BMOQ

Basic Training, Boot Camp, or whatever else you wish to call it, is your first taste of the military. This is a test of your endurance, your patience, you teamwork skills and your ability to eventually lead a small group of people.

To provide you with an overview as found HERE on the Forces website I have listed a bunch of general information of the course:

• 14 Week Course: This can vary depending on your entry plan, for Direct Entry Officers (DEO) it is a consecutive 14 weeks.
• The objective is to provide knowledge common to all trades and elements and to prepare officers to effectively lead small teams.

The topics you can expect to learn include:

• Drill
• First Aid
• Weapons Handling
• Physical Training
• Topography
• Field Training
• Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Defence
• Force Protection Operations
• Canadian Armed Forces Regulations and Orders
• Communication
• Military History
• Leadership
• Military Planning

Your estimated daily routine will look sort of like this:

• 5:00 am: Wake up
• 05:10 am: Morning physical training
• 06:30 am: Breakfast
• 07:00 am: Inspection
• 08:00 am: Instruction
• 11:30 am: Lunch
• 12:30 pm: Instruction
• 05:00 pm: Dinner
• 06:00 pm: Maintenance of military kit and quarters
• 11:00 pm: Lights out

 

Where you’ll be staying on course!

BMOQ is conducted in St Jean, Quebec. The base is primarily used for the training of new recruits with the occasional language training course being taught there as well. Below is a photo of the MEGA, the impressive building that is some 12 stories high and about a kilometer long. It encompasses the quarters for students, the messes, gym’s, classrooms and a variety of other little shops and offices.

Stock photo found on Google… The MEGA, St Jean, Quebec

The mega is an impressive building to look at from the outside. The picture that I was able to find doesn’t do it justice and unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it…. probably happened subconsciously because while I was there, I came to dislike the place. But, in hind sight, it’s pretty cool!

BMOQ preparation:

There are a lot of things to consider prior to leaving for BMOQ. I have written a small blog post HERE that outlines some of the things that I did to prepare myself for course. I can confidently say that I had far less headaches on course because I thought ahead of things that may surface while I was away and basically out of touch with the rest of civilization for the 14 weeks.

Things to be aware of while on BMOQ:

One of the biggest things to know before going on course, is that one does not have a lot of time to stay in touch with family and friends. We were expected to complete evening tasks, such as: sewing our names into every piece of kit; cleaning our quarters; preparing our kit; or studying for tests. Especially during the first 5-8weeks, we were monitored pretty closely by your staff to ensure that we were in fact doing these things and weren’t slacking off. Some other things to consider:

• Your cellphone will be either locked up, or you will be expected not to use it. Our staff allowed us to keep our phones, but we were only allowed to use them for 30 minutes every evening. Since the staff did random spot checks during the night it was often too risky to be on your phone outside of those parameters.
• All of your civilian clothing and most of your civvie belongings will be locked up. For the first 5 weeks you will have no access to your civilian lockers and will only get to use your military kit. After the 6^th week however, you should be entitled to your civilian clothing and have your first weekend off.
• Pay had been a discussion between several members while on course. We all seemed to have been told different stories of what amounts we would be getting paid. As it turned out, if you are a DEO candidate, you will be receiving pay at the rank of 2Lt, Second Lieutenant, which amounts to a gross pay of $3839 per month. However, your net pay will be significantly lower because you will have to be paying rations ($538) and quarters ($120) while on course. Aside from those deductions you will also have your Pension (superannuation) deductions and Quebec Tax deductions. After all of the deductions, I think I netted about $1600 per month… which isn’t much but at least you wont have a lot of expenses. Unless, you are like most of my platoon and leave to go to Montreal or stay at some other hotel on the weekends.

NOTE: If you want to see further pay scale information for Officer and NCM ranks, you can view them HERE.

Phase 1 of BMOQ – Become a follower

The initial 5-8 weeks are entirely focused on acclimatizing new recruits to the military and to turn them into a member who can follow orders. The order and discipline set in from the moment we arrived at the airport in Montreal. Basically from that second on, the staff put pressure on us with strict timelines and expected levels of discipline. The focus is entirely on ensuring new candidates are individuals who can begin to follow orders as, this is an important aspect as a member of the military.

After a few days on course we were issued all of our initial military kit, and boy were we eager to try it all on. Below is a pic of me and a couple of buddies right after we got our FFO (Full Fighting Order).

Aren’t we cool?

The first week on course was relatively relaxed because we had a bunch admin sessions to get all of our paperwork in order (Expect to be standing still for very long periods of time). From then on, we learned the basics. Classes were long and we often found ourselves very tired. Death by PowerPoint is a saying everyone there becomes very familiar with. A priority should be not to fall asleep in class. Whenever staff found someone dozing off in class, they were made to go to the back and hold a squat or do jumping jacks to stay awake. So the best bet is to simply get up and stand in the back of the class and continue to take notes from there.

NOTE: You should make it your mission to NEVER be the last person to be ready for anything…. Often times our staff made the rest of the platoon assume the plank position, hold a squat or do pushups until the last few stragglers got themselves ready. If you are dilly dallying and taking your time getting ready, the rest of your platoon will not be happy with you. ANYWAY, I digress….

During the indoc period, you will find that you spend a lot of time doing chores and cleaning your quarters. Daily inspections begin early on and you will be expected to meet dress standards, room standards, and quarters standards to 100%. Inspection lay out for your bed will look like this:

Everything on the bed had to be perfectly measured and spaced according to standard. If it wasn’t the bed got ripped apart and often time that was accompanied by doing some 25-50 pushups.

Story time: One of our weekends off was taken away from us because we didn’t display a high level of teamwork. The above photo was taken on a day where we held, I believe, 5 inspections in one day that weekend! It was insane. We had to wake up extremely early, around 5 AM, go to breakfast and have our rooms inspection ready for 0700hrs. Each time the staff came around that day, there was something else they were picking on: First was that the rifle’s chamber wasn’t clean enough, next inspection the bed wasn’t measured to the exact centimeter, then the gas mask was dirty…. and it went on. Each time something was not to par, our beds got ripped apart. This sucked because we had to have it all ready to go again for the following inspection…. which was about 30 minutes later. To top it all off we had to do a pt session for a couple of hours in the afternoon where we ran for a solid hour of it. Needless to say, the week following was extremely exhausting as we had gotten no rest all weekend. I believe we were in the field then too… but hey, we adapted and overcame!

The biggest reward to look forward to after the indoc period is the first weekend off! The second we were allowed off base, we got dressed in our normal clothes for the first time in 6 weeks and called the cabs! Stop one for me was Tim Horton’s… because I really wanted coffee other than the tar they were serving at the mess. From there we went to Montreal and spent the weekend in the city! One little trick we learned was that the Fairmont Hotel gives military discounts, so we soon realized it was as cheap staying there as it is staying at any other hotel. We also ended up using Airbnb several times to stay in apartments for even less.

Phase 2 of BMOQ: Turning you into a leader

Phase 2 becomes a bit more relaxed in the sense that we began to assume more responsibility and call the shots. Inspections are done by section members vs the staff and we assumed the responsibility of CPC (Course Platoon Commander) and got to order the platoon around for meal times, classes, etc.

Here, we began to learn more about becoming a leader and learn how to plan missions, develop orders and then execute them. During this stage, we began going to the field more often as well. Up until this point, we had probably only gone to Farnham (a small town about 30 minutes from St Jean) once or twice. The field phases can be stressful. While we did our course in the Winter, the days were cold, and we barely got any sleep throughout the week. Our platoon was what one would call “Hell” platoon. So our staff took it upon themselves to make our days harder and more exhausting than our sister platoon had it (They were the Hollywood platoon, named so because they are pampered compared to Hell platoon).

An example of why we were hell platoon: On our pre-vimy exercise (second to last ex in the field of the course), our sister platoon was engaged in a 5 minute fire fight. Their staff was basically calling them to a stand-to (where you have to defend your camp) and were engaged with some artillery (arty) sims and bangers. Well, since our camp was right next to theirs, our staff decided it was time we showed them what a real fire fight was like…. SO, we engaged in a 45 minute stand-to exercise. Where we had simulated causalities, which we had to carry back to camp, had several arty sims and bangers go off and were absolutely exhausted by the end of it. Needless to say, it took about all of 3 seconds for us to fall asleep after that when we finally got the chance to…

Back to the leadership aspect of BMOQ. All of the leadership lessons and exercises lead to one final evaluation known as Exercise Vimy. Where you go into the field for a week and are faced with a pretty cool simulated mission scenario. Each candidate will had to lead a 4 hour mission, which includes the planning process, delivering orders, and then executing the orders. These mission are continuous and go on for 24 hours a day, for as many days are necessary to get everyone through. This is the last evaluation conducted on basic and can actually be a lot of fun. We got a bit more sleep on Vimy (about 20 minutes every 4 hours) which made things far easier also.

Graduation

The final week in St Jean was spent getting us ready for Grad parade and for our departure to our OJT units. This week was very chill where the hardest part of our day was to wake up at 5am. When grad parade came, it was a day filled with pride and joy. Our family and friends were invited to watch and to celebrate with us, and after the parade we were also allowed to leave and have dinner with them. While the final day can be a lot of fun and joy, the work isn’t quite yet over. The next morning we had to get up at 3AM to clean our quarters one final time and get all of our kit sorted out and leave for the airports. I have personally made a lot of friends on this course and while it was hard saying bye to many of them at that moment, I was ready to leave the Mega and get on with my pilot training!

Here is a pic of my room all cleaned out on the last morning:

 

Here is also a short list of little tricks I implemented to make life easier:

• Buy 2-in-1 shampoo, body wash. This will save you so much time after PT showers… as you usually only get 8-12 minutes to shower and get ready to be formed up after PT.
• Buy a ghost set of shampoo, soap, razors, etc for inspections and don’t touch those items. This way you won’t have to worry about doing tedious tasks like cleaning the inside of the toothpaste cap! Note: You should make it look like you use those items though… obviously your bar of soap wouldn’t remain in brand new condition if you actually used it…
• Buy a small brush from the CANEX (military convenience store in the MEGA) to carry around with you to clean your boots throughout the day.
• Iron your bed. If you iron your bed, you will have far less wrinkles and can reuse the creases to make your bed.
• Order extra socks! You will be entitled to 5 extra pairs of liners and gray socks to wear. This will be great so you can keep a ghost set in your closet for inspections. You would order them online at Logistik Unicorp.
• Bring Swiffer wipes with you on course – helps a lot with dusting the quarters!
• Practice folding your shirts etc earlier on. You will become more proficient at it.
• Stay on top of cleaning your barracks… don’t let the work pile up.
• Smother your weapon in CLP, prior to going into the field. This will prevent it from rusting! Also, clean your weapon daily and reapply CLP, especially in the winter months!

 

If there are any questions, feel free to leave a comment below, and I will be sure to respond when I can! All the best to those who are gearing up to go to this course. I guarantee memories of a lifetime will be made!