My first taste of Canada is maybe an incorrect title for the story of how I happened to go to the mainland, still Canada to me, at the tender age of fourteen years. Perhaps I should have titled this little memoir "'Tag Day' in the coldness of a St. John's November." <br /> <br /> My wife of almost 57 years has always 'tagged' along with me wherever my wanderlust or my employer decided that I should go. I think sometimes that I came from a seafaring family and as my maternal grandfather was a master builder of schooners I may be correct in my thinking. This may help explain why I have wandered so far from home but my wife is no where close to being nomadic so it is either my charm or that Mary really loves me the reason she has always 'tagged' along with me. Which brings me back to Tag Day.<br /> <br /> We now live, or I might say on my subsistence pension exist, in Cobourg, Ontario. But forget that, a few days ago at Walmart I gave a $2 coin to a 12 year old air cadet selling tags as it was Air Cadet tag day. The weather in southern Ontario is a little milder than I remember it being when I was a 13 year old Air Cadet standing outside Parker Brothers Shoe Store, smiling my sweetest smile and trying to entice passersby to donate ten or twenty cents for a "tag", a nickle would have been great as well. I don't remember how much money I collected that day but I do remember that it was the usual cold and gray foggy day on Water Street. But the time I spent in the cold and dampness of that November day hoping to sell tags as well as the time spent attending drills was paid back in spades when the following summer I was selected to attend summer camp at RCAF base in Greenwood, N.S.<br /> <br /> I had reached the age of twelve years old on December 29th, 1953 and sometime in September of 1954 I joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. Why I joined the Air Cadets and not the Navy Cadets, which would seem to have been a better fit for a "bay boy"like me (I lived in St. John's but in my heart I was always a Trinity Bay Boy) I cannot recall. I cannot as well recall the reason or if I even had one, I normally didn't need a reason to do anything that I wanted to do, for joining the Air Cadets. We were not paid, but got a free uniform that I was told young girls liked, so money was not the reason. But for whatever reason I joined the Air Cadets mattered little to me because of Greenwood, N.S.<br /> <br /> Going to Greenwood in August 1955 we boarded a B52 at Torbay air port and secured our selves along the fuselage in straps, more or less standing, along the wall of the airplane until we landed in Greenwood. At the RCAF base we were assigned to barracks, a bunch of young guys sleeping in one room; can you imagine the talk, the chaos? <br /> <br /> During the seven day camp all cadets in attendance were taken for a ride in a four seat Piper Cub, with each cadet taking a turn in the co-pilot's seat. As things worked out I was sitting in the co-pilot's seat when we were landing at the air strip in Greenwood, an experience that I shall never forget. When we were approaching the landing strip it seemed to me that I was sitting in a chair and watching the air strip come to me, as if I were playing a video game. At that exact moment I knew what I wanted and what I was going to do with the rest of my life, become a pilot in the R.C.A.F. and fly around the world forever. But fate, whose name is Mary, as it inevitably does intervened and my plans, as seasons do, changed.<br /> <br /> But thank you Newfoundland and the R.C.A.F. for an experience, that for all the money in the world, I would never sell. I would die a pauper first.   Submitted By: Randolph Toope