled through the week. Impossible to visit them all in one day anyway. I know. I tried. This Navy Brat is lovvvvving IFR week!The DND IFR concert with Colin James, Garrett Mason and others rocked! Go Navy!
I guess Navy fails at customer service.
BTW: HMCS Toronto and Brazil’s Independaence are docked up by Pier 21 and seem to have shorter lines than the more centrally located ships. HMCS Goose Bay is docked at Alderney Landing and is tourable. I was able to board all three with no wait times!
The aircraft carriers would have to be the big ticket items for visitors. Worth the wait but there goes half your day. I’d try for the 2 Danish ships,the Mikkelson (sic) and the Absalon, Very interesting stealth-influenced design on the upper works.
I got turned away yesterday too, right at the dude at the gate who was closing it down. I figured arriving at 1245 would be enough time… I never thought we’d be turned away at 230. So sad because I’ve been exciting for days to get on that boat. 🙁
they closed the gates at 230 because it would have taken the crowd ALREADY waiting,1 1/2 hours to get through,so,you are wrong,not the navy!!
the bear and the pa toured the birmingham and the gettysburgh. the ships that had guided tours took much longer to get on…today would probably be a good day, what with the rain
Tours don’t resume again until Wednesday and Canada Day. Nova Scotia’s liquid sunshine will put paid to the flypast this afternoon, but I did see the Snowbirds flyover on Saturday.
Glad your menfolk had a good day PG. About 10 years ago Discovery aired a 6 part documentary series called HMS Brilliant. A British production team had pretty much unlimited access to an RN destroyer and it’s crew on a 6 month tour enforcing the Balkan embargo in the Adriatic. Really good – love to get it on DVD.
do not ever question soldiers motives or the reason to their decisions.with your comfortable safe job,seeing your family everyday.while they are vigilant,you sleep soundly.
know your place and respect it, civilian!
The only thing that irked me so far about this event is the fact that a lot of things closed down early today because of the weather.
I understand that (I think…)
But for fuck sakes, I was scheduled to volunteer at the bar tonight and NO ONE told me about the cancellation; no phone call, no email, nothing. I showed up to find out it was all closed, and all gone pete tong!
Otherwise things seem to be going epic. Colin James effin rocked on Saturday, can’t wait to (hopefully) volunteer Tuesday and Wednesday!
xsixesx—are you insane ?
The world wide WAR machine is exactly why the world is as fucked up as it is.
Anyone who believes being brainwashed to ‘kill for your country’ is a good thing….is a fucking moron.
I can see the value of police services, Coast guard… I even see the need for Government ( I just wished they worked for us, instead of thinking we all work for them)
But having Trillions of dollars go to supporting War machines in almost every Nation is IMO what is holding us back as a species. Imagine what could be done with the Military budgets, if instead of more bombs, war machines & conflicts ,that money was spent toward education, the scientific community, helping 3rd World Countries improve their agricultural sectors.
But unfortunately people like yourself will never be happy until we have the capability to blow up the world 1000 times over…instead of the hundred times over we are capable of now !
Several countries of the world presently still manufacture landmines from 5 to 10 million a year, many for as little as $3.00.
Yet we have almost half the worlds population having restricted access to clean water ! With many having no access at all !
When I see all the War machines lined up in the Harbour today…I didn’t feel any pride, I felt dismay at what a waste of resources that we are guilty of.
Protecting yourself is one thing… inflicting your beliefs on others through force is something else entirely !
But war machines are really cool. And folks in the military are much like police officers, fire fighters, EMTs, ER docs etc. They understand the difference between feeling good and doing good. And that is rather rare in our society these days.
Ivan… I know some guy’s who are now ex military, I’ve hears many ‘stories’ from these guy’s & something about shooting deer with a tank round, for fun while on exercises…doesn’t really sound like fun to me.
I fail to see how that action was good , whether feeling or doing comes into it I don’t know.
(IMO its just fucked up ! !)
And I know some ex-military people, like my father, who risked their lives to aid refugees, bury casualties and arrange prisoner transfers in Cyprus in 1974, when you had the spectacle of 2 NATO countries going to war , ethnically cleansing the mixed population and shooting liberally at the soldiers of another NATO nation (Canada) who were wearing that surprisingly un-bulletproof Blue Beret that the Iggy and Taliban Jack are so nostalgic for. Which is really quite hilarious since at the high-water mark of Canada’s “traditional” UN peacekeeping (who knew the NDP were such traditionalists) the defence policy of the New Democrats was , quite literally, “take the toys away from the boys” and that of the Trudeau and Chretien liberals was scarcely better.
Now we could tell war stories for the rest of the day without necessarily solving a thing. It just depends on what you consider to be “the exception” versus “the rule”
More…good luck catching that rainbow. Yes, it would be wonderful if the world could do without any form of military forces, but the reality is that every country needs one. It is necessary to protect our population and our resources (remember the spanish fish thieves that our navy sent back home?)
You don’t have to agree with the afghan mission (I don’t), but I bet if the area where you live was to suffer a nasty flood (or any other disaster), you’d get a warm and fuzzy feeling to see truckloads of soldiers coming in to your town to pile sandbags around your house…Cops and firefighters do what they can but they are limited in numbers, and you can’t expect civilians to be organized and prepared to react quickly and efficiently the way an army is trained to do (just a fact – sorry).
…And about shooting a deer with a tank round, you obviously have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. Ammo is very strictly controlled, and it isn’t cheap…so if you’re given ammo, you’re going to fire it when you’re told, and at the target you’re supposed to fire at. If you don’t, you’re going to be in a world of hurt. A 102 mm gun going off is not exactly subtle either, so it’s not like you can fire it “while no one is watching” and expect no one will know. I’ve seen guys get a second arsehole reamed just for shooting one RIFLE round at the wrong time or at the wrong target at the range, so the 102 mm round shot at a deer…I’m sorry but your buddies are full of shit.
Tsunami, Hurricane, Earthquake, Civil War. The Americans will have an Aircraft Carrier Battlegroup and Marine Amphibious Unit there in about 72 hours, which co-incidentally is about the same amount of time it takes the UN General Assembly to decide whether to order Cajun or Thai for lunch. And depending on whether our politicians are watching CNN, we are usually there shortly after, with something. DART, a couple of ships, those sexy new C-17 heavy lifters that a certain ex-environmentalist commissar finds so “obscene”
Make no mistake, the primary task of a military is to kill people and break things; the fact that the armed forces of Western, democratic nations make great first responders is to our eternal credit and something to be proud of, not embarrassed by.
And when we can no longer ignore the fact that there are “detestable scumbags” in this world who could do with a bit of killing, they are pretty damned good at that, too.
I think what More is getting at is that instead of trying to kill the fellow human race, we should have united and collaborated against those pesky alien species who are inevitably going to come destroy us all….
we could have had the NCC1701-D made by now if we weren’t mustard-gassing our fellow people….
zZz, great, then we can worry about phasers and photon torpedos. LOL.
Ivan, your right. I wonder what the masses would do if we were attacked in our own land (which thankfully hasn’t happened since the War of 1812, with the exceptions of some ships off the coasts during WWI and II). I bet they’d be clamouring for the CF to protect them.
Better to fight them over there than here.
at least we’d have that shield technology down….
and who doesn’t want to transport??? really???
I want a holodeck. Computer run Program: ivaninnakedkatyperryland – Authorization Bravo-Niner-Zero.
Bro Tim: you’ve alluded to a military background before. If you don’t mind me asking are you ex-Air Force with a tour in Eritrea under your belt and a very compelling reason to not like the Vandoos, cuz you remind me of a bloke I used to work with at the gulag.
I know, long odds.
“friendly fire” is the one that always bugged me…
is ANY fire really friendly?
unless it’s paintballs… or a bonfire with friends or family, it’s not friendly.
BBQ’s aren’t friendly either
“Friendly fire” has become more of a media term. The Brits with their impeccable sense of black humor call it an “Own Goal” like in footy when you score on your own team’s net. American’s use the term “Blue on Blue Contact.” For the grunts on the receiving end it comes down to “Someone fucked up bigtime!”
or the ever popular “oops”
I’ve tried twice now to respond to those like Bro Tim & -.
No matter what i post it gets deleted.